Thanks for your reviews, everyone! I am grateful to you. Well, here goes!
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Kyrael was bored. She'd even persuaded her sending-attendant not to clean her bathroom so she could do it; a chore she royally despised. She wondered what had gotten into her.
Maybe it was that strange dream, she thought. Or maybe she was just lazy from not doing anything in a long time. Anything fun, like a prank, or serious, like binding the Dead.
Kyrael decided she was annoying herself and should stop and just concentrate on scrubbing the toilet. It appeared her sending cast illusory cleaning spells instead of the real ones- the toilet was filthy! She'd have to take this job off of the sending's list of chores. She'd also have to retire the really senile one that had just popped out of the wall one day and commenced throwing her in the bathtub- at six o'clock in the evening!
Kyrael always took a shower in the morning. She'd gotten her gorgeous new silver surcoat quartered with black Abhorsen's keys and her father's personal emblem of a baptismal Charter mark and sword all wet, too!
"Argh." Kyrael mumbled in memory. At least the surcoat had dried- she liked to wear it a lot. Out of curiosity, she opened the secret vent in the wall that she'd discovered last year. It had been cloaked with a Charter-spell then, but as nobody but Kyrael used her bathroom, she'd removed the spell. A jeweled box fell out.
"Well that certainly wasn't here before." She said out loud, the toilet finished for now. The vent usually contained a sword sheathed on its wall, pointing down the duct toward the mews, where she could listen in on whoever was sending a message. Kyrael took the box to her room and locked the door with three spells she was sure nobody else in her family knew how to unlock. She opened the box on her bed- surprisingly the spell over it required no activating Charter mark to work.
The lid creaked open gently-aha! There was an inscription inside!
"I belong to the fifty-fifth Abhorsen, to be found by her on the second day after Midsummer. She is Kyrael, daughter of Lirael Goldenhand, and this box will open to none other- even of the same Blood." It read. It was a strange thing. Kyrael didn't go about as a habit finding strange jeweled boxes in her vent that proclaimed her to be Abhorsen and would open to none other!
Kyrael looked at the contents of the box and gasped, then giggled. Her cousin Samira would be so jealous- and Samira got to wear the Crown Jewels on a daily basis!
Nestled in powder blue velvet were six things- a key carved from ebony suspended on a golden chain, a silver necklace with an emerald the size of Kyrael's thumb nail suspended in silver filigree for a pendant, a book bound in silver silk, a book bound in blue silk the match of the lining of the box, a silver ring with a single ruby on it, and a Charter-spelled blade that looked like a Yamani... what was it? Oh yeah. Kodachi! It had a silver hilt and Charter-spelled platinum blade, and a very polished, very round piece of ebony set as the pommel stone.
Kyrael lifted the kodachi out of the box and read its inscription.
"I was made for Abhorsen Kyrael to bind the Dead." The inscription said, before the letters shimmered into a new arrangement. "Beware, Kyrael, for in other than practice, no sword but I shall you heft."
"Whoa." Kyrael mumbled, glad she hadn't gotten a sword from the Armory to use, as her mother had wanted Kyrael to do.
Kyrael put on the emerald necklace- it turned out to be a choker that fit perfectly. She slipped the key on the golden chain over her head- it dangled down so that the key rested beneath her shirt, almost to her natural waist. She grabbed the silver book from the box and noticed it had spells more powerful than those upon The Book of the Dead on it!
It too had an inscription.
"Only my children and those with my spirit can, or should open this Book of Yrael." The inscription read.
"But that's not possible!" Kyrael cried, knowing that the Abhorsen line was descended solely from Kibeth and Astarael, who sometimes inhabited the tunnels under Abhorsen's House.
"Oh yes it is!" The inscription read now.
"Great. A talking inscription." Kyrael said, as much to the Book of Yrael as to herself
"No, simply an inscription that you talk to." It read.
"I s'pose I have to read this now." Kyrael sighed.
"Ditto." It said.
Kyrael began to read and by the time she was done with the book, it was midnight, even though she'd started at roughly two in the afternoon. She picked up the blue book, strangely not tired at all. It was an empty diary, filled with pages of creamy vellum.
Kyrael neatly signed her name on the first page.
Kyrael Sayre, Abhorsen-in-Waiting, aged fifteen. This is MY DIARY so keep out!!!
It seemed like the correct thing to write. As soon as she'd finished, marks swam into view on the cover. It would now only open to her and future Abhorsen.
Her first entry described the box, what was in it, what she'd been doing that day and how she'd found the box. She signed the page "Kyrael". And that was that.
"Mum- what would you do if you found a box full of random objects in your bathroom vent?" She said sleepily to the air.
The air did not answer.
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Kyrael dreamed she saw the world from a cloud; she dreamed of what had been and what would be. She dreamed of her mother, fighting the Dead, sometimes with Kyrael by her side; she dreamed of everyone she'd ever known and ever would know.
Unbeknownst to her, this was what Yrael had meant many years earlier when he'd said "I can see time." For Yrael had had many dream-visions like this one- and some during the day as well.
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So how was it? Less choppy? Better, perhaps?
As in the last chapter, stock tips, death threats, premonitions and horse shit are welcome (as long as you review!)
It will take three reviews for me to continue, as I only got 2 for the last chapter.