Despite the utter lack of knowledge and experience I had when it came to being violent, I yelled at the Lao's to go inside one last time and started walking beside my newly reborn familiar.

The world had lost its red tint and I assumed my eyes must have changed like they had with Anna in my bedroom.

Not yours anymore. I thought. Mentally adding the sudden crimson occurrences to the list of things I desperately needed to investigate but had not had the time to, I pushed the bitter thoughts away. I was probably going to die no matter what I did, but I knew I could cause more damage on my way out if I was focused.

"Sam, I don't think it wants to hurt me. When it found me in the woods, I heard the lich."

"What did it say?" My familiar asked, his deep voice unusually bright. He had called me "My Lady." He had only ever done that once before, when I had agreed to let him go and hunt. Maybe he was only an asshole when I didn't give him everything he wanted.

"It told me to let that fucking thing take me. That it would bring me to him."

"Learn this, my lady, and learn it well. Putting trust in an entity as dark and terrible as the lich is never a wise decision. Do not assume it was telling the truth."

The creature, nothing but massive hands and torso, slowed and began fingering its way around in a circle. Sam returned the gesture, not letting the horror gain our flank. I followed my familiar's lead.

"Sam?" I asked.

"Yes?"

"I don't know how to fight."

"Truth."

"How do I do it?"

"It is a practice, a discipline. One that you unfortunately do not have the time to study." My familiar stated.

"Then why am I going to try and fight this fucking thing?" I snapped, annoyed.

"Use the memories, my lady." Sam answered and then, without warning or any sign of what was to come, he vanished.

The creature froze in place and turned its featureless face up to the dark sky.

Thunder cracked, sudden and sharp, and a bolt of yellow lightning streaked down from the sky and struck the creature in its face. Momentarily painting the world in the same yellow as my familiars eyes, when the light dissipated, I could see Sam, his claws surrounded by arcs of the same lightning, clawing wildly at the monster's face.

"Use the memories," I repeated, focusing my aura to try and do something. "The memories, not your memories."

I didn't know how to fight, but I had been sorceresses that did! Trying to forget the fear that held me by my spine, I ran through what I could bring to my mind in that moment. Willa had used Gat, which would be extremely helpful but was unfortunately not an option. There had been Trea and her gauntlet, which I knew was so far beyond my abilities it hurt to think about. Enna had killed with her purple aura but I hadn't seen how. Ten-Moons and her orbs came to my mind fully. Not just what they had looked like, but how it had felt to shape them and the pressure she had applied when she had bore a hole into the head of the Sorcerer Edwuin with her will.

I couldn't make ten moons, that was beyond my limits. One moon, however. . .

The creature jerked one of its massive hands from the ground, leaving five jagged holes the length of its black nails, and swung it towards my familiar. Just before it closed around his boney body, Sam vanished from the creature's face. A streak of yellow energy circled the creature's body almost too fast for me to see, and then Sam reappeared and tore into its shoulder.

Dashing in, I didn't want to use my power to make a moon only to not be able to reach my target with it, I planted my feet and pushed my aura out of my right palm. Pressing against one side of it and then the next with my will, I slowly shaped my working into a pale imitation of one of Mezalina Anilazem's orbs. It was not gray, only colorless and glimmering. I only managed to pack a fraction of the power she could focus in one of her ten, but it was a moon nonetheless.

"I. . .," I opened my mouth because I felt the need to say something that would encapsulate the anger I felt in a clever phrase but nothing came to mind. I sent the orb spiraling towards the creature's face, shouting. "Bitch!"

I missed.

My focus wavered at the last second and my orb came apart in a shower of colorless light that did nothing but make the creature's head and neck sparkle momentarily.

The creature turned its attention from Sam's lightning speed flurry of blows and focused its eyelessness towards me. With one of its massive hands, it dug the black tipped nails into the flesh at the base of its neck and tore it open. The creature did have facial features. Bloodshot and lidless eyes, a pointed hole where a nose had once been, a lipless mouth filled with needle thin jagged teeth, all held in an oozing face of exposed muscle.

It had a face, it just wore a skin mask over it. It unclenched its wretched mouth and a cloud of black gas began leaking out of it.

"My lady!" Sam growled and I saw his yellow light vanish once again.

Frozen with fear, all I could do was watch as the noxious cloud spewed towards me.

Thunder hammered against my ears and the white light coming off the back of the boarding house flickered.

A second lightning strike slammed into the ground before me, blowing me back onto my ass and tearing into the ground. Seeming to flow endlessly from the sky, it coursed into the small crater that formed under it with a tearing roar. The creature still holding its skin mask from its face spewed its black breath just as endlessly but when it reached the lightning, it burned away. Within the deepening crater, the silhouette of Sam stared down the creature.

He's protecting me. I realized.

Just as the lightning ended its downpour, the creature let out a final plume of black breath before it dropped its skin mask back down over its disgusting face.

Sam vanished and appeared within it. My familiar had no lungs but when the gas began to be drawn within him, the only word that I could use to describe what followed was an inhale. When the last whisp was taken in, I saw the yellow flits of Sam's eyes wink out and he fell onto his side, rigid.

"Sam!" I yelled, moving towards my fallen defender. One of the creatures' massive hands swept me back onto the ground and It grabbed my familiar's body in its palm.

A burst of audible cracks sounded as the creature squeezed and threw Sam away in pieces.

He's dead. The notion struck me and I had just enough presence of mind to start crawling away from the oncoming creature. Its ribcage of arms spread open as it crawled towards me and I heard the lich in my mind yet again.

Let it take you. It will bring you to me.

Sun warmed grass, sea salt, death.

A flash of silver light in the form of a massive set of fangs closed around the creature's middle. It moaned in pain and frustration as it was dragged back from where I lay, cursed hands stretched towards me. Before it was pulled out of range, it dug one of its large black nails through the cloth of my pants and into my skin.

"Mother fucker!" I screamed, crawling away from it as fast as my exhausted body could manage. I didn't look down, seeing what damage had been done would only make it more difficult to go on. With my left hand, I squeezed the spot on my calf that burnt and stung. When I brought my hand to my face to see, it was slick with a mixture of my blood and traces of something black that swirled within it.

The creature clawed against the silver fangs that sunk into its sallow flesh but could find no purchase. Just as it moved to anchor itself to the ground with its massive hands, I heard a fearsome growl and the creature was lifted into the air. The silver fangs clutching its middle released and the creature was thrown backwards. It crashed into the tree line in a wave of broken branches and thrown up leaves and for a moment, I could take a breath.

"Well done Auden!" A voice I recognized but did not expect to hear came from the boarding house.

The Lao's all, huddled against the house and the short stairs that led to the back door, wore wide eyed stares that were pointed to my left. From the section of wood line that was the furthest from the house, the unfamiliar familiar limped out of the dark forest. All four of its eyes were shining bright silver, but it had been gravely injured. Its left foreleg drug across the ground, being held on to its shoulder by nothing but a twist of flesh and sinew.

"Are you out?" The familiar voice called to the injured familiar.

The silver eyed wolf twisted its head down in an angle that seemed like it would break its neck if it strained much more and closed its jaws around its nearly separated leg. With a sharp wine and another fearsome growl, it tore the ruined limb away and threw it to the ground with a toss of its head. Then, it raised its snout to the night sky and let out a clear howl. Silver light, like the ethereal jaws and trails of light I had seen the familiar produce before, extended from its newly limbless joint and formed into a shining new leg. The familiar tested its weight on the replacement of what it had lost and turned its gaze to the trail of ruined trees it had thrown the creature into, answering. "Not yet."

"Tough old bastard." The voice I recognized spoke again.

I turned to lay my eyes on the speaker, absentmindedly returning my hand to the wound on my calf.

Mrs. Mole, with her long grey hair and hunched from age, side stepped her way down the stairs. She glanced at the huddled Laos when she reached the bottom and I could just hear her say. "I would tell you all to go inside, but I'm afraid you won't be any safer. Try not to move and this should be over quickly."

The unfamiliar familiar, what had she called it, Auden, was Mrs. Mole's? How did an old woman like her have a familiar? Was she from Zenithcidel?

"Dearie," The old woman called to me. "Are you alright?"

I didn't answer. She started hobbling towards me regardless.

What started as a pained walk, knees, hips, and ankles worn down from a long life, quickly smoothed into an open stride. Her back straightened as she pulled her glasses off of her face and threw them to the ground.

Maybe it was the pain of my calf, maybe it was the fear of one of the creatures getting its filthy hands on me, or maybe it was the lack of restful sleep I had gotten recently but it took me entirely too long to understand what was happening.

Mrs. Mole, was and had been since the moment I met her, been wearing a glamor.

She was not a she, by the time she had reached me, a man stood in her place. He was taller than me but shorter than Arthur, with shoulder length silver hair and a square jaw. He wore a suit, all in gray and black stripes, and did not look unkind when I met his eyes.

"My apologies for the smoke and mirrors, they were necessary, I assure you," He said with an accent I couldn't place. Before I could realize it was happening, the man had picked me up as if I weighed no more than Sam when he had been a kitten and sat me on my feet. "This will not suffice in the long term, but it will keep the blood in your veins while we rid ourselves of the horrors that hunt you."

Sam. . .

A strangely metallic burning, sharp and cold, bloomed on my calf as the man shaped his aura against my wound. It was gray, like the sky on an overcast day or a worn blanket that had once been black. I couldn't tell if he had channeled it through his palms or somewhere else, but when he released his hold on my calf, the burning vanished quickly. I checked my wound again, looking at it that time. Smooth skin, pink like a new scar ran the length of what looked to have been a large gash. Exposed by the rip in my pants, my sock had bunched around my ankle and was no longer white.

I had lost a lot of blood. There was a chill in my fingers that had nothing to do with the cold night that confirmed that fact.

Mrs. Mole had been Mrs. Mole only through a glamor. The four eyed familiar, Auden, was his. He could manifest his aura and had healed me with it.

The man could only be one thing. "You are. . .?"

"A Sorcerer of The Spire, yes. You may call me Eames," The man said, standing and pulling off his overcoat. He folded it neatly, placed it on the ground, and stretched and smoothed the gray vest and shirt he had been wearing under it. He ran a hand over the head of his familiar as it reached us. "Of course, you have made the acquaintance of my familiar, Auden, twice now if I understand correctly."

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Sorcerer's stole the Mother's magic. I had experienced one in a memory and he had done nothing but try and kill the Sorceress whose memory it had been and assassinated a king. In the small amount of knowledge I had about the lands outside of Zenithcidel I knew that The Mothers were at war with the Sorcerers and had been for longer than I could know. Eames's familiar had been skulking about the woods and the Sorcerer himself had lived under my feet in disguise practically since the moment I had taken residence at the boarding house.

I looked at him, unsure if I should be allowing myself to stand as close to him as I was.

"We've no time to build your trust in me. You are unable to kill the creature alone and Auden and I would fare much better with your help. You have had no knowledge of my true nature these past months. If I was a threat to you, don't you think I would have attempted something during the times you were asleep or elsewhere? Think of my actions and deicide. I will not allow the undead monstrosity to take you."

As if I was in some story being told around a hearth fire by a Precept to a bunch of witless maidens, the sounds of the creature beginning to stir sounded from within the dark trees, reminding me of the danger on my heels while I was trying to make one of the most difficult decisions I had ever been faced with.

"What can I do?" I asked, turning my own attention to the place in the woods the creature would undoubtedly finger its way out of.

Eames smiled. "Right. You've no training or experience, I know that much, but for what you need to do, isn't needed," The sorcerer manifested his gray aura around his hand, forming a coat of power that sharpened on either edge. "Awakened color or not, you can channel through your palm, yes?"

He is a palm. I noted just in case his willingness to help was an illusion just like Mrs. Mole had been.

"I can," I answered. I focused my own aura, colorless and weak, and pushed it through my newly discovered channel. Only managing to cover the pinky side of my hand, I kept my channel open and my aura flowing to maintain the pitiful blade. "Kind of."

"Good enough! The creature is from beyond the grave, sewn together by something that I imagine you know more about than I do," He raised an eyebrow at me. "We are going to pop the stitches. Have you noticed them when you have gotten close to it?"

I hadn't. "The only thing I've noticed is that fucking thing is trying to take me somewhere."

"Right. You will see them. Every spot that the wretched pieces of it connect, you'll see them. You pop enough stitches and whatever dark magic is holding the thing together will fail."

"How am I supposed to do that? All I've managed to do is get my familiar killed and my leg cut open. If Auden hadn't come along, I'd be as good as gone." I said, panic and fear creeping back into my voice.

Eames held his hands up. "Easy, easy. You've got to stay calm in situations like this. Your familiar is not dead, but petrified. I saw it happen. If that cursed black breath was turned on you or me, I imagine we would be asleep for a decade, but familiars are made of sturdier stuff," He said, nodding to Auden's leg of silver power. "It didn't use it on you though. The damned thing isn't trying to kill you, it's trying to capture you. I'd wager it wouldn't kill you if you got down on your knees and begged it to. That gives you enough room to get in and cut the thing apart."

I didn't know if the fact that the Sorcerer seemed excited to face off against the second most horrifying thing I had ever seen should make me feel any more confident or if it should cause me worry, but there was something in his voice that made me feel like his own confidence wasn't misplaced. Maybe it was his accent, the way it all rolled together through the vowels gave his words a casual grace.

"What will you do?" I asked him, keeping most of myself focused on maintaining the working that covered half my hand.

"While you're busy butchering the thing, Auden and I will do what we do best," Eames said and flashed me a devilish grin. "Piss the thing off so much it can't help but try and kill us."

The Sorcerer laughed, but cut it short as a strange rumbling sounded in the backyard of the boarding house. The ground beneath my feet began to shake. A mound of displaced earth formed just beyond the wood line and started snaking its way towards us in a raised trail of winter yellowed grass. Eames yelled. "Jump Dearie!"

I didn't.

The ground underneath my feet erupted, the two black nailed hands stretching out of it like a venus fly trap made of sallow skin.

Eames grabbed me by the back of my coat and threw me straight up in the air. "The stiches!"

At the peak of my ascension, I glanced over and realized I was almost even with the window of my room that Sam had spent so much time staring out of.

Beneath my feet, Auden had clamped his magical fangs down on one of the massive hands of the creature and his master was repelling the eight sprawling hands of the creatures rib cage with a complex series of strikes and blocks with two bars of his gray aura connected in the middle by a string of his will. He spun them up and around his head, bludgeoning the small limbs with each impact a moment before they reached him.

"Remember Dearie, Mr. Mole is no small man!" Eames yelled, spreading his legs into a wider stance and redoubling his efforts. The speed of his strikes increased, his aura leaving gray trails, like Auden did when he had dashed, swirling around himself. The power of his impacts sent splatters of black blood into the air with each violent strike.

I started to fall, Knowing that Eames must have been using some of his aura to keep me aloft and out of reach.

Auden, one massive hand still in his ethereal jaws began jerking backwards, snapping his head from side to side. The flesh that connected the hand to the body stretched to its full extension and I saw the stitches.

So faint that I could have convinced myself I imagined them, I could see small tendrils of moving magic being stretched by the force of Auden's pull.

I dipped my head like I was preparing to dive into a pool and shot myself straight down, using the solid footing made of the Sorcerer's aura that I found myself elevated by, and extended my half bladed hand in front of my face.

Eames aura was not there to cushion me when I crashed into the ground.

My own aura reflexively flared and prevented my arm or neck from breaking from the impact. The landing, or rather the lack of a landing, still hurt and I rolled onto my back with my entire body pulsing with pain.

The disgusting black blood of the creature rained down on my face, cold and putrid, as one of its massive hands was dragged away lifelessly by the four eyed familiar.

I did it. I realized. And I didn't die.

"Fuck you," I screamed in triumph. "Justice!" Jumping back to my feet in my excitement, heavy breaths wracked my chest, but my focus remained. I poured more of my power out of my palm to maintain the blade and darted my eyes around the moaning creature for more of the stitches.

"The other hand." I heard Eames say calmly from the other side of the creature.

The sallow flesh of the creature was tinted red and through that glow, I could see the stitches connecting the remaining massive hand clearly.

I could also see the same traces attaching its featureless head to its neck.

Maybe it was my inexperience or maybe it was the thrill of amputating one of the horror's limbs, but I didn't listen to the Sorcerer.

I went for the head.

Learning as I went, I pushed my own aura beneath my feet and gave it a pulse, sending me through the air in an arc that left me colliding with the back of the creature's neck. I locked my legs around it and squeezed, bringing my bladed hand down in a savage swing.

It hit the cold flesh of the creature and I heard my bones crack and break, sounding just like when Sam had been crushed. I screamed in pain and nearly lost my saddle as the creature tried to turn its face towards me.

"I said the other hand," Eames spoke. I could see the Sorcerer, surrounded by the trails of his own vicious attack, losing ground. One of the eight arms of the creature's rib cage had him by the front of his vest and though it was slow, the man was being pulled, inch by inch, into the crushing grip of the cage. He didn't look like he cared at all. The man's gray eyes were unfocused and dull but he did not stop his attack. "I will keep it busy."

Just as the man spoke, another of the creature's smaller arms closed around his right wrist. Eames's assault slowed momentarily, but he passed his working from the captured hand to his free one and continued with a blank expression on his face.

Red tint faded yet again, I tried to ignore the pain shooting up my arm but I couldn't. Every attempt I made at focusing my aura and manifesting it back into the blade was met with increasingly more intense waves of pain.

"I'm going to be sick." I said under my breath, feeling the wave of nausea wash over me.

Silver light flashed before my eyes and I saw the ethereal fangs of Auden's power close around the neck of the creature, just above the stitches. The thing's head was pulled down, laying its neck out for me like a slab of meat on a cutting board.

Auden, several steps behind his master, had his chest and head pressed to the ground, desperately trying to hold the creature's head down.

"If you can't do it now, I will die." Eames said, his free hand being caught and pulled into the grasp of the rib cage fully. The arms folded around him and began to squeeze.

Tears in my eyes, I forced my aura through my palm, grinding my teeth all the way. I couldn't make the blade, I would have lost consciousness if I kept trying, but I did manage to run a single tendril of my will up my pointer finger and cap my nail with a razor sharp edge. One by one, I snapped the stitches. Every magical link I severed sent a new wave of pain down my arm. The fifth stitch split beneath my will and the force of Auden's grasp did the rest, tearing the creature's head from its neck in a geyser of black blood.

My leg lock slipped over the now headless neck and I fell onto my back.

The creature slumped to the ground and a single mote of flame burst from the center of its back. The mote roared into open flame and consumed the creature, sending a trail of thick black smoke from its body into the air. The speed at which the flame ate the fetid mass away made me think of the dry shavings the houseman at my mother's home used to start fires. In only a couple of moments, every physical trace of the creature had been burnt away and vanished into the air, not even leaving ashes.

"Autumn!" I heard Anna call. A second later I saw her leaning over me, a terrified expression on her face.

"Was that sad?" I asked, sitting up and cradling my broken hand. In the distance, I could see Arthur holding Sam's body and one of my familiar's separated legs. The tall man held them against one another before they linked in a quick flit of blue light and he reached down to grab another section and continue the reconstruction.

Ms. Lao, still pressed in the corner of the house and the stairs, held her head in her hands.

"What do you mean?" Anna asked, her look of fear changing to confusion.

"You told me I'm full of sad shit, was that sad?" I asked.

"No," Anna shouted. "That was fucking terrifying. You're a monster!"

New tears, not caused by my exhaustion or my pain, threatened to spill onto my cheeks. "Oh. . .I'm sorry."

"I didn't mean it like that! You are a monster, but you're my monster." She said smiling and helped me to my feet.

A wave of dizziness nearly sent me back to the ground where I belonged, but Anna kept me on my feet. "How are they?"

"Uhm," Anna said, and we both looked at Arthur, who had finished reconstructing my familiar and was holding his boney back legs and shaking him downwards like he was a bag filled with treats. "Arthur is fine, better than that actually. When," She gestured in the general direction of the battle that had just taken place. "All that was going on, I tried to explain things to them so they wouldn't go crazy like I almost did. Arthur took it like I was telling him about the weather."

I couldn't feel myself from feeling a flush of anger at the notion that more people knew about me, the real me, but I pushed it away. Beyond me leaving when I had known I should have long before then, it was unpreventable. Alright, it wasn't unpreventable but there was nothing I could do to change it then. Eames and Auden were sat together on the spot on the ground that the creature had burned away in, the Sorcerer had a stream of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth, but was passing his hand over his familiar, presumably healing him first before he tended his own wounds.

Ask him to heal your hand. I thought. I would after he had healed himself. I believed he meant me no harm, everything he had told me had been true and we had shared the battlefield together as allies. Even as inexperienced as I was, I knew that meant something.

"Ms. Lao?" I continued.

"She thinks she is dreaming," Anna answered, her expression turning down despite a weary smile. "She is tough though, I think she will be okay."

"I could calm her down." I offered meekly, not wanting to cross any lines.

"We'll see, if she needs it I'm glad to have you here to do it." Anna replied.

"She wouldn't need it if I wasn't here." I muttered.

"Don't start that bullshit." Anna said, giving me a gentle nudge.

Footsteps approached from behind and Anna and I turned around.

"Well done Dearie, well done," Eames smiled at me, miraculously looking as if he had just had a shower and a shave. "It's easy to tell you're an amateur, but who isn't rough around the edges when they first start out."

"What happened to you?" I asked, despite the uncountable amount of other things that were more important. Seeing the man become emotionless to the extent that he didn't react when he had been pulled into a death grip was exceptionally odd. Offering my broken hand towards him with my other, I added. "Can you fix this?"

Eames's face turned into a confused expression. "You don't know? Horrible," Then, he answered himself. "But, ah, you haven't found your color yet. have you. That makes sense then."

"I don't know what?"

"That is a very long list, which is a tragedy that could have been prevented. Here is not the place or time for you to learn but know this, as you grow stronger, the cost of using your aura gets a bit more complicated than needing a meal and a nap. Let me see your hand." Eames said, taking my offered hand gently in his own.

I studied the Sorcerer's face. Life had come back into his eyes and I didn't think he was being dishonest but I was too damn tired to learn anything, even if it was something I really wanted to know.

"I'm no healer Dearie, but as you've seen I can tend to a battle wound or two. I'm afraid I can't fix your bones but I can delay the pain." Auden appeared beside him, his flank pressing against his master's legs. The shining silver leg he had made for himself was replaced by one of flesh and bone. Eames's accent made me like him, I couldn't help it.

That made it hurt all the more when I discovered that he wanted something from me.

"I'll be glad to heal your hand just as soon as you agree to travel with me to The Spire." Eames continued, still smiling.

"What? Why?" Anna chimed in.

"Because I know who you are Dearie. I know what you have. It's. . .," He paused and shook his head. "You're not safe here if you can't tell." He said.

Eames, the Sorcerer, knew about The Well. That's why he was in the boarding house. That's why he had helped me kill the creature. He wanted to take me because of The Well. Regardless of his assistance, the knowledge he had given me, or the fact that I found myself wanting to add him to my newly formed list of friends, he was just as bad as I had been warned that sorcerers were.

Feeling my aura stirring within me, I glared at him. "I don't want to go with you."

The Sorcerer sighed and spread his hands out in exasperation. "Ahh. I had hoped to avoid you feeling that way. You will be coming with me, in what manner that outcome is entirely up to you."

Auden bared his fangs at me, his silver eyes threatening and focused.

Turns out, there were two monsters that wanted to steal me away that night.