It turns out I did, in fact, care tomorrow. I woke with the feeling of impending doom, a feeling that the conversation with Alina and Lord Balar did little to put off.

Apparently, multiple explosions had gone off in the city of Haven, and even now, it wasn’t quite clear how many had been injured or died.

Even from our window, the smoke over the city was visible. A thick cloud of dust and smoke that misted through the city.

The guilt weighed on me. I should be helping these people. I could help these people. But by doing so, I would put Lord Balar and Alina at even greater risk than I had already done.

Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what the point of was having White Magic if I couldn’t help other people.

These thoughts I kept to myself as Lord Balar, and Alina conversed about what should be done.

“Haven’s in chaos,” Lord Balar sighed, rubbing his brow, “The people know something is wrong. Most suspect the Empire, but we both know that it’s a Black Mage. We can’t be passive. If they are willing to take such an overt move, then it’s only a matter of time before they do more. More people will get hurt unless we find and stop this Black Mage.”

“And what do you suggest?” Alina sighed, looking worn down, playing with her red hair distractedly, “The guards are already alerted to the issue.”

The guards could not smell black magic, however.

But I could.

Before Lord Balar could speak, I interrupted softly, “We need to investigate, right? I’m your best lead. I’m the only one who can smell Black Magic.”

They both looked at me, and their expressions were already turning into frowns.

Alina spoke first, “And if the King’s Guard finds out you’re a White Mage, you’re likely going to be imprisoned. Are you really willing to take that risk?” her voice was carefully controlled but the disapproval leaked through.

We locked our eyes, sharp emerald green against silver.

“If the other option is more people getting hurt? Yeah,” Was it even a question? Was I just supposed to put other people’s lives on the line out of fear?

I felt Sara nudge me with a faint feeling of worry, and I responded with a feeling of assurance.

Alina groaned, massaging her forehead, and looking away from me, seeming frustrated.

Lord Balar looked conflicted, but he nodded slowly, “I don’t feel particularly right putting this on you, but we admittedly have few options. I’d ask you to be as circumspect as possible in your investigation.”

I nodded, “I’ll do my best. I’ll first check out the sites of the explosions.”

“I’m going with you,” Alina said firmly, locking eyes with me, glaring at me, daring me to disagree.

I was going to disagree; the words were on my tongue already. I had already walked someone else into a trap; I wasn’t going to do that to Alina.

“That’s for the best,” Lord Balar said, “You joining him will give him more authority than he would have by himself.”

I looked between them, frustrated.

Bright emerald locked with my silver before I found myself looking away, “Okay,” I murmured.

The atmosphere of the city was in a gray haze as we walked through the streets. Even now, guards moved about the streets in rushed movements, and I spotted flares of green light as buildings began to pull themselves together.

I shook myself; I couldn’t get distracted. We moved through the buildings until we arrived, where Alina had said was where the original building collapses had occurred.

I took a deep breath through my nose, attempting to filter everything for the one smell I was looking for.

It was faint but present; the cold, empty smell and the smell trailed off through the streets. I followed the smell, relying on my nose to guide me as I followed the trail.

Alina followed behind quietly in my wake, looking antsy as we passed through the streets. I even caught a couple of suspicious glares as she observed the few people around us.

Focus.

The smell led to another building and then to another, the smell getting stronger as we walked. I wondered if this indicated if the black magic was more ‘fresh’ for lack of a better term. I wasn’t sure.

There was definitely a distinct difference between ready-to-activate black magic and residual, but the distinction wasn’t always apparent at a distance. I had followed the smell of the dagger that had impaled Lord Balar and spotted the Black Magic before it activated. My experience was frustratingly limited.

We treaded through the streets, following the smell as it meandered through the city. Unfortunately, another smell was intruding upon some of the sites. It was also Black Magic, though I could tell there was a difference, if only barely.

It had to be Lieutenant Ilsa.

Frustration reared its fiery head as I bent down to inspect a pile of rubble that still wasn’t cleared. There were two Black Magic scents but they muddied so close together I was left unsure which was from the explosion and which was from Lieutenant Ilsa.

Rock shattered in my clenched fist, and I tried to take a deep breath, attempting to release the building frustration and anxiety.

Why were the feelings so strong? It reminded me of what I had felt after the fight with the Legatus. The air itself tasted panicked and fearful. Could the citizen's emotions leave traces that I could feel?

Sara sent a soothing feeling through me, and I focused on taking deep breaths.

Finally, I was once again able to focus on the faint smell of Black Magic once again trying to parse the difference between the smells.

I kneeled there for some long moments, filtering the air through my nostrils, examining the smells, and attempting to separate them from the jumbled mess they had made in my head.

Finally, my head could focus, and between the two scents, I focused on the one that did not smell stagnant. That smell led away from the broken and shattered stone, so I turned and began walking in that direction.

Alina followed silently in my wake.

Our feet beat a staccato rhythm in the too-quiet of the city. I couldn’t help but morbidly feel like the other shoe was about to drop. I had to be faster. If I was too slow, the city was going to pay.

We arrived at another ruined area where another building had been demolished, and my nose flooded with a third scent.

There, she stood like an omen of bad fortune. Long blonde hair and hard brown eyes that examined me as if I was also her omen.

She looked at me with a hard expression; her armor was covered in dust, and a thought occurred to me to wonder if she had rested at all.

Dappled brown flitted over my form before they came to rest on Alina as she stood next to me.

“Lady Dellar, odd to find you out here,” Lieutenant Ilsa remarked, her voice completely neutral.

Alina cocked her head, “Is it?” she asked, tension filling her voice.

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The pair looked at each other, fierce bright green against firm brown.

I was somewhat interested in who would break first, but unwillingly, my nose twitched. Past Lieutenant Ilsa’s scent of Black Magic, there was something stronger here. It was like standing in cold shade on what should have been a bright summer day.

Black Magic.

Sara’s words mirrored my thoughts. My eyes twitched across the broken stone, frantically searching, but it wasn’t my eyes that alerted me to what happened next.

My ears heard the whistle, and I tasted the abyss.

I crossed the distance between Ilsa and spun on instinct, grunting as a spike of black shadow seemed to emerge from the ground, spearing through my left hand, which had interposed between Ilsa’s head and the branch of the abyss.

I found myself gazing at my injury, surprised despite myself. I hadn’t expected the shadow to pierce through me so easily.

Ilsa had spun as well, “Hells,” she whispered as she gazed at the tendril, which had branched out of the ground, and the chunk of shadow stabbed through my hand.

“Jamie!” Alina cried out, and she leaped with a blast of fire to land next to me.

The tendril of shadow pulled back into the ground, disappearing as if it had never been there.

The smell was growing stronger.

Across the ruined stone, a shadow seemed to stretch and contort, tearing itself free from the ground until it resolved itself into a figure. They were surrounded by shadows that seemingly shrank until a pale face emerged. It was a woman with long black hair and black eyes who looked at us with not a single emotion on her face.

“I thought I smelled a White Mage, but I couldn’t be sure,” a dry voice emerged from the woman as she cocked her head, looking directly at me, “Your scent is so weak I would think you a child, yet there shouldn’t be any White Mage children left.”

I didn’t respond. There was something about this woman's face. It was tugging at my memory; it was familiar, yet I was sure I had not seen anyone like her in Haven or even since I had come to this world.

“Tell me, White Mage, from whence do you come?” the woman asked.

I could feel Lieutenant Ilsa’s gaze on me at the woman’s words. I didn’t have time to worry about that, though.

I shrugged, “Good question. Where do any of us come from? I don’t know, but it keeps me up at night.”

Like I was going to mention anything about Sara.

“Funny,” the woman shook her head, a curtain of black swaying about, “As last words go though, rather weak.”

The ground began to shift and crack, and from the small pits of shadow around us, creatures began to emerge. They looked like giant dogs, but they shifted and turned as if their material itself was fluid.

I took a deep breath, attempting to steady myself.

The air rose to a blistering temperature, and the air between Alina’s hands began to shift and contort as she cupped them, and a ball of fire began to form.

Ilsa looked at us and then shifted her bow from her back, drew an arrow, and readied it against her bow.

One of the shadow creatures leaped forward only to be ripped apart by an arrow tearing straight through its middle.

Two sprinted forward only to vanish in a ball of fire.

I sprinted forward and leaped over the fireball, aiming a fist at the woman. I put everything into the fist, and the air around it shimmered with white light as I drove it at the woman.

She looked at me, and her lips quirked mockingly as a shadow tore through the ground, erupting in a wall between us.

My fist lashed out, and the wall erupted, blasted open by the sheer force of my fist. I hadn’t ever tried to hit something so hard, and maybe the woman wasn’t expecting it because I saw her eyes widen as she looked at me.

My hand was lashing out, but I froze as I realized I wasn’t aiming at some strange woman.

Her facial features looked like my mother's except not. This was my sister. Bright, searing memory filled in the years and different colored eyes and hair. There was no other answer. I didn’t know how I knew, but everything in me screamed. The woman I was attempting to punch was my sister.

“Anna,” I choked out words unwillingly as they strained through my lips.

The woman blinked, looking down at my fist frozen in front of her,

“So, you have heard of me,” she murmured, a familiar smile spreading across her lips, except this one was horribly twisted, “From who? Perhaps another White Mage; I was looking forward to hunting another one down.”

The shadow around me twisted and spun, striking forward.

It was only thanks to Sara that I lived. Instinct pounded into my head and spurred my next move.

Protection.

It still wasn’t enough. Half of the black tendrils bounced off me, but the other half pierced through my skin, and I cried out before their progress slowed and dug deep through my skin.

I stared at Anna, horror stealing my voice. This shouldn’t be possible. It couldn’t be her. Yet, as stretched and fragmented as my memory was, I would know my sister's face anywhere.

How could my sister be here?

“Odd to see such an expression on the face of White Mage’s face,” Anna mused as cocked her head at me, “I haven’t even killed those you’re trying to protect yet. I’ll let you decide who goes first, the human girl or the elven woman?”

Something hot flushed through my system. Like my head had been lit on fire. The sensation of wanting to scream and destroy everything in front of me.

It took me a moment to realize what the feeling was.

Anger. Pure, unadulterated anger.

My body left my control.

My Magic flared, burning hotter than the fire raging in my head. My body flared white.

Enhance.

The tendrils had a second to drill further through me as I dropped Protection and put everything into my next spell.

My entire being flexed as my body ripped forward, tearing through shadow like the light of the sun chasing away the end of the night.

My fist landed on the Black Mage's chest, and I felt something break, and the air itself seemed to ripple.

She was launched backward, skipping across the ground completely out of control as she barreled into and then through a building.

I collapsed. I faintly realized I was gritting my teeth as I chased the source of the Anger all too easily finding the source. Sara was burning like the sun in my mind.

Fear.

Loss.

All amalgamated into Hatred.

“Sara,” I gasped out, “Please.”

No! She must be punished! Harmed child!

She was trying to move my body. Attempting to chase after my sister.

It was will against will.

I slammed my hands through the ground embedding them through the stone.

My eyes had closed at some point, but I could still feel everything occurring around me as fire and arrows lashed out, cutting incoming shadow beasts.

I could feel the holes lashed into my body faintly. I needed to heal.

Heal.

Energy drained from me, swirling around my wounds and sinking through them, turning my broken body into something whole once more.

Why had Sara lashed out like that? When I fought the Great Dragon of the Last Frost and the Legatus Victor Marcus, she hadn’t lashed out like that.

Of course, I hadn’t been against fighting Victor Marcus, and Victor Marcus hadn’t hurt me like this.

But this was my sister.

“Jamie!” Alina had broken through the shadow beasts and landed with a flare fire red by me; she was looking at me with an expression of horror on her face, “By the Single Fire,” she was gazing at the blood covering me.

I turned away from her, gazing at the hole where I had launched my sister’s body.

I rose to my feet slowly. I sniffed the air.

Instinct launched my fist forward just as a massive bear-like creature's paw met it as it shot free of the hole. The air thundered as our limbs met, and I glared at the onyx-black shadow.

Air rippled above my head as an arrow cleaved through the beast's torso in a flash of blue light. The beast fell apart, splitting into a black mist.

The ground shifted as Lieutenant Ilsa alighted next to me, barely disturbing the ground as she gazed through the broken hole my sister’s body had gone through.

“I don’t understand,” she murmured, gazing through the gap, “Was that a Black Mage? But why?”

Wasn’t that the question behind this mess? Sara had said the Black Mages were friends. Except everything that had occurred pointed to the opposite. Why was my sister a Black Mage?

The ground rumbled for a moment before it split apart, a massive claw spitting out from the ground, screaming towards us.

The air ripples as suddenly a firestorm comes into existence, burning straight through the shadow.

Alina was panting as she pointed her hand at the firestorm before; with a gasp, she dropped to her knees, and the firestorm winked out of existence.

Black Ink shot through the air, coming to a swirling landing and shifting into my sister’s shape.

She looked at us with a cocked brow as if contemplating one of life’s great mysteries, “It would be nice if you three died,” she said matter of factly, “The King’s not dead, and security has tightened considerably. Still, I suppose it’s something to know there’s another White Mage. I had thought the only ones left were the ones owned by the Empire of Gold and that broken one in the Long Mountains.”

“Anna,” I murmured, looking at her, “What are you doing?”

Anna looked at me, a confused cock to her eyebrows, “You don’t know?”

We locked eyes before her lip twitched in an amused parody of my sister's smile, “You don’t know!” she laughed, though there was no humor in her voice, she gave loud barks of laughter that eventually petered off before we once again locked eyes, “I’m saving the world. The world that the White Mages doomed.” She replied, as if her words were within the bounds of reason.

My head twitched as I heard thunderous metallic footsteps approaching, and my sister cocked her head for a moment.

“We’re done here,” she sighed and then gestured, and a shadow formed underneath her, forming into the shape of a large bird, which took her straight into the sky, vanishing in an instant.

I gazed off after her before my legs gave out, and I fell to my knees; I took deep, ragged breaths as I tried to regain any amount of energy.

Out of one of the streets emerged several guards, and they immediately saluted as they spotted us.

One of them shouted, “Lieutenant Ilsa, are you alright?! There were reports of a commotion.”

Lieutenant Ilsa looked down at me, and our eyes bore into each other. I wondered what she would do. Here was her chance. She had me dead to rights.

Lieutenant Ilsa turned to the guard, “Everything’s clear here. I’d check further into the city.”

The guard saluted and then gestured for the rest to follow him. They ran away with thundering footsteps, though they didn’t sound as loud as my heart as I looked at the Lieutenant, confused.

Alina was also looking at Lieutenant Ilsa, a confused expression on her face.

Lieutenant Ilsa looked between us for a moment before she sighed and looked at us, “Don’t be so surprised. My last name is Aegis, after all.”

That didn’t mean anything to me, but Alina’s eyes widened in seeming shock.

“I thought there weren’t any more of your clan,” she responded softly.

Lieutenant Ilsa shook her head, a wry smile on her face, “Oh, we exist. Shunned. Hated. We can’t live in the First City, of course, but the Aegis keep existing. Some of the last Fallen Leaves. Lost without our charges.”

Fallen Leaves. I had heard that before. Those were the elves who had guarded the White Mages.

“So,” Lieutenant Ilsa turned to me, “What would you have me?”