Pippin's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Deep in the pines, Pippin had only rumors. Traders spoke of a cloak that swallowed light, but none knew where it lay. She could not search the whole kingdom before Thorne found her. She needed a place to start, and she had none. The raven shifted on her shoulder, its black feathers slick in the gray dawn. She scratched its throat and asked the only question that mattered. "Where do I look?" The bird did not answer. But it flew. It climbed above the trees, circled once, then dove north and back, again and again, until Pippin understood. It wanted her to follow. She trusted it now. She ran. By midday the pines thinned. The raven dropped to her shoulder and went still. Ahead, in a clearing choked with vines, stood a tower of black stone. Runes glowed faint along its rings, blue and gold and violet. Its great arched door hung open in the dark. Pippin knew this place from every fireside tale she had heard. The old tower that no one entered. Adventurers had gone in for centuries. None came out. But the stories said something else too. Whoever beat the tower earned three wishes. Any wish at all. Pippin's breath caught. She could wish for the cloak, wish for a hidden refuge and still have a wish left. One wish and Thorne would never matter again. She touched the enchanted bag at her hip. It looked small, no bigger than two fists, but its runed mouth held far more than its size allowed. Inside she had packed rope, travel rations, flint, water canteen, water filter, med kit with healing potions and undulants, a magical trap detector, magical trap disarmer, a sword and lastly a compass. Everything she could carry for a trial like this. She had gathered it for a long hunt. Now it would serve a stranger purpose. A raven's cry cut the air. Not her raven. Pippin turned. Far down the slope, between the trees, a hooded man moved. He walked slow. He did not hurry, because he never had to. Thorne. He had not lost her scent after all. He had followed her here. Pippin faced the black door. She could run and be tracked forever. Or she could step where no one had returned from in a hundred years. Behind her, Thorne climbed. The choice took only a breath. She pulled the bag tight to her chest. The raven gripped her shoulder hard. "Stay close," she whispered. Then she walked through the arch into the dark. The door did not close. But the tower had swallowed her whole, the way it swallowed every fox and knight before. Pippin was the first adventurer in centuries to enter. Behind her, on the cold slope, Thorne reached the empty clearing and found only her tracks ending at a door he would not follow. Ahead, in the black, something began to move.