Haven's Addiction

A familiar voice called out from the shadows, “Hello Bailey.” The net bound me so tightly that I didn’t have enough air to respond. “What’s the matter? Nothing to say?” He mocked.

I tried to speak, but the net was clamped around my jaw and could only manage a mumble with my lips closed. Gerald stepped out of the shadows, stalking casually over to me.

“I should just strangle you here, but I have orders to do otherwise.” He obviously wasn’t happy about it, but anything that irritated Gerald was good for me.

I called out to Barthandolous to aid me in removing the net, but there was no response. In fact, I could sense that the connection to him had been severed.

“The bindings of the net temporarily break the link to the dragon. You’re on your own kid.” He extended his open palm towards me, “Now hand it over or I will have to submit a report saying that I had to choke you to death because you wouldn’t cooperate.”

“Just hand it over,” Vincent called from the shadows above me. “I honestly don’t want to harm you.” He must have been the one to drop the net over me. I heard the shuffling of movement and eventually his footsteps on the ground as he climbed down from wherever he had been perched. From my vantage point I couldn’t see him. My neck instinctively tried to turn and look, only to respond in discomfort and pain from the effort.

“I can’t hand over anything when I can’t move, asshole,” I muttered through clenched teeth.

“Oh, we’re wasting time,” Boregard groaned from behind me. “He can’t hand it over anyway. Nobody who has accepted the call of the Orbs has ever given them up in the history of their existence.”

“Ger,” Vincent called, his tone now changed. “You’re just looking for a reason to kill him. Let’s take the Orb and be done with it. “

“I wish I could,” Gerald lowered his eyes in honest to goodness sadness, which surprised the heck out of me. “The enchantments on the Orb make it so that I can’t take it from him unless he is dead or willingly relinquishes it.”

I remembered when I first encountered the Orb. I couldn’t bring myself to go anywhere near it no matter how hard I tried. It wasn’t until Placidious’ death that I was finally able to pick it up. Now that I accepted the call and took ownership of it, that same protection held true to me. Gerald may not have wanted to kill me, but he definitely would if it came to it. If I didn’t hand over the orb, he was going to kill me to get it.

Aw hell. The day was going so well.

Without a connection to the Orb I couldn’t access any of his magic. Without being able to move I wouldn’t be able to access any of my weapons. Fortunately these weren’t my only assets, and I was prepared for just such a situation. I fought against the bonds with all my might, but didn’t succeed in doing anything but wiggling about. That didn’t stop me. I kept at it until I lost my balance and fell to my side on the ground. God, that hurt. Gerald broke out into laughter at my folly.

Fortunately for me, Gerald didn’t notice the false bottom in the heel of my boots opened up as I fell. The cluster of five throwing stars I requisitioned Q make for me tumbled out of the hidden compartment onto the ground. The sound of my grunting and groaning in pain, which I intentionally overplayed, masked the metallic clink as they clattered on the hard floor. They were very similar in design to ninja throwing stars, about four inches in diameter with five curved bladed that I kept meticulously sharpened, like miniature saw blades.

I used my telekinesis to send them flying right at him as spinning blades of death. His reflexes were quick for an old man. With a bat of his hands his spells sent them flying away in all directions with only a couple of them missing by a few inches.

“Did you really think you could get me with such a simple tactic?” He looked down on me like I was a complete idiot. I had gotten used to seeing that from him.

“Hey, I had to try. You can’t blame me for that, can you?” I mumbled through the ropes. When I fell, the ropes around my mouth loosened slightly so that I could speak more clearly.

“Hmph, I guess not. You are a stubborn bastid. It is both your most admirable and irritating traits.”

“What about my resourcefulness?” I asked.

He started laughing, which caused a chain reaction of my laughing, which led to Vincent and Boregard laughing, which in turn got me laughing even harder. Our laughter bellowed throughout the empty warehouse, echoing off the walls. I continued to laugh as loud as I could until my sides hurt and I felt like I was about to pee myself. I eventually had to stop because the bindings still restricted the amount of oxygen I could take in, and felt about ready to pass out. It took a lot longer for my breath to come back than I expected, but that was fine. It gave me a moment to focus on the situation.

When the laughter finally subsided and I had enough air to speak, I asked, “So what now?”

“You hand over the Orb, or I kill you,” he said. “I’m sorry. I do not like the alternative, but that is what we are presented with.”

“Nice rope,” I ignored him. “Where did you get it?”

“We’ve had it for a some time. It’s been specifically made to deal with Orb owners. So far it’s been the only effective tool we’ve been able to make that works against the Orbs.”

“Not effective enough since your boss only has two of them?”

He got angry and gave me a swift kick. Boregard let out an almost imperceptible growl, like a dog about to pounce, and positioned himself between us.

“My apologies,” Gerald said more to Boregard than to me.

“What’s the matter Gerald? Your high and mighty boss doesn’t allow you to hurt others?”

“Not if we can help it,” he grumbled.

“Wow,” I tried very hard to form the words through the bindings. “If you get any farther up your bosses ass you’ll break your neck when he sits down.”

He growled again, readying to kick me, but stayed himself. “Your mouth won’t save you this time.”

“You’re right. It won’t,” I stalled. “I sure can’t trust your dragon. He would just as soon kill me.”

“What do you expect? You betrayed him and stole the Orb.”

“As I recall he instructed me to hold onto the Orb the last time I saw him, right after You,” I put emphasis on the word, “told me to go get it. I just did as I was ordered.” The irony that this was the only command Gerald gave me that I succeeded in didn’t escape me. “He knew damn well what would happen, and you know it. That was why he said he was sorry for getting me into this.”

Gerald sighed, “It’s true. There is a prophecy that foretold of someone claiming the Orb of he Red Dragon and using it to free all of the dragons.”

“Ha, I knew it,” I relished with glee. “So why should I trust your dragon over mine? At least mine has been honest with me from the start and didn’t resort to hiding things. There are still things in this prophecy of yours that you aren’t telling me, I’ll bet.”

“Releasing the dragons, is that the deal he made with you?” he asked rhetorically. “He has made that deal many times before. Obviously it has never come to fruition. He will say anything that will convince you to set him free, because he is a prisoner. It is in his nature.”

“At least he’s up front about it. All I’ve gotten from your side of the fence is smoke and mirrors with half truths.” The anger boiled up inside of me, and I had to calm myself to focus.

“You look like you’ve gotten a bit of a sunburn there,” he commented, seeming to ignore me. He could see some of my skin through the bindings of the rope, although it was probably turning reddish because of the pressure of the bindings.

“I bet your sunburn is even spread throughout your body to parts that haven’t been exposed to the light of day. Am I wrong?”

He was right, but I didn’t want to admit it because I hadn’t fully realized it until then. I just didn’t know what it meant. I made all manner of excuses for it from the intense heat when Placid went up in flames to a rash of hives caused by stress.

“Your dear friend is turning you into a dragon,” he gloated. “There will be no waiting until they are set free as a whole. You will gradually become a dragon, and when you do he will free himself. If you continue down this path, you may not be so lucky as Placidious.”

He had a point. I could feel the changes within me. They were subtle, like a leech sucking the life out of me. It was so subtle that you don’t even notice, it gradually creeps up on you. The reason I felt stronger, more connected to magic, and more resilient to exhaustion was because I was slowly becoming a dragon.

“He can’t help it, you know,” his tone now sounded polite and respectful. “The transformation happens automatically as soon as you take up the mantle. But he didn’t tell you that, did he?”

I couldn’t move, but if I could, I would have nodded in agreement, and he knew it.

“He is using you. If you continue on, it won’t be any better than all of those before you. It is not possible for you to assemble all the Orbs and release them before the transformation will be complete and you will be imprisoned. Even if we were to step aside and let you continue, and helped you in your quest, the fact remains that there is simply not enough time. If you don’t hand over the Orb you will be doomed.”

“What about what Boregard said?” I asked. “No one has ever freely given up the Orbs?”

“It is true that the power it holds over you is as strong as the spells that compel us to not take it from you. They all come naturally and can not be avoided. Again, I am sure that this is something he chose not to tell you as well. Nothing short of a miracle could compel you release it willingly.”

“So why even try? You know I can’t give it up any more than Placidious could.”

“Because my master isn’t as insidious as you perceive him to be. We wish to give you the opportunity to redeem yourself instead of signing your death sentence immediately. Unlike your dragon host, we offer the chance for forgiveness. Your only crime is the weakness of answering the call in the first place.”

This rang a note with me more than anything else he said. Barthandolous certainly didn’t offer forgiveness, just look at what he did to Placid the last time someone pissed him off. Then again, it’s not like he could help it either. My transformation and addiction to the Orb was set in place by those who created the Orbs. If they didn’t want The Twelve to ever be released, then adding the transformation so that any owner wouldn’t be able to gather them together and release them in time before being imprisoned would be the perfect way to do that. However, it was Drognaus’s own grandfather who created such an insidious curse. That left the quandary of not knowing who to fully trust.

Even if I could free myself from the hold of the Orb, the goal of releasing The Twelve would still be in my sights. Freeing them would be my only way to get home, of that much I was certain. There is no way that I would be able to to count on Drognaus and his ilk to aid me in this quest. They were just as obsessive as Orb owners when it came to apprehending them. Then I would be Orbless and have no means to do what I needed. Even with Droclin’s aid, I would still have to get the Orb back from Drognaus. Incidentally, I would still have to do that to get the two Orbs he currently owned. Although making an ally out of him instead of an enemy would make that task a lot easier, no matter how many Orbs possessed.

I could see why their magic net was designed in this way. It cut people off from the Orbs they obsessed over, giving them time to listen to reason. Already I could feel a weight lifted off my shoulders, like a constant pressure had been pushing down on me. Not a pressure that was intimidating, but like the way the pressure on your ears pop when changing altitudes. It was noticeable enough that my train of thought was definitely more open without boundaries.

Lines of reason opened up like brightly illuminated paths without a fogginess to cloud my thoughts. While my mind cleared, there wasn’t time to think about it any further. Gerald was distracted by something above him, making it time for my great escape.

They were so distracted by the conversation, and with the uncertainty of having to kill me, that they didn’t notice until it was too late. When Gerald sent the throwing stars away, I quickly took back hold of them with my telekinesis. Since the blades were far from Gerald and the others, none of them noticed. I focused intently on the spinning blades, but could only keep one of them going at a time. The rest went flying off elsewhere, as Gerald intended when he deflected them.

The metal disk continued to spin lake a miniature saw blade cutting into the rafters of the building. I wasn’t sure what alerted them first. The buzzing of the saw blade high overhead, the raining sawdust, or the rafters that came loose and tumbled to the ground. I’m guessing it was the latter.

In further hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best idea to cut into the rafters that held up the roof of the building I was in. It was probably a worse idea to cut the rafters in multiple places so that they would rain down in a chain reaction. Oops.

The first beam fell only a few feet away from us, getting everyone’s attention. It was followed a moment later by a second, third, and then a fourth. The roof groaned and strained for only a few moments before it began to collapse completely.

As soon as I could sense the first beam begin to fall I sent one of the stray throwing stars my way, spinning like mad. I slowed it down as it got close, putting every ounce of effort I could into not cutting my arm off as it tried to cut the rope. I didn’t have the time to be too careful. The blade cut into my arm with a shooting pain, but there was no time for that. As soon as the link of rope was severed it disrupted the suppression spell, and I could sense Barthanodolous’s presence again. I instantly had him unleash a spell that would release the binding of the rope. I got up, wincing from the pain of the deep cut in my arm as it bled profusely, the blade stuck deep in the muscle. I hoped I would be able to get out of this mess to heal it before I bled to death.

The three stooges looked back at me, startled, as I rose halfway back to my feet. At that point the groaning of the building’s roof was unmistakeable. They were running for the nearest exit like a chinese fire drill. In a brief flash I thought it was because I was just that intimidating, but only for a moment. In the next moment I realized that the roof was already coming down on top of us. As far as they were concerned, they could pry the Orb from my cold dead hands as they sifted through the rubble; literally.

While the constriction of the net no longer kept me immobile, I was still wrapped up in it. I gave up on trying to get myself out of the rope of the net, lifting it up like a skirt, and using a hastening spell to boost me along as I sprinted towards the nearest exit that they weren’t headed for. Unfortunately there wasn’t one, so I made a beeline for the nearest wall.

Hastening spells are a truly bizarre experience. It doesn’t seem like the you have sped up, but that the world around you is going slower. Everything around you goes in slow motion, like watching a movie frame by frame. You can feel the strain on your muscles as they are accelerated to speeds that they weren’t made for. The strain is enormous, but you have gone ten feet before you begin to notice it. I could literally see the entire ceiling of the warehouse coming down in slow motion while the others fled at normal speed with their own hastening spells. All sounds were warbled and distant because they were on a different plane of existence. Even smells were nonexistent because the particles around me were going so slow that my nose couldn’t even pick them up. The colors of the world were in a blurry spectrum of psychedelic color streaks, like a camera placed on too long of a shudder.

They already tagged the nearest exit, the only two discernible doors to the warehouse. I, however, headed for a more unconventional exit. I created a shield in front of me as I ran. It was similar to my energy shields, but designed to deflect physical objects. It hovered six inches in front of me as I ran. If I stood still with this shield and a giant hurled a boulder at me, it would have been deflected. So whether the large piece of rock was hurtling towards me, or I hurtled towards it, shouldn’t have made a difference. At least theoretically. There wasn’t exactly time to discuss the practical application of it with Barthandolous.

I ran straight towards the wall with all my magically assisted might, holding my arms in front of me to brace for impact. Not that it would have done any good if the shield didn’t work. If my theory was incorrect, I would break every bone in my body as I went splat against the brick wall, seconds before the building crushed me to death.

“Hulk smash,” I screamed as I came upon the wall. In an oddly muffled tone, the words died into the slow motion of time around me as soon as they left my mouth.

The wall burst outward at normal speed. Fortunately the shield was moving at a fixed position in front of me at the accelerated speed. The debris burst outward, pushing away from me as I ran. In the slow motion around me I could see the splinters of wood and shards of shattered rock that would have stung my face and body, tearing me to shreds had the shield not been there.

I probably looked pretty ridiculous with the net still wrapped around me, like I was on my way to a a costume party as a fisherman’s ghost. I also didn’t have time to care. I may have felt all high and mighty with my powerful Orb, but I had been captured nonetheless. I wasn’t about to stick around and get caught again. I kept running in full flight mode like the devil was chasing me, and indeed it felt like that was the case. Ever since I accepted Barthandolous’s offer I felt like I had my own personal demon hanging on my shoulder, whispering in my ear even when I couldn’t hear him speaking to me.

I didn’t know what to make of it all. Apparently everything Barthandolous told me of what to expect from Drognaus was true. They would just as soon kill me to get the Orb. Any doubts I may have had of whether I could trust Barthandolous or not were thrown out the window as well. He intentionally hid the fact that I would be transformed into a dragon so that he could gain control of my body, which was a pretty big omission.

I continued to run through the city long after the spell ended, my lungs burning from the strain, threatening to choke me. I was a good mile away from the warehouse when I stopped to take a breath, and I could still hear the effects of the building collapsing to the ground in a heap of rubble.

People everywhere were coming out of buildings to see what happened. I quickly put up a Shroud and hid in the nearest space I could find, catching my breath. My hands shook as I sat in the corner of an empty alley. The fear of what just happened gripped me so tightly that I didn’t even think to take off the rest of the net.

‘How did they find me?’ I asked to myself.

‘I’m looking into it,’ Barthandolous responded. I was startled to hear his voice, I had almost forgotten about him. The long pause while he contemplated this indicated that he didn’t know, but was too stubborn to admit it.

I didn’t think it was possible for a voice in your head sound so irritated, but he did. Was it because someone had gotten the drop on him? Or was it because there had been a lapse in communication between us. He was a paranoid individual, and with good reason. Just to be sure, I pushed the thought out of my mind before enough of it registered that he could read. I certainly didn’t trust anyone from the Gold clan now, but I didn’t entirely trust Barthandolous either. There wasn’t sufficient time to process it yet, but if he intruded on the thoughts, there would be no way to ever analyze it.

‘Maybe they didn’t track me,’ I wondered aloud so that he could hear. ‘Maybe they scoped out Droclin. It wouldn’t take much for them to make a connection between us, either through the transaction with him or the fact that he has an Orb. ’

‘Fenton set up the transaction and arranged that meeting,’ he pointed out.

‘Yeah, I thought of that too. Looks like the little man may have betrayed us after all.’ I paused for a moment, realizing that I said ‘us’ instead of ‘me’. At what point did we become a ‘we’? Once again I found myself quickly pushing the thought from my mind before it registered with Barthandolous, and began to wonder if I would ever have time to sit and analyze these thoughts without his prying presence; which I quickly had to block from my mind as well. ‘I guess it’s safe to say that going back tomorrow will be a trap as well, whether he betrayed me or not.’

‘Yes,’ he responded, annoyed.

‘Guess I fell right into it, didn’t I?’ His silence said it for me. ‘Yeah, sorry about that.’

‘You are inexperienced. That is to be expected.’ I could imagine him making an annoyed face as he said it. ‘They are experienced. I can teach you the fundamentals of magic, but that is not enough to teach you strategy.’

‘We’ll work on that,’ I responded. ‘Are we safe for now?’

‘Yes. I can’t detect anything on you that is emanating a tracer. ’

‘Could it have been a tracking spell?’

‘Possibly. You didn’t put up a shroud when you left the presence of the merchant.’ Again he sounded annoyed.

‘Ok, I get it,’ I snarked back. ‘I’m inexperienced.’

‘You didn’t even do anything to disguise your appearance.’

‘Clam it,’ I lashed back, angry. ‘I know. I screwed up. But I also got out of it on my own.’

‘Yes, by bringing down an entire building on top of your head,’ he said. ‘Then with my assistance to get you out of the mess you put yourself in.’

‘Your bedside manner sucks,’ I grumbled. I looked down at my bleeding arm. I used a healing spell to patch up my arm, but Barthandolous wouldn’t do anything until I pulled the throwing star out. I’m pretty sure he set that condition to be vindictive, and it worked. I made my gums bleed from biting down on my sleeve so hard as I pulled the blade out to keep from giving away our position, forgetting that I was under a Shroud, and nobody would have heard me anyway. I almost lost consciousness, the pain was so intense.

‘We need to move,’ he said as soon as it healed. ‘The shroud will hide you, but the blood trail is unavoidable. ’ I looked around me and he was right. My arm bled a lot more than I initially thought. There was a clear smattering of red splotches that led right to me and a giant puddle where I currently sat.

I walked for a while, wandering the city. I’m not sure how far I went, or how long I walked. I let my thoughts wander, pondering my situation. Yet at the same time I didn’t let them wander too far, keeping any thoughts questioning Barthandolous, and his motives, closely under wraps. Gerald and his team were dead set on getting the Orb from me. ‘Dead set’ being a literal term leaving no room to doubt that they wouldn’t hesitate to kill me the next time we crossed paths in order to get the Orb.

To make matters worse, I couldn’t petition to any sort of law enforcement for protection. Asking for help would require admitting my goal of releasing The Twelve. The rulers of Haven weren’t going to allow that to happen, if they could help it, and would side with Gerald in an instant. The only real ally I had was Ferdinand and Droclin, neither of whom could be fully relied upon to not turn on me the moment I became an inconvenience, or if the law of Haven put the pressure on them to back off.

I didn’t think I had anything to worry about with the two of them. Ferdinand was a rebel against authority and seemed loyal enough to anyone he respected. Droclin definitely worked with his own agenda, but since we both had the same goal, and the fact that he held the power to make others back off, made him a very valuable ally. Although, paranoia kicked in as I pondered my situation, and I began to doubt the validity of my alliances.

I was grateful that Barthandolous kept to himself throughout my whole thought process. I didn’t know if he was watching my thoughts out of entertainment, to see if there was something he could exploit, looking for signs of betrayal like with Placidious, or was respecting my space.

I eventually found myself at the Courtyard of Champions. It wasn’t intentional. I ambled through the city lost in my own thoughts, not paying any conscious attention to my surroundings. It wasn’t until I stood in the middle of the courtyard directly in between the statues of The Pair that I finally took note of my environment.

Something about standing in that spot felt comforting, like returning home after being a way from a long trip. Which didn’t make any sense, because there was no place in Haven that felt at all like home.

‘Must we be here?’ Barthandolous asked.

‘Why? I’d figure that as narcissistic as you are, you would love to be around yourself.’

A long silence followed. When he did finally speak, I could sense a tone of sadness to him, which I didn’t think was possible when dealing with words pumped directly into my mind. ‘I don’t like being here. It is a painful reminder of what I have lost.’

Now I felt like an ass for heckling him. I looked over at the massive statue representing his body and felt myself choke up a bit. There was no way I could fathom what it must feel like to be yanked out of your body and imprisoned like that. The only possible experience I could think of was being shown an image of my prone body, lying in my bed at home while I remained stuck in Haven. The longer I remained in Haven, the more I would resent that image. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like after a couple hundred years.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think about how this would affect you. I,’ I tried thinking of the right response, but nothing came to mind. ‘I’m just drawn to this place, and I don’t know why.’

I hadn’t really thought about it before, but the impact of this place finally registered with me. In all of my travels throughout Haven, I felt a constant pull drawing me to a specific direction. If I went for a random walk without any direction in mind, I would always be inevitably headed towards the courtyard. Standing in that courtyard, in the center of the ring of massive statues, was the only place where I didn’t feel that pull

‘Maybe because this is the exact place where I arrived in Haven.’

‘Really?’ He asked. Something about what I thought/said peaked his interest. ‘Can you show me the exact spot where you arrived?’

‘Not really, I don’t have any memory of it. I remember waking up, as if from a dream. I was in such shock by the statues that I think I passed out. I’m not sure. I woke up in Drognaus’s office a few days later. The only reason I know I was here at all was because he mentioned it.’

‘So you know nothing of your arrival in Haven.’ He said it as a statement and not a question.

‘I remember going to bed the night before. The rest is all, well, static.’

‘That is because your memories are blocked. You can not access those memories because someone, likely those who sent you here, put a wall up in your mind to prevent any intrusion.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘It prevents even me from tapping into your mind any deeper than base thoughts. The only way to truly block an individuals memory from being seen by others, is with a wall like this that prevents anyone, including the owner of the memory, from accessing it.’

I wasn’t exactly sure how to take that. The fact that he knew this meant that he tried to hack into my brain, and I couldn’t even tell. If it wasn’t for this mental firewall it is possible that there wasn’t anything that could stop him from unraveling my mind like he did with the Carnivex spy. But I also saw that as a silver lining. He wouldn’t be able to read my mind. I would be able to keep secrets from him. Was that the intent when the firewall was created? If my benefactors sent me here with the purpose of seeking out the Orbs, that is very possible, as a safeguard to protect me from the dragons within. Or it was protection against the temporal tether, so that people couldn’t find out about it. Either way, someone went to great lengths to prevent me from knowing how exactly I got to Haven. While I wanted to know who they were and their intentions, my Danger Sense kicked in when Barthandolous pushed to learn more. Something about his intentions weren’t entirely honorable, and I had to quickly block that thought from my mind and change the subject before he picked up on it.

‘I already know why I’m here,’ I quickly mind/blurted out. ‘To find the weakness of the Graxis and return home.’

‘Based on what information? Vague recollections of a dream that mentioned their name? What Drognaus told you? His kind are just as subversively manipulative as mine, if not more so.’

He felt angry, downright furious. I could visibly see the glowing of the Orb brighten in my bag with the powerful red light leaking out. The last time I saw the Orb glow like this, the city of Placid was a smoldering ruin within hours afterward. I needed to do something quickly to diffuse the situation, but my stubborn nature got in the way.

‘What does it matter to you? If I’m wrong about being able to go back home after freeing you, it won’t matter, you’ll already be free. Why does it have you so pissed off? What is your problem?’

Apparently, in my frustration, I spoke that last question out loud. A few sentient beings lounging around in several of the benches of the courtyard, who I hadn’t noticed before, turned their heads towards me. One in particular stood out. The large insectile creature stood about five feet tall. His head was green with bulbous eyes that reminded me of a preying mantis. Of his four arms, three were holding wooden wands. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him.

He, however, recognized me immediately. The mandibles around his mouth stretched out, which reminded me of the human expression of widening their eyes in surprise and alarm. He froze in place with the expression of, what I could only assume to be for his species, surprise and fear. The wands fell from the grasp of his claw like hands. When the wands hit the stone courtyard with a clatter, he snapped out of his daze, turned away with remarkable speed, took a couple steps, and flew off into the sky on wings that sprouted from his torso like that of a grasshopper.

As soon as he began to turn, the recognition immediately hit, and I’m sure the expression of alarm on my face matched his, if he had bothered to take a moment to even look back. His was the face that I saw when I first arrived in Haven at the Courtyard of Champions, standing over me as I lay on the ground before I lost consciousness out of sheer terror from seeing a giant alien bug.

I walked over to where he stood before his departure flight, and picked up one of the wands. On closer inspection I saw that they weren’t wands at all, but paint brushes, each with a different color paint on the bristles. I looked around, perplexed at what this could mean, to see large canvas on an easel. The canvas contained an incomplete portrait of a landscape. In the sky, a red dragon flew in the sky, letting out a jet of flame from his mouth. With the direction the easel faced, it appeared that the artist used the statue as a reference point for the portrait.

Below the flying dragon was an incomplete painting of a house. After taking a good look at the house, I froze.

′How good are your tracking spells?′ I asked Barthandolous.

‘Exceptional. All I need is an object the subject was recently in contact with.’

I held up the paintbrush still in my hand. ‘I’ve got that covered. Do it. I need to find this guy right now.’

‘Why the urgency?’

I took another look at the painting. The roof of the house in it was ablaze, and while the painting was still incomplete, there was no mistaking the shape and color of the house that matched my home back on earth exactly. The massive old victorian home was unmistakable, especially considering there were no houses like it in Haven. That coupled with the paint scheme of earth tone greens that my wife personally picked out, the decorative fence along the side yard that she designed, and the willow tree in the front yard that we planted when we bought the house meant only one thing; this bug like creature had been to Earth and had seen my home.