Verna was hurrying through the wild on the northern side of the island. Pursuit was on her heels. She flickered between the Wollamba plants like a shadow in the pale false dawn light, teleporting short distances at a time, changing her location as fast as she could spot a good place to place her feet, it was this type of movement that had kept her in one piece as spells flew fast as thought after her. Her own armor was torn at the shoulder and her right arm dangling, all from the blow of a sword she misjudged. She had lost her sword at that point as well. She wasn’t even sure where she was heading. Blood was obscuring her vision from a bloody gash on her forehead. Considering the situation, she was thankful it was just a bloody gash.

She had been searching for the hidden expert on the island ever since Alayah’s warning. She knew the Ocean King wouldn’t have mentioned it if it wasn’t dire. She even performed a communal and received warnings from Ssaras of a deadly danger drawing near. 

Verna wished she had taken Ssaras’s warning more literal. While searching for the hidden expert she had grown a little careless. She thought she had found sign of someone in a remote northern section of the island. And rather than stalk closer, teleported right into a clearing in their line of sight. The trails had been old, so she didn’t expect that she’d stumble upon some of the group by accident. Two Kindred, both of whom she knew, Carish and Johna which made the identity of the expert clear in her mind. She always rather liked Carish and even had taken his proposal for marriage seriously after her husband was killed. He was a good and honest man, that said, he was on the wrong side today. She could tell a tragedy was about to unfold and wished bitterly in her heart she had taken Ssara’s warnings more seriously.

She wasn’t a poor fighter by any means, against most kindred she was a step above. However, this pair was on another level. She would have been hard pressed to defeat either alone, both together? It would probably be almost impossible to escape let alone kill them. When presented with an unwinnable situation she always had one instinct, attack. So she lept and struck at nearest, Carish. She had recovered from her shock faster on seeing them; and unlike them, she had no doubt they were her foe, their uncertainty turned out to be a fatal. Her first blow struck true and killed Carish, nearly separating his head from his shoulders. She hoped she killed him. Thus far he hadn’t joined the pursuit. The problem was their leader did. 

If she thought she might be able to escape Johna alone she definitely couldn’t escape him. Frankly it was taking all her skill not to be killed by him. Nothing worked to shake him either. Of course it wouldn’t. He was a sorcerer. Sorcerer’s were fundamentally different from grand wizard level magicians like herself. Magic didn’t work on sorcerers. Not magic from a grand wizard or lower. Furthermore, the magic of a grand wizard or lower couldn’t stop or affect the magic of a sorcerer either. She had her suspicions about who it might have been when she realized scrying was dead, and nothing she cast could make it work again. She wished she had been wrong. This one had as much compassion of an enraged Rock Devil. Which is to say, none. 

Several more jumps took her out of the Wollamba grove and into a field of orange flowers called Elis’s Dawn. Not that she ever would call it by that name. She was after all a priestess of Ssaras, the patron goddess of Dragons. 

She had taken Sa’manatha out this way to find appropriate flowers to take the grey sickness out of her hair that the curse had put in it. No girl her age should ever sport grey hair. Yet the curse seemed to drain all the color out of humanity. Especially the ones born with the moon tattoo. It wasn’t uncommon for those children to be still born, those who do survive birth, often being sickly and weak their whole life. Some like that monstrous girl Kay’rin even sporting grey hair from childbirth. The curse always twisted her stomach, but what humans then did to themselves because of it made it far worse. Most humans scratched and clawed at survival like animals. Squeezing out just enough of an existence to reproduce and die. Little more. 

Hurrying across the field of flowers, with jumps fasters then the eye could track, she flickered across the field, making her way around the lip of the northern volcano, she knew she was getting close to the teleportation array, and hoped some eyes somewhere were watching this location. No matter how she fled she couldn’t get around the pursuers and back to the keep where her defensive arrays, Jace and perhaps with luck that monster Kay’rin, would have turned the battle or at least forced a stalemate, not that they two could actually stop him but at least he might not be willing to kill Kay’rin. She suspected that child to be blessed by fate, Elis always liked disciples blessed by fate, and rarely would confront Fate in such a way as to take one of his chosen children.

 She was just about to leap past the teleportation array when an explosion tore up the ground in front of her, timed perfectly with her brief materialization a sealing spell was contained in the explosion cutting off her teleportation and combined with the explosion, flinging her off the bluff. Her heart was in her throat as she realized this might be the last few moments of her life as she fell rapidly within a shower of debris toward the dark waters and jagged cliff face below.