Will was awakened the next morning by Anna and after breakfast, she showed him the chores he was expected to do around the house. For now, he was to keep to the ground floor as the first floor contained many delicate magical artifacts. Will found the chores a lot less vigorous than what he was used to in the stables. Anna had a silver haired ape familiar who always brought fresh fruits and nuts from the forest. Anna had a sizable stock of mead and preserved meat.

The washing was done in the smaller cavern with the small stream flowing through it. Even for these tasks Anna had magical devices Will could operate. Anna had a brush that would clean pots and pans by itself as long as it was tethered to Anna’s magic. Since Will was her familiar, she could initiate the magic, tether it to Will and the jobs would get done.

After a couple days, Anna took Will out to the forest with her. They collected the shed skin of the snake that Will had seen when he was coming into the forest the first time. The silver rings on the snake skin still glowed even after it was shed. Will noticed that they never harmed any magical creatures for collecting any of the materials, they just took whatever was discarded. This suited Will just fine as even the thought of harming these magnificent creatures was abhorrent to him. He was remarkably less pleased, however, when Anna asked him to collect fresh steaming unicorn dung from the forest floor.

Will kept himself busy with chores or helping Anna in the forest. As the days rolled by he tried to evaluate Anna’s behaviour to him. She wasn’t cruel like lady Milderd, but she wasn’t warm like Rowan or Geoffrey either. Anna was considerate of him but he always felt that she maintained a distance with him. Maybe, she didn’t want to get attached to a human familiar who would die a long time before her.

Will tried not to think too much of home and the people close to him. Sometimes, when he woke up, there was a moment when he still thought he was back in the village. Will couldn’t believe that he actually missed that light smell of horse dung that was ever present in the stables.

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Today was a big day for Anna. Today was the day of the solstice coinciding with the new moon. Will was told to go to sleep in the afternoon as he was supposed to stay up late to help Anna. Today would be the first time Anna would be seriously drawing energy from Will since the day she healed Messenia.

Will was woken up by Anna’s cat familiar Caitlin licking his face. He rubbed her behind her ears as he groggily woke up. Anna was lounging in the drawing room as Will entered.

“Ready for today Will?” Anna asked. Even though she didn’t show it too much, he could tell that Anna was excited. Must be a magical day. Will nodded in reply .He didn’t have much to do today except to stand there and let Anna draw energy from him. He was a little excited as today was the day he would finally get to go up to the first floor with Anna. By now, Will’s imagination was running wild as to what was up there. Will’s imagination had thrown up fantastical magical weapons that could obliterate an entire village in an instant. Magical swords and iridescent shields were also on top of his list.

Anna led him up the stairs which opened to a corridor with several paintings. Each portrayed different animals in their natural surroundings. There were paintings of a lion, a snake, a stag, a raven and a horse. Will had never seen any paintings quite like this, they were so lifelike.

Anna saw Will studying the paintings with interest.

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“They’re quite something to look at aren’t they?” Anna asked.

“Yeah, Do you know who painted them Anna?”.

“No one”Anna replied with a smile.

“Huh?”

“These aren’t paintings Will. They’re ancient artifacts left behind by old mage families. Back in the day, there used to be a lot of infighting among mages. The fighting was brutal and there was nothing they wouldn’t do to win. In order to weaken rival families, some even began targeting infants and children. Those were dark days” said Anna with a pained expression.

Will had to repress a shudder as he thought about babies being the target of magical exterminations.

Anna continued “In order to protect the children, one of the families came up with a solution. They would suppress the magical energy of the baby with a seal and make sure that the baby was raised by humans away from all the conflict. The family raising the baby would also be given one of these portraits which contains magical energy sealed by elders of that family. When the child became a teenager or an adult, both the seals inside the portrait and the child would break. This ensured that by the time the child of the family is discovered, he/she would be at an age where they could at least defend themselves and had a childhood unmarred by constant fighting and wars. The idea caught on and soon most of the mage families were doing it”.

Anna let out a sigh and brightened up a little “Those days are long gone now. Nowadays these are considered rare and valuable antiques and as you can see I’ve managed to collect 5 such items from old mage families”.

Will could tell Anna was very proud of them. He made a mental note to not go near any of these paintings/not paintings. He was sure that Anna considered these paintings far more valuable than her human familiar.

Anna led Will to her study. All the fantastical visions Will had of magical swords and armor were shattered in an instant. It was just a normal study filled with a lot of books on the shelves along the wall. The only thing different about the room was that the roof was shaped like a dome and there was a circular hole at the apex of the dome. There was a basin filled with water perched on top of a pedestal directly beneath the hole in the dome.

Anna went and stood near the basin and motioned for Will to do the same.Will stood opposite to Anna.

“I’ll start performing the spell when the ghost of the moon is directly above us” she said indicating the hole in the dome.

Will was puzzled “Ghost of the moon?”.

“It’s what we mages call the position directly opposite to where the moon is right now”. Will nodded even though he didn’t completely grasp what Anna was saying.

A little while later Anna asked “Almost time, ready Will?”

Will nodded, sure, he was ready. It’s not like he was actually doing anything.

When he felt the tugging sensation in his heart, he knew that Anna had begun her spell. There was a shape taking form as Anna was moving her hands over the basin. Will could see shadows moving in the basin, soon the shadow began to condense and take the form of what looked like a fish.

Will started to feel a little dizzy like the time they healed Messenia. Then the shadow in the basin collapsed and dissipated into nothing. Will knew from Anna's Disappointed sigh that the spell had failed. Anna, however, recovered quickly and shruged “Oh well”.

“We’re done for the day Will. Good night”.

“Good night Anna”.

Will stepped out of Anna’s study and shut the door behind him. He was still feeling a little weakened as he stepped out into the corridor with the paintings on his way to the stairs. Will glanced towards the paintings. The lion looked so majestic. Then his eyes moved to the raven. The raven looked back.

Will stood rooted to the spot. He could’ve sworn that the raven’s eyes in the painting moved to look at him. Will shook his head and looked again, the raven was stationary. He must’ve been more tired than he originally thought.

‘Better get to my bed before I start imagining that the lion’s chasing me’ thought Will

Will was about to take the next step when he heard the ‘caw caw’ sound.

Will turned around. The raven’s head was poking out of the portrait and it was cawing at him, it’s head swivelling while it’s eyes were fixed on him.

As Will watched, the raven freed itself from the portrait and perched on top of the frame of the stag painting, it was inching closer to Will.

Will turned and ran down the corridor towards the stairs. Just as he was rounding a corner, he saw that the raven had taken flight and had overtaken him. The raven turned in mid air and darted towards him. Will opened his mouth to scream, but before he could make a sound, the raven had flown headfirst into his mouth at frightening speed.

Will could feel the raven moving into his throat, it’s tail feathers now sticking out of his mouth as the raven continued to burrow deeper. With his last remaining coherent thought, Will ran towards Anna’s door. He was finding it hard to move, he couldn’t breathe with the raven lodged in his throat. Will was past the paintings when the raven burrowed further into his esophagus. Will wanted to scream out in pain but he couldn’t. He couldn’t breathe. Will fell to the floor a few feet away from Anna’s door.

Will was thrashing about on the floor with his hands clenched around his throat.

His vision was getting blurry. He thought he saw Anna’s door open before he finally succumbed to the darkness spreading from the corner of his eyes.