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Not too much to say today actually, so here are the chapters!

Chapter 9 Kera
Kera woke late in the afternoon the next day to the musty smell of smoke. It wasn’t much of a smell, but it was enough to wake her up. She sat up worried, but once she spent more time identifying the smell, it didn’t smell so much like a forest fire as it smelt like chimney smoke. Kera hoped that it was chimney smoke, which would mean that there were people close by, and she might be able to get some food from them. But, just in case, and also because she hadn’t eaten last night making her ravenous, she decided to eat before she left. So, after sadly finishing the very last of her food Kera got up to leave, checking for the third time that she still had her stone with her around her neck, despite the fact that she could always feel it’s warmth. Kera set off using both her eyes and her nose to help guide her towards the smoke. It might not have been the best plan, especially if the owner’s of the fire turned out to be inhospitable people, but she decided it was worth the risk. A bad plan was still much better than no plan.
It took almost an hour before Kera finally saw the source of all the smoke. The forest really seemed to thicken as she got closer to the edges of it. She felt her heart quicken, she had been in this forest for days, she wasn’t really sure what to expect outside of it. Here she finally had her chance to get out of the forest and see other people, and now she was starting to feel like she didn’t want to. But, in the end, her stone kept her on the right track, pulling lightly at the chain, encouraging her to get out of the forest.
As she got closer to the source of the smoke she discovered that it wasn’t just a normal home, and she saw immediately that her chances of getting food from here were slim. The source of the smoke was definitely from a chimney, as she could see it spewing out in an immense gray cloud. But, it wasn’t a house that the smoke was spewing from, a more accurate description of the place was a castle, it had high towers, a large moat on the front side of it, and magical circles etched subtly near the bushes a yard in front of her.
Cautiously, Kera inched closer to the circles, she had to make sure that she was going to get herself incinerated by passing through the circles, and also that she wasn’t going to set off any alarms. It was basically a requirement to living in Painten that you had to know how to read magic circles, all of the pranks she had done in her childhood required changing the enchantments in the circles, so she’d learned how to read them from Sharron. It was a useful skill even after she had grown too old to get away with childhood pranks, as it helped her to sneak into different towns as she explored looking for work.
The skill helped her now, because she was able to change all the circles she could see to ignore her and let her pass through safely. It was actually pretty hard to change the spells in these magic circles, because someone else had already changed them to do the same thing, and Kera was worried about messing up that other person’s work. From personal experience Kera knew how terrible it would be to think that your work in the magic circles was still there, walk past them and then when it’s too late learn that your labor had been changed. But, she managed to add herself into the circle and passed safely into the grounds of the castle like building.
She wondered if she would have to find some way to sneak past the castle, and she wondered how she was going to do it. The towers were quite tall, and she knew that if anyone so happened to look outside they would see her right away, and she wouldn’t have enough time to get away before she knew someone was after her. There had to be some spell that could help her, even just a little bit, so she pulled out the spell book and quickly began scanning manually through the book, having tired quickly of the searching spell. After only a few minutes Kera found a spell that she hoped to be helpful in hiding her. The spell said that it changed the caster invisible for at least fifteen minutes depending on the strength of the spell, and Kera knew that she could pull off a pretty strong spell, so it would work perfectly. She couldn’t see it taking her much longer than fifteen minutes to cut through the grounds to a nearby town, so this spell was just the thing.
Taking a deep breath she began softly reciting the spell making the correct hand movements as denoted in the book. This spell wasn’t difficult, the only problem was that it took a lot of magic energy at the beginning to cast it, and even more to sustain it every minute after the fifteen minutes that the spell was cast for, that added a big risk to the spell, but Kera knew she had to go for it. She seemed to have more magic energy then she ever had before lately, so she wasn’t too worried. While casting the spells she found herself wondering where all the extra energy could have come from, her parents had never been big magic users themselves, leading Kera to believe that they didn’t have much, and the last time she had seen her brothers, they hadn’t even had their powers yet, so Kera was unsure.
After Kera had finally finished she surveyed herself, (the spell was surprisingly long with tons of steps that had to be followed exactly with no shortcuts) making sure that every body part was properly concealed and that none of her clothes had been missed by the spell. Everything was good, so she tucked the spell book back into her bag and began running towards the back of the castle, she figured it would be much easier to get away unnoticed through the back, and there wasn’t the tricky part of the huge moat to deal with in the back.
When Kera was closer to the castle she heard loud whinnying. For a moment she was startled, until she remembered that it was probably just horses. It was natural for her to have been scared; she had only seen a horse once, no one in Painten was rich enough to own one because of the fact that they couldn’t be worked very hard in the high temperatures of the town. The one time a horse had ever come to Painten was when a traveler had come from quite far away to deliver a message to one of the townspeople, and even then the horse had needed to rest for several days just from traveling around in Painten. But, since the horse had needed to rest, Kera had managed to get hired to take care of it, and she’d enjoyed sweeping out the stall and brushing the horse while it had stayed.
This time though, there was a ton of horses, Kera could hear the din that they were all making on the other side of the wall. Either the person who owned this castle was really rich, (which Kera couldn’t deny in the first place owning to the fact that they even owned a castle while she struggled to get food) or they were having a party of sorts. What was the use of owning twenty or thirty horses? It would take heaps of time to exercise that many and feeding them would be a mess.
Even though Kera knew that she was on a tight timed schedule she couldn’t help her curiosity, a real party, held by rich folks! Kera wanted more than anything to peek inside and see what was happening, and since she had invisibility, she couldn’t see a huge reason why she shouldn’t the magic circle defenses hadn’t been that strong, so how strong could anything else guarding this castle be? Kera remembered the defenses that her mother had made for their home, and they weren’t very strong, the poorest people often had enchantments ten times stronger than those of the richer populace, it was quite humorous. The rich folks didn’t know a strong enchantment from a weak one, and so they paid high prices for something that common children learned from their parents at a very early age.
As Kera was wandering around looking for an easy entrance to the castle she spotted another magic circle etched onto the castle wall. Looking up, she saw a high window and dropping out the window of it was a strong looking rope. Obviously whoever lived in that room was prone to escaping out that window down to the grounds and the forest outside. Kera moved closer to the wall and discovered that the same person who had changed the magic circles out near the forest had changed this one too, so it had to be whoever lived in this room that was the same person who often snuck out.
A sudden drain on her powers told Kera that her fifteen minutes were now up. Her magic was being drawn out of her in huge quantities, so she had to decide something. It was almost night time, and if Kera was right about the party than that meant whoever was in the room above her was going to be out…could she wait until dark hiding in the room? Another huge draw on her magic decided for her, she was going to hide out until dark. Snapping her fingers and releasing the invisibility spell she used a summoning spell to cause the rope to fly down to her so she could climb up to the window.
It was hard work climbing up the rope to the window, but since she was mostly used to carrying heavy objects from field to field in the summers it was okay, but she wasn’t really used to this kind of physical work. After she had finally managed to climb up to the window she hauled herself through the window and slid down to the floor beneath the window panting. She was lucky, she seemed to be right and there was no one in the room. The room was a shambles though, there were clothes lying on the floor near the large mirror, and several bottles of something had been tipped over on the table in front of the mirror. The doors on the closet had been thrown open and shuffled through, and even the bookshelf was in disarray.
Kera glanced out the window once more as she stood up and determined that she probably had two more hours before it would be dark enough for her to be able to sneak away. So, yawning Kera walked over to the bookshelf, to see if she could find something to entertain herself with for two hours. She skimmed through the titles reveling in all the languages on all the different books. She hadn’t seen that many languages since she had lived with her parents and it brought warm memories surging back. She remembered all the times that her mother had read to her before she went to bed, all the legends and myths that she had learned. She recalled studying different languages just so that she could read to her mother. There weren’t too many books on this book shelf that weren’t about spells so she looked briefly around the room, if this person had a bookshelf that meant they were probably reading at least one other book.
Her eyes fell on one particular book on a table near the bed. This was a large leather book with a dark blue cover with no title anywhere on it. This fascinated her, was it this girl’s journal? She carefully stepped around the clothes on the floor and grabbed the book, opening it and sitting cautiously on the bed. To Kera’s slight disappointment, it wasn’t a diary, the words were printed. The title read:
The waterfall legends

Kera had never heard of anything like this before, so she eagerly opened the book and began reading.

Sarila walked up the stairs to her mother dismayed. She didn’t want to have anything to do with this strange ceremony her mother was holding, and she certainly didn’t want all these strange people watching her. She didn’t even know what her mother had planed; all she knew was that everyone else was excited about it.
As soon as Sarila had reached her mother the room became immediately silent. Sarila’s mother began talking, but her voice was suddenly different, it sounded evil and somewhat cruel…
“Here, we have our hero, the one who shall win for us, and bring our clan to victory, and her powers which were stolen and sealed away in her sapphire have been desecrated. The sapphire was stolen and destroyed, and by the hopes of the light so were her powers. Unfortunately for them, the sapphire was destroyed before it was able to make the proper connection with Sarila, so she still retains her powers and now because she has yet to use them, they are stronger than we could have hoped.” Sarila’s mother smiled, her teeth glinting in the light.

Kera stopped reading startled, this was an interesting legend, it didn’t seem to be following anything she had ever read before…but she continued reading anyway.

Chapter 10 Sarila
Sarila stared uncertainly at her mother, what was she talking about? All this about sapphires, why were they important. Sarila’s mother continued before Sarila could even summon her voice, “Sarila, with the help of your new powers and my magic book you’re going to destroy the forces of so called light, and win.”
Sarila stared at her mother, “What are you talking about? I don’t have any magic powers, and why would I want to use your book for anything, all it has in it is legends!”
Sarila’s mother laughed pitilessly, “Of course you have magic, and you’ll have all of it after tonight. My book doesn’t just have legends in it, the only reason it does now is because that’s the only use you have for it right now, when you need it to have spells, it will have those too.”
What was she talking about? Sarila was sure that her mother was going crazy. But, remembering the company she was in, she knew it wasn’t proper to tell her that. “Mother, are you feeling alright?”
“Better than ever, now, let the ceremony begin!” Sarila’s mother began chanting inaudible words under her breath, making odd, disconnected gestures with her hands with each mumbled word. Sarila felt her hands becoming warm, and as she looked down at them, she saw that they were glowing.
“What’s happening?” She demanded softly so only her mother could hear her. But her mother didn’t answer, she just continued chanting and gesturing with her hands. Soon the glow spread from her hands up her arms until eventually all of her skin was glowing.
Sarila’s mother had stopped and she smiled down at Sarila, “You see, since the sapphire was destroyed, it was much better for us than anyone could have imagined. Now we can seal the fragments of the stone inside you, making the connection stronger than it ever could have been and ensuring that no one can ever separate you from the stone. Now, you have just as much power as they do.”
“Who do I have just as much power as?” She questioned, staring distractedly at her hands and arms.
“Kera, and everyone on the side of light who will fight against you.” Her mother answered.
“Kera? That girl from the legend? What are you talking about, she’s not real!” Sarila protested, “And I’m not fighting in a war!”
“Of course you will, it was prophesized, and what no one expected, was that the one thing that anyone could have done to stop you only managed to make you stronger!”
Sarila would have argued further, but she had a sudden feeling of warmth pulsing through her, each beat of her heart seeming to make the warmth stronger. She suddenly felt powerful, confident enough to take on anything. She was met with a sudden urge to cast a spell, any spell, and she recalled the ones she had been practicing earlier that day. Muttering a quick word and flicking out her fingers she summoned her fork from the table below. Her eyes widened, how had she done that, less than three hours ago she hadn’t had any magic, what did her mother just do?
“You see Sarila, you have magic now, and I’m very proud of you for having taught yourself some spells already, I knew slipping that spell book into your book shelf would do some kind of good. I also know that you already know about the magic circles, I’ve seen the changes that you made to them.”
Sarila stared, how had her mother found out? That meant her mother knew about her sneaking out last night… “Then why didn’t you punish me? I thought you said that going out into the forest wasn’t something I should be doing anymore.”
“I didn’t punish you, because I forbid it to see if you could do something about it, and you did, you learned how to read and change magic circles, an important skill.” Her mother smiled proudly, and Sarila noticed that her mother’s voice had changed back to normal. “Now, I think its time for you to be able to see what else your spell book can do, let’s go.” She turned to the rest of the people in the room. “Thank you all for coming, and tomorrow we shall have a party to say farewell to Sarila, as she shall leave on her quest tomorrow!”
Everyone in the room cheered and Sarila was lead out of the room by her mother. As soon as they were out in the hallway she berated her mother. “What was that in there! I can’t believe that you would do that to me! I don’t want to do any of that!”
“You will Sarila, and I know you will, because this is the only way for you to earn your freedom. If you don’t want to be forced to stay holed up in this castle, you’ll fight, and you’ll win. Otherwise, you shall be stuck here, and married to Cavan…” Her mother smiled maliciously, “So what do you think now?”
Sarila gawked at her mother, she couldn’t do this! Now that Sarila had powers she wasn’t going to stand for this! If she had magic, that meant she could get away despite whatever her mother said. “I don’t have to listen to you or do what you say to get away!”
“Yes you do Sarila, I can take your powers away just as easily as I gave them to you, and I can even put a spell on you to take the powers away completely if you don’t do this. But if you do, then your powers will be strong enough that I won’t be able to do a thing to do. What do you think now?” Her mother questioned.
“I don’t think I want to talk to you anymore!” She shouted, storming off to her room. Sure, she was going to leave tomorrow, but not on any quest for her mother!
Sarila stomped loudly up the stairs to her room, using one of the spells she had learned earlier to blast small holes into the walls of the stairwell. It felt good, blasting things to pieces, it helped her to vent. As she was going up the stairs she tried using the summoning spell to untie the corset under her dress, and it only worked partly, but it was enough for her to breathe much easier.
When Sarila reached her door she heard a flurry of activity going on inside. Who could be in my room? I don’t even let the servants come in to clean up after me, she thought, pressing her ear to the door. The activity suddenly stopped, and Sarila was confused, she slowly put her hand around the door knob and opened the door.
“Hello?” She inquired walking in. The first thing Sarila noticed when she walked in was a girl sitting on her bed, with her mother’s book on her lap, the girl was staring at Sarila with wide, fearful eyes.
“Who’re you!?” Sarila shouted, her temper flaring after being with her mother.
The girl looked down at her mother’s books and her face blanched, “Is…is…your name…Sarila by any chance…?” The girl asked apprehensively.
Sarila stopped mid-breath, how had this strange girl known her name? Sarila started at the girl, and as she did so, she noticed a stone around the girl’s neck, it had begun glowing. The girl looked down at the stone startled, and then back up at Sarila. The girl acted very quickly then dropping the book and standing, running to the other side of the bed. “I’m sorry, I-I have to…leave…” she began to run to the window.
“Wait! How do you know my name? What are you doing!?” Sarila demanded, kicking off her high heels so that she might have a chance of catching the girl.
“I-I don’t know!” the girl shouted, not stopping, but only moving closer to the window, climbing onto the window ledge.
“Stop!” Sarila commanded, stretching out her hand to grab the girl’s arm. The girl seemed to stop mid-movement, she had just been about to grab the rope and slide down the castle wall but she seemed momentarily frozen. Sarila hurried to grab her arm, confused as to why the girl had stopped, but before she could do anything more, the stone around the girl’s neck burst into light, the oranges, reds and yellows blinding Sarila.
Then, Sarila heard the girl muttering frantically, her words rushing together. Sarila tried to see what she was doing but the light shining from the girl’s stone was still blinding her. “What are you doing?” She shouted. The girl didn’t reply, and a few seconds later she just disappeared. The light was gone, just like that, and Sarila had no evidence that the girl had ever been in her room. What was that? Desperate to learn something, Sarila hastily changed out of her dress, ripping the fabric in some places, changing swiftly into something that she could move around in.
As soon as she had changed she jumped out the window grabbing the rope to slow her descent about halfway, just the way she normally did. On the way down she checked to make sure that the magic circle was still changed not to detect her, it still was, but this time it was different, someone else had added themselves to the list of undetected people. Sarila couldn’t read the name it seemed as if they had changed the magic circles to not detect them just once and then to erase their name from the circle. Had that girl been the one to change it?
Sarila searched the grounds for the girl, but in the darkening light it was becoming increasingly hard to see anything. Sarila ran into the forest, maybe the girl had run here, to Sarila’s forest. The further she ran into the forest, the more obvious it became to her that someone had been here, even in the dark she knew this forest as well as the back of her hand. Sarila began to see a glowing trail, there were small glints of white light. Sarila followed it, and at the end of the trail she saw a glowing rock. Upon closer inspection Sarila could see that it was a diamond. The diamond flashed once and then disappeared. Sarila began to feel dizzy, what was with all these disappearing things today?
Sarila slowly stumbled back through the forest to the rope so she could climb back up to her window. Why was there a diamond sitting on the ground in the middle of the forest? And why had it just disappeared like that? Sarila’s dizziness became worse, and her steps became less organized, she tripped over roots she had never even stumbled over before. By the time she made her way out of the forest and back into sight of the grounds she had fallen three times and cut her hands and legs badly on rocks and tree roots. When she came to the last hill between her and the grounds she ended up rolling down it.
Ramming into the rocky wall seemed to shake some of the dizziness from her but she still couldn’t focus enough to grab the rope. She needed a spell to get back up to her room, and she didn’t know any, so she cast the summoning spell, muttering, “Book!” and snapping her fingers. A book came flying out of the window and with her blurry vision she couldn’t tell which book it was until it landed right in her hands. Several seconds passed before her vision was clear enough to see the words on the page, and when she finally read them, she couldn’t believe them:

Sarila burst into the room upon hearing strange noises in the room. “Hello?” She called questioningly. Sarila noticed the girl sitting on her bed, “Who’re you!?” She shouted.

The words stopped there, but Sarila recalled that scene, it was exactly what she had done a few minutes ago. She flipped the book closed and look at the cover, never before had there been a title on it, but it now read in shiny, light blue letters,

The waterfall deluge

Her mother’s book had never had a title before and now it suddenly had one? What was going on? Sarila opened the book again and flipped a few pages in to the place where she had just read her name, but it was no longer there, in its place was a spell for levitation, the exact spell she needed to get back up to her room.