When Callum walked into the dining room for breakfast, he was flooding with emotions when he saw Harrow at the table, sipping at his coffee and reading over some of his messages. When he noticed that Callum had arrived, Harrow bellowed a greeting to the prince. Ezran and Bait also seemed cheery enough as they shared a platter loaded with jelly tarts.
The only thing that gave Callum pause was when his mother entered the room, apologizing for her tardiness. Callum could feel his heart leap with joy, but he couldn't deny the overlaying sense of wrongness.
This can't be real, he thought to himself — Mom's dead. Mom is dead!
Still, when she hugged him and wished him a good morning, he couldn't deny how comfortable it would be to accept the lie.
To pretend that this was real and something wasn't appallingly wrong. It seemed that she couldn't sense his discomfort, and that only made him more uneasy. His mom always knew when something was wrong.
Everything looked perfect. The pancakes were excellent, his parents were alive, Ez seemed happy, but it felt wrong. It was like he was stepping into the past, stepping back into a pair of shoes he'd outgrown.
When he was alone, he tried to cast aspiro, but nothing happened. His connection to the sky arcanum wasn't there anymore.
"Hey, Callum!" Claudia called out from across the courtyard.
Callum found himself taking a step back when he saw her. She looked like herself, aside from half of her hair being vibrant white. "Hey, Claudia," Callum said warily. "What happened to your hair?"
"Oh, this?" she said. "I dunno. I think a spell backfired or something. I think it suits me, though, don't you think?"
"Yeah, it's definitely something," Callum said. There was a part of him that felt that she was lying. She'd done something terrible. Something with dark magic.
It was unfounded, of course. It had all been a dream. A stupid dream.
When it was time to go back to sleep, he buried his head in his pillow and screamed. Why was he so miserable? Because of a dream?
No, it had to be more than a dream. He rolled over and glared at a pile of clothes that had built upon one of his chairs, and he couldn't help but smile when he saw the red scarf. He heard Rayla's voice in his head saying, 'I think it's good luck'.
The second he thought of her, he was suddenly angry again. Where was she? Logic told him that Rayla had never been real, to begin with, but he couldn't find it in him to accept that.
He got up and went to his window to gather his thoughts, breathing in the fresh summer air. He tried to calm his mind, but that proved itself to be impossible when he saw Viren walking through the courtyard. Callum instinctively ducked behind the wall when Viren glanced up at their tower window. It was the middle of the night...what was he doing out there?
Callum was getting redressed before he'd decided that he needed to follow the dark mage. He grabbed his scarf last, hoping that Rayla was right about it being lucky.
When he opened the door, the last thing he expected to see was Ezran sneaking out of his room with Bait tucked under one of his arms.
The brothers froze and looked at each other, trying to gauge what the other was thinking. After a few seconds, Ezran broke out into a grin. "You remember things, too, don't you?"
Callum grinned back, "I think so. It all kind of feels like a dream. What do you remember?"
"We can talk about that later," Ezran said. "Viren's up to something, and I think I know where he's going."
Callum couldn't argue with that, so he rushed down the stairs after his brother. They had to dodge the guards, but that had proved to be easier than Callum had expected. What he hadn't expected was that Ezran would pull back a portrait to reveal a tunnel within the walls.
They shut the hidden passage behind them and started to run. Where they were going, Callum had no idea, but he trusted Ezran.
They dashed through the hidden passage, Bait croaking and hopping at their heels. Before long, Callum was starting to get winded, but he kept going. They only slowed down when they realized that theirs weren't the only footfalls in the dark.
When they saw who was in the tunnel with them, Ezran gave Callum a proud smiled, and Callum ruffled his brother's hair.
Viren didn't seem to notice them as he strutted down the corridor, and Callum wanted to make sure they kept it that way. It felt like they were following him for an eternity before Viren unlocked a door and stepped inside, closing it behind him.
"What now?" Ezran asked.
"We can't just go barging in after him," Callum said. "I think we just need to wait."
"You can't electrocute him or something?" Ezran asked.
Callum brightened up at this, beaming. "No, I can't!"
"Why are you smiling like that?" Ezran asked.
"Because I might have been able to do magic," Callum said. "What else do you remember?"
"Less than I'd like. Everything's fuzzy like it was a dream. It can't have been a dream, though. Bait says he remembers everything," Ezran admitted. "I remember mom and dad were gone. I remember finding the egg, and we decided we had to get it back to Xadia. We wanted to stop the war. We were traveling with Rayla - "
"You remember Rayla?" Callum interrupted.
"Shh!" Ezran said, shoving Callum back into the shadows before joining him.
Viren was leaving the room in a huff, grumbling to himself. Ezran and Callum hardly breathed until the mage had passed them. They didn't move or breathe until they couldn't hear his footsteps.
"This isn't the same room the egg was in," Ezran said as Callum tested the handle, discovering the door was locked. "What do you think's in here?"
"I dunno," Callum sighed. "It doesn't look like there's any way in, though, not unless you have a key."
Ezran gave Callum a blank look before pushing his brother aside. He took something out of his hair and started fiddling with the lock. It wasn't long before the latch gave way, and the door swung open.
"Where did you learn to do that?" Callum asked, mildly impressed.
"No door can hold me," Ezran said with a laugh.
They shut and locked the door behind them before they started snooping around. It seemed like an ordinary storage room, full of empty bottles and bolts of fabric, but there was more to it than that.
Ezran was poking around in the cupboards, and Callum had been taken by something under a sheet, propped up against the wall. When he uncovered it, he found an ornate mirror. He couldn't understand why it would be in storage and not hanging in a guest room. He touched the glass carefully, thoughtfully. Something about the piece drew him like a moth to a flame. He only moved away from the mirror when Ezran called for him.
"What'd you find, Ez?" Callum asked, covering to mirror again.
Ezran didn't answer but pointed into a wardrobe on the wall beside the door. The top shelf was loaded with empty bottles that had names inked on them. Callum read over the names carefully. There were so many of them, and all of them were people he knew. Soren, Amaya, Claudia, Gren, Corvus, Opeli, Ezran, and Callum.
Callum stood on his toes to take his and Ezran's jars, looking them over. They seemed empty. He tried to twist the tops of the bottles off, but they wouldn't budge.
"Callum," Ezran whispered, distracting him from the bottles. He pointed at the door, which was being unlocked from the other side.
Viren was back.
Happy Almost American Thanksgivinggg. I don't know how fast I'll do this, how much I'll get done, or how long it'll be, but it will be a nice reprieve since there's no Season 4 yet. I'm going through withdrawals, helllp. Anyway, I'll do this as I can. If you wanna leave a review or follow me or whatever that's super nice, and I would appreciate it a lot, and I won't lie is definitely a motivator for me to write me.
