Disclaimer: Seriously. Do I really need to say it again? I own NONE of the Circle of Magic characters or their branching characters. Just cause I want to own Briar doesn't mean I'm gonna steal him… How DARE you accuse me of something like that! The nerve! Hmph!

Author's Note: This is a special treat! I normally wouldn't be updating a day after the previous chapter, but since I'll be gone for at LEAST 2 weeks, I thought I should let you guys read more into the story… and wet your appetites a bit more.

The Circle Reunited

Chapter Two: Treasure in the Flames

Briar looked over to Daja.

"This is your area of magic. I'll try to stop any plants from feeding it," he said before falling into his rhythmic pattern of breathing. Daja stared at him in disbelief before turning to the girls.

"I can't stop the flames. I'm not a flame mage and I'm not stupid. I can contain them, but really, we need something to douse them," Daja told them, looking pointedly at Tris. Almost annoyed, the weather-witch rolled her eyes before speaking.

"Fine. But it'll take me a few minutes. Those clouds might have some water in them, but they'll need to combine if I'm to summon a storm. Give me five minutes, and I'll have it pouring buckets." That said, she looked to the sky, closed her eyes and immediately fell into the same rhythmic breathing as her foster brother. Daja soon followed after taking another look at the raging flames.

I will not just sit here, thought Sandry frustrated. She dug through her pockets and pulled out a large spool of thread. In her eyes, it gleamed with intense silver light. She had ordered it not to burn and thereby fireproofed it. Normally, she used it to lift pots from the fireplace. With a thought, and falling into the same rhythmic patterns as her foster-siblings, she moved forward toward the wreckage. Snake-like, her thread unraveled itself from the spool and slithered outward. It began to wrap itself around collapsed wood and move it out of the way. If she couldn't help stop the fire, she could at least search for survivors before they burned to death.

So it was that before the house, four eighteen-year old mages stood still breathing in unison. Every now and then Briar would wince as he lost a plant. Daja began to sweat as she held the fire. Sandry wrapped her thread around large flaming rubble and tossed it aside like paper. As they worked, the clouds turned black and any light that was left from the twilight vanished as these thunderstorm-clouds formed. With an almighty thunder-clap, rain began to fall. True to her word, Tris had summoned a storm so powerful that within seconds her friends and herself were drenched.

Tris opened her eyes first. She saw Sandry in the middle of the heap, clearing her path as she looked for survivors. She looked to Daja just as the smith mage opened her eyes. Briar was the last to open his eyes before looking around. He whistled.

"Wow. Now this is what I call a storm," he said casually, causing a slight tinge of red to appear on Tris' cheeks. Slowly, very slowly, the flames began to die. Within minutes, all that was left of the fire was wood that glowed with the orange embers of the fire they had held.

"Yeah, and that's no joke," Daja commented squeezing water from her hair. In the end, that was useless since as soon as she went to work on another braid, the one she had just finished with was soaked again. She looked to the rubble which was now so drenched that there was no way any flames could be alive. "I'm pretty sure you can stop now."

Rolling her eyes, Tris said, "Do you want me to kill myself? I can call them to me, I can shoo them along, and I can feed them. But I cannot stop storms. They have to run their course."

"Right. But at the rate this is going, we're gonna have a flood," Briar told her, running a hand through his wet hair. "Let's just hope the sewers aren't already filled."

"They're not," Tris snapped. "It hasn't rained here in weeks! And we're right by a sea! Can you believe it! Clear skies for two weeks! And when the clouds finally come, it still doesn't rain. Honestly!" As anyone who knew her was well aware of, Tris took clear skies as personal insults.

"Well can you at least stop me from getting wet? You can see through this shirt now."

"Oh, right," she said. It was true. His cotton shirt had become so wet that you could see through it. With a wave of her hand and a push with her mind, she formed a type of air-bubble around herself, Briar, and Daja. "Let's go find Sandry."

"That won't be hard," Briar said with a smirk, pointing as a large pile of rubble flew from one spot, thrown as if it were a pile of leaves. Fighting not to laugh, they set off in the clear path that Sandry had left behind herself.

Sandry stopped searching. She could not find anything or anyone to be saved. Her head hanging, she stood in place as her foster-siblings approached. When they did she turned to them. Had she been less depressed she would have laughed. "You are all soaked."

"No kidding," Briar said sarcastically. "I had no idea." Sandry's clothes were perfectly dry. As a thread mage, none of her clothes dared get wet, catch a stain, or so much as wrinkle in her presence. While they all were connected magically, they had separated their powers enough that they could not delve completely into the thread-magic that was Sandry's. "Mind helping us out?"

A shadow of a smile appearing on her face, she laid a hand on each of her friend's shoulders. Water drained itself from any cloth they were wearing immediately at her touch. Even their hair became dry as Sandry was able to manipulate her magic to think of the fibers of the hair as thread.

"Thanks," Daja, Briar, and Tris said together.

"You are welcome," Sandry said. She was silent for a moment before she continued. "It's sad. I'm sure there are some survivors here. I can feel it. But I can't find anything."

"Well, four is better than one," Tris said sensibly. "I'm sure if we all look, we'll find something."

"Right," said Briar. "I'll take th-" He stopped in mid-sentence. From the corner of his eyes, he had seen something glitter. Turning his head, he looked to where it had been; as it had vanished when he tried to look directly at it. He unfocused his eyes and looked at everything while looking in nothing particular at the same time. Immediately he began to see specks of light. In this heap of wreckage, magic was dappled everywhere. Yet from the center of it all, small beams of light would escape its confines of debris.

"What?" Daja asked looking in the same direction. She opened her mouth to speak again before she closed it and said, "Oh."

"'Oh,' what?" Tris inquired, staring at her foster-siblings.

"Really, Tris," Briar retorted, "I would expect you to be the first to notice it. Whatever caused this fire was magical and it seems something magical, and powerful, is hidden under this rubbish." Without another word, they set off to work again. Tris and Daja used the wind to push the garbage out of their way. Sandry used the method she had used before, only now showing more care to where she flung the debris. Briar used his magic to scoop up wreckage as he would use a hoe to pick up dirt. It wasn't long before they overturned the last bit of garbage to reveal two children. Around them, magic gleamed.

Someone had placed some sort of barrier around them.

"They're naught but children," Sandry said. "They are lucky to be alive." Tris, Sandry, and Daja drew the gods circle on their chests. Briar moved closer to the children, still seeing the magic gleaming around them. He moved to touch it. Upon contact, he was thrown back several feet to land painfully on his backside. "And someone made sure these two would be safe," she added stopping herself from laughing as Briar got up and rubbed his rear.

"Daja? Think you can break it?" Briar asked, ignoring the grin on his foster-sister's faces. Daja nodded and walked up to the barrier, taking out a mallet from her mage's kit. Giving it magic, she knocked on the barrier which promptly shattered.

The four mages approached the children. Perhaps "children" was too hasty of a word to use to describe them. They had to be, at the very least, in their preteens. They both had short, jet-black hair that was wet from the storm going on around them. They wore no shoes and tattered clothes that had to be a result of the explosion that they had no doubt been trapped in. They seemed to be identical. In fact, as Briar, Daja and Sandry came closer, there was no doubt that they were identical.

They were twins.

Suddenly, rain poured on the plant mage, soaking him and two of his companions. Briar looked over to where Tris had been and was surprised to find no one there. Tris had stopped several feet behind them. Also wondering why the rain had suddenly started drenching them again, Daja and Sandry turned to look at the mage who was standing stock still. "What are you doing?" Briar asked in an exasperated tone.

"I don't do well with children," Tris said simply, her arms folded and her eyes narrowed.

"You've been dealing with kids all day," Briar pointed out.

"Not really. All I did was give them objects and see if magic responded. Their parents played with them."

"But they're unconscious," Briar said in a tone of unmistakable disbelief. "They're not going to hurt you." The weather-witch turned her head in a way that firmly said she was not moving any closer. Shaking his head, he moved closer to the children.

"Well if you will not come closer, at the very least open this bubble a bit more," Sandry said in a worried tone. "They are soaked and they will catch their death with this storm blowing about." While it was obvious she was not moving any closer, Tris did seem a bit worried about them dying. The air-bubble expanded to cover all of them once again.

Briar and Daja picked up one twin each and held them in their arms. Sandry tapped their shoulders and the water poured itself from the little cloth they were wearing. Almost as if it were an afterthought, the rags unwrinkled themselves. An eyebrow arched, Briar looked at Sandry who merely nodded. Returning his attention to the child in his arms, he readjusted his hold. Now closer, it was easy to tell that they were both boys as well.

"We should get them back to the manor," Briar said still looking down at the twin. "We need to get them clothed and their cuts and bruises need to be tended to."

"And judging from their weight, they need to be fed too," Daja added, Briar nodding in agreement. That said, they turned to return to their booths and their carts. The children were absolutely quiet as they walked. Well, almost. The twin that Briar held kept whispering to himself. Straining his ears, he was finally able to make out what the boy said:

"You promised…You promised…"

Author's Note: Confused much? Well… if you are… that's good! You shouldn't know what he means by "you promised" anyway. Third chapter should be much more interesting than this one.

Responses to Reviews:

Onyx-worrystone: Thank's for reviewing! You're my first reviewer and as such, you get a prize! You get to ask one question about what's been presented so far. E-mail me or YIM me and I'll answer the question. Be careful what you ask for! Alright, in response to you're questions here: Tris is being a magic-finder here. You don't have to be good with children to do that. All she's doing is handing them different objects to see if any magic gets excited when they do touch it. In The Will of the Empress, she makes it clear that she doesn't like it that she's the only one without something to put on the table. And I haven't read Shatterglass… I'm getting it for my birthday along with HP6! Woo! But thanks for telling me that. It actually helped me in a sequence here. And yes, The Will of the Empress will be coming out September 28th here. There, they are 16. I made them older so as not to conflict with too much with WotE. I know I inevitably will clash with something there, but I'm trying to avoid it as much as possible. If there's anything else I should know about Tris' personality that I wouldn't gather from the other books, would you mind terribly telling me? If you can't, it won't matter much since I won't be able to update after this until mid-July. Yay for summer programs! Thanks for reviewing again.

The Golden Shadow: Well, with a summer program coming up, I won't be able to update frequently until August, at which time I hope to have a new Chapter up every 1-3 weeks. Hopefully. I can promise you I'll work on it during the summer program I'm in now so that all I have to do is type it up. And you're wondering what Tris was doing at her booth? Well, she was testing to see if the children had magic in them. Hehehe… nice thinking though. I hope this chapter efficiently answers what manor was burning. Thanks for reviewing!

Fic-fan: Well, he's possessive of his shakkan. As for the ones he's selling, he's as attached to them as Daja would be attached to a sword she might make or something. He cares about it, but he has to let it go so that it can gain the experience that shakkans are supposed to get. He might not like who he's selling it to, but as long as they can afford it or the shakkan asks to go to them, he won't refuse to sell them one unless the shakkan protests. Shakkans are supposed to be expensive and as such, he's probably used to dealing with "bags" as he calls them. So… he's probably used to the attitude. It's nice that you're paying attention to detail though. Thanks for reviewing!

Aku Maru: Can't wait until you read them. Thanks for reviewing!

Cat: Thanks for telling me. Its fixed. And thanks for the review!