Folker woke with a scream. He was back there again, the day he first drank from the Waters. He was a boy no older than seven. In his dream, Folker always feels a serene calm as he slowly approaches the clear pool. He looks up in wonder to the beautiful white tree in the centre of water, and he delights in the feeling of the soft green grass underneath his feet. A voice tells him to drink from the pool and fearing no evil he kneels down. He sees his face reflected in the water, his own face, worn by time yet not old, and eyes that are grey and lifeless. He wants to pull back but the voice now commands him to drink. With great reluctance he does. Shortly after putting his lips to the Waters an excruciating pain erupts in his chest that slowly spreads over his whole body. He wants to scream but he cannot. Death, this had to be death. In this moment he always woke up, sweating in terror.

Dawn came as Folker washed himself in the stream by his campsite. It was day twenty of his hunt yet still no sign of his quarry. With a simple spell, for those were all he could master, he lit a spark in his old campfire and set it alight. Drying by the fire he read the scroll again, an apprentice turned rogue when she destroyed her mistress’ laboratory with necromancy. It should have been a straightforward case: catch her magical scent and track her down. He had followed the scent to Eastern Kirrina but there it disappeared. Now here he was, with nothing to go on. Folker packed up his simple camp and returned to the path.

‘Who knows Bruin, maybe we’ll have more luck today.’ Folker said to his horse as he padded her flank, then he set off.

Eastern Kirrina, like most regions in the East near the Weldrugh mountains, was a land of hills and dales. Unlike the rest of Kirrina it was heavily wooded as well, with forests of pine and oak covering the hills. Folker liked the quiet of these regions, they were not as heavily settled as the lands closer to the Endless Sea. The only places where one was sure to find civilisation were around the rivers and near the quarries, and ore veins of the mountains, where there are both the new mines, and the old mines that were long ago taken from the dwarves. This was where the horselords of Kirrina got the iron for their swords, and the stone for their walls. It was also a great place to hide, for people who do not wish to be found, by whatever authority pursued them. Folker had been on the hunt here several times before, so he knew the forests and hills well.

Folker rode along a path he had used in the past to track down an apostate. He simply followed a stream that led into one of the most remote parts of the region, away from any nearby town or mine. Folker’s logic was that, sorcerer or not, his quarry must sate their first somehow, so a water source was always a good starting point for a hunt. Yet once again it was of no avail. Folker rode through the long grass of the streambed, whistling an old peasant song from his youth. Looking up to the clear spring sky Folker saw the sun was beginning to set, he would have to camp soon. Folker was keeping a lookout for a good spot for his campsite, when a tremendous bang sounded behind the trees of the forest to his east. It was so loud Folker almost fell of Bruin as he momentarily lost control of the horse because of the shock. As he struggled to stay in the saddle, Folker finally caught the scent again, which led, unsurprisingly, toward the direction the explosion came from.

At a gallop Folker rode to the treeline where he dismounted, and left Bruin by a pine tree to continue his hunt on foot. Swiftly yet softly he snuck through the green ferns that covered the forest bed. As the magical scent became stronger Folker could see smoke in the distance. A spell gone wrong, Folker thought. His prey may have blown herself up before he could have even gotten to her. Death following spellcasting negligence was an all too common thing in the magical community, especially among apprentices who believe themselves to already be masters of magic without yet having actually attained any mastery.

Folker went from a crouch to a walk as he approached the explosion site. The explosion had been so severe that some trees had been blown aside by it, creating a clearing. The apprentice had to be dead. To Folker’s surprise however he did not see any signs of a corpse that had been blown to pieces, no body parts laying around, no blood spattered on everything at the blast sight. Folker drew his sword and started looking around for any sign of the apprentice’s body, but he found none. Until he spotted a disturbed patch of ferns some thirty metres from where the explosion happened. Folker walked over to it cautiously with his sword at the ready and that is where he found her, the apprentice. She was unconscious, but not blown to pieces, she did not have any visible wounds on her in fact. Folker sheathed his sword and took a chain from his belt. The chain was enchanted with dwarven runes. The Dwarves disdained magic and the part it played in their downfall so they became masters of crafting weapons to nullify it. A Witch Hunter’s chain was one of these creations, a priceless artefact the Dwarves reluctantly grant to Witch Hunters because of the role they play in curtailing magic users. Once bound around a sorcerer the chain makes them incapable of performing any magic, they can not even muster the simplest conjurer’s trick.

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Folker fastened one end of the chain to the apprentice’s wrist and held the other end in his hand. Now he had to wait. He whistled for his horse. After a while Folker could see Bruin riding towards him, he greeted the horse with a smile. After Folker patted the mane of his mount, he fastened the chain to a link on his saddle and left Bruin and the apprentice, to search for firewood for the sun had almost set completely.

It was dark when Folker returned, branches in hand. Walking back, he could see a figure on Bruin and he heard a female voice shouting.

‘Come on you stupid horse go! Please just run, I don’t have time!’ The voice yelled. ‘Come o-‘ Folker could hear Bruin whinny, followed by a high pitched yelp and a slight thud.

‘Are you alright?’ Folker asked the woman, once again laying in the ferns. ‘Your not the first one she’s thrown off, she only listens to me, if that’s any consolation.’

‘Consolation, great! I’ve been hunted down and caught like some animal, and smashed to the floor for the second time this day, consolation is just what I needed.’ The apprentice snarled as she got up.

‘What is your name?’

‘Nothing that concerns you!’ She said staying as far away from Folker as the chain let her. ‘You’re bringing me to the executioner’s block anyway so what’s the point.’

‘You don’t have to tell me anything, it would just make the journey ahead more pleasant I suppose.’ Folker said putting down the branches.

‘Pleasant? In what way will any of this be pleasant for me, especially with this on me!’ She held her chained hand up.

‘The chain is a necessity I’m afraid until I’ve convinced you its in your best interest to just come along to Regenburg.’

‘Never then. A trial means death and I’d rather die on my own terms here than with a noose around my neck.’

Folker laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘If every single sorcerer that broke one of the treaty rules was executed, only a handful would be alive by now. The only reason I am after you is because you fled.’

A silence followed. Folker cast a spark to light the campfire, he then took some provisions from a pack on Bruin’s saddle, and started eating by the fire. It was simple bread and dried meat. All the while the apprentice stood at a distance carefully watching him.

‘Don’t you want some food?’ Folker asked. ‘I have enough for the both of us.’

No answer. The apprentice just stared at him with an angry look in her eyes.

‘I have an extra blanket for you too, the grounds are cold in these parts.’ Folker continued undeterred.

Still nothing.

‘Silence is not gonna help you much, if you just cooperate everything will be fi-‘

‘I won’t trust you so don’t bother.’ The apprentice interrupted. ‘I’ve heard enough of your kind to be wary of your feigned empathy and lies, you’re just trying to get me to talk so there’s more evidence against me in the trial. I’m not stupid.’

‘Suit yourself then, you can starve all you want, but with that chain on, you’re not casting any heating spells, so you’re taking the blanket whether you like it or not. I am not dragging a corpse all the way to Regenburg.’

Folker walked to his horse and threw off one of his packed blankets toward the apprentice.

‘Now either sleep or talk to me.’

The apprentice took the blanket without saying a word and laid down, turned away from Folker. Folker sighed and sat down by the fire. He took a pipe from his pocket. He put some Sodonian Leaf in it and lit it with a spell by pressing his thumb into the pipe. He smoked in silence staring into the flames of the campfire, listening to the sounds of the forest at night. He did not want to sleep for fear of what his dreams might bring. Eventually however, his eyes grew heavy and he fell in a mercifully dreamless sleep. He woke at dawn, he always did. After drinking some cold water from his flask, Folker prepared for the journey to Regenburg. He did not wake the apprentice. He walked over to the explosion site to find whatever things the apprentice had with her on her journey. Near the slight crater the explosion had left in the dirt, he found a small travelling bag. Looking inside, Folker found some spare clothes, an almost used up bar of soap, a bit of dry bread and other basic items. The only thing of interest was a phial of blackdust, which Folker took out of the bag and put in his pocket for his own safety.

The still sleeping apprentice was woken by the thud of her own travelling bag next to her head.

‘We’re leaving.’ Folker said.

The apprentice replied with an annoyed grunt, but got up nonetheless.

‘It seems to me that it would be best for you to ride on Bruin while I lead us along, I know these parts so it should not be long for us to find a road again, then we simply follow till we get to Orwdan for a boat east.’

The apprentice still did not say anything but looked warily at the horse.

‘She won’t throw you off again, as I said, she listens to me, now get on. We have a long way to go.’

Folker led the apprentice back to the stream and from there back to road. There was a morning fog in the forest, that shrouded the pines and ferns. In the distance Folker could hear the chirping of birds and the flowing of the stream but apart from that, a quite ruled among the trees. Eventually Folker decided to talk to the apprentice. Though she stayed mute he continued, it was rare for him to have any company other than his horse while on the path. He told her about all sorts of things, ranging from the last time he had visited the hills of East Kirrina, to an inn in a town just outside of Olise where they served the best chicken pie he had ever tasted. He also told her of Morgenburg and his life there, about the grandmaster and the brothers he trained with. The talking gave Folker some peace in the wake of his dreams, so much so, that he did not mind the long road ahead as much as he usually did.