Halfway to the Silence her pursuers stopped chasing her. It was stupid to go into the Silence at all, let alone after dark. With nothing more than the pack she grabbed from her cart on her back, Quinn slowed her pace as she approached the Silence. It wouldn’t be necessary to go inside unless those looking for vengeance proved angry enough to return. Not to mention her only ventures into the Silence were to cross it.

Her lungs hurt as she caught her breath, and her feet tripped over the uneven ground. Rocks and hard dirt made up the northern half of the Cinder Desert, and Quinn’s breath fogged in front of her. Winter was well on its way, and the North Pass was already treacherous enough as it was. 

Her magic wells were low and until she knew for certain no one followed her, she entered the Gray and let her tendrils spread out in a wide circle. Lights in pale green and white winked out as she passed, filling her wells and renewing her stamina as she left a trail of death behind her. 

“Rainon,” she said to herself, and then scoffed. An overly liberal people too focused on their magic and science and politics to notice Cinder, the only other country on their continent, had a new and horrible king. But they didn’t execute necromancers, so now she didn’t have a choice unless she wanted to live out her days in the North Forest.

Quinn didn’t know anything about Rainon beyond that, and the fact she now raced to the northern pass to find safety there scared her almost as much as imagining what the gypsies would do to her if they caught her. 

As the night grew longer a deep exhaustion set in, the kind created by prolonged time spent in the Gray. No signs of pursuit revealed themselves, and she could make out the Spires in the distance in the bright moonlight. The Spires meant the caravan wasn’t posted as far from the mountains as she expected, and she would reach the base of the pass tomorrow. It was still odd that they would be so far northwest from their usual route. The storms in the southern half of the desert must’ve been as bad as the peddlers said. 

The Spires were burnt orange rock formations creating a forest of stone: some pointed straight to the sky and others formed rough arches creating a maze of fallen rocks and cliffs and chasms so deep and dark no one knew how deep they truly were. Most travelers turned south to avoid the Spires unless they had a desert tracker with them, and Quinn didn’t have one of those. She also didn’t dare move any further south or she risked running into the gypsies. 

Which meant after another hour, Quinn walked past the first of the arches and felt a chill go up her spine. Her Sight in the Gray would be worse where the rock was thicker, but for now the spires and arches were thin lines distorting her vision.

Small rodents scurried in the darkness, and she watched their little life lights as they left hiding to avoid the nighthawks perched in crevices of rock, watching closely. To her back she heard a nighthawk screech in indignation at the already dead shrew she left in her wake. 

Necromancy and the Gray didn’t work well in places like this. The thick rock concealed her Sight with its dull gray glow, and even the glaring white light of a human life could hide behind it. She hated being in survival mode; it was exactly why she escaped to the desert in the first place. Unfortunately, hiding where the rock was thinner wouldn’t be much of a hiding place at all.

The night sky lightened above and Quinn reached her limit. Her tendrils stretched out further, seeking the life it knew lied out there, reaching outside of her control. She let the Gray wink out and her tendrils with it. Quinn began looking for an empty nook or hidden shelf in the rock to rest. She doubted the gypsies would follow her in here, but news like that traveled quickly and it wouldn’t be long before the rumors reached the bounty hunters holed up in the desert to come after her.

How did that happen? How many times had she hunted in North Forest and shared that food with the nomadic desert caravans? Perhaps her luck was starting to run out, or maybe the forest was tired of her plundering its creatures. In any case, she didn’t do anything to that meat. It should’ve been fine. The image of the woman with her baby, convulsing and foaming at the mouth would haunt her to the end of her days.

A shelf of rock around the corner made her sigh in relief. The ache in her legs and feet felt worse at the sight of it knowing rest would come soon. Her lips and mouth were dry and nearly cracked at the thought of the water in her pack. 

As she hauled herself up onto the shelf, broken rock clattered down a fallen arch ahead to her left. She pressed flat down on her belly and shuffled to the shadows, and then leapt into the Gray. Two figures, glowing with harsh human life light, peeked their heads out over a rock for a brief second and hid behind it again. 

Her tendrils were ravenous at the presence of life and sensed her lack of control. Without permission they inched in the direction of the men tracking her. She halted them with a throbbing ache, and forced them to retreat. 

“She dodged us to head south,” said a man’s voice, tinted with a Rainon accent. “She would’ve come through here by now if she were headed to the pass.” 

“We followed the dead animals,” said another, and Quinn narrowed her eyes. The mage from Wind Song caravan. “She’s here, and she can see us.”

Those weren’t gypsies looking for vengeance. Her stomach dropped. She should’ve known she couldn’t escape the bounty hunters forever. Sleep didn’t matter much now. She needed to get to Rainon, and she needed to be there yesterday. 

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Fear drove her now, and she let her tendrils create a sphere of transparent blackness around her like a bubble of death, and she ran north and west through the natural maze of the Spires. 

It didn’t take long for the bounty hunters to discover she had changed direction. They would know she was familiar with North Forest and guessed that’s where she would be headed, but Quinn was too far ahead for them to cut her off from the north. She kept the sun to her right as it rose and continued at a steady and ground-eating pace. 

Trees became visible in the distance. The Silence pressed on Quinn’s ears, and her heart thumped hard in her chest as she jogged through the barren land separating North Forest from the rest of the world. Its border always moved, either receding or growing depending on the day and putting mages at a loss. 

The bounty hunters continued to follow her and kept to the west, blocking her from getting to the pass. It didn’t matter now how much snow would be collecting in the pass if she didn’t live long enough to make it there. Her last resort was the Forest; with uninhibited Sight and nearly unlimited resources, she could hide there for months if she needed to. With luck, the bounty hunters would get bored or run out of supplies.

The hunters weren’t far behind, but she was close to the treeline and slowed to a walk. Neither of them dared to enter the Silence. She overheard them making their plans after she looped them in a couple circles, and the Rainon man refused to enter the Silence under any circumstance, even if it meant giving up the king’s gold. 

Bounty hunters. Quinn wanted to spit. It’d been years since she encountered one, but she supposed it wasn’t too surprising given the new King Haevyn III and his monumental hatred for necromancy. His father simply banned them, but this king held public hangings and put bounties on the heads of all necromancers who dared enter Cinder. 

Rainon, however, did nothing of the sort. In fact, for all Quinn knew, they were just like every other mage or even celebrated. Magic was much more common and accepted in Rainon, and she found herself wondering why she hadn’t thought of going there years ago. 

Money. That was why. She frowned to herself and continued through the Silence. Hunting in the desert was a lucrative business, even if she had fallen on unlucky times recently. Traveling to a new country was an unknown she wasn’t ready to deal with unless forced.

The ground beneath Quinn’s feet shook and threw her off balance with a yelp. She flung out her hands to catch herself on the rocky sand and crashed hard. All around her fingers insects crawled up out of the loosened dirt. In fact, they were everywhere. The ground shook again, and Quinn wobbled to her feet. What in the name of the Elders was that?

An inhuman shriek pierced the Silence, and whatever life managed to survive in this unlivable part of the world crept back into hiding. Even the bugs buried themselves back into the sand. Quinn ran now, and the two little specs in the distance of her hunters were nowhere to be seen. What she did see was much, much worse.

Up in the air, it didn’t look so big. A feathered creature with a long, serpentine body and wings looked something like a cross between a dragon and bird of prey. It hurtled past her and Quinn slowed. 

She ran through stories and myths, trying to place the creature and came up with nothing. Coiled up, it might’ve been the size of a horse. It continued on its path, growing smaller as it flew further away. 

The creature banked and turned back towards her, gathering speed as it began to descend. Quinn’s tendrils snapped to attention and she let them hurtle up to meet the creature, its life force pale and bright, almost human. Its features were twisted, dyeing its scales and feathers black like a vine had wrapped around it and began to grow and infect its host. Little of this creature was natural, and she swore under her breath. This was going to hurt. 

The biggest of her tendrils punched into the creature’s feathered chest and started draining. The power hit her like a wall, and every shred of her exhaustion vanished. The creature shrieked but didn’t slow. She couldn’t use the energy fast enough, and felt full to bursting with magic. From where she stood it looked like her assault had little or no effect on the fast approaching monster. 

Panic filled her chest along with the magic, and started siphoning her magic out into a ball, using her smaller tendrils to control it. She didn’t know what it was or what it would do, but as her fattest tendrils sucked the life out of the monster, her smaller ones spun it like making a ball of yarn out of wool.

For a moment, the creature’s light flickered, and it came crashing down into the Silence. It didn’t stay down, and screeched in a fury before burrowing beneath the rough sand. 

Quinn’s giant ball of magic hovered and hummed beside her as power radiated from it and kept her warm in the early winter morning. Her whole chest throbbed and she let the rest of her magic flow into the growing ball of black...something.

The earth stirred, and creature surfaced, its light more diminished now that it had been. Quinn watched, and let her tendrils drink its life force. It moved slower now, but it was still too fast. She wouldn’t be able to drain it before it reached her.

Quinn lifted her arms above her head and made a throwing motion, willing the ball of power at the creature. It made no sound at impact, or perhaps that was the Silence reminding her how it got its name. The black ball of pure power shredded through the creature and it didn’t have time to scream. Scales, feathers, blood and flesh coated everything within a dozen paces. Stunned, Quinn stood still.

The remains of the creature steamed in the cold air and Quinn gagged. Something was wrong with the creature. Organs that should’ve been pink and fleshy in color were dusky, and some nearly black and giving off a putrid stench, similar to what she smelled in the cooking cauldrons at the Wind Song caravan. A grim feeling settled over her. Something was happening in North Forest, and it was doing something to the things that dwelled there. Perhaps she wouldn’t find any refuge there after all.

She picked a few scales and feathers from the demolished beast and tucked them in her pack. With any luck, one of the mages at the Academy might know what kind of creature it was. With more energy than what was fair, Quinn turned west. If she could take down that beast with that ball of power she made, two bounty hunters were nothing.