Prelude
The flames had already reached the top of the staircase, the light and heat of which had already erupted down the hallway towards Charlotte's small bedroom. A thick and nausea inducing layer of black smoke had covered the ceiling, from which a light snowing of white ash and glowing embers was falling.
The fire had started slowly and almost unnoticeably small in the downstairs kitchen of the house. Yet it had very quickly picked up pace and by now had completely engulfed the ground floor of the house. At the top of the stairs it soon spread onto the carpeted floor of the hallway and raced towards the closed bedroom doors at the far end of the hallway.
Amounts of smoke had already made their way through the cracks under Charlotte's door and although the full brunt of the heat was blocked by the door, the room and floor were unmistakably heating up rapidly. Inside the room was Charlotte, a short girl with long blonde hair and brown eyes, standing on her bed at the far end of the room.
Charlotte was frantically trying to unlock the small window opposite from her door, fumbling with the key. She turned the key, met with little resistance and the slight click of the handle unlocking. However, no matter how much she pushed the handle the window refused to move even a crack open. It didn't budge even when she barged her shoulder into the glass pane, all it did was hurt her shoulder.
In frustration she turned and threw the key at her door and dropped down onto the bed, pulling her knees up and hugging them close to her chest. She stared at the crack beneath her door, seeing the orange and red glow of the fire becoming more and more intense. The black smoke above her was slowly filling up the room from the ceiling, but she could already barely breathe the heated air that was filled with other lighter smoke, causing her to begin coughing violently.
Barely a minute later she could see the flames directly under her door. She thought she could see individual pieces of flame reach under the door and into the room. But by this point her vision had started to become blurry and a heavy headache took most of her concentration away. She began crying out of fear, but the tears burned down her cheeks before quickly drying up from the heat.
Suddenly, without Charlotte seeing the handle move, the door opened fully. This created a sudden burst of blinding light and heat that made Charlotte cover her face with her arms, but even then, she could feel her arms and face burning in the heat.
"Given your situation, you're quite strong indeed" A strange high-pitched voice rang out through the room, somehow drowning out the sound of the fire without itself being loud. Charlotte felt something light land onto her knees and block out some of the light and heat from in front of her. Looking through her arms she just about managed to see a small white, cat like creature with long ears, a flowing tail and two ruby eyes that seemed to have no life of their own.
"Indeed, you are strong and could help other people with that strength if you so wish. However, I've found that fire such as this is much stronger than most things and you will surely perish if you don't make a decision." The creature's mouth didn't seem to move, only its tail wagging slowly from side to side suggested that it was even alive.
The creature turned its head and looked back at the fire, "It would seem we do not have much time on our hands.". Its head turned back to look at Charlotte, "I can help you, but in return you must also others with your strength."
Charlotte looked at this creature in disbelief and confusion, not fully comprehending what it was saying. However, the one thing that stuck in her mind was that it could save her from the painful heat of the ever-closing fire. She took a glance at the flames, she could feel the heat burning her skin and the light starting to blind her, but her mind was now in a distant place that the pain didn't fully register any recoil reaction from her.
She turned back to the creature and nodded her head.
"You wish to be saved, so that you may use your strength to defeat Witches?" The creature's tail kept slowly wagging whilst its voice pierced straight into Charlotte's mind. "If so then you must say the words."
"I wish to be saved." Although her throat was completely dried out, and opening her mouth left a burning sensation all the way down her throat, she managed to utter the few words that the creature was requesting.
The creature leapt up from her knees, onto her shoulder and up to the window that she had been trying to open and looked out into the dark night. Its eyes glowed slightly for a few seconds before returning to the red stone eyes.
Charlotte felt a pain tear across her entire body, pain like she'd never known before, for a split second. Once this pain subsided, she felt as though she had been dumped into a cold dark ocean. She could no longer feel the heat of the fire, she no longer breathed the toxic burning air, and the blinding light had vanished.
She looked around to find that she had somehow appeared in the street directly outside the front of her house. Street-lights, which lined the street, were giving off a dull yellow glow acting as the only source of light against the night.
Looking up at her house she saw no sign of any fire raging, no light, no smoke and no heat coming out from the house. Whatever the creature had done, the fire had seemingly been put out and she had been teleported out of the house completely.
She began to hear sirens of multiple emergency vehicles in the distance slowly approaching. And a faint glow of flashing blue lights not far from the end of her street. She took in a deep breath of fresh air and found that her headache had seemingly vanished and she could focus again.
She began to look around the area for any sign of the creature, or of any differences to what she knew of her street. The only sign of difference that she could find was a strange necklace that was now weighing down around her neck.
Pulling it up from her neck it was a long silver chain that was connected to a round pendant at the bottom. The pendant consisted of a deep blue stone, that seemed to hold twinkling stars within it, inlaid into a golden fitting. As she looked at the stone, it began to glow slightly, and the starry mist seem to shift of its own accord.
Whatever it was, it wasn't natural.