Gretchen rose early the next morning, retrieved the cat’s blanket that served as the anchor for her location spell, and set off towards the tavern with a groggy Bumblebee in tow. She was still somewhat frustrated with her uncle, but overall she was pleased with how their conversation the previous night had ended. Now if only he could learn from that and not swing back towards being overbearing again in the future.

Gretchen wound through the streets of the Trade Quarter as the suns’ dawn rays peeked over the eastern face of the City’s high stone wall. The Greatest City Known To Man had been besieged numerous times in the long centuries since its founding, but had never fallen. Still, there was an unevenness in the way the light caressed the top of the wall, a stippling that was out of sync with the regular cadence of merlon and crenel. This city had its scars.

A low rumble from behind her gradually built into a thunderous roar. Gretchen moved to the side of the street just in time as an alchemically-powered cart clamored past, her hair lashing around in its wake. While alchemical transportation was a newer invention, it was one with an often incendiary and even occasionally deadly history. But the people of the City reflected the same resilience and battle-scarred determination as the walls of their town.

Grit, she thought. That was the word for it. That was the quality she needed to embody. Especially if she wanted to offer consultation work to the City Council after she finished her apprenticeship. Best not to get ahead of herself though. She needed to focus, to get this cat situation off her plate. Then she could find a way to prove to Barty that she was ready.

She renewed the spell on the cat’s blanket as she neared the Irrelevant Warrior. The tavern was quiet, closed this early in the morning, though a lazy curl of smoke rose from the riverstone chimney. She circled around to the back entrance and the blanket immediately started tugging. The hunt was back on.

She followed the cat’s trail through a series of alleyways that were walled in by squat, utilitarian buildings. While the Arcane Quarter favored two-story buildings with a shop below and living space above, the prevalence of loud, occasionally dirty industry compelled the denizens of the Trade Quarter to adopt more of a zoned approach, with housing areas mostly contained to insulated pockets. This area was zoned primarily for storage and warehousing, with loading bays that jutted haphazardly into the street like piers in an ocean. Here and there, trash was piled neatly next to a doorway, awaiting some future collection date. Luckily the suns hadn’t yet set to cooking the trash, nor had any vermin upset the piles, so the smell was manageable if unpleasant.

Eventually the blanket pulled her out of the narrow warren of alleys, and Gretchen was surprised to find herself next to a waterway. The cat had looped through a large portion of the City, and Gretchen now stood at the border between the Arcane and Trade Quarters. She faced the Goldflow river—so called because of its economic importance to many of the businesses in the Trade Quarter—now far downstream from where it powered the Miller’s waterwheel, near where the river exited the city. The steady churning splash of water sounded from the opposite bank of the Goldflow, where a large iron storm drain spilled its contents, steaming in the cool morning air and cascading down into the river.

A wide stone footbridge spanned high over the river, and Gretchen crossed it into the Arcane Quarter. She followed the river for a short ways until the blanket started to tug in the direction of a storefront. The building had clearly seen better days: its front wall was warped and rotten, and the window was opaque with grime. A small chalkboard sign hung incongruously from the door, with the word OPEN scrawled in a cheerful yellow script.

A nagging feeling of uncertainly teased at the back of Gretchen’s mind as she went into the shop, the door’s rusty hinges heralding her entrance with a blood curdling screech. The smells of saffron and bonedust, dried witchbane and citrus washed over her, prickling at her nose with their disharmony. A shelf along the far wall housed dozens of glass vials, their contents ranging in hue from deep emerald greens to muddy browns. The potions, however, were the only points of color in the shop. Two large cauldrons bubbled over fires near the back counter, their flames belching forth an oily smoke which lingered in the air and coated everything in grayblack soot. Gretchen felt dirty already.

She felt a faint tugging from the blanket but then a man emerged from a back room. His nose was long and hooked, reminding her of nothing so much as a falcon’s beak. Above the beak were lecherous, lingering eyes.

“Mmm. Help you?” the man eventually asked.

“I’m looking for a cat. Would have come into your shop a few days ago.”

He sucked at his teeth before replying, “Nah. Not seen no cats.”

“Is there anyone else that works here that may have seen it, Mr…?”

“Aleister Thelema. My shop, so’s just me. And I ain’t seen it. Unless you’re buying or here for…some other business,” the lecherous eyes again, “I’ve work to attend to.”

She felt a slight shifting as Bumblebee repositioned himself on her hat, turning to face the potion maker more fully.

“I see. Thank you for your time, Mr. Thelema,” Gretchen said, following the blanket’s insistent pull back out of the shop. The door screeched open as she left, and she felt a rush of relief when it slammed firmly shut behind her.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

“He was lying,” she said to Bumblebee, who up until now she was pretty sure had been asleep.

“How can you tell?” he asked.

“Well, it’s a little strange,” she said as she absently followed the blanket along the bank of the river. “The spell drew me in there, so the cat must have entered the shop. As soon as we got in though, I could feel the spell pulling me back out. The potion maker had to have seen something. How else could the cat get in and out? It can’t open doors. Plus, he doesn’t seem the trustworthy sort. Did you smell the witchbane in there? I’m not the potion master that Uncle Barty is, but even I know there’s not many ethical uses for that.”

“So the cat entered the shop for some reason, then left again?”

“Seems like it. But as to why and where she went after? I guess we’ll see.”

Gretchen suddenly stopped walking, the motion so abrupt that Bumblebee was almost launched from her hat.

“Excuse me,” he complained. “Passenger on board.”

They stood next to a culvert, its round brick opening easily large enough for Gretchen to walk into without stooping. A trickle of water slithered from the opening, spawning with it a patch of slick moss that ran across the path before the water eventually dripped over into the river. An iron grate covering the culvert reminded Gretchen of a prison cell. Only this cell had a matching iron doorway in the middle of its bars, and the doorway stood ajar. Aside from the small stream of water, nothing else, no light nor sound, escaped the black maw of the culvert.

“Gretchen,” Bumblebee said. “Gretchen, why are you staring at that sewer drain?”

She didn’t respond; she couldn’t. She stared into the void while the veins on her hands bulged, fighting to counteract the spell on the blanket. The spell that said Princess had gone into the darkness.

“I feel I must remind you that fairies are creatures of the forest,” Bumblebee blathered. “We do not like confined spaces, Gretchen. We like the open sky. The light of moon and stars. Gretchen? Why aren’t you talking to me, Gretchen?” He’d never admit to being nervous, but Gretchen had known him long enough to recognize when he was.

And honestly…she was nervous too. It wasn’t just that it was dark. Or that it was cramped. It wasn’t about the fact that it was a sewer underneath an ancient and magical city, and heavens only knew what that might entail. The truth was, Gretchen just had a bad feeling about this. It had nothing to do with her magic and everything to do with her gut.

“We’re going in, Bumblebee.” Maybe if she sounded convincing to him then she could also convince herself. “The cat went that way, so we’re going to follow it. We’re going to find that damn cat come hell or high water”

“You might want to rethink the high water portion of that idiom. You don’t have wings.”

With a smile that didn’t touch her eyes and a laugh she didn’t really feel, Gretchen pushed on through the doorway, its metal bars leaving rusty red flakes on her hands. Within a few feet, the light from outside had completely vanished. Swallowed whole. Gretchen focused her intentions and with a snap of her fingers she materialized a small glowing orb that bobbed in the air a short distance in front of her. The magelight emitted a soft yellow glow, and though it struggled to push back the darkness in more than just a short radius around Gretchen, she found the light comforting nonetheless.

The small trickle of water grew slightly deeper the farther Gretchen went into the tunnel. The rounded tunnel proved to be more wall than floor, and she had difficulty straddling the stream, occasionally stepping into the cold water. The sounds of tinkling and dripping and plopping echoed all around her, the volume intensified and amplified in the confined space. The sound of her own rapid breathing, too, echoed mockingly back at her, taunting her for her fear.

A long, unidentifiable keening sounded from ahead. The noise was twisted and distorted, amplified and elongated. It reached Gretchen’s ears as a groan—as a whisper. It called her a failure. It told her she’d never be good enough. It told her she’d die.

Just like her mother had.

She stopped dead in her tracks, heedless of the water that flowed over and around her feet. She refused to be afraid: not of the dark, not of any potential danger, and certainly not of her own anxious self-doubting imagination. She closed her eyes. She inhaled deeply through her nose, filling her lungs with the foul damp air. Then she expelled it all in one violent breath. She banished the fear, the doubt, the fungal dampness. It had no power over her. She was a fucking wizard and it was time to act like one.

“Bumblebee, let’s go,” she declared.

Go where?, the bewildered fairy thought. He said nothing, though: he could sense the battle raging within Gretchen. He could see the fear radiating from her in waves.

Three sharp snaps cut through the sewer’s dull, echoing ambiance. Magelights shot from Gretchen’s hand. One launched down the tunnel in front of them, complementing the existing light and enhancing the field of view; another streamed off behind; the third started orbiting around Gretchen’s waist, a girdle of light to watch over her. This was how a wizard tackled her problems.

She strode forward, powerfully, confidently. After a few hundred feet, the general din grew louder. She could hear turbulent, rushing water ahead. And.

And something else.

She strained, trying to distinguish the sound. It was nebulous: here one second then the next it was drowned out by the rushing water. She continued forward, and this time, when she heard the sound again, recognition jolted through her like lightning.

There were voices.

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Aleister watched the girl leave his shop with a deeply set frown on his face. It was quite nearly the full extent of his face’s emotional range. As the door screeched and slammed shut, another man emerged from the shop’s back room. He, too, wore a frown. The man swept the small shop with an intense scrutiny, his glower deepening in apparent dissatisfaction.

“Who was that?” the newcomer asked.

“Just some busybody. Don’t worry; I sent her on her way. She won’t be back,” Aleister replied.

“I’ll worry if I please, Thelema,” the man spat the name out as if he found it bitter on his tongue. “You have enough on your plate as is, I’d hate for you to overburden yourself by trying to assuage my apprehension.”

The potion maker looked down, cowed by the venom in the man’s voice. “Of course. Please forgive me for overstepping.”

“Your last batch went rancid. Boss wants you to re-brew it. I brought the case back.”

“Rancid, all of it? All 250 vials?” he looked at the man with a mix of apprehension and pleading, but was given only stony silence in return. He sighed. “Such a waste…”

“And who’s fault is that? You don’t want to waste your precious ingredients? Then do a better job. I’ll be back in two days.”