Cateline was hooked on the idea of fire. She had but a mere taste of it touching her skin, and yet she craved more. She wanted to harness the idea, the power, and the element as if it were second nature. She had spent just seconds enveloped by the embers, consuming her focus and coiled her idea of magic into something entirely new. Something chaotic.

The Princess sat at her bedside, studying the tips of her fingers with care. The tips tickled as her curiosity grew, the desire to explore growing evermore. Standing to her feet, she walked to the open window and peered her head out, strands of her long hair blowing as the wind picked up. It had been hours since her lesson with the Mistress, but it felt like a century for the Princess, each hair standing on her arms as she yearned to know more.

During these lonesome hours, she wondered what would have happened in Axulran if her magic had not resurrected at the Courtship Ball. She had never been the type of witch who could call to her power, nor did she know the language of magic by heart. Each spell she spoke was unknown to her, dripping off her tongue like venom from a snake bite. The syllables foreign and dangerous, but so natural as the phrases sucked her magic from her core, only to explode in ice.

Axulran. She reached up and touched a pendant her mother gave her soon after discovering her powers. Cateline’s mother claimed she would always be protected if she wore this, that it warded off the demons inside her closet. Cateline wondered if the demons lived inside her heart, though, waiting to implode and awaken a disaster across this land before she had time to master this inner madness.

In the distance was that flickering light again, the same she saw while eavesdropping on Aiora. Atop a mountain, peaking just above the clouds, was an illumination so bright it shined through the fog. It was livelier than the moon, transitioning into shades of blue as the source erupted into the sky. Cateline gasped, taking a step away from her window before turning on her heel to run down the stairs. When she exited Lighthelm’s doors, the chilled air touched her skin. The cold delighted Cateline, reminding her of home where it was in a seemingly indefinite status of ice.

Unsure where her feet were taking her, Cateline pushed towards town. She dared not to question why none of the residents even peaked their head out, but part of her wondered why the town grew dead in the wake of night. She yearned to see the hustling and bustling during the day, but Mistress had her pulled away into the library in attempt to learn of her restrictive magic.

She soon passed the houses scattered throughout, coming up to the shoreline. Her feet dragged against the sand, particles falling into the bed of her shoes and pricked at her skin. The water washed onto the shore, breathing with each push and pull as she stepped towards it. Cateline’s mind felt numb, she was aware where she was and what she was doing but gave little regard as to why.

The water washed over her, soaking the leather of her shoes and adding weight to the thick fabric of her dress. She took a few steps further into the shore, a positively loud voice ringing in the back of her head. With each stride forward, the voice grew clearer. They were a puppeteer, dragging her until her torso was submerged in the icy water and moved her lips to follow a sequence of words that she had never heard before.

“Aqua, Ventus, Nocte erunt consumat iterum.”

Each utterance breathed out caused the water to shift around her body and encircled her in a whirlpool. At the center lacked a current, allowing her to stand still as her feet sunk further into the gooey sand. She repeated it a hundred times over, the water rising and casing around her.

Through the wall of liquid was an image. Cateline was present enough to take note of the scene, watching as her father sat at a tabletop amongst other noblemen and conversed with each other. She wondered if this was a mere fragment of her imagination, or simply a look into the happenings of Axulran during her days away. Reaching her hand up, her fingers traced the wavering wall and pushed through, her mouth opening in awe when she felt a dry environment on the other side. Initially, she ripped her hand away and the watery shelter almost gave way, but something within her told her to hold onto this unknown energy. Something told her to push ahead and discover.

As Cateline lifted her foot and stepped through the barrier, her heel made contact with the wooden floorboard. With the next move, she was completely dry and was standing behind the group of men. Tiptoeing towards, she peered down at her father and smiled as he continued to talk. She was but a fly on the wall, never to be exposed as she kneeled at the table.

Her father, the almighty King Airen of Axulran, sat slumped with his matted beard and baggy eyes. He was a distressed version of the cold and brooding man she grew up to know him as. He doubted her once he knew of her power, he saw her as anything but able to continue his political regime. That would be for her brothers, the dimwits who could hardly count to ten. Cateline saw her mother with grace, most likely due to her mother’s relatively accepting nature when Cateline’s powers surfaced. When Airen found out, he took the daughter’s magic by the throat and suffocated it until it existed no more. At least, until she turned sixteen. That was when her powers began to grow again, only reemerging when Cateline felt endangered.

Cateline blamed her father. She wondered what her capabilities would be if he hadn’t forced those physicians to run their tests and deem her as a child of evil. Axulran saw magic as an element of bad, her father only endorsing that mindset. With a man that hated magic so much, she wondered how his flesh and blood channeled the sorcery within.

“Your Royal Highness, we mustn’t sit idle and allow our land to be swept away,” an aristocrat, Niklaus, said firmly, his lips curved downwards, and his brow furrowed.

“My land is mine; I will not let any man take it from me. Niklaus, you need to trust in your King,” Airen said.

Another man, Charles, huffed; he doubted his King. “You let the biggest threat to our land take your daughter!”

Cateline furrowed her brow. She stood and walked to Charles, leaning down to eye his features. A bead of sweat dripped down his temple, seeping into the corner of his mouth before he opened to speak again. Her father slammed a fist onto the table, the silverware shaking with impact.

“I say, Charles, do you doubt your King?”

His mouth clamped shut, and the aristocrat shook his head curtly. The King stood and began to pace the room. He continued.

“My daughter is in the hands of Traburg because she is too powerful for her own good. She shall serve to good use upon her arrival, gentlemen, we will have insight on the happenings of Traburg yet again.”

“And if she serves no good?” Niklaus inquired.

Airen looked back towards the group, each of their eyes following him as he stopped in his tracks. His large hands gripped onto a wooden chair, flexing his fingers as his teeth gritted against each other. “My daughter is the fruit of my loin, gentlemen, but if she serves no purpose, she is better off dead.”

Cateline stared at her father in disbelief, standing upright and clenched her hands into fists. Her body quivered at the thought, her own father threatening her life as if she was anything but useful to his motives—whatever they may be. Taking careful steps, as if she could be discovered in her mystical eavesdropping, Cateline wondered if this was all some strange dream. Surely, her own flesh and blood would not threaten such an act? The Princess doubted what she was seeing. His lips curled upwards in response to the fellow aristocrats’ stares, a bellowing laugh escaping his throat before shrugging his shoulders.

“Men, we have built a kingdom that should be feared, we are Axulran! Witches and other creatures alike shall quiver at our feet, I just need you to stand by my side.”

Cateline let out a scoff, and just as she was about to grab hold of the table to steady herself from a bad step, her hand slipped through and the world pushed into her like a wave.

She gasped, the water entering her lungs as she kicked her feet in attempt to pull herself back to the surface. The whirlpool that had surrounded was twisting her about, eventually spitting her further into the water until she was to the point where her feet did not touch the sand below. The midnight sky above blurred as she opened her eyes, the salt of the ocean stinging and muddling her vision as she struggled to regain her composure. Pushing against the current, Cateline felt herself being dragged by the skirt of her gown as the waves pulled against her. Each time her head came above the water, she let out a gasp to try and appease her suffocation, the thought of air becoming a luxury to the mage.

Cateline was relieved as soon as her fingertips grazed the mush beneath the water, eventually getting to a level where she could crawl the rest of the way to shore. Coughing, salty liquid spewed out of her mouth as her lungs cried out in defeat. She fell onto her back and her chest heaved with each breath. Slowly, the world stopped spinning and the stars above returned to their position in the sky. Each twinkling light faded in and out of her focus before she closed her eyes, recounting everything that just happened to her.

She felt like part of her was in control during that eavesdropping daydream, that she was the one who called upon that portal, but even the naïve Princess knew that type of power was not instinctual. Aiora can tell her to feel the fire that coursed through her veins but creating a portal that provided insight into the happenings of a kingdom far away was not instinctual. That was magic. The type of magic she had no idea how to do.

Opening her eyes, she turned her focus to the mountainous regions and waited to see that illumination that called to her so. The same illumination that encouraged her to leave the confines of her bedroom to explore, to know.

It was black. No flickering glimmer, no blaze that rocketed throughout the sky. She weakly sighed and sat up, rubbing a sore spot on her leg and wondered if venturing out by herself was just a mistake. One hallucinogenic, messy mistake.