Yuma woke up at the crack of dawn as he usually did and found a pair of pale blue eyes surrounded by a pale golden halo looking down at him.

What? Mizki didn't have blue eyes. And she definitely did not wake up earlier than he did.

Then his eyes adjusted to the dim light in their barrier and determined that the pale golden halo around the owner of the blue eyes was hair, not some kind of sunlight tricking his eyes. Oh. Right. Ia.

"What are you doing, up so early?" he asked as he began to get up. Mizki was still in a deep sleep, which meant that he'd have to wake her up. As usual.

Ia shuffled a bit in her seat, but didn't answer. Not like she could have even if she wanted to, anyways.

His guess was that she had suffered from nightmares during the night, woken up and had been too scared to go back to sleep in fear of further terrifying dreams. Usual for kids her age. She'd probably been waiting for one of them to wake up so she'd have someone to be with. Unfortunately for her, he wasn't good at that kind of thing.

Ah, hell, she looked ready to cry.

Think, Yuma. What do little kids like to do?

The immediate answer he thought of was 'cause mischief'.

Sending a silent apology to his partner, Yuma made his face as friendly as he could. "Would you like to do the honours of waking Mizki up?" he asked. The girl's face brightened considerably. "You can jump on her if she doesn't get up," he added, knowing that the mage would never give the girl the head of a donkey for waking her up.

Ia smiled at him and proceeded to throw herself on top of the sleeping mage without even trying to wake her the gentle way. At the sudden weight dropped heavily onto her, Mizki woke up screeching like a banshee in shock. When the woman saw just who had shattered her morning's sleep, she patted the smaller culprit's head as glared at him. "Yuma."

"Mizki," he replied. "Get ready. We need to get breakfast."

Yuma knew that she'd argue for the sole sake of arguing against him, but a loud growl from her stomach shut her up. "Fine."

Ia giggled.

The baker didn't recognize Ia from any of his former customers, but the man had been so taken with her shy smile that he had showered her with free pastries and sweet buns. "You could make out like a bandit in Silvana Market," Yuma told her as they walked away, thinking about the gullible merchants of Meredin's capital city. "Just flash them the baby blues, duck your head again behind Mizki and the merchants will never know what hit them while they clean their emptied stalls."

Ia stopped nibbling on her apple and walnut cobbler to duck shyly behind Mizki again. Then, apparently feeling sorry for her two impromptu guardians, she offered them the uneaten peach cobbler in her other hand.

Mizki burst out laughing and had to stop walking. "You are adorable," she told Ia after her laughing fit was over. "Thank you, sweetie," she added, taking the offered peach cobbler.

"You already had breakfast," he told her.

The mage bit into the sweet pastry and made a face at him. "There's always room for dessert,"

"You are aware that this is breakfast, yes?"

"I'm a mage, Yuma, I need all the energy I can get. The quickest way to get energy is-"

"Sugar. I know. I also know that you'll crash if you eat too much."

Ia finished off her cobbler and licked her fingers before patting Yuma on his back. He couldn't tell whether her intentions were good or childishly mischievous. For all he knew she could have been wiping her saliva-covered fingers on his clothes.

Mizki burst out laughing again and Ia's smile grew wider.

The good humour lasted until they reached the Office of Auren. Ia looked nervous as she clutched at Mizki again. "It's okay," the mage comforted the girl. "We're just going to see if we can find your family."

Only if she didn't have family, they'd be pretty hard to find. He opened the door and let the two females pass first before entering the office himself.

Inside the office, Yuma could only describe everything as chaos. There were papers flying around – literally - everywhere, several clerks either scrawling hastily on anything and everything or running around like headless chickens near Mizki when she was bored. The crystal orb that served as communication was buzzing with new messages and contacts every five seconds.

Chaos in an Auren office. He never thought he'd see the day.

"What happened here?" he asked aloud.

The head clerk, who also happened to be the oldest man there straightened his robes and walked over to them, only getting hit in the face with flying paper three times on the way. "Hello, you two," he said, recognizing them from the demon slaying quest he had sent them on not too long ago "I see you picked up a stray."

The head clerk's eyes softened considerably when he saw Ia's shy smile. "What can I do for you?"

"We need to see if there were any children reported missing or taken," Mizki said briskly. Around people she didn't know very well – children being an exception – she was all business, professional down to the last strand of pink hair. "We found Ia here last night near a panther demon."

The clerk didn't seem to like the idea of a sweet child like Ia near a demon known for being a silent, deadly hunter. "Of course. I'll get right onto it," he promised, ignoring the disbelieving looks his subordinates were sending him for abandoning them to the chaos.

When the head clerk was behind in the files office, Mizki looked around. "Why not just contact the Auren Database?" she muttered. The Auren Database was hosted by the Kingdom of Meredin but was kept separate from the palace and the Royal Library. It was meant for getting information heroes needed on their quests quickly and efficiently. Everyone contributed and the Royal Librarians of Meredin, as well as members of Auren sorted them out for easy access. The Database was also funded by other countries in Terrestria to not place the entire burden onto Meredin and its people. That was where any missing children reports would be sent right after the offices received them.

One of the clerks paused in his wrestling with magic paper. "You didn't hear the news?" he asked, incredulous. "And here I thought, with you folks being from Meredin and all-"

"What news?" Yuma asked. The clerk shrank back a bit and he cursed inwardly as he remembered that most people found it frightening if he leaned towards them with fierce eyes. Or, at least that had been the explanation Mizki had given to him after he once wondered aloud why people cringed when he asked them a question.

The others had paused in their work as well. "The Meredin Royal Library and the Auren Database was attacked," the clerk that had cringed said slowly, eyeing Yuma warily. "Some kind of magic terrorism. All the Orderlies and the Royal Mages are trying to find out who did this, and they've closed off all magic connections temporarily to prevent further attacks. Every office in Terrestria has been informed and ordered to keep all records ready to be added if it opens again."

If, not when. The two of them exchanged glances and Yuma knew Mizki was thinking of her former sponsor, Duchess Sonika Astrain, one of the Royal Librarians. There was no way the green-haired woman wouldn't be involved with this right now, searching for the reason why this had happened. "When was this?"

"Yesterday. We got the reports around the twenty third hour last night."

That was before they had found Ia. Poor kid. Of all the times she could have been separated from whatever life she had before, she got lost when the best chance of finding her caretakers went down.

Ia licked her candy and blinked when the head clerk came back into the messy room to inform them that there hadn't been any missing or taken children reported in the last month in this area. "Until the magic link is re-established, there's no finding anything else," he said apologetically.

Yuma looked down at Ia. "We'll fill in a form and take her with us to Meredin," he decided. Mizki nodded without any look of surprise. "If there's any news about her, please contact her."

They left the messy office their given identification numbers and essence records. "Well, Ia, I'm afraid you'll have to stay with us just a bit longer," Mizki told her.

The young blonde didn't seem to mind that at all. She especially didn't mind it when the mage announced that they were to go shopping for all the things they'd need on their journey back.

Yuma didn't argue even with his hate for shopping. The fastest way back to the Center Kingdom was considerably dangerous, and even with two well-known heroes for safety it was still quite a rough path. Ia would need sturdy shoes and better clothes.

He did, however, put his foot down when Mizki eyed the pink lace gown in the display window. "No," he said.

"I didn't even-!"

"No."

Mizki's practical side won over and she gave up dressing Ia like a doll or a princess. She did, however, insist on buying some sort of a rock from a vendor selling mage supplies. "This is robbery," she muttered as she handed the man half their coins. "In Silvana Market it would be half the price."

The vendor shrugged as he counted the money. "Well, that's in Silvana, and this is just plain small Cloudsgrove. You're lucky we even have this stone."

The mage just nodded before they walked away. "Never thought I'd ever have to use one of these," she said, turning the small round stone with gray streaks over and over again in her hands. It's a retini stone," she said in response to his curious face. "It helps with remembering forgotten or lost memories."

"Isn't that what enhanced emeralds do?" Enhanced stones were gems that had been magically heightened. Each jewel had a certain meaning and therefore each had different properties. Emeralds, if memory served, were the gem of truth and helped to clarify the mind and memory.

"Yes, but those are expensive and the retini stone works slightly differently. It also has certain properties the emeralds don't."

"Such as?" he was still skeptical. He'd never even heard of a retini stone before.

"Such as the afterimage. Ia?" Mizki asked to the girl. They were now out of the market area and distanced from rest of the people. The closest person to them was a young girl selling flowers from her basket. "Would you mind holding this for me?"

Their temporary ward took the stone. "That's good, thank you," Mizki said, keeping a finger in contact with the stone. "Now, I want you to keep listening to what I say. Can you do that?"

The girl nodded. Yuma thought she was insulting the girl's intelligence. Ia was mute, not stupid.

But then again, it had been a long time since he'd been ten years old and he wasn't good with kids.

"I want you to think of home. I know you don't know where that is, but I'm sure you remember certain parts of home. Where do you sleep? What places do you like to go to? Are there flowers? Animals? Buildings?"

The retini stone pulsed with light once. Mizki flinched.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

She shook it off and blinked. "Nothing. Just . . . drained me a bit, that's all. I hadn't been expecting that much of a backlash."

"Backlash?"

"Unlike emeralds retini stones can't supply their own power. A mage needs to give it power while it forms and holds that image," Mizki took the stone from Ia and thanked her before showing him the rock. "Normally it doesn't take a lot of energy, but in this case it took a lot, and," her breath caught as she looked down at the stone. "I can see why."

He could, too. The 'afterimage', as Mizki had called it, was an extremely detailed image of a magnificent building with arches and graceful pillars. It could have easily been mistaken for a palace, if he hadn't recognized it. "That's the Auren Database," he said.

The Auren Database Headquarters. That was in Silvana City, not far away from the palace.

"This is your home?" Mizki asked Ia. She nodded.

His mage partner looked at him with uncertainty and he had a good guess of what she was thinking; what was Ia doing all the way here in Amerys if she was from Meredin?