Young Writers Society

Two days after Ashwythe had summoned him, Fyn squinted up at the gates of the Temple of Peace, cursing the bright sunlight for glaring off the white walls and giving him a headache. Fyn had never been so tired in his life. Zhiron had been waiting for him when he left Archpriestess Ashwythe’s chamber. They had left that very hour, and Zhiron had forced such a fast pace through the network of tunnels underneath Selachen that they had arrived in Promise a day faster than normal. Now all Fyn wanted to do was to crawl back in one of those tunnels, curl up, and go to sleep.

“Come on,” Zhiron ordered as the gates swung open. “The angel should be arriving any minute.”

He swept up the steps of the courtyard, Fyn following close in his wake and trying not to stumble or swing his head too much. The temple grounds were nauseatingly beautiful, the courtyard paved with gold leaf and scattered with delicate topiaries and marble fountains that poured clear, crisp water, leaving hardly enough room between them for a drake to sneeze.

Zhiron stopped in the middle of the courtyard, so suddenly that Fyn bumped into him, then pressed himself quickly to the floor in apology.

“Get up,” Zhiron ordered. He bent his great head level with Fyn’s ear and whispered. “Before I leave you with the angel, a few things. Your primary mission is to bring back the Treatise. No more and no less until you receive orders otherwise. You must work with this angel, but if she gets between you and the Treatise… well, just make sure it looks like an accident. Understood?”

Fyn nodded eagerly. He wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of completing his mission.

Orders given, Zhiron urged Fyn forward. They approached the temple itself, which was no less hideous than the grounds, all white marble and stone columns and intricate reliefs Fyn only caught a glimpse of as he hurried up the front steps and into a large, open room.

It must have been the room where the Treatise was normally displayed – it was austere and bare except for an ornate golden pillar in the center with a small red cushion atop it. Of course, the Treatise wasn’t there. But an angel was.

She had her back to them, sitting cross-legged at the base of the pedestal. Fyn didn’t know much about angels, but her posture and stature made her seem young. Her hair was as golden-blonde as the pedestal, and it bounced down her back over a pair of large, pure white wings. She was hunched over something small on the ground in front of her, her fingers flitting back and forth through the air. A pale sort of light that clung to her wings flared as she whispered some incantation under her breath.

Fyn hissed. Who was this angel, and what sort of angel magic was she doing?

Zhiron appeared to want to know that too. “What exactly are you doing?” he snapped at the angel.

The angel started, letting out a high-pitched squeak and scrambling to her feet. Fyn was gratified to see a flash of fear cross her eyes as she took in their size and powerful teeth and claws.

She took a deep breath. “I was trying to scry on the Treatise,” she said insolently. “You broke my concentration, though.”

Now that she had turned around, Fyn’s guess was confirmed – this angel was no older than he was. Her dress was simple and girlish, her eyes wide and her cheeks flushed. Who was she? Some kind of maid, maybe a mage the angels had sent to help whoever it was they were sending out with him? Well, if that was the case, she’d have to stay behind. The agreement had said one angel, and Fyn certainly wasn’t working with two.

He waited for Zhiron to snarl at her for her insolence, but to his surprise Zhiron only said, albeit unconvincingly, “My apologies. I am Zhiron, the right hand of Archpriestess Ashwythe. I have brought young Fyn, our chosen to aid the search for the Treatise.”

He prodded Fyn forward with his tail, warning him to keep his mouth shut with a glance. The angel’s eyes widened in surprise, glancing from Zhiron to Fyn. Fyn felt a surge of anger. She had clearly assumed Zhiron was the chosen, dismissing Fyn entirely.

But then the angel held out her hand. “Um, it’s good to meet you. I’m Cassia, daughter of Micah and Grand Mage of Mithrinden. What’s your name?”

Fyn couldn’t help it. He let out an incredulous snort. Grand Mage? She was only a child! Was this the best the angels could come up with? He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised.

Within seconds, one of Zhiron’s back claws had sunk deep into Fyn’s foot, and Zhiron gave Fyn a poisonous glance. “You will respect our ally and the angels’ chosen while in this temple, youngling,” he hissed.

Fyn cringed away from Zhiron reflexively, but no further blows came.

“Sorry,” he said shortly to the angel, Cassia. “I’m Fyn,” he added, though he was liking this arrogant angel less and less by the second. She clearly didn’t know anything about proper respect, even if she was a “grand mage.” She was the angel he’d have to work with? If she expected him to kowtow to her on this mission, she’d be getting a few claw marks down that pretty face of hers to persuade her otherwise.

“It’s fine. I know I’m young,” Cassia said with half a laugh. “Fyn. I like that name,” she added.

Fyn blinked, at a loss for what to say to that. Was she making fun of him? He couldn’t tell, but the thought made him angry. “It’s just a name,” he snapped.

She flinched, then steeled herself. “Okay, Just-A-Name.” She turned to Zhiron and said coolly, “Now that he’s here, I suppose we can start? We’ll need to know everything there is to know about the human who took the Treatise, and I’m going to need time to do a few more spells here. And what about transportation? Will we have access to the teleportation networks?”

“The file on the human is here,” Zhiron said, and he unhitched the satchel at his side and tossed it at the angel; she caught the heavy leather with a flair of her wings for balance. When she spread her wings, the light shimmered distractingly off of them and Fyn screwed up his eyes again as his head stabbed with pain.

“As for transportation,” Zhiron said, baring his teeth in his approximation of a smile, “as you should know, seeing as how your Minister fought so hard for it, this mission is bound by the strictest of secrecy. Any… favors from the government of Promise could so easily trickle up to other Archpriest ears…so in the interest of secrecy, no. You have no papers and no authorization. You’ll have to travel underground. After all,” – he cast a glance at Fyn – “I wouldn’t want my young protege here to get bored.”

Fyn was so busy swelling with pride that Zhiron had called him his protege that he hardly noticed that the black drake was now excusing himself. That is, until he struck Fyn with his tail for not making the proper posture of respect as he left. Fyn hurriedly crouched with his paws over his nose. Zhiron padded toward the entrance, his enormous claws clacking on the marble floor. Then with aflick of his tail, he was gone.

Fyn was now entirely alone with the angel. They surveyed each other warily for a long moment. Then Cassia cocked her head to one side.

“Does he hit you often?” she asked.

“What?” Fyn said stupidly.

“He said you were his protege, but he was pretty mean to you. I didn’t like him much.”

“He’s High Priest Zhiron,” Fyn snapped. “Ashwythe’s right hand. Nobody even knows everything he’s done for the Order—”

“All right, forget I said anything,” said Cassia.

Silence fell again, this one stranger than the last. Fyn finally forced himself to break it. “Are we going to get started, or what?” He was itching to be on the hunt, filled with the thrill of danger and possibility.

“Just let me finish my scrying spell,” the angel said, and without waiting for him to agree, she plopped back on the ground next to what looked like a bowl of water and began whispering words under her breath.

Fyn shifted from one paw to the next, angry at himself for standing there stupidly while she did… whatever it was she did. He saw the satchel of papers across her shoulder and snatched it from her, not caring that he broke the leather strap and jostled her out of her spell in the process. She looked from the satchel to him and back. “You could have just asked!”

Fyn ignored her, though he felt a surge of guilt. He pawed the papers out of the satchel and spread them across the floor. They were small, designed for human form, but Fyn wasn’t about to change to human form in front of this angel.

He skimmed through the file. Middle-aged human female, name Iona Pendrin, hair in silver braids down her back, a wide nose suggestive of Aisen descent. She was a mage specializing in transportation and transmutation magics, and had been transferred to Promise five years ago. Before that, she had lived and worked in Ashbourne, a small Selachen mining town, and before that, Mt. Onyx itself.

One of ours, then. No wonder Ashwythe had emphasized the importance of secrecy. Well, this was just another hunt, if a little further afield. He’d learned from his mistakes last time; this was something he could do. Ashwythe believed in him

He scanned a little further, looking for a key detail – her family. Husband, two daughters (one dead) and a son, all still living in Ashbourne.

“Perfect,” he said to himself. She would run to them. Humans always did. They were all so attached to their families. Or, at the very least, she would have found a way to get them out of Ashbourne, and be planning to reunite with them at some third location. If they got to Ashbourne quickly enough, they could intercept her or pick up her family’s trail.

“I know where we need to go—” he started to say, right as Cassia jumped up from the floor.

“I know where we need to go!” she grinned. “The Haverin Forest.”

“…What? How did you come up with that?”

“My scrying spell,” she said proudly. “I actually wasn’t expecting it to work this well, it’s much more reliable at night, but thank Mithrinde the moon is still in the sky—”

“So you’re telling me you did a spell and now you know where the Treatise is,” Fyn said flatly. She had to be lying. Sure, maybe she was some sort of Grand Mage, but if the angels could just locate the Treatise like that, they wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble to arrange a partnership to find it.

“Not quite.” Cassia retrieved from the floor what turned out to be a shallow bowl full of clear, glowing water. Fyn thought he saw some kind of image flickering across the surface, but picking the bowl up had disturbed the water, and he could only see flashes of some kind of green.

“I scry into this bowl, and it shows me what I want to look at,” Cassia explained, “but it doesn’t tell you much other than that. So I used it on the Treatise, and sure, I saw it, but not much of the surroundings. It’s moving right now, being carried in a wagon, and the leaves on the ground are thick enough that it’s definitely a forest, but the trail was wide and flat and the trees are deciduous, not like a mountain forest. Using a wagon suggests the thief has limited teleportation at best, probably a lack of components, so maybe mid-range from Promise. I should probably check again in an hour, just to be sure it’s not a small patch of woods, but all signs point to the Haverin Forest. That’s a start — it’s just one forest.”

‘Just one forest’ was a bit of a stretch. The Haverin Forest ran the entire length of Raynen and covered half of Larisen as well. It was by far the largest forest in the Basin, and the only one remotely close to Promise. In truth, Fyn wouldn’t put it past the humans to have some sort of hideout somewhere in there, but how were they ever supposed to find it?

“No way,” Fyn said. We are not searching an entire forest.”

“Well, then what do you suggest, big-brain?” Cassia said, managing to make the size of his brain, which was definitely larger than hers, sound like an insult somehow.

“The normal way to go after an escaped human, of course,” Fyn said, tapping the file with his claw. “Find her family. One way or another, they’ll lead us right to her.”

Cassia faltered. “She has a family?”

“Yeah, in Ashbourne. It’s all in the file. Come on, we’re wasting time, it’ll take at least two days to get there.”

“But—”

“Look, how many times have you hunted down a human?”

“Never, and stop saying it like that!”

“Why?” Fyn asked, nonplussed. He was starting to get the measure of Cassia now — sure, maybe she had a fancy title and a few magic tricks up her sleeve, but she was way out of her depth. “Look, I’ve done this before. Just follow my lead. They always either run to their family, or try to get them out separately. So we find them, we find her, we find the Treatise.”

Of course, “done this before” was a stretch. Though he’s had training, that disastrous mission with Kez and Vak was really the only experience he had to speak of. It wasn’t like humans went missing every day. Hatchlings and young Initiates spent most of their time waiting on older drakes and cultivating fungi in underground caverns. Once they were Initiates, they began to specialize in various trades.

“But that’s not— there’s million things she could be—” Cassia started.

Fyn let a growl build in his throat, tapping one claw against the floor. He had a plan. He wasn’t going to let this angel overrule him like Kez always did. He held her gaze steadily, meeting her piercing blue eyes, and trying to ignore the question of what he would do if she didn’t agree.

She looked away first, shoulders drooping with a sigh, and Fyn felt a wave of relief wash over him. He had won the first battle. Hopefully this meant he would win the rest of them, too. Ashwythe had entrusted him with this mission, which meant it was up to him to track Iona down and find the Treatise, not some angel.

Still, he would have to keep an eye on Cassia. Angels were crafty. Her whole air of innocence could be an act. Who knew what her Archpriest had told her to do once they found the Treatise?

Without saying another word to the angel, Fyn turned and led the way out of the empty Temple of Peace.