Ravenna Blackthorn's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The hare slept in Ravenna's arms when the new smell reached the manor. Rot and ash. She carried the familiar to the garden and stopped at the door. Where the horn's blast had torn the ground, the grass had turned gray. A faint light bled from the dead patch, the same shimmer that spilled off her skin. Wild magic. Her blast had left a scar, and the scar was still awake. Something in the trees had smelled it too. She heard branches snap, far off and getting closer. The hare went stiff against her chest. Its ear turned toward the forest. Ravenna knelt and pressed her palm to the scar. Her magic surged, eager and blind. The ground flared brighter. Worse. She was feeding it, not healing it. "That will call the whole wood down on you." The voice came from the gray grass itself. A small figure stood at the tree line, no taller than a child, with curling ram's horns and eyes like banked coals. He leaned on a staff topped with a red stone. Ravenna had heard the valley folk whisper of the warlock who lived alone in the mountain caves. They said he traded in things better left buried. She had never thought he would come to her. "Fix it, then," she said. "If you know how." He snorted. He walked to the scar and tapped it with his staff. The light hissed. "I don't fix. I teach, badly, and charge too much." He looked at the hare, then at her. "You have an anchor. Use it. The wound is loose magic. Pour it back through something that can hold it." The branches cracked again. Closer. Through the fog Ravenna saw shapes between the trees. Many eyes, low to the ground. Five heads on one black body, wings folded, mouths lit from within like furnaces. It crept toward the glowing scar, drawn the way the fox-dragon had been drawn. Ravenna had no time to doubt him. She set the hare on the dead grass and laid both hands on the scar. The familiar pressed its head against her wrist. Warmth ran up her arm, steady, holding the string. She let her magic flow, but this time it did not spill wide. It ran down through the hare and into the ground, aimed. The gray grass drank it. The shimmer faded. The scar closed. The five-headed beast stopped at the tree line. The lure was gone. It stared at her with ten burning eyes, then turned and melted back into the fog. Ravenna sagged. The warlock watched the hare with open interest. "The anchor held," he said. "But you only aimed one spell. You can't aim your life." He turned toward the mountains. "When you want to learn the rest, climb. I don't make the trip twice." He left. The scar was gone. But now something worse knew her scent, and the only teacher lived a hard climb away.