The Lightwielder Files

Chapter 16

Mona fell quickly through the portal, like a newborn deer, her legs unsteady. 

“Ai, Mona what are you doing here?”

Mona’s eyes adjusted briefly to her surroundings but when she saw where she was or rather who was in front of her, she wished she was still in the throngs of spyglass travel or even with Harry back at the scene of something most disturbing. In front of Mona in one of the lab doors was a woman who was much older than she looked to the envy of most of HQ she had long curly brown hair and sunkissed skin. Her eyes usually danced with light a trait she shared and passed on to her son but right now they were glinting like daggers t the blatant and albeit uncontrolled interruption but Mona wasn’t scared of daggers and was not at all scared of her stepmother Nicole Avierio. Mona never had the heart to refer to her as Nicole Davenyemer.

“It was an emergency," Mona replied trying to keep the edge that usually occurred when around her stepmother out of her voice. “I found something and I thought I should take it to a lab ad I don't know, I got so worried and it led me here.”

Then Mona remembered something important, well sort of important. 

“Welcome back”, she said trying to sound welcoming. The time of all times to be back home was not working in Nicole's favor, Mona thought or maybe it was because she was one of the last people she wanted or expected to see when she arrived back at HQ.

Without another word, she walked out of the lab and tried to get her bearings to know which way was the main office. She thankfully found her way quickly and without her stepmother coming out to find her. 

She knocked on the door, a quick rat a tat tat, that thankfully her dad answered on the first tap. 

She strode where her dad sat with pages and pages spread out in front of him.

He looked up at her from beneath his glasses and frowned deeply. Mona wondered if he knew that she had found tout but hen then remembered something. She had broken away from her patrol group with no particular reason (although to be honest she had accomplished more on her own with Harry than she had with the group), she was sure her dad was about to give her a firm talking too. She braced herself to get her word in quickly before he did. 

“Dad...”

“Mona, what's this that I heard about you needed in got pick something up during patrol?” he snapped. 

Oh crap, she thought miserably. If only she didn't waste so much time on that last breath. 

She could have been the one talking instead o him. 

Well, she thought grimly, she might as well unjust salvage her chance and answer as honestly as she possibly could. 

“Yeah, but it was a lie," she said at warp speed which was quite uncommon for her. She was usually so cool and collected even at the other end of tongue lashing, but after what she saw today, she thought uncommon was the new common thread in her life these days. “As you can see, I am empty-handed.”

“Just get to the point Mona”, her dad gruffed.

Yes, she thought that would be the best course of action for everyone. But what had she seen, she had to put into words, and that quick spyglass tri after she and Harry parted hadn't given her that much time to put her story together. 

She thought that for once, it was better to be obedient and get straight to the point.

“We found a wizard’s hole.”

”Who’s we?”, her father asked in a clipped tone leaning forward professionally on his elbows. She had to fight the urge to roll her eyes in front of him. 

Of course, that would be the first thing he would ask. Who was we? She now wondered if she should have brought up the hound attack first and how Harry had helped her instead of going straight to the point about what they had found. 

“Me and Harry Cowell. He was at the scene of the hound attack and he had picked up the trail of Algar Fray from the pub and he was following it. He really helped us out there dad.”

She gave a moment to digest her words before she went on with the rest of her tale. 

“He followed the scent to a shed that was concealed in the middle of town. Inside was a concealed wizard whorl.”

“Was it abandoned?” her father asked. 

She nodded and felt an almost freezing sub-zero chill crawl up her spine as she remembered what she saw and felt in the shed.

“It was but dad it was filled with dark light energy. Practically reeking of it.”

The last time she had felt so much dark energy in one place was when he saw the people who died the day the hell monsters attacked. The day after her mother died. They had to do purifying ritual to be able to properly dispose of the remains as Lightwielders but the ritual was so strong, as strong as the darkness of the beast that killed them, that the bodies had to be disposed of, meaning there was no place to properly bury them. They were all burned to ashes. She never saw her mother’s face again after that horrible night.

He took a deep breath to steady herself and distance herself from the memory. She wasn’t there anymore. That was in the past, she was here in the present but now after what she had seen, the present was almost looking as frightening as the past.

Piles of bones lay there with weird rines and markings that Mona recognized from her Lightwielder history textbooks as some of the corrupted runes that the Darklighters created and began to use. They in equal parts both fascinated and frightened her. She told her father all of this including the part about the claw marks on the walls and floor of the shed that Harry had rightly identified as being hell monster claws. He had his own run-ins with those beasts himself, he and his Pack. They decided to part ways, she would go back to report what they had found to HQ while he would go warn the Pack of what was coming. A part of her wished that he was able to come with her for some reason. Maybe for moral support which was a completely odd thing for her. She didn’t need moral support but seeing those claw marks did something to her. It reminded her too much of the marks that she saw on her mother’s body the last time she ever saw her. 

She shook the painful thoughts out of her head and decided to place 100 percent focus on the task at hand. 

“We believe it might be a portal the Darklighter is using to bing monsters into this world.”

Her father tilted his head to the side his dropping into deep thought. 

“You think that it might be Algar Fray don’t you?” Mona asked. 

“It has his work written all over it”, her dad replied in a low strained voice. She didn’t need to be some sort of aura seer to know the pain that her father was thriving to keep under the surface. The pain she knew and felt every single day. Her blood boiled and not the good exuberant battle rage, but pain and anger permeated every pore of her being. Algar’s hubris and taking so much from her others in the Order, she would stand against him with everything that she had but one thing was bothering her with all of this. Where did Malcolm Vandhurtst fit into all this?

Mona opened her satchel and pulled out some of her findings and gave them to her father who looked them over with a cold analytical eye. 

She could practically feel the dark energy tingling through her fingers brushing up against the lightning playing under her skin, almost bringing it to the forefront of the tips of her fingers. 

After her father had done his own look over the items he handed them back to her ensuring she got every single piece back in her grasp. They didn't want to leave anything that might be volatile behind. They were working with things that they didn't have much clue of what they were working with. 

“Take this to Nicole”, he said plainly in a tone that was inherently dismissive. 

Mona frowned shifting from foot to foot. 

“Can’t I take it to anyone else in the lab ?” she asked and her father looked at her incredulously his pen lifted from the table in his hand. Of course, she knew that he couldn't hope to understand what she had against Nicole, not that she had anything against her per se but this whole case and situation were bringing all the feelings that she had repressed right up onto the surface. Her father would never understand that though, he hadn’t lost a mother. 

“Do what you see fit, but please show it to someone will you?” he said brusquely and that was enough for Mona, as long as he wasn’t pushing her to see her stepmother it was more than good enough for her. 

She gave a low incline of her head in respect then turned on her heel to leave the office. 

“Mona?”

She turned around at the sound of her name. 

“Don’t tell Max about this”, her dad's head a sharp edge breaking out in his tone. “I mean it, do you understand?”

No, she wanted to cry out, but frankly was not in the mood for an argument. And what had she found out really? Nothing that could bring his dad back to him. If anything some would see it as proof that he was working with Algar Fray to open more portals in the city. No, she thought resolutely, She would not tell Max what she had found yet. Who knows maybe it would come up during a morning announcement and she would be spared the trouble. 

She gave another incline of her head to her dad before walking out of his office and making her way back to the labs. She handed her findings back to Madrigal one of Nicole’s co-workers who began work on it right away with the help of assistants which included Delilah. She waved shyly at Mona on her way out which Mona returned with a huge grin of her own. She hoped that they would be able to help and clear the air about what Algar’s plan was and to make sure what happened before would never happen again.