The grey walls seemed to blend together as Karla floated past them. Her entire body was frozen. No matter how hard she struggled, the bindings of magic that the old human had put on her remained rigid and unmoving.

Everywhere except for her mouth. For whatever reason, the human seemed to be interested in speaking to her. He was fluent in the monster language somehow; this was the first time that Karla had heard a human speak it.

Whatever he wanted, Karla staunchly refused to give it to him. For the past two minutes that she’d been held captive, the only things to come out of her mouth were ear-wrenching screeches and curse words that would have made a rock blush. The Kanmi had really dug down into her creativity for some of them, and she was quite impressed by herself.

The human was not. With a small frown, he said, “You know, there’s nobody coming to your rescue. The circle that you’re trapped in has you muted to everybody except for me.”

“Why don’t you shove the circle up your--” All of a sudden, Karla’s tongue was frozen as well, and the words got stuck in her mouth.

With a meaningful stare, the human said, “I can control you to my whim. There’s nothing stopping me from stopping your lungs from breathing at any given moment except for my mercy.” He stopped walking, and the circle stopped in tandem. “Now, I’m going to unfreeze that mouth of yours in the expectation of something civilized coming out of it. Understood?” He paused for a second to emphasize the point, then snapped his fingers.

Karla felt a small portion of her body come back under her control. She felt the overwhelming urge to spit at the man, but the rational part of her brain stopped her. However much of a… human he was, the old man was right. She was held at his mercy, and there was nothing that she could do about it.

Taking a couple of measured breaths, she asked, “Who are you?” It came out more demanding than inquisitive, but apparently the human was fine enough with it. He turned around and continued down the street once more.

With a sigh, he began to speak. “Who am I, you ask? That’s a difficult question to answer. The easier question would be, who was I?” He gestured dramatically. “I used to be somebody of importance. The greatest enchanter to grace these sad, dirty streets.

“And yet, all of that was stolen from me. All my hard work, decades of knowledge accumulated all thrown to waste as soon as the damn Empire showed up.” His voice crackled with fury. “As soon as they came, everything went downhill. People lost their jobs, anybody with a job even remotely close to magic was either thrown into jail or executed for heresy. It was a travesty!”

He laughed a maniacal cackle. “But they shall know the bite of Intigo soon. The soft Northerners will know not to underestimate the city of magic!”

If Karla had the ability, she would have rolled her eyes. If all the man wanted to do was complain, then he could have just found another human. “Why did you bother capturing me, then? Unless you’ve switched professions to become a hunter?”

The man’s face grew slightly grim. “Ah. Well, to be perfectly honest, it was by accident. I’ve placed traps throughout the city to capture pigeons and seagulls.” He coughed. “As it just so happens, getting food is substantially more difficult when you’re to be killed on sight.”

A spike of fear stabbed Karla. “No. Oh, no. You’re not going to eat me.” She struggled even harder, trying to break the invisible bonds, but they held tight.

The man laughed. “Worry not, little Kanmi. That would be a great waste of a legendary bird. No, I have much better plans in place for one such as you.” The way that it was said did not calm her down.

Her imagination had little time to wander, however. The enchanter stopped right in front of a small grate in the ground. If Karla had had the ability to cover her nose-holes, she would have done so immediately. The smell was rank and repulsive, as though a dozen animals had pissed on another, deader animal.

To her surprise, the old man crouched down and opened the grate up, placing it aside. He climbed in with a groan.

Karla looked on with disgust. “This is where you live now?”

The old man glared at her but said nothing. He dropped down, landing with a sickening sploosh. Karla struggled even harder, once again to no avail. The circle floated her down further into the rancid smell. She felt her stomach turn over.

The grate led down to a small tunnel, no wider than three of Karla’s wingspans. In the middle was a stream of waste, where the old human waded knee-deep. He quickly jumped out to one of the walkways on either side, each just wide enough to fit one human. For the first time, Karla gave the human a genuine look of pity. He was just an old, crazy, sewer-dwelling human that had everything stripped away from him.

The old man let out a small chuckle, and once again snapped his fingers. The sewer grate above them clicked back into place, sending the sewer into pitch-blackness. Even Karla’s superior eyes couldn’t make out the walls or floor in the tunnel.

Before panic could set in, however, the human snapped his fingers once more, creating a small blaze right above his fingers. It illuminated the surroundings, although Karla wasn’t sure that she wanted to see them. “A lovely place, isn’t it? Don’t worry, I’m sure that you won’t be here long.”

The casual tone and nonchalance of the statement threw Karla off just a little bit. It wasn’t clear what the human wanted, but whatever it was clearly wasn’t beneficial to the Kanmi.

The old man lightly shook his wet robes and started walking down the tunnel, monologuing as he moved. “Is it the most comfortable living space? No, I wouldn’t say that. But it is hidden, and the Empire hasn’t even thought of looking here yet.” The man put on a smug smile. “And anything that makes life a little inconvenient for the Empire is good for me, even if it is just a bad smell.”

Karla didn’t bother responding, instead focusing on keeping her mouth shut and keeping her lunch in her stomach. The journey continued in relative silence, except for the echoing of the human’s footsteps through the tunnel and the gentle snap of his magical flame. A sense of foreboding grew in Karla’s body as she thought about what they were going to do to her.

In an attempt to forget the future, she blurted out, “How do you know the monster’s language?” It was a question that she’d almost forgot in all the excitement of being captured and most probably about to be killed.

The human looked back, almost surprised. He let out a good-natured laugh, and said, “Finally, a good question! It was a long time ago, but I was actually apprenticed to a witch. It’s a rare thing, to see a witch outside of the Grove. The one that I met was completely by accident. She was young and foolish, and the best damn enchanter that I’d ever seen.” His eyes grew wistful. “But that was before the war between the Grove and the humans. I doubt that I’ll ever see another in my lifetime.”

Karla froze, or the parts of her that she was in control of anyways. Her mind whirled back to stories of the past that she'd been told by her parents. “Wait, did you just say that this was before the war between the Grove and the humans? How old are you?”

“Ah, but you should know the old saying. Never ask a wizard his age!” The laugh that he gave was once again on the side of unhinged.

Karla opened her mouth, prepared to ask a hundred followup questions, but she was cut short once again. “Ah, but we have reached our destination!” The wizard gestured down the tunnel towards two other flames that floated in the air. Beneath them were two other wizards, apparently in deep conversation.

“Really? You really think that that’s going to work? You might as well set your robes on fire before trying to invent a cleaning spell.” The first human, a woman, berated the other. She held her nostrils closed and gave the man a large berth.

“Well, excuse me for being innovative! And might I remind you that this current situation is entirely your fault? Well, yours and that senile Master of ours.” He grumbled. His robes were even wetter than the old human that had captured Karla.

Her captor, moving graceful as an eagle, was next to the complaining man quick as a flash. With a dangerous smile, he said, “I may be senile, but I am certainly not stupid.” There was a small splash as the man was pushed into the stream of waste once more.

“Apologies that you had to see that moron. He gives me more trouble than he’s worth, if I’m being perfectly honest.” The old wizard brushed his hands on his cloak, as though he’d just rubbed his hands on garbage.

“Master. It’s good to see you once more.” The female wizard bowed gracefully.

“Ah yes, nice to see you too Amaya.” The old human greeted her with a nod. “I trust that things have been quiet?”

“Mostly, except for that.” She pointed towards the gurgling wizard in the stream, currently trying to doggy-paddle his way towards the walkways.

The old man gave a small chuckle. “Well, he’ll be free to do whatever he wants for the foreseeable future, anyway.” He turned towards the door that they were standing in front of. “And now, young Kanmi, I bring to you the piece-de-resistance.”

He took a small key out of his robes with a flourish. It glowed a virulent apple-green, wisps of magical smoke coming off the end. The old man waved it in the air with pride. “Now this door, it’s the second greatest thing that I’ve ever created. Unbreakable, unopenable, and practically airtight to boot. Without this key, there’s absolutely no way of making it inside.” With a wide smile, he pushed the key into a small slot near the middle.

Once he turned it, the door made several noises that doors usually make, but never at the same time. It creaked, groaned, and, surprisingly, slammed. Karla didn’t know what mechanism was inside the door, but it seemed to be overly complicated and magical in nature. After several seconds of noises, there was a soft click, and the door creaked open.

“The door is truly beautiful, but it can never compare to my life’s work.” A tear seemed to come to the old man’s eye as he walked into the room that had just opened. “Now, this. This is art.”

As the room came into Karla’s sight, she couldn’t help but gasp. The object in the middle was by far the shiniest thing that she’d ever seen. It glowed like the other magical artifacts, but this one glowed so bright that it seemed to shower sparks of light across the room. As soon as it reflected off of Karla’s retinas, she knew that she wanted it. No, she needed it.

She struggled harder than she’d ever done before. “What is it? Give it to me!” She strained against the magic, pushing against the constraints with all the force that she could muster.

This time, she managed to move her wing just a centimeter. It was so sudden that it surprised her, but she managed to nudge the very tip of her wing, a single feather to reach outside of the circle. Apparently the old man was shocked as well, his mouth agape.

Karla let out a war screech and pushed even harder. It was one thing to be held captive, but to hold her captive with a shiny thing in front of her? That had to be a war crime.

“I’ll get that if its the last thing that I do!” She screamed as she struggled. But after a minute of intense invisible grappling, she found herself nowhere different, except on the brink of exhaustion.

The old man had recovered by then. He let out a sick laugh, one that she could only describe as demented. Karla, breathing hard and trying to catch her breath, yelled, “What’s so funny?”

After a long hoot, the man replied, “Oh, don’t worry, young Kanmi, you’ll have the Orb. In fact, you’ll get to know it intimately.” With a flick of his fingers, the circle under Karla threw her into the artifact.

Karla was pleasantly surprised by this turn of events. Perhaps being a prisoner wasn’t all that bad if her cell was shiny and beautiful?

Her mind changed as soon as she entered the Orb. For a second, she simply thought that it was her mind, but after a couple more she was sure of it. Whatever it was, the artifact was draining her energy.

It wasn’t an awful exhaustion, like the end of a long flight, but more like a relaxed exhaustion, like being tucked into a nice, warm nest at the end of the day. Karla immediately felt like taking a quick sleep, but once she realized that it was the Orb that was doing it, she did her best to keep herself awake. “What is it?” Even her voice seemed to be more drowsy, slurring her words together.

“What is it, you ask?” The wizard was grinning a thoroughly despicable smile. “Why, it’s nothing less than the future. And you should be grateful that you lived to be part of it.”

He walked closer to the Orb, gesturing to it with both hands. “This is the largest container for magic to exist. Every day, for the past two months, I’ve been putting all of my magic, as well as the magic of my more useless apprentices into it. And now it’s almost full to the brim.”

Karla felt an immediate sense of danger from the words that he uttered. She wasn’t entirely sure how magic was going to be used, but she was positive that he wasn’t going to use it to help people.

“And this, of course, is where you come in.” He looked at her with crinkled, insane eyes. Karla realized that he’d left the realm of logical reason long ago, probably before the Empire even invaded. “Creatures from the Grove are always imbued with more magic than the rest of us. The Tree of Life gives more than it takes to all in its realm, even those who refuse it. I suspect that you’ve got another day in you, at least, before you die.” The wizard let out a dramatic sigh. “It will be a truly tragic loss, but I imagine that the Orb will be full by the time that you leave this world.”

Karla snarled at him, struggling to keep her eyes open. “You won’t… I’ll get away.” Already, words were swirling around her head, but they refused to connect themselves. Her head seemed to feel light, and her eyelids drooped by themselves. Gravity felt ten times heavier than it usually did, and despite her best efforts, her body fell to the bottom of the Orb.

The wizard looked at her, and in her last moments of consciousness, she thought he was sincere. “Know that with the end of your life, you helped stop evil.” Then, blackness.

As Karla fell into the deepest sleep of her life, the wizard gave a giddy smile. With this final piece, his plan was coming together. Two months ahead of schedule, to boot! He walked to the door with a skip in his step, but composed himself before he exited. After all, he couldn’t have his apprentices see him vulnerable.

Unbeknownst to both the bird and the human, there was a third entity in the room. Lurking in the shadows of the ceiling, unharmed and transfixed by the light that the centerpiece emitted, Darkness had witnessed the entire scene.

And it was feeling terribly confused.