Author's response:
To anyone who leaves a review: I always appreciate it. I won't always respond, as I won't always have something to say in return, but know that I read each and every review my stories receive (yes, "stories", plural). Feedback is the fuel for the machine that is my writing, and I don't think I'll ever get enough. So write away, readers, tell me your thoughts. Even if you don't hear from me, you won't ever be ignored.
Take, for example, the guest reviewer "Ranty Tail". Read your review, thought about letting slip a plot detail, but I couldn't find a way to word it without being too specific. Surprises are meant to surprise, after all.
Chapter 2: Make It New and Bright
"Would you just hurry it up and do it already?" Lyon complained, his breath visible as he clutched at his arms, wearing only his boxer shorts. "I already had to go through this twice."
Gray eyed him, equally undressed. "Don't see me complaining, do you?"
"I'm not stripping," Ultear stated again, levelling eyes at her mother. "I don't have a bra like you, and I don't want Gray's bad habit."
"My bad habit?! Listen, Ultear, I wouldn't even have this stupid habit-"
"-if you weren't such a slouch during your lessons," Ur finished for her student. No way was he going to try that line again.
Lyon laughed. "She got you there, Gray."
"Oh yeah? Last I checked, I knew how to do this stupid Ice-Make stuff as well as you, Lyon!"
The boys literally butted heads, pushing against one-another. "But can you make it dance, ice-flunky?"
"Like you can, teacher's pet!"
"Yeah?"
"Yeah!"
"Well just watch me!"
Shoving Gray away, and placing his fist against his palm, Lyon began channeling his magic.
"Ice-Make… Uh…"
The whirling white around Lyon's fists dissipated. "Never mind."
"Something like this, Lyon?" Ur called.
The boys turned and their eyes nearly popped out of their sockets as they saw Ur waltzing around the banks, a stick-man made of vines with a rose for a head as her partner. She led, it followed (not that those two would know anything about ballroom dancing), until she whirled it around and let it disintegrate, scattering the gleaming powder through the air and watching it glisten as it fell.
"Ur, that was amazing!" Lyon's eyes were glistening as well.
"All of that starts with this simple exercise," Ur said, turning back to her three- her two students. She looked around. "Ultear?"
Following the tiny footprints, it appeared Ur's daughter had gone back to the cabin.
The woman shook her head, muttering, "Sure, I can take another handful. Not like she gets that from me, anyway."
Meanwhile, shutting the door behind her, Ultear sank down against it, breathing a sigh of relief. Her discomfort with stripping was only part of it. After the hell she'd endured to get home, Ultear was in no hurry to freeze to near-death again. At least another week next to the fire, in her bedroll, reading: maybe then she'd be able to stand looking at snow, much less disrobing in it.
On the other hand, she'd have to go outside to get firewood, because this cabin wasn't much better than the outside and she wanted to change that. So-
"Changed your mind?" asked her mother, who was right outside the door.
"No," said Ultear, looking up at her, ignoring the fact her mother was still three-quarters naked. "I just want a fire."
"Tell you what," Ur said, squatting down in front of her, leaning on her knees. "I'll help build you a fire, if you keep it going for the rest of the day."
"I will."
"And," said the wizard, holding up a finger, "you have to gather additional firewood barefoot. Think you can handle that?"
Ultear's hint of a scowl was all the answer Ur needed. Any denial on her daughter's part would be a lie, and they both knew it.
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"Aaah, this is the best," Lyon sighed, wiggling his toes as he sat splayed-legged in front of the mantle.
"I guess…" Gray muttered, having de-clothed himself yet again. "Still kinda chilly in here."
"Don't you blame me," Ultear called, stumbling through the door with another armful of lumber. "If you don't like my fire, then you can sit outside."
Gray glanced at her, then returned to glowering.
"Why do you act like that all the time, hm?" Ultear asked demandingly, plonking the pile down against the side of the brick-and-mortar mantle.
"You're one to talk," the boy quietly countered.
Ultear's mitten-clad hands rested on her hips as she stood over him, leaning forward. "I'll have you know that I smiled when I first saw this house. Father Time could tell you that."
"But he's not here. Anyway, what's that got to do with me?"
Now Ultear was returning outside, hoping to hide her slight smirk from her foster brother. "You haven't smiled in seven days."
"Gray never smiles," Lyon told her, looking her way. "Ur says he's got some kind of darkness in him, and she's trying to banish it."
As Ur's daughter returned to the frozen hellscape, she heard Lyon again.
"Well you do!" the silver-haired boy insisted. "I knew you even longer, and I never saw you smile, either."
The apprentice mage returned to looking at the fire, muttering to himself.
By the time Ultear had gathered up another armful from the stack that lay buried beneath the wool tarp outside, the boys had started an argument.
"It's none of anyone's business, got it?" Gray jabbed a finger into Lyon's chest. "I can take care of myself just fine!"
Lyon brushed Gray off, then riposted with a poke of his own. "Then why are you still here, huh?"
"Lyon!"
The boys both flinched at Ur's voice. By the way they shrank before her mother, Ultear could only deduce that she came from the bloodline of a truly frightening woman.
Gray glared at the back of Lyon's head, as the other boy was now looking at his teacher. "It's fine," said the troubled youth. "I'm here to learn the really powerful stuff."
His knees bent as his legs collapsed into a cross-legged sitting position. "Once I do, I'm outta here, so keep your hair on."
"Any particular reason why?" Ultear asked, moving over to stand on the warm stone near the fireplace, dumping most of the wood beside it.
"My parents are dead," Gray said, turning his back to the fire and scooting away from it. "A demon called Deliora killed them and everyone else I knew."
"But not you," Ultear pointed out.
"What about it?" Gray crossed his arms. "The only thing I plan on doing once I learn all the best Ice spells is ditching this stinking cabin and killing that demon. After that, I don't even care."
Ultear accusingly looked up at her mother, who was relaxing in her comforter chair. The woman shrugged.
"He's a work in progress," she admitted, leaning on one hand. "But, I'll do whatever it takes, even it means fighting Deliora myself."
"Don't even think about it, Ur," Gray warned.
This got him a knock on the head.
"Don't you order me around, kid!" she snapped. "You still got a lot to learn before you're on my level!"
"We both do," Lyon whispered to Ultear. "But someday, I'll be even better than Ur."
Ultear looked at Gray, who was protested his head-bump, and Ur, who was still chewing him out for being a bratty little so-and-so. Then, back at Lyon.
"You have my sympathy," she told him. With that, she turned and walked back out into the snow, feet still bright pink.
Lyon watched her go. "Sheesh, who's the one who hates cold again?"
"You were, when you first got here," Ur reminded him. She looked up at the departing form of her daughter, who was now going for the whole trilogy of wood-gathering, still shoeless. "Give her time. Then she'll be streaking with the rest of us."
The silver-haired youth pursed his lips, his head sinking in front of his neck. "You didn't have to say it so weird, Ur…"
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"I heard from my cousin, Hrodgar," said the muscle-bound "tradesman" sitting on a barstool, itching the underside of his chainmail shirt. "Mr. Sacks started his rounds back home this year."
"I take it your cousin had to pay tribute?" said the other "tradesman", drumming his fingers along the haft of his bearded axe. "What'd he give?"
"One of his cracked whaling spears. Just-" The first man clicked his tongue and mimed a throwing-motion with his arm. "Chucked it right in, head-first."
This got a laugh from the other man, to join the raucous sound that was the inside of The Forlorn Fisherman. "What, did he think he could punch a hole in the bottom?"
"All know is I'm not staying home for Twelfth Night!" he roared merrily. "I left ten ingots for Mr. Sacks, and if Hrodgar wants to be a stingy bastard, he can have whatever he gets!"
"I'll drink to that! HA!"
Ultear, now eight-years-old, was seated with her mother, at a table not too far from these "merchants" from the far-north. She watched these two smash their mugs together before downing the frothing brew in one go.
"If you're curious," her mother's voice told her, "then ask them."
The girl turned back to Ur, who was leaning her chair back on its hind legs, enjoying a cup of warm cider. Ultear had her own brew, albeit non-alcoholic.
"It's none of my business," Ultear replied, blowing on the drink before taking a sip. "What they keep in their sacks, stays in their sacks."
Ur sputtered into her cup, spilling droplets on the wood, before setting it down and chortling loudly. "Maybe." The wooden table groaned a little as Ur leaned her arms on it. "But you might not get another chance to find out."
"They might take offense," Ultear offered, shifting uncomfortably in her seat.
"If they do, then I get a bonus and you get to watch Mother in real action." Ur nodded to where the two meat-monsters were tearing at their dinner: massive bird legs that usually fed a party of two. These men had one a piece. "Besides, you're a wizard now. You can't be afraid of getting into fights, not if you want to join a guild someday."
Sighing, realizing that she wasn't getting out of this, Ultear took another sip for moral support and scooched out of her chair. Walking over to the burly northlanders, she realized they were even larger up-close, easily three-times her size.
"Excuse me?"
One of them looked down at her, pushing his bushy beard against his neck with one hand. Yes, he was definitely looking at her.
"Need help, little miss?" he asked. "Are you drinking right?"
"I'm too young to drink."
"Where we come from, children are weaned on mead!" the trader's un-bearded companion shouted. "Keeps them well, makes them strong!"
"Regardless," Ultear continued, knowing her mother was probably laughing at her latest machination, "who is Mr. Sacks?"
In but a moment, the laughter of the two northman died down.
"Mr. Sacks," said Hrodgar's cousin, "is the spirit of winter."
The man set his mug on the table, then began slowly waving his hands and drumming his fingers through the air.
"Every year, two days after the season begins, Mr. Sacks begins making his rounds through the houses and towns that call upon him," the man said cryptically. "No one ever sees him, not during the day, but at night, we all stay up for The Watch."
"It's always just before midnight," said the bearded one, setting his mug down and wringing the froth from his facial hair. "Mr. Sacks goes to houses, knocks on the front door, holds open his sack, and asks for tribute. You can give him whatever you like, even nothing at all. But he remembers what you give, and you get yours come Twelfth Night."
"Which is…?" These two seemed to have forgotten who they were talking to.
"The night which Mr. Sacks makes his rounds one last time," said the cousin. "He leaves things for anyone who marked their house. I've even seen homeless beggars get a package from Mr. Sacks, so long as they have a place to sleep. Even woke up to him once myself, while he was shifting a poleax under the bed."
"So, he is real?"
"HA!"
Two massive hands slapped two massive thighs.
"These outlanders, Logan," remarked Hrodgar's cousin, looking at his companion while slapping the bar with his hand. "Lucky Mr. Sacks doesn't pay them a visit."
The bartender quickly filled the man's mug, while "Logan" returned to his telling.
"Everything that goes into that sack is gone forever. No one ever sees it again. In ancient times, when all the north was under one rule, the jarl declared that no one but his hold was to call on Mr. Sacks one year."
Ultear didn't know what "jarl" meant, but she deduced it quickly enough.
"This jarl," Logan continued, "had Mr. Sacks at his door all eleven nights of The Watch, and he had eleven different house members give a gift. Come the morn after Twelfth Night, he gathered all the parcels in his great hall to see if anything that was given made its way back to the hold."
Both men began to crack up. Ultear thought she could hear her mother doing the same.
"And?" she asked impatiently.
"Mr. Sacks gave them all coffins! Filled with chicken dung!" Hrodgar's cousin bellowed, roaring with laughter. "The entire hold was abandoned, the stink was so bad!"
"No, wait! Remember?" Logan corrected him, laying a hand on his companion's shoulder. "Not all of them! Old Jarl Sigurd got a note from Mr. Sacks personally, telling him to never deny him tribute again…"
The man could barely contain himself for what he said next. "And skrub af!"
Hrodgar's cousin only guffawed harder, so hard he fell off the stool and landed on the floor. Even there, he continued to choke on fits of hysterical laughter. Ultear could only guess at what "skrub af" meant, if it was enough to form a punchline.
"So is this Mr. Sacks ultimately benevolent?"
"Benevo-what?" The bearded man scratched his temple.
"A good spirit."
"Aaaah…" Logan climbed back into his seat. "No one knows, really. He's never not given to those who've paid tribute, but only those who pay receive his surprises. He's never passed on the downtrodden that have called him on themselves, but even the poorest men have still been approached."
"Up north," Hrodgar's cousin said, slurping back his drink (how many did that make?), "twelve nights is a long time when all you have is a fur and maybe a freeholder's livestock to stay warm. Never knew anyone who had the courage to refuse Mr. Sacks."
"Why d'you ask?" said Logan, leaning on his knee. "Thinking of calling him?"
Ultear inspected the floorboards. "I was just curious."
"Huh," snorted Logan, reaching into one of the large pockets of one of his pants.
He then produced a small wooden figurine, about as tall as the length from Ultear's wrist to her forearm, dressed in miniature cloth attire.
"If you want to try your luck with Mr. Sacks," Logan informed her, pressing the doll into her puny-looking hand, "set this somewhere in your home, and ask for Mr. Sacks to visit every night after the sun goes down."
"But hasn't he already begun? I wouldn't think he'd come if I start late."
"Miss…" Hrodgar's cousin laid a hand on her shoulder, encompassing her entire shoulder, half her upper arm, and the base of her neck on that side. "If there's one thing you should know, it's that Mr. Sacks is nothing… if not generous."
"As the dung-filled coffins would tell you…!" Both men began laughing again. Looking at their size, Ultear could only imagine how enormous those coffins would be for men of their size. She sensed that she'd been forgotten about, so muttered an excusal and shuffled back to the table.
There, she showed Ur the figurine that the man called Logan had given her. It was then that they both decided to give this "Mr. Sacks" thing a try. Hopefully, he delivered to where they lived.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
"Ice-Make…"
Ultear stood perfectly still, the meat of her fist against her palm, her imagination starting to run wild.
"Dahlia!"
From magic came a stem, and from that stem sprouted layer upon layer of florets. Just in time, too, because the chiseled mountain cat had just about reached her. It crashed into the flower, scattering them both to glittering glass.
"Ice-Make Sparrow!"
Another arcane circle appeared before Lyon's hands. Continuing his offensive, boots planted in the white field, a flock of prismatic birds materialized and flew at Ultear.
"Rosen Krone!"
Twin tails of thorny brush exploded from the ground around Ultear, winding through the air and spearing through the avian projectiles. The girl pressed them onward, swatting more of Lyon's conjured pets out of the sky. Victory was as good as hers.
That is, until the last Ice Sparrow twisted in mid-air and spun away from Ultear's counterattack, flying straight for her. In a panic, she leaned back to dodge it, but lost her balance and fell, the toes of her shoes digging up snow.
"Yes! Still the best!" Lyon pumped his fist, forgetting that die Krone der Rosen was still in motion. The next instant, he was uprooted and flung back, the tendrils boring into the ground where he'd stood.
"I'll take that victory, thank you." Ultear was now sitting up, smirking at her fallen opponent.
Lyon jerked upright, snow no doubt melting through his pants. "No fair! You moved first!"
"But my attack was still in motion." Ultear folded her arms, still smiling in triumph. "That's what gloaters get."
Nearby, Gray was having worse luck against his teacher. He was throwing everything he could think of at her: spears, arrows, even a big hammer to swing down at Ur. She countered with the same large ice-leaf: first sprouting up to block the spears, then growing a vine with which to catch the falling arrows, and finally turning into a giant blade with which to snap forward and cut Gray's hammer at the haft. Immediately, the head began to fall, and Gray darted back, losing the game.
"Interesting choices, Gray," Ur called, beaming at him with pride. Shrugging her coat's sleeves back up to her shoulders, she made her way over to her pupil. "What made you think of all that?"
"Just came to mind," he replied, putting his hands in his pockets (thereby getting snow in them). "I still think you're holding out on me."
At this, Ur's smile grew a little stale. "I told you, Gray: Maker Magic can be as powerful as you want it to be. The only limit is your imagination, and your magical power."
"Hmph." Gray looked down the trail that led to the nearby town. "We going grocery shopping or what?"
"I'm going grocery shopping," Ur said, walking over to a nearby rock and retrieving her burlap sack. "You're free to come, as always."
"Sure."
"Wonderful. Lyon?"
"Course I am!" Lyon sprinted over. "I wouldn't wanna miss another fight!"
"I wouldn't get your hopes up." Ur laid a hand on his head and ruffled his hair. "Don't think any sailor's gonna try anything. It's too early to start drinking."
The master then looked to her third protégé. "Ultear?" she called.
The nine-year-old shook her head. "I'll stay here, thanks."
"She always stays here," Gray commented.
"Her loss." Lyon grinned. "She's missing the master in action."
"You talking about me, or yourself?" Ur inquired, playfully suspicious.
"Don't worry, Ur," Lyon told her as they began their walk down the trail. "I won't call myself a master until after I beat you."
Atop the hill, by the cabin, Ultear waited until they were out of sight. Dashing inside, she flung her boots off her feet and ran over to her bed. Pushing aside the basket of clean clothes beneath, as she'd done so many times before, she retrieved the rectangular-shaped package, wrapped in that same strange weave. Ultear had never been able to find out what it was: black in color, always cold and stiff to the touch, but nearly as flexible as the paper it shrouded.
Carefully untucking the outer flap, Ultear gently removed the tome within. Opening it, she repeated the next step in her clandestine little ritual.
As you've now conquered the cold, mayhap you wish to broaden your studies. Learn well, practice often, and never break the taboos. You will go far in life. – "Mr. Sacks"
Exactly one year after Ultear had come home, this book had appeared beneath her pillow, bound in a white hair ribbon. She'd decided to keep the book a secret. Great master or no, her mother's feelings were still human.
On the other hand, the magic gleaned from this book could most definitely be called "diverting".
The secretive student flipped to the table of contents. Listed was entry after entry of spells, exponentially growing in complexity. Unlike her mother's magic, these spells required not just imagination and power, but a fundamental understanding of the element manipulated. Sparrow, spear or rosebush, magical ice was still magical ice.
Glancing at a few broken twigs next to the fireplace, she concentrated her magic into her eyes, then let it flow through her gaze. Slowly, one twig knitted itself back together. Then, two more, then three, and as Ultear walked over to start re-breaking them, she wondered if this "Restore" spell could work on larger, more complex objects. After all, the book never said it couldn't.
Stepping outside, tome still in hand, the next spell to reprise was "Continuum". Despite its disappointing effect in practice, it was the principle of the thing that mattered. Concentrating hard, visualizing the thread of fate woven before her, Ultear swept her free hand forward and willed the snow to move. Instead, all it did was melt.
"Augh, why?!" she frustratedly fumed. It seemed she'd forgotten the principle again. Thus, she settled in to another afternoon of the gnashing and grinding of teeth.
By the time she heard her mother returning up the trail, Ur's alto voice carrying well through the snowy pass, she'd only just gotten the hang of Continuum again.
"Another time, I suppose." Tucking the book back into its protective weave, Ultear made to run back inside but slipped and fell on the front step.
"Ow… Wait."
The book had landed in the half-inch slush of her footprint.
"No." She snatched it up and hurriedly began swiping the melting snow away. "No no no no no no-"
Sweeping a foot behind her (lest her family find the square-shaped imprint in front of the door), the dread-wracked Ultear pulled the book out of the weave.
It was dry.
Not damp, not slightly moist, but as dry as the desert that surrounded her old prison.
Ultear jerked her head up. No time to think about that! Had to get inside! Boots off, book under bed, move the basket back, now just to conjure a cover story-
"Well I'm going!"
Gray's voice came from outside, the only warning Ultear had before the door was flung open. The boy was more PO'd than usual, angrily stomping over to his hamper and tossing his things into a nearby rucksack.
"If any of you think I'm gonna pass this up, then you're stupid!" He pursed his lip, not even acknowledging the girl who was watching him. Ur and Lyon appeared at the door, Ultear's mother looking far more stoic than the girl could recall seeing her. Lyon's big eyes showed off his worry, watching his friendly rival sling the rucksack over his back and stomp his way out.
"If you go," Ur said, her head remaining fixed even as Gray strode by, "you'll no longer be my student."
Gray stopped at the front step, but only long enough to turn and say, "You taught me magic. So if I die, it'll be your fault."
Ultear's eyes flared at that, and it took everything she had to not run out the door and slap Gray so hard that his head spun off.
"The nerve!" she fumed, fists clenched at her sides. By her expression, she looked like she was trying to suck her own lips through her teeth. "Who does he think he is, burdening someone with his own idiocy?"
Ur shook her head. "His bed's made, now he has to sleep in it." Without another word, she closed the door behind her, leaving Gray to wander on his own.
"Where is he going, anyway?" inquired Ultear, simmering down.
"To Brago," Lyon answered, flopping down on his bedspread and staring up at the ceiling. "Some people we heard on the way back up here said Deliora's headed that way."
"Deliora?" Ultear knew that name… "The demon?"
"The one that killed Gray's parents and destroyed his home town." Ur looked at the ground. "I can't believe he thinks he can kill it."
"Well, why not?" Lyon tilted his head to look at his mentor, his voice a little shaky. "He learned from the best. He's got the spells. And he's pretty good for third-place."
Ultear responded before Ur could. "He lacks the conditioning. Even the most powerful magic is worthless if the caster's body can't handle it."
"And he knows that." Ur sighed, sinking into her chair, leaning back to join Lyon's ceiling-stare. "But he still wants to throw his life away."
"You're not going?" Ur's daughter eyed her mother; her affinity with the cold was only supposed to run skin-deep.
"I won't let Gray endanger anyone else." Ur reached up and began thumbing through the bookshelf above the mantle, her expression completely neutral. "It's his life, and he may spend it however he likes."
That was the last thing that was said for the next hour. The remaining three occupants of Ur's cabin went undisturbed, unspeaking. They lounged around, Ur rereading an old romance novel from her shelf, Lyon poking at the fire. Ultear was shifting around uncomfortably, pacing between walls. She remembered those years past, before her journey home, before Father Time had found her, when the Bureau of Magical Development held her prisoner.
It's what your mother wanted. Once we've expanded your magical power, she'll be back. You'll see.
Always those words, repeated to her over and over again by the white-haired monster than ran the asylum, and it was an asylum, in all but name. The electrodes had always been the worst of it: injecting her frail body with Etherano, forcing her power to grow, feeling like her organs were ready to explode inside herself. She'd swallowed that power whole, over and over again, until she remembered not even feeling the swell. Her flight from that horrifying place hadn't been so much an escape as the beginning of a warpath. All of that raw magical energy, stuffed and pushed down inside her small frame, had been unleashed, discharging in blue wave after blue wave that toppled the crescent-shaped cell block and saw an end to the Bureau's cruelty. From there, it had begun.
"I'm going, too," she announced, ceasing her back-and-forth.
"You sure about that?" Ur asked, not even looking up from her read.
"I'll talk to him," the girl fibbed.
Now Ur did look up. "No, really, Ultear: you sure?"
The girl looked her mother, her teacher, straight in the eye. "Do you know why he's doing this, Mother?"
"Because he's arrogant and angry." Ur returned to reading, but she was just as bad at lying as her daughter. "A bad combo, if you ask me."
Being the child of a parent, and now speaking to that parent, Ultear couldn't resist.
"Are you suuure?" she asked, as smugly as her tiny voice could convey.
"All right, Little Miss Know-It-All," Ur barked, slamming the book closed and standing up. "What am I missing here?!"
"Oo!" Lyon's hand shot up in the air.
"Deliora took his parents away from him," Ultear explained, still smiling (and ignoring her foster brother), "and since he can't have them back, he wants the next best thing. It's all he wants. Everything else is there to either help him, or to hinder him. There's no middle ground, in his mind."
Ur crossed her arms. "Really," she huffed sarcastically. "Is that how you see it?"
"That's how I saw 'it'…" Ultear paused, drawing back for the killing blow. "…when I decided I wanted to come back to my mother."
And what a glorious strike it was. Not even the all-mighty Ur of Isvan could stop herself from recoiling in surprise.
It was right then, with Ur's eyelids just starting to relax from the shock they'd received, that the starlight shining through the windows began to fade to pink. Then, orange. Then...
"What the-" Lyon was the first to the glass. "Where's that coming from?"
Ur tried the northern window, the one facing the mountain slope. "Not from over here."
"…I see it."
The diminuendo of uncertainty, slowly releasing its grip on Ultear's vocal chords, only added to that gnawing feeling of dread that clawed at Lyon and Ur's guts. Master and pupil dashed to meet their third, and beheld the horrifying source of the light.
It was the moon. But not just the moon: in a full lunar eclipse, larger and more imposing than even Ur could remember seeing it, staining the sky red, sitting just above the Twin Peaks overlooking the frozen lake.
When the moon bleeds between the twin tusks…
"…Hey." Lyon nervously turned to his mentor. "You think that guy was just talking about Gray when he said that?"
"I was not."
The three all spun around. That voice came from everywhere, even the woodwork.
Ur smirked at it. "Well, no time like the present." She went to her large wardrobe, cast a spell on the strongbox that sat atop, and removed every Isvanian Mark she'd saved up, just in case something like this.
"Grab what you can," she ordered her pupils, stuffing the money down her pockets. "Don't know when we'll be coming back."
Ultear started for a moment, in the midst of stuffing her small shoulder bag with spare clothes. There was just enough room, and if she was quick about it…
"What's that?"
"NOTHING, LYON!" she squawked, hugging her precious tome to her chest.
She couldn't see it, but she just knew he was grinning. "Then why're you bringing it with us, huh?" He began poking her back. "Is it your diary? Lemme see it!"
"I SAID GO AWAY!" She thrust a hand towards him and a magic circle sprung forth. Lyon fell backward, hand shielding his face as his thoughts scrambled to recollect a counter-spell.
"That's enough!"
The ice mistress's hand actually passed through the arcane circle and scattered it.
"We're going to have enough problems without you two trying to kill each other over a stupid book!" Swatting her child's hand aside, Ur sucked in a breath, exhaled, then opened her eyes. "If it's that important to you, Ultear, I want to see it after this Deliora bastard gets what he's owed."
"So we're all coming back, eventually," Lyon tentatively offered, shrugging his backpack over his shoulders. He swiveled around, his eyes a little wider than usual. "Right?"
"Well, I don't know about you two," Ur grinned, "but I don't plan on going anywhere."
"Besides Brago?" Ultear offered.
"Besides Brago." Ur opened the door, which mercifully did not let the cold in, as the wind was dead tonight. "Hopefully we can catch Gray before he goes and does something really stupid."