-=[Callista Liesl]=-

I simply stood there, half-fused to the floor of Ioan's pub, straining to hear what was happening outside with all of my senses.

I felt the distant presence of my sleigh and the cold grip of intensifying winter and something ancient and dangerous that surrounded me within this cursed old pub. Some unseen, invisible hand that gave life to the impossible flowers and plants all around me, suspended me in the wooden floor.

The hours of silence were maddening.

I had no idea what that idiot and his damn cat were planning, but I was certain that at best they’d just get themselves killed.

After such, I’d have to suffer in this floor for a few days and pull on the power of the micro-star shards in my piercings to stay alive, fighting muscle fatigue, hunger and dehydration until the barbarian mortals from Bernt arrive and dig me out.

. . .

The first sound was a crack so loud it made me flinch.

It was followed by a series of thunderous booms that shook the very foundations of the pub. I could hear the creaking of wood and the tinkling of broken glass as the building trembled around me.

"Goldara’s tits," I whispered. "What? It can't be..."

But it was.

I knew those sounds all too well, sensed arcane power dancing along the edges of my stardust tattoos. It was the sound of my sleigh's Ward being attacked, its defenses fighting back against an unseen, powerful enemy.

Just one of those thunderbolts was enough to bring down a young Champion. Two or three would have fried them alive. Four? That was just pushing it.

The thunder kept on rumbling.

I counted the strikes.

Ten strikes.

Twenty.

Thirty four.

It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t! Ioan wasn’t a seven hundred star Champion… right?

What in Goldara's name was the Ward even fighting for so long?!

If Ioan simply tried to grab the door, the defenses would have simply blasted him away, felled him and then stopped when he stopped moving by either getting knocked out or dying.

Did an Immortal Star-Eater come from the sky, seeking something precious inside my sleigh?

There was nothing inside, but useless mundane merch and six backup gold scrolls to bind young Champions with! Why would a Star-Eater even go into my sleigh?! There was nothing inside for him to devour!

My mind raced, trying to comprehend what was happening. The Ward on my sleigh was one of the most powerful magical protections here in the North. It was designed to withstand the assault of an Arch-Sorceress, to repel a high level Star-Eater, even to hold off an entire army of mortals!

Sixty six thunder strikes.

I swallowed nervously, my entire body becoming covered in sweat.

What in Goldara's name was going on?! Did the men from Bernt arrive already? No, surely it was too early for that. Why would they purposefully attack my sleigh?! I convinced them all that I was a friend of their village, a beneficiary who would pay them well if they served me.

It couldn't have been mortals, the terror field would have made them all run from the sleigh screaming even before the thunder-strikes began!

The sounds intensified, a cacophony of magical warfare that made my white fur stand on end. The defence Ward had upped its game, increasing the potency of its strikes.

I could hear the crackle of lightning, and what sounded like a distant roar of something massive. Beneath it all, I heard a low, ominous rumble that seemed to emanate from the earth itself.

My tail lashed in frustration as I struggled against my bonds. If only I could get free, if only I could reach my sleigh, to even see what was happening out there... But I was trapped, helpless to do anything but listen as my most prized possession, my ticket to fame and fortune, was being systematically assaulted by an unknown, monstrous enemy… enemies?

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With each passing second, my guesses about what was happening became more wild.

Did Ioan have an army in his pocket? Was that tiny kitten of his some kind of a Divine Beast in disguise?! Was Ioan secretly an ancient dark abomination, a thing from the Abyss, Infinity of eyes wearing the flesh of a Nordstaii teenager?

Then came more deafening explosions, ones that didn’t sound like the attack of the Ward at all. The ominous deep rumble intensified.

It sounded like the roar of a gargantuan, primordial beast, but not like any I had ever heard before!

A dragon?! It had to be a dragon. But dragons didn’t strike the same place twice. Why would a dragon return to the ruins it had already cleansed of human hearts…?

Then there was a sudden, deafening explosion of arcane fury. The pub shook violently, dust raining down on me, the windows and beams cracking. For a moment, I feared the entire building would collapse around me as I covered my head with my hands and leaned down into the dirty floor in pure terror.

If Dragon Zarnitza returned to Svalbard, then this was my end. Any moment now, the beast would tear the roof of this pub off. Then, she would bathe me in dragonfire until there was nothing left of me, but a blackened island of ashes.

Silence. The sound of a ringing pulse in my ears.

I stood there, panting, my ears pivoting left and right straining for any sign of further events.

Nothing. Just silence.

The air smelled of magic and… moisture?

I extended my senses outward, spun the tiny furnaces of power available to me to the max, reached out far past myself, past the building.

I felt nothing. Whatever magical bullshit kept me in the floor also badly interfered with my ability to sense things in the distance

I felt nothing at all now.

It was as if the ever-present pulse of the Defense Ward of my sleigh… was gone!

As the moments ticked by and no triumphant return of the Ward's magic reached my senses, a cold dread settled in my stomach.

I knew, with a certainty that made me want to curl up and disappear, that my sleigh's Ward had fallen, that the invincible Star-Shard within had somehow shattered, the binding runes on it fried.

"No," I whispered again, my voice breaking. "No, no, no..."

How had a simple mission to capture a newborn Champion turned into... this utter, complete madness?

Heartbeats stretched on as I waited for something, for anything to happen, trembling, fearing the worst.

----------------------------------------

In about an hour or so, the front door of the pub swung open.

Ioan was back with the black, silver-eyed kitten sitting on his shoulder.

I stared at the Nordstaii teen as he entered the pub, my heart pounding in my chest.

He looked the same as he always did. Just an anorexic, short, redhead, seventeen year old boy. He didn’t smell like a mighty cultivator, didn’t cast a thousand threads of power around his body like an Arch-Sorceress.

He was simply… human, didn't feel like anyone important or even remotely magical.

I saw that Ioan held six golden tubes in his hands. It was the other binding contracts that I had kept in a lockbox in my sleigh.

He had somehow gotten into my mobile domain, obliterated an absolute Ward powered by a shard of the Wormwood Star!

“What in Goldara’s name are you?” I uttered.

"Me?" Ioan grinned back at me. "Just your average, run-of-the-mill Svalbard village boy."

“Quit screwing with me!” I barked. “How’d you get past the Ward?! You… you don’t even look like you broke a sweat fighting a Thunder-rune array and the Absolute shield! You… can't be just an averrrr-rage boy! You survived Dragon Zarnitza’s attack! Mortal children can’t freaking do that! What are you… Some kind of ancient spirit? A fallen God? A primordial from the Astral Abyss?! A Star-Eater in disguise?!"

"A fallen god?" Ioan laughed, shaking his head. "Nothing so dramatic. I'm just a man with a knack for problem-solving and a pinch of kitten-shaped good luck."

He pet his kitten, who seemed to melt into his hand, purring loudly.

I gritted my teeth, frustration mounting as the damned Nordstaii teen continued to dodge my questions with infuriating nonchalance. "Good luck? You call obliterating an Arcane Ward designed to withstand an army of men 'good luck'?"

Ioan shrugged, looking even more insufferably smug than before. "What can I say? I’m pretty good with creative application of rocks."

“Rocks? What rocks?!” I growled in frustration, my white tail lashing through the air. "That's not how anything works!! The Ward doesn't simply target mundane rocks, they’d just bounce off the shield and there would be no Thunder-Strikes!”

Ioan raised an eyebrow.

“Y-you can't just... luck your way through magical defenses designed by an Enclave of the most talented Arch-Sorceresses in the world from the Iridium Istria Maggelanum! That Ward was made to stand up to a mountain avalanche and there are no big enough mountains here to drop rocks from!”

“Look,” he said. “What if I am a fallen god? Would knowing such a thing change your attitude towards me? Would you stop being so god-damn uncooperative, stop lying to me? I just want to be left alone and to study magic in peace, Cali.”

I opened and closed my mouth.

“...are you really?” I whispered.

Ioan ignored my question by pushing a wooden table towards me. He then opened the tubes and unrolled six golden contracts across its rough surface, the sight making my stomach drop.

"What?" I sputtered, staring at the six contracts in disbelief.

Ioan's grin turned predatory. "A single contract doesn't seem to work against a cheeky Sorceress like yourself," he said. "So, why don't we stack the odds a bit?"

“What? But… that’s not… who in their right mind would even…” I felt the blood drain from my face as I realized what he was suggesting. "You... you can't be serious," I whimpered.

"Oh, but I am," Ioan replied. "Basic math. Seven contracts, seven times the binding power. Let's see you wriggle your way out of that, shall we?"

I stared at the contracts, then back at Ioan, my mind reeling.

How had I, a master of Dealermancy, kept fumbling everything so terribly?

As Ioan pushed the gold pen towards me, I knew with a sinking feeling that I was about to find out just how deep the Goldara-cursed Abyss went.