Minette sat at the crackling fire, sipping from a mug, reading the journal of the Chronomancer. She had made herself at home over the last week, set up her tent and bedroll and chopped down one of the trees with the axe strapped to her pack.
She had journeyed out the morning after Farkas left and hunted a deer, dragging it back into the grotto. She used limbs from the tree to make a rudimentary tanning rack where the deer's hide was still strung, drying. She had salted the meat and cooked the rest, then she left the skull and antlers neatly placed at the altar, alongside the flowers and coins.
A fitting offering from the Companions, she had thought smirking to herself.
She hears a noise, the sound of feet disturb the peaceful nature of the grotto. She picks up her bow from its place leaning next to her log, seats and draws an arrow then quietly ducks against the trunk of remaining tree. Raising the bow, she edges around the tree, gazing over her thumb.
"Minette?" Farkas calls out as he enters the grotto. She lowers her bow and walks out from behind the tree.
"Welcome back." She says, waving at Mirabelle.
"Hey, Belle." They hug and turn, Minette gestures at the altar.
Mirabelle walks over to it and touches the case. She drops her pack which lands with the thud and clinking of books and bottles.
"This is...serious." She mutters, under her breath.
"This is the journal of the Chronomancer who put her there." Minette hands her the book and Belle flips through it.
"Anything worthwhile in it?" She asks as she studies a page scrawled with illustrations.
"Maybe to someone like you, I have only a rudimentary grasp of the arcane." Minette replies, shrugging.
"But to me, towards the end, it seemed more like the raving of a truly insane person." She adds and Belle nods.
"I'll need some time with this." Belle mutters as she turns and examines the next page.
"Take all the time you need, how about lunch?" Minette replies as they all walk over to her campsite.
On the morning of the fifth day since Belle arrived, Minette sweeps aside the flap of her tent, yawning. She stretches and Farkas hands her a mug of steaming hot tea, she looks at Kyra on the altar and sips it. Belle was sitting on the log and was scribbling furiously onto parchment, Minette peers over her shoulder at the symbols on the page, takes another sip of her tree and rubs her eye with her free hand.
Belle suddenly stands up, shouting in proclamation.
"I think I've got it!" She picks up her bag and kneels in front of the altar.
Removing a carved troll skull with a gem pressed into its third eye socket from her bag, she sets three candles around it and lights them with the tip of her finger. Taking the books from her bag she sets them around her. Popping the top off a potion bottle she quickly gulps it.
"Want to walk us through this?" Minette asks, standing over Belle.
"No, no time. The potion will only boost me for a short time, alchemy is not my strong suit." She takes off her gloves and flexes her fingers. Carefully she lays out seven pages of scrawled symbols around her and folds her fingers in front of her. She begins to gesture, muttering quietly to herself.
The case begins to shimmer as Mirabelle changes the hand gestures and the case begins to tremble. Farkas watches his hand on Minette's shoulder, Minette was standing in place biting her lower lip.
Belle's hands begin to glow as the case shudders, and the air around them begins to pop and crackle, sparks of blue lightning appear randomly and pop out of existence just as quickly. This intensifies as Farkas takes cautionary steps back taking Minette with him.
Belle changes the gesture and the case suddenly jerks into the air away from Kyra and it hovers there, Kyra still frozen. The case shudders and begins to melt. It turns from clear to purple to red, then with a boom, explodes in a shower of sparks.
Kyra gasps, back arching screaming as she stumbles off the table, crashing into the skeleton forcing Belle to scramble away. Minette starts to run toward her but Farkas grabs her. Kyra stands upright for a moment as she stops screaming.
"K—Kyra?" Minette asks, reaching towards her in the space between them.
Kyra's head snaps back towards the ceiling and explodes in a bright light that fills the grotto and forces them to blink and turn away. There was a rush of flames that followed the light and Farkas grabs the two women and turns them away hunching over them as the flames rush past, charring the fabric parts of his armor.
Peering over her shoulder and through Farkas's arm, Minette squints into the blinding light. Kyra was a silhouette, rising into the air her back arches and a pair of wings seem to erupt from her back, bony and scaly like the wings of a dragon.
"Zu'u Alok." A haunting and ethereal voice fills the grotto. It wasn't harsh or menacing, it just simply...was.
"Zu'u Alok, fin feyn do Dovah. Zu'u los fin Ah." Minette squints, the wings seem to turn to ash as the light begins to ebb. The light then fades and Kyra falls onto her feet, panting as steam rises from her naked body. She blinks, then her knees give out and she collapses.
They run over to her, Minette kneeling beside her. She runs her fingers over two long, jagged and angry red scars on either side of Kyra's spine just below her shoulders. Minette turns her over and gasps, jaw falling open.
Kyra looked younger, her body lacked any of her fading battle scars apart from her new ones. She looked like the Kyra that used to tell her bedtime stories and bring her treasure and bobbles from her adventures back in the Lakeview house.
Kyra looked like she did fourteen years ago.