Flying was hard.

She had assumed the shape of the first animal with wings she could think of, tapping into the feral nature of Hrulinar. As she raced across the sky, she wished she had chosen something faster. Her chest muscles burned, her arms sore. It was strange, being an owl. She could feel the usual parts of her own body but they seemed overlaid with the shape of the beast.

The forest loomed ahead of her, the massive plateau jutting out of the earth, the hours of flight nearly over. Her keen owl eyes could see so far, so clearly, that it amazed her that she should have to go back to being blinded by the darkness of a well-lit, moon-filled sky.

She descended into the trees of the forest around her childhood home, spotting the stream that led to Ohira’s hidden dwelling and following it with ease. Suddenly, she was no longer an owl. She fell, her arms windmilling wildly, bouncing off the limb of a tree and crashing painfully into a bush just outside of Ohira’s home. Within seconds, the driftwood door opened and a milky eye peered out into the night.

“Who’s there?” called the witch, her country voice creaking with age. “I ain’t no fool,” she called when she got no answer. “Someone in a false shape is here and I ain’t no fool,” she repeated.

“Ohira,” groaned the younger witch, struggling out of the bush.

“Aethra bless me!” A gnarled hand helped Alira to stand, brushing leaves from her. “You done scared me, child!”

The elderly woman led the way into her small cottage, chattering warmly as Alira limped across the threshold. She felt the bond between her and Hrulinar flutter and she breathed deeply, a sigh that felt more like taking a breath for the first time in several long minutes. Ohira spun and eyed the younger woman.

“Why ain’t he inside your body?” Her face was suspicious and before Alira could answer Ohira sat, hard, on a chair, her hands to her face. “She’s free.”

Alira felt tears prick her eyes at the aged witch’s distress but she willed them away.

“Yes,” she breathed instead and knelt at Ohira’s feet, ignoring the burn of the scratches down her arms and across her face. “And I need help understanding this.”

She took out the book she had found in Galvyn’s resting place. She smiled to herself at the thought of Therin’s shock if he were to open the cloth wrapped book she had given him, a battered copy of the prayers that he himself already had. She wished she could be there to see the surprise he would have when realised she had duped him.

“We need to resurrect my mother, to question her.”

“Child,” Ohira said and the emotion playing across the old woman’s face confused Alira. “Shadesorrow is free. Ain’t no reason to bring Erin back now.”

“But she might know how to return–”

“Nay, Alira,” said the old woman gently. “She ain’t gonna tell you. You’re best off cutting this problem off at the root.” Ohira stood and got down her dented tea kettle and handed it to Alira. “Fetch us some water and we’ll talk.”

The cuts along her arms were scabbing over, the blood drying to a pebbly crust that pulled as she bent to fill the kettle in the stream. As she looked down the flow of water, she caught the silver flash of scales in the moonlight and was reminded of her mother for some reason. She played her hands along a slippery stone, feeling the smoothness, the cool water numbing her skin.

If Ohira didn’t advise them to bring Erin back, what could she possibly do? She was just a single person, and she wasn’t even a whole person. She felt so incomplete, so scattered. She rubbed her chest, a tightness there where Hrulinar should be, where the scars he had given her lay, and stood.

While the elderly witch brewed them tea, Alira sat, the end of her braid in her hands, staring into the fire. Occasionally, she’d feel a tickling flutter across the distance separating her from Hrulinar and it would feel like the sun peeking out from behind clouds. It was distracting, though, the distance. The way her mind kept casting itself across the leagues between them made it hard to focus. Was he alright? Would she know if he wasn’t?

“Sorry,” she said for the tenth time. “What did you ask?”

Chuckling softly, Ohira handed her a cup and sat across from her at the scrubbed wooden table, her wizened hands grasping her own mug.

“I know it ain’t easy, child,” she said as she sipped the warm brew. “He’s a part of you now. And with Shadesorrow released, he’ll be in a right state, I’ll recokon.”

Alira studied the crone before taking a deep breath and telling her the entire story, from meeting Therin to finding her father’s grave, to travelling with the blades.

“And now, his selfish drive has blinded him.” She rolled her empty cup between her palms and sighed. “He has Hrulinar.”

The crone stood and refilled her cup, the steam of the tea rising in whorls of silver.

“Ohira, what am I meant to do?”

“You drink your tea and then you see where you’re at,” winked the crone and with a grin, Alira complied. She sipped and hummed happily, the warmth of the drink spreading down her, thrumming against the bond between her and Hrulinar.

“So,” Alira tried again. “I shouldn’t be looking to resurrect my mother for help. What then?”

Ohira tapped the book between them.

“Ain’t you read it?”

Alira shook her head a little sheepishly. “I’ve been busy.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Ohira’s eyes, one milky the other depthless, roved over her face and her toothless mouth worked as she took in the changes and the story Alira had just finished.

“I can see that,” agreed the crone. She lifted the small book, the leather cover cracked and faded, and opened it with trembling hands. “What you got in mind, child?”

“I’m not sure,” said Alira, shaking her head. “Hrulinar was guiding me. It was his suggestion that we find a way to communicate with my mother’s spirit, to make her tell us what her plans were. Even saying it now, though...it sounds pointless.”

“Oh, he gifted you the tongue, did he? Lovely of him. Always liked that foxy little princelin’.” Ohira’s toothless smile was endearing and Alira found herself smiling back. “Even if he is a tricky one.”

“He’s very secretive,” Alira said wistfully, feeling the void where her soulmate should be.

“Ain’t no other way to be when you’re a renegade god. He’s been running from Shadesorrow for a millennium or so.” Alira stilled, her mug halfway to her mouth.

“What?”

“Well, when the Witches were finally corrupted, he grew wary. Shadesorrow ain’t no fool and asked him to give her witches some of his power to help ‘em. He did but it wasn’t enough, ain’t never gonna be enough because their hunger knows no end. Shadesorrow taught her power-mad followers enslave the lesser spirits and store their energies in crystals. It done gave her bigger ideas. She made a network of caves, hidden from the paladins, beneath the plateau.” Ohira sipped her tea again, wetting her weathered lips.

“Down there, she made a kind of power storage system. Giant room, all made of crystal. She wanted our princelin’ to stay in the room and give the crystals his power so she could give it away to her witches but he refused. He knowed it would be painful and she wasn’t about to let him go once she had his power. He came to me, instead, and I hid him.”

“How did you hide him from Shadesorrow? Isn’t she too powerful for that?”

“Nay, nay,” Ohira waved her hand impatiently. “I’ve not been alive as long as I have and not learned a thing or two about power, child.” For some reason, Alira believed her, the timeless feeling of the witch’s power echoing around her.

“Didn’t you follow Shadesorrow, Ohira? Weren’t you one of her first witches? That’s the story around you.”

“Is it, then?” Ohira smiled mysteriously against her mug and drank again. “That I’m a Shadesorrow witch?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Am I?” The crone grinned again and Alira frowned.

“But, surely, you’ve said–”

“Child,” Ohira said, setting down her mug. Alira gasped as an image shimmered over Ohira’s visage. Long, wavy hair, ethereal beauty, Divine light.

“You’re Aethra’s witch.”

“I knowed you see it,” crowed the witch and she patted Alira’s hand happily. “My sisters and I was special to Her Grace.”

Suddenly Alira remembered Ohira’s words from her last visit.

They was Aethra’s handmaidens, and they was good.

“You…” Alira frowned again and Ohira merely smiled as she saw the dawning across the young witch’s face.

“I’m one of them lesser spirits, yes, child. When Aethra done ascended to her place as goddess, her first job was to send out some of us lesser folk. So when her own son came to me, afeared for his divine life, I done took him in. I kept that princelin’ safe using the power that Aethra herself gaved me. I ain’t sayin’ it was easy. He’s…loud.” She smiled again and Alira had to laugh at her tacit admission.

“He is very boisterous, yes,” she sighed and sat forward, her arms on the table, the still-warm mug between her thin, pale hands.

“The night that he was taken from me was the worst of my life,” Ohira said sadly, her eyes suddenly misted with tears.

“How did that happen?” Alira asked carefully, watching for any sign of distress from the crone.

“He done wandered too far, a course. Erin’s people didn’t live far from here, a little cottage a lot like the one you growed up in. He was always a curious fella, that Henry. Curious and wild. Erin’s mistress, Magra, caught him. Hard to miss a green fox, I ‘spose.” Bitterness, for the first time, bled into Ohira’s voice.

Alira felt the bond between them tug again and she sighed. Of course, her own mother wasn’t directly to blame for his capture. She understood that Erin was at most a baby when he was taken, but she could not shake the feeling that somehow her mother was to blame for the start of Hrulinar’s misery.

“He was a prize, a course,” Ohira continued. “Shadesorrow was bound long before he was taken but the witches knewed he was key to her freedom. Magra had made a deal with Erin’s people that she would take any future children they done had as they was always thin on food. Too many mouths to feed.” Ohira’s milk-white eye met Alira’s as she talked and the younger woman..

“Soon as she got word that Erin’s folk had had another girl, she baptised the babe and took her. And our pincelin’ became her slave.” The darkness that fell across Ohira’s face was terrifying. Alira silently vowed never to make this witch angry.

“I done watched,” the old woman said sadly. “I watched as they bound my princelin’ to this girl baby, this tiny squallin’ little thing. And I knowed in my ancient bones that he would suffer, that he wouldn't know no peace again for a long time.”

“My mother did terrible things to him, Ohria. Things he wouldn’t share with me.” Alira felt a chill run down her spine.

“Child, I’ve been here long enough to understand some of what that little godling done lived through. If I could have, I’d have saved him. But it was out of these old hands.” She shook said hands at Alira in frustration. “I ain’t been out of this body for so long now I ain’t sure I could have anyway.” She sighed.

“You…know some of what he endured?” Alira asked hesitantly. She wasn’t sure she should be asking a third party about his enslavement, the things he had gone through.

Ohira sat quietly for a moment, watching Alira’s emotions play across her ravaged face.

“You’re worried about him.”

“Of course I am,” Alira said, startled. “He’s important…to me.” She looked down at the mug of tea in her hands and frowned again. “I don’t really know what his pain is like but…I feel like my own experiences might enable me to understand, at least a little, what it’s like to be taken against your will.” She met Ohira’s eyes, bravely. “To have things taken from you, against your will.”

Ohira watched the young woman for a beat longer before she bobbed her head in agreement and rose creakily to her feet. She refilled her mug and sipped the tea before sitting back down.

“Them catacombs,” she said and watched Alira again. “The crystal syphon at the burial mound that Shadesorrow tried to make him use...” The crone’s voice lowered to a whisper. Alira felt her blood run cold.

“Erin learned about it, learned how to use it.”

“She didn’t,” Alira denied but the crone ploughed on.

“She went a step further. After he complained of the pain, she went and bound that princelin’ to the top of the structure and used the syphon at a distance. It were slower, but it worked.”

Alira stared, agape, at Ohira as she talked.

“And she done made weapons with his crystals. When yous was here earlier, I could feel that somethin’ was wrong with him. He’s weak because most of his power lay in them crystals. If someone was to get rid of them…”

Alira’s eyes grew darker as she stared at the witch before her. She felt the anger at the injustice of Hrulinar’s abuse rise, bubbling out of her as a single tear down her cheek. Her hands trembled as she ran them over her face, wiping away the grief-laced rage. She stood and, hands on her hips, her face a thunder cloud, she spoke.

“Tell me where the cave is.”