Gvera Cross

Splitting Up

They ate supper, both lost in their thoughts. Solean thought about the scroll and what it meant. Magicians had similar stories about heroes banding together to create the laws of their magic, but all the heroes were magicians, not wizards and certainly didn't hail from several different magics. And there was something bothering him.

" I think one of them is a necromancer. " he said.

" What?" Gvera was pulled from her thoughts

" One of the order"

" What makes you think that, necromancers are evil"

"You said only necromancer can open the door to death and summon creatures from there, so wouldn't they need a death master to put a death creature king back into death?"

"Well I guess so" she agreed" But it would also mean, that only a necromancer could free him , right?" the realization struck her

" You think the necromancer that summoned the creature in the woods is trying to free the king?

Gvera was starting to think that herself.

" He killed someone from the Order, and then there was a creature in the house , what was it doing here? Did come to steal the letter, or kill the person who lived here?" the boy kept thinking out loud

"I can check that" she offered

" How?" " With my guardian sprite, it can answer basic questions and located things and people."

Gvera summoned the little orb of light

"Where is the owner of this house?" she asked. The orb turned red.

" What does it mean?" Solean asked

" It means the person is dead." She said" green would mean they are alive, and it would show us the location, if it wasn't too far away."

" I see, pretty handy" .

"So, the person who lived here was most likely killed." He deduced.

" I think it might have been that woman we found dead by the gate." The girl said

" There was no body in the house and no blood, so the person wasn't killed here, but somewhere else."

"Probably true, but what was the creature doing here? If it didn't kill the woman, why was it here?" Solean wondered

" Maybe, because of the letter, maybe the woman wrote it for someone and the skeleton was here to kill whoever came to pick it up." The witch offered her theory.

" Or maybe it was here to steal it, but couldn't leave until dark" the magician guessed

" Either way , the necromancer doesn't want the Order to know about this" he concluded.

"And they will most likely never will, unless someone tells them. But we don't know where the order is or who they are. We can't find them ." Gvera said

"Can't you do it?" he asked.

Gvera shook her head :

" For the spell to work, it would have to be a lot more specific than "The Order", I need a name, or a face, or a personal item, or an approximate location of the person, to locate them. The house if full of the persons presence so it was easy. " she explained.

" This is not good" Solean said " I don't suppose, you would just give up on the idea and forget this ever happened?"

She calmly shook her head

" I already got involved, I mean I destroyed the death creatures and I think the necromancer noticed it, so running away is no longer and option, besides, we know about things we shouldn't know about. The letter was not meant for just anyone. We found it and we have to do something, it's our responsibility, what if it really meant the end of this year? "

"You're right" he gave in "if the world gets destroyed because we did nothing that would be bad. But if we can't inform the Order, and we have no means of finding them, and if we just wander round looking for them, the year could end before we find them." He said.

" So what are you saying? That we should give up?" she wasn't sure she liked the sound of it.

" No, the only other way is if we fight it ourselves. You can destroy death creatures, so you could take down the king."

" Well, I don't know about that" Gvera was scared of the idea of facing a horrible monster all alone

" I'm not saying that you do it alone" Solean said," but we need to get much stronger if we want to fight."

"We have no idea where this king is located" she objected

" I think I know" the boy answered " in the letter, sea is mentioned, a frozen sea. It has to be Kalmer. The Middland and Kalmer are separated by the Ice sea."

" So, the place the king is sealed in, is in your homeland" Gvera wanted to see a foreign land, but under different circumstances.

" It's the only place I can think off. So I have a plan." He said" the end of the year isn't until three months from now, so we still have time. I think we should split up."

"What?" the girl couldn't believe that he wanted to leave her, but a part of her told her that it was to be expected.

" Once we leave the forest, we should split up, cover more ground, look for the Order, gather information, train and become stronger. You need to master that power you have, it could be our best weapon against that monster. I need to get stronger too, my illusions are useless against death creatures"

"Alright" she agreed" but how will we meet again, when we need to?"

He sat there thinking for a while

" Darlakus! The port of Darlakus! We meet there on the first day of winter. Ships from Darlakus sail to Kalmer. We could go there next and look for clues there while we still time."

"Sounds like a good plan" Gvera agreed.

They went to sleep, since it had gotten late. There were two small rooms, each with a bed, so they said goodnight and agreed to call out if anything happened. But Gvera couldn't sleep, doubt was eating at her: was Solean really trying to be helpful or was he just trying to get out of the situation. He didn't seem like he wanted to fight, then again she herself didn't feel up to the task. If he really was on her side only time would tell.