I was going to get Asha killed.

Azeralphane crept towards us, the fog that had rolled in on his heels obscured everything but the distance that he closed between us.

"Leannan." Asha whispered to me, pulling me back by my arm. “We’ve got to go.”

I waved my hand in a wide arc. Letting my iridescent aura pour out of me, I replicated the fog billowing into the alleyway and painted a wall of it in front of us and released. I stumbled backwards weakly and felt Asha catch me.

A wicked laugh came from beyond my glamor and the echoes of the demon's steps vanished. "Impressive, impressive. You will make a valuable addition to my collection."

Beginning to move blindly through the billowing white fog, I pulled Asha along behind me.

Another wicked laugh sounded from the direction we were running in, followed by the sharp echo of Azeralphane’s footsteps.

“How did he get behind us?” Asha whimpered.

I couldn’t answer. She tugged at the sleeve of my robe, but I couldn't turn to look at her. My eyes had found the demon's shadow within the fog. I met his glowing yellow eyes and couldn’t look away.

Asha shook me, pleading. “Leannan, What's happening to you?”

Azeralphane spoke to me.”Leannan, tsk, tsk, What were you doing? Dragging poor little Asha out into the cold dark night.”

The shadow faded away into the fog and the sound of his footsteps trailed off.

The demon appeared in front of me. Wild white hair framed a face the same shade of blue as a corpse. Two curved horns jutted from its forehead. A long tongue hung out of a mouth filled with pointed teeth. Its whiteless eyes alternated between hypnotic rings of blue and yellow. Cold breath brushing against my face, Azeralphane hissed. “Give me your soul, Leannan. Let me taste it.”

My body froze with fear, all I could was whisper. “Asha, run.”

The demon’s long tongue uncoiled towards me, saliva dripping from its tip.

“Leave her alone!” I heard Asha scream.

A blade of orange light, the color of sunstone, sliced through the tongue just before it licked my cheek and the severed end fell to the ground.

Azeralphane, horns, eyes, hair, all vanished. The fog dissipated in an instant. The fear that had frozen my body released me and I was left staring into the eyes of someone I knew.

“Precept Marisol?” I gasped, recognizing her seafoam eyes.

My teacher scowled at me. “Maiden Leannan, I hope you have learned your lesson about disobeying the rules. Do not make me terrify you in that way again,” She scolded me.Then she turned to Asha. “Calm, Maiden Asha.”

“Did she?” I asked. Asha’s eyes were alight with the sunstone colored light and strands of her short brown hair floated from her aura. A triangle of orange power harnessed over her navel and her jaw was set in a look of sheer determination.

“It seems her desire to protect you in the face of what she believed to be Azeralphane proved a strong enough trigger,” Precept Marisol explained, laying a hand on Asha’s shoulder. “To awaken the color of her soul.”

Asha’s orange glow shining in my eyes, I felt myself fall.

"What is your name?" I heard Sam ask the first of his questions.

Why did he sound so quiet?

Racked by fits of shivers, my fingers and toes were numb from the cold. Rushing water, all the heat ran out of it sometime while I had been in the memory, spewed from the faucet into the open drain. I had never plugged it. I stood up, the freezing porcelain sending stabs of cold in my already chilled skin and shut the water off.

I answered my familiar. "Autumn," Then, coming quickly off my tongue, I said. "Azeralphane." I wanted to lock the name in my mind. I had lived the first eighteen years of my life within Zenithcidel and due to the constraints I existed under there, I had never heard a single mention of the monster that the Maidens in the memory had spoken of like he was as well known as stories of dragons stealing princesses. How much did I not know because I had been kept under lock and key? If there was some blue horned demon striding around Chaos targeting sorceresses and stealing their power, didn't I deserve to know? Even if it was just a story, It hurt that I had never been told. It hurt that if I ever found myself among other Maidens my age, there were an uncountable amount of things that they would know that I wouldn't.

You don't deserve to know. A thought I only partially disagreed with came.

Stepping out of the bath and wrapping myself in the towels that I would let Anna wash the next time she asked, I answered Sam's remaining questions. The towels were more for warmth, as ineffective as they were, than to get dry considering I hadn't gotten very wet. My current strategy of eating only what I could steal while everyone else in the boarding house was asleep was apparently not enough considering my shoulders and collarbones looked sharp enough to cut glass. Maybe I could cut through the walls in The Well. I thought. The dark brown of my hair had lightened at its roots considerably and flecks of emerald green scattered in the muddy brown of my irises glimmered back at me when they caught the light from Sam’s perch. My cheekbones and jawline looked entirely too much like what my actual face looked like.

"If you don't do it now, you won't" I said to my reflection, knowing I had made a habit of putting off things I knew I should do as of late.

I inhaled and focused my Aura, pulling it until I held it in my mind. "Dani. I am Dani Matthews. I have dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. I couldn't be picked out of a crowd even if someone knew me." I said. The loss I felt from using my aura was gradual as every trace of my true face dulled into my persona.

I wobbled out of the bathroom with my hand on the wall. I needed to eat. I wanted to sleep. My room was much colder than I was used to it being and I was sure the pile of blankets on the floor wouldn't be enough to keep me warm. The clothes I had worn the night before would be better than nothing, but something felt so utterly wrong about curling up under a blanket wearing denim. My robes were in the closet, but wearing nothing would be better than donning what I had come to think of as a prison uniform.

Sam strolled out of the bathroom and hopped onto the dresser. "One of your mortals knocked on the door while you were in The Well. They left you something."

In my surprise, I didn't think before I picked him up under his front legs and held him to my face. "How long have you been able to talk?"

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"From the moment I awoke in this feline body." Sam answered. He took a swipe at my nose, claws extended.

I'd never given much thought of where familiars come from. I wasn’t sure anyone knew. It occurred to me at that moment that Sam had not always been a cat.

"My command, what did it feel like?" I asked.

Sam swiped again, his low voice rumbling in his tiny chest. "It didn't affect me at all."

My eyebrows furrowed, and I felt the heat of anger blush my face. "It didn't work."

"Not in the slightest." Sam swiped for the third time and hit me.

I was too mad to care. "Why the fuck haven't you been talking to me then?"

"I did not wish to speak to you." Sam answered.

I resisted the urge to throw him. Instead, I chose peace and suddenly dropped him back onto the dresser, dusting off the blue hairs he had shed onto my palms. "I thought I fucking broke you, you stupid cat! What about when I mentioned the other familiar? You didn't think that was worth talking to me about? Or when I said I'd go back home, nothing?"

Sam was still except for a single swish of his tail. "Your outrage is sufficient enough for me to know my point has been taken. In the future, I suggest you simply ask me what you will of me instead of attempting to bind me with your will"

I laughed at him. "How could I be so silly? I'm sorry, I should have remembered that with the long and trusting partnership we've built you would absolutely do whatever I asked. Hey Sam, hold your weirdly rough cat tongue while my friends are here won't you," I acted. "You wouldn't have said a word."

"Your command did not affect me and yet I did not speak." Sam growled.

The stupid blue kitten had me there.

"Only because you were trying to prove a point." I yelled half heartedly, the heat of my anger running out of things to burn. I walked away from him and opened my door. The view from within my room was a landing, large enough for a single person to stand, and the stairs leading down to the second story. If I had to guess, the room had been an attic of some sort long before the Lao's had become the owners of the boarding house. A small stack of things sat at my feet. On the bottom was my sweatshirt and shorts, washed and folded. Then, wrapped in a cloth rag, were two sandwiches, overflowing with what looked like scrambled eggs. On top was a note,written in a tight script, it read. I'll come get your sheets and blankets later. Anna."

I smiled, a warmth that had nothing to do with the temperature of the house spreading through me. I went back into my room and locked the door behind me. I hung up my towels in the bathroom and pulled on the clothes I had become all too comfortable wearing. My socks hadn't been washed but turning them inside out was good enough for me to put them back on.

I pulled my notebook and pen from the dresser and sat down on the bed to eat. Tearing into the first sandwich, I read the last entry in my notes. Kavinli, Maiden, awakened color, glamor. It had been long enough since I had viewed the memory, that I had almost forgotten what it had been like to be Kavinli. She had been forbidden to show the color of her soul, I remembered that, but by who? From my limited understanding of the formal training that Maidens of the circle undertook, growing strong enough to awaken your color was the point.

I finished the first sandwich and wrote my next entry. Leannan, maiden, drunk, colorless, glamor, And then I added. What is Azeralphane?

I thought about flipping to a new page and making notes about my attempts to break through the barriers within The Well, but just like the idea of going to bed with jeans on, it felt wrong. I would need a new notebook. One for memories and one for my new pursuit. Based on my previous experiences, being crushed, dropped, and most recently forced into a memory, two more notebooks might be necessary.

Laying back and stretching out, I pulled the pile of blankets off the floor and onto myself. They were the right kind of cool within the folds and I closed my eyes, feeling an easy sleep coming over me.

Just before I drifted off, I felt it. Something was watching me.

A small weight landed on my chest and I opened my eyes.

Sam peered down at me, the pupils of his blue eyes razor thin. "Your hunger has been sated."

"For now?" I said, confused.

"Mine has not."

"Eat the other sandwich, cats can eat eggs. I think."

"I must hunt." Sam said, his low voice vibrating against my chest.

"Get off me." I sighed, moving to sit up.

I couldn't. I was pinned to the bed. I grabbed Sam by the scruff of his neck and tried to pull him off but he wouldn't budge. The kitten small enough to fit in my hands felt like he weighed more than I did. "How are you doing this?

"As annoying as I seem to be to you, I could make my service much more difficult," The kitten said and I felt the pressure on my chest gradually increase. Just before the air was forced from my lungs, the pressure released. "Now. I must hunt."

He hopped off me and I sat up gasping. Did he just threaten me?

I couldn't just let him out, Especially now that Mr. Bill Argus and his creepy fucking smile had moved in.

"I guess I could sneak you out and take you into the woods." I sighed. It wasn't the best idea considering the four eyed familiar that could still be stalking around out there.

"Unnecessary. Open the window." Sam said, pacing in front of the upturned mattress.

I am a fool. Maybe it was how exhausted I was, but I just didn’t have it in me to argue with him. Pushing the mattress out of the way and turning the latch open, I asked. "Sam, will you please remain unseen and return as soon as you have satisfied your hunger?"

"As you will it my lady." Sam answered immediately, his blue eyes flashed for just long enough that I could notice it.

My Lady?

I put my trust into my antagonistic familiar and opened the window.

Sam shot past me like a blue bolt of lighting and bounded from the window sill towards the tree Arthur had been playing under the night we had met. He landed on the thin end of a branch and it sagged under his weight. A scattering of birds burst from the tree in a panicked jumble of chirps and cries. Sam sprinted along the thin branch as if it weren't half of his size, crossed over to a second branch at the trunk, and ran its length almost faster than my eyes could follow. A fat gray bird sat on the branch's end but as Sam clawed towards it, it took flight. Sam followed suit, jumping off the branch and sailing through the air towards his prey.

Thunk.

I staggered, catching myself on the lip of the open window.

Sam collided with the bird. Both of them plummeted to the ground in a tangled mess.

Thunk.

The metallic heartbeat I had come to expect while in The Well hammered in my mind, and I felt my body grow weak as my vision lost its focus.

Sam and his prey hit the ground, a plume of feathers and leaves been thrown into the air.

Thunk.

I lost sight of my familiar, the view from the window being suddenly replaced by the wooden ceiling of my room.

"Sam." I called out to him weakly.

Then, I dropped, falling into The Well.

For the first time, I did not find myself standing in the room with three walls. I laid on my back on the strange black floor. Everything else was the same. The walls of gold, silver, and bronze threads with their collapsing pattern still stood around me.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. The heart beat shook the room quicker, coming in rounds of three.

Stunned into silence, both from the way and the state I had been dragged into The Well in, I could do nothing but breathe. The reverberations of the beats felt like they would shake me apart at my joints if they came much quicker.

I expected a door of light to appear and to swallow me like it had last time, but it never arrived. I laid there for what could have been hours just as much as it could have been a few seconds.Then the sound of metal sliding across metal filled the room and I covered my ears with my hands. The last time I had heard that, I got crushed.

I looked at the walls, expecting to see them slowly grinding towards me. When I had been crushed before, the threads had looked like they were running over some invisible loom, repeating endlessly, but this time, they were not repeating.

Starting at the center of the pattern on each wall, the threads withdrew, unweaving themselves from one another and drawing back into darkness behind them.

I sat up, realizing what was happening.

The walls were coming down.