Enna Viot, I wrote. Sorceress of the Third Circle. Familiar, Nathanial, ghost of a talkative man. Shaman, jungle, ritual, new sun.

The morning was still new as I wrote my notes. I sat cross legged between the foot of the bed and the dresser. I had crawled down there the moment I had woken up, knowing how much harder it was to remember the important details of a memory if I didn't record them while they were still fresh. Then, I wrote about the Lady and her grace, beauty, and power. Inconveniently, due to the nature of how the memories worked, since Enna hadn't learned her name, I hadn't either.

My mother was a Sorceress of the Second Circle. By all means that was nothing shake a finger at but the displays I had viewed recently, particularly Trea and the Lady, would not leave my mind. All I could do was cast small charms and glamor. Those small magics shouldn't be possible considering the Seal placed over my navel, my channel. Even if I didn't bear the weight of a magical chastity belt, I didn't think I would ever be able to do things on such a scale.

When I had gotten up, Sam had asked his questions again. I’d slept so well, they had only been a minor annoyance. Still sad I hadn't discovered a way to circumvent them, I had torn Sam from his all important work of devising new ways to dismember avian creatures and asked him for his thoughts on my sleep induced slips into The Well. Since that moment, he had sat atop the dresser silently.

"Have you come up with anything?" I asked him, looking up from my notebook.

"Yes." He said in his rich baritone.

"Why haven't you said anything?" I replied. I had entered a state of near constant surprise at the new and creative ways my familiar found to frustrate me.

"I did not wish to interrupt your focus. Other than entering The Well, writing your notations is the only worthwhile pursuit you do."

I pursed my lips. It was considerate, him waiting for me to finish my work, but he had added a wonderful flourish of insult to his nicety. With Sam, you took what he gave you, I had learned that lesson. So, I swallowed my rising anger.

The wooden squeaks of someone coming up the stairs to my room sounded and were followed by someone knocking on my door.

“It’s Arthur, can I see the you know what?”

Arthur, not someone, had knocked on my door.

I don’t know what level of deception he thought he was operating under by referring to Sam as the you know what, but whoever heard him say it would know there was something upstairs in that strange girls room and she doesn't want anyone to know about it. That made keeping the secret that much harder. I opened the drawer of the dresser that now had clothes folded neatly within it. They were the ones Anna had given me the night of the ghost hunt and had been washed and returned to me by the same girl, the one I got to call my friend. I tucked my notebook under the jacket and closed the drawer.

“Sam?” I said to my familiar sitting atop the same dresser.

“I will remain silent.” He replied without me having to ask the question.

I didn’t like it, trusting him, it felt too uncertain. Having Arthur and Anna know I had a strangely blue kitten was one thing. If he changed his mind and decided to speak. . .Having them know I possessed dominion over a soul that had been fashioned into a strangely blue kitten and that, for a lack of knowledge on their part, I was a witch with a near infinite source of knowledge within her mind, was another.

Didn't I have to give him the benefit of the doubt though? He had come back when I had been swallowed by The Well and left unconscious. If revealing my location to the Mother's so I could be entombed within the walls of Zenithcidel was what his goal was, then he had missed his largest window of opportunity yet when I had let him out of the window to hunt.

“I’m trusting you.” I said to him,

“You have any other choice.” He replied, standing and arching his back in what could have been mistaken as a little bow.

I took it as one.

I unlocked my door and opened it.

Arthur, ducking his head so it didn’t hit the doorframe, greeted me with a smile. “I come bearing gifts.”

He held up the same thermos he had brought on the ghost hunt.

“Gift. You come bearing a gift.” I said, welcoming him in.

The tall man handed me the thermos and I took the top that also served as a cup off and poured what I had expected to be more hot chocolate into it.

It was coffee. We had coffee in Zenithcidel. I had never been allowed to drink it but we did have it.

"You’re up early," Arthur said to me, and pulled a length of string out of his pocket. "And I meant gifts."

I took a sip of the hot coffee. It tasted nothing like what I had expected. It was rich and much sweeter than I imagined.

"I hope you like cream and sugar, that's the only way I can drink that shit." Arthur said, dangling the string in front of my familiar's placid face.

"Yes, I love cream and sugar in my coffee." I lied, more of a fib really, wanting to avoid revealing how little I knew.

Sam did not so much as twitch at the string.

"Come on buddy, come on Sam." Arthur cooed in a hilariously high voice.

Sam swiped at the string.

"Unbelievable." I exclaimed.

The playing escalated dramatically in only a few seconds, going from the occasional swipe to a full on hunt between Sam and Arthur's string. Sam was the hunter, naturally.

"Alright," Arthur said, looking at the clock. "I've got to go, I just wanted to come say good morning and give the little monster this." He dropped the string at Sam's paws and my familiar attacked it.

"Where are you going?" I asked, taking another sip of coffee.

"Oh, into the city with my mom," He said, his usual smile fading just a bit. "I'll be back tomorrow though."

"I was just wondering when we would go ghost hunting again?" I asked, which I wished I hadn't as soon as I said it. It was becoming all too easy for me to forget who I was when I interacted with the siblings.

"Oh shit, yeah. We will have to plan that. I was thinking of having a bon fire this weekend, would you want to do that with me? We can make smores?" He said, his smile returning to its full strength.

"Of course." I answered.

Arthur left and I closed and locked the door.

I didn't know what the fuck smores were but they had the rare quality of their name sounding delicious all on its own.

Finishing the last swig of the coffee I had poured, I made for the bathroom. I wanted to see more. I wanted to watch through the eyes of Sorceresses like Trea and Enna. I wanted to see all the wondrous things they could do and the terrible things they faced. My new found excitement for the memories wasn’t all that surprising. I had been locked in a room for all of my life that I could remember.

Bath filled, Sam perched, clothes off, I hadn’t even focused my aura before I fell.

No three walls, only the circular room of strange black material surrounded me. Literally unable to contain myself, I burst out of the door and onto the landing. There would be time for me to slowly examine The Well in detail, but it wasn't then. Instead of running straight across one of the walkways, I took the stairs down. One, two, three floors down I went and then took the walkway on my right. I understood the need to eventually devise some system to keep track of where I had been, but I had been trapped in a three walled room until very recently, it felt too good to stretch my mental legs.

I came to a hall of doors just like I had before and began my selection. Bypassing dozens of shades of gray that didn't suit my mood, something caught my eyes.

On my left, A gray stone door bore a large black x that stretched from either side of the door and rose fully to its height.

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Reyna. The name appeared in my mind. That's new.

Unable to control my curiosity, I took the door. The hall behind it was much shorter than any I had been in before. All the way at the end, the gray gave way to a final door that was entirely black. Unable to control my curiosity, I took it before I got a glimpse of what awaited me.

It wasn't supposed to end like this.

Uma and I had heard tales of a guarded treasure buried deep within the confines of a forgotten crypt. We were Seekers, that kind of information was exactly what Sorceresses like her and I thrived off of. We couldn't not go.

All had been well, the usual undead guardians and giant spiders proving no more difficult to deal with than they had been in the crypt before. We had been making quick progress, chatting between tense moments of battle, about what the treasure could be and that this tomb was much larger and much deeper than any we had plundered before. We were fools to arrive at the conclusion that a bigger crypt meant a bigger treasure and did not stop to realize there was a third element to that equation.

Bigger danger.

Down we had gone, thinking of all the comforts and riches we would be able to buy upon our triumphant return home, not noticing that the last several floors had been empty except for the already slain corpses of the monsters that liked to make homes in dark and abandoned places.

"Reyna, what was that?" Uma had said, stopping me. Her torchlit face had been set into wide eyed shock.

"I didn't see anything." I responded, my mind full of golden dreams.

"We should go. I'm starting to get a bad feeling. There is something wrong with this place."

I didn't listen. I encouraged her. Using my superior skills of persuasion to calm her fear.

A scattered mess of dry corpses, none had been sorceresses the best I could tell, had littered the hall to the treasure room.

For the second time, Uma had tried to get us to turn back.

Mother’s forgive me I should have listened.

We had come too far, I could literally see an ornate chest sitting atop a diadem through the crack in the massive stone doors. So I had spurned us forward, leading Uma and I through the hall and up to the chest. It hadn't been locked and when I opened it I knew my stubbornness had paid off.

Flawless rubies, sapphires, emeralds, shone back at us. The smallest gem in the chest was larger than my fist.

"I can buy you a castle." I had said.

Uma and I had celebrated, forgetting where we were for a moment. We had laughed and cheered, hand in hand, but now that it was over, I would take a moment like that again over the gems or any other treasure.

The Lich had folded into the treasure room out of thin air faster than I could realize it was happening.

Before I could channel my aura or summon any other defense, it had extended its skeletal hand towards me and I was thrown back against a wall. It pinned me there by some unseen force.

The lich had come up behind Uma and it took her. Palming her head and turning her eyes up to its hooded face, my friend screamed.

“Uma.” I moaned, but she couldn’t hear me anymore. The way her body crumpled to the floor was wrong, just wrong. People who could still feel and think couldn’t lay like that for long and she was as still as the stones she had fallen on. She couldn’t hear me anymore. She couldn’t hear anything anymore.

The lich, cloaked in tattered robes and a nebulous cloud of dark mist, hung in the air before me. I should have done something. After all, even if I was a weak one, I was still a Sorceress. As the monster that had murdered my friend turned its eyeless gaze towards me, I could only think of Uma. It wasn’t just that she couldn’t hear me, I would never hear her again. The way her laugh would turn into a wheeze whenever she found something truly funny or the way she would hum some melody I only knew because of her when she was cooking us dinner around a campfire.

I was terrified, yes, but tears came instead of screams.

Maybe it would leave me alone. I hadn’t provoked it. Maybe it would disappear in the same cloud of swirling shadow it had appeared in.

Maybe, I could rush Uma out of here and call for the Mothers.

It hovered over to me, Its fleshless face enshrouded by its black hood.

"I'm sorry, we didn't know this place was yours. Let us leave and we shall never return." I begged, trying to turn my head away from the lich's

The lich's eyeless gaze did not leave my face and It did not take mercy on me. "Your companion has already departed and shall never return."

A pinpoint of cold stabbed into my chest, at first only feeling like when I had been a girl and held ice to a salted spot on my forearm. It grew, sapping every bit of heat out of my body as it went. My eyes lost their ability to focus and rolled in their socket, only catching momentary blurs of the lich.

Then, I felt it happen. A felt the cold embrace of death wash over my arms and legs. I was dying. There was less pain than I had thought there would be.

"At last," The lich spoke in a voice that sounded like broken hopes and dying dreams. It raised its skeletal hand and slowly, almost gently, placed the tip of one of its fingers in the center of my forehead. “I see YOU.”

Darkness. A dissonant ringing filled my ears. The kind of cold that ran down your spine and didn't come from wind or cold water shot through me. I was back in the bathroom, but it was dark, too dark.

Sam didn't ask his questions. I turned to look at him. The little blue kitten sat atop his perch, the lights strangely dim. He did not look back at me, Sam was looking up. I followed his line of sight up and screamed.

A swirling black mist hung heavy off the ceiling. From the mist, the white bone of a fleshless hand slowly appeared. A tattered black sleeve followed and then the lich from the memory descended into the bathroom and turned its eyeless face towards me.

I screamed again. Pushing myself as far away from the nightmare as I could. My aura burst within me, filling my body with more power than I had ever felt. Stabs of paralyzing pain in my right palm curled my fingers and locked them in place.

Unspeaking, the lich hung above me, watching.

The smell of it, carried down by the dark mist, brought images into my mind. Fields of wildflower blossoms and windswept grass warmed by the sun, Rolling hills ending in white sand and blue water, A cool breeze bringing the smell of sea salt. Under it all, the sickly cloying scent of death and rot was sweet in my nose.

I couldn't move.

"I have been watching you, child," It rasped. Then, it pointed a jagged finger at the seal over my navel and hissed. "They bind you out of fear."

"Leave me alone." I whispered, unable to do anything else.

The lich's head snapped away from me, its hollow gaze turning to the bathroom door as it opened. Anna stepped through the doorway, concern on her face.

"Dani," She began and then her very mortal eyes looked up to the lich. Every part of her froze, just like I had.

"Ah," The lich rattled, turning to her fully and extending its wretched hand. It spoke to Anna. "Come."

Anna took a shaking step forward, her shivering arm raising to meet his hand. "Dani, help me." She forced out.

I couldn’t move. I could barely think. The lich’s presence pressed me into immobility against the porcelain of the bath.

There was nothing I could do. I was just a girl.

Call the mothers.

Anna took another step, her eyes brimming with tears.

Sam still sat motionless atop the light fixture.

Calling the mothers would only save me, it quite possibly could be worse for my friend than what was currently happening, but those three little words came to my lips in desperation.

Trea hadn’t left her knight. The Lady had saved Enna. Asha had defended Leannan.

Rage boiled within me. I had escaped the clutches of The Mothers, I had felled the walls within The Well. For fuck’s sake, I had made a friend.

I couldn’t just be a girl. I had to be more.

I would not let it take Anna.

"Leave her alone!" I yelled, fury I had never known breaking me from my paralysis. I snapped my right hand up to the lich. A violent burst of glimmering light erupted out of my right palm and slammed into the nightmare above me.

Burning through the dark mist, as soon my power made contact, Anna collapsed to the floor.

The lich turned to me, my aura dissipating against the folds of his black cloak, unmoved. It laughed, a broken sound that made me wince with every cackle. "I shall see you soon, child." Its decrepit voice called and then it receded back into the mist, the black cloud condensing and then disappearing.

My aura slipped from my hold and I sagged back, my hand falling limp beside me.

The bathroom was just a bathroom. The ceiling was just a ceiling. I was just a girl again.

I rolled my head to look at Anna. "Are you okay?"

Her eyes wide, she shook her head no.

"I can help you." I said, pulling myself up on the lip of the bath.

"What the fuck was that? And you! What the fuck are you? What did you do? I’m in a fucking nightmare. . .aren’t I?” She shuddered. “It was in my head, I could feel it. . .”

She continued in that manner until I reached her.

The water dripping off me, forming a pool underneath my feet. I helped her up.

Her eyes shifted between me and the ceiling, panic still stressing her face, then shook her head and looked at me. "How are you okay right now? How did you do that? What did you do?"

A slurry of questions continued from her, her whole body shaking. I was fucking terrified of what had just happened but at least I had the basis of knowledge necessary for it to not threaten my sanity.

My friend didn't.

Anna didn’t.

I had to help her.

I thought about being arm in arm with her during the ghost hunt, the clothes, the sandwiches, how she had pulled me into her arms and comforted me when I had come back from my second memory of Trea. I pulled my aura again, bringing the feelings that came with thoughts of her to the center of my mind, and threw my arms around Anna.

"What are you doing?" She asked, I could feel her shallow breaths coming quickly against my chest.

'You are okay. I am okay," I whispered into her ear, willing myself to believe the words I spoke. "It’s gone. It's just us. You are safe.”

Was she?

"I'm going to pass out." She said weakly, sagging into me.

My charm wasn't working. The feelings she felt were too strong for my assertions to overcome.

She was going to lose herself.

An idea came to me in a manner that didn’t allow deliberation. My friend needed my help and what I could offer wasn't enough.

I couldn't stop trying. For her, I had to be more.

Aura still focused, I separated from her enough that I could look in her eyes and felt my lips begin to tingle.

"Anna."

She looked back at me.

"Everything is going to be alright." I said and took her face in my dripping hands, pulling her to me.

With my iridescent aura glimmering on my lips, I kissed her.