-~-

            Daniel awoke at first light, rising in near-total silence and packing his few belongings into a black leather satchel.  Having done so, the Venus adept stalked over to the enormous mound of glimmering topaz scales situated nearby, reaching out with the toe of his boot and lightly tapping the wyrm’s nose.

            Tresriel awoke quickly, his giant golden eyes snapping open and regarding the man before him with friendly annoyance.  Opening his mouth and yawning ferociously enough to rip furrows in the earth, the dragon clambered to his feet, stretching and then twisting his neck to place his head on level with Daniel’s own.

            “And a good morning to you, my friend,” Tresriel murmured.  His friend was strange; Tresriel had to admit that, but, having known each other for so long, Daniel could say that about the wyrm as well.  The dragon surveyed his friend’s appearance, and felt a glimmer of dismay sneak into his mind.

            The dismay was caused by Daniel’s apparel--a long-sleeved black shirt and black gloves, and slightly loose-fitting black pants--loose enough to provide utter ease of movement, but tight enough to not get caught on things.  The adept was wearing his best pair of black ‘sneaking’ boots, soft-soled, yet sturdy.  A matching headband and hair tie completed the look; the headband to keep the adept’s sandy bangs out of his eyes, and the hair tie to make sure his longish hair didn’t interfere with his…business.  There was no evidence of the warrior’s longsword, the Balmung, but there were two knives strapped to either side of his belt.

            Daniel was dressed for assassin’s work.

            “Who is it today?” Tresriel asked.

            The adept took a step forward, climbing up onto the dragon’s neck, just behind his head.  “It’s an odd request,” he offered.  “But one with a high price.  We’re to wait for a Warriormaiden in Imil, then kill her just before she leaves.  From what I’ve heard, it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

            The yellow wyrm tried to squash an irrational sense of terror and simply nodded slightly.  “Right.  Imil…we’ll be there in but a few hours.”

            “Let’s get going, then, we’ve no time to waste,” Daniel ordered, and without further adieu, Tresriel pumped his giant wings once, twice, three times, and took to the skies, flying northwest into the dawn sky.

-~-

            As dawn broke, Skaield looked over his three charges, giving the two strangers a dubious glance and then lightly tapping Kaitichey’s shoulder with the edge of his claw.  The lithe Mars adept quickly woke and looked at the others, then rose, yawning and nudging Mia’s side with her foot.

            The Mercury adept rose out of her slumber quickly, leaving behind a peaceful dream of better times as she did so.  A frown quickly planted itself on her face, but the Warriormaiden willed it away just as quickly as it had come.  She then crawled over to Sheba and shook her friend’s shoulder.

            “Sheba…wake up…” Mia said softly, stifling a yawn.  Meanwhile, Kaitichey was breaking the banked coals of last night’s fire and adding fresh wood, not to mention a touch of her magic, to get a good blaze going.  As Sheba woke, Mia watched the girl with interest.

            The slight Mars adept unpacked a pot from the packs slung across Skaield’s neck and two sacks, a large sack of rice, and a smaller sack of some kind of spices.  The girl looked up at Mia in questioning, then held out the pot.

            “Get some water,” the girl said, her tone authoritative.  Mia sighed inwardly; the girl was still so spoiled and demanding.  The Mercury adept hoped that they would ‘cure’ the girl of this on their travels--but she wasn’t hoping for much.

            All the same, Mia wanted breakfast, so she took the pot and walked to the stream that they’d discovered near their campsite, testing the water first to make sure it was still as clean and clear as it had been the night before, and then filling the pot with water.  She carried it back to the girl, who dipped out some of the water to drink with breakfast, and then emptied a precise amount of rice into the remaining water, putting it over the flames to cook.

            Mia watched with interest, then turned back to Sheba, who was now awake, and writing something in a small book she kept.  Mia recognized with mild interest that it was a book Felix had given her for the Midwinter holidays the previous year, a book bound with simple green and brown leather, but adorned with gold paint, painstakingly formed into a rendition of a Crest of Jupiter Sheba had shown the older Venus adept, a symbol that was on a necklace she’d kept since birth.  Besides the Crest, there was also a well-done painting of a Jupiter Djinni, though it was difficult to tell which one had posed for Felix.  Sheba could probably tell, but to Mia, they all looked the same.

            Well, except for Mercury Djinn, but that was probably because she was closest to them.

            Sheba seemed to feel Mia’s glance and looked up, then jotted a last note into the book, snapping it closed.  The book, along with Sheba’s quill pen and pot of ink, vanished into the Jupiter adept’s packs, which she then carried over to Skaield, packing them away into the larger ‘saddlebags’ that hung from the wyrm’s neck.  The adept herself then walked over to her friend and sat next to her, watching Kaitichey cook breakfast.

            It was an amusing affair, to be sure; it was clear that the Mars adept knew exactly what she was doing, but she did it with more flair than was necessary, to be quite certain.  The girl applied her dancing skip to her step even when walking between the campfire and Skaield’s packs to get ingredients, and she wove her arms in complex patterns while adding the same ingredients to her dishes, much as if she were casting another spell.

            At length, as she was preparing some dried fish, the girl seemed to notice the stares of the other two adepts, and fixed them with a disapproving stare.

            “You look as if you’ve never seen anyone cook before,” she muttered.

            “Not like you, certainly,” Sheba replied calmly.

            “Ha!  It’s the only way to cook,” the Fire Wizard replied.  “I was taught this way by my mother.  As the wife of the shaman, she is expected to prepare great dishes, ones massive in size as well as in taste!  The whole village partakes of the cooking of but a few wives during many ceremonies, and my mother’s is of course the best.  You see, cooking is as precise as casting a spell, you have to put effort into it.”

            With that, the diminutive magician fixed three plates of fish and the lightly spiced rice that she’d prepared.  She cut up some kind of citrus fruit produced from the packs and added its juice to the mugs of water.

            “Enjoy,” she told the two other adepts, just before she dug into her food.

            The two adepts glanced at each other and bent to start eating the food.  Mia was anxious to taste it--it was the first time they’d had Kaitichey’s cooking, as they’d eaten dinner in Valeheart last night.  That brought her back to memories of the preparations…

-~-

            Despite the hope that this brought to Dora’s heart, she couldn’t help but be concerned for Mia’s safety, alone with just two other adepts.  What if they ran into something that was resistant to magic?  Dora didn’t want to voice it, but was Mia strong enough to bring such a thing down with brute force?

            “Stay safe, Mia,” was all that Dora would let cross her lips.  “And please, eat dinner here before you go, for good luck.  Sheba and your new friend too.”

            “Of course, Dora,” Mia said, walking over and giving Isaac’s mother a hug.  “I wouldn’t dream of anything else.”

            That dinner would stand out in Mia’s mind.  Kyle and Dora were obviously excited by the prospect of getting Isaac back, but didn’t let their hope get out of hand; they knew that by this time, Isaac could be dead.  So instead they simply expressed their concern for the three adepts, but Kaitichey’s cheerful and egotistic banter brought smiles to the faces of all.

            As they left, Mia promised once again to bring Isaac back to his parents.  They nodded, and Dora gave something to Mia as she left--a light blue scarf, very similar to the one she’d woven for Isaac so many years previous.  Mia immediately put it on, thanking Isaac’s parents again, and turned quickly, so that she wouldn’t see that she left with a tear in her eye.

-~-

            “Warriormaiden Mia, are you going to eat?” Kaitichey inquired, her tone offended.  Mia quickly realized that she hadn’t yet taken a bite of the food, too caught up in her memories, and rectified the problem by taking a big bite of the rice.

            To her astonishment, it was delicious, and before she knew it, the entire plate of food was gone.  Kaitichey grinned smugly, pleased that once again her superb cooking had proven itself fully.

            Skaield surprised them all with a harsh rumble and a look at the lightening sky in the east.  “We should go,” the red wyrm muttered savagely.

            The Fire Wizard simply nodded in response.  “Of course,” she called lightly, packing up her belongings and carrying them over to the wyrm.  The two older adepts looked at each other, then quickly finished their breakfasts, Mia packing away her own belongings.  In short order, the three broke camp, dousing the fire and obliterating all other signs of the camp’s existence.  As an end result, the campsite looked far older than it actually was, at least to the casual observer.

            “Is there anywhere specific we should be going, Lady Kaitichey?” Skaield rumbled.

            The Fire Wizard seemed to think for a moment, then turned to the two.  “Do you have any ideas of where he might be?” she asked them.

            Sheba shook her head in silence, but Mia began to think.  After a moment, she nodded, and looked at the other two.  “Let’s go to Imil,” she told them.  “I might not know, but there is someone there that might.”

            Skaield dipped his head in affirmative.  “Right,” he murmured, then took off, flying north like a blazing arrow.

-~-

            Tresriel landed outside Imil a ways, lowering his body into a small depression in the snow-covered ground and curling his tail about himself, wings snapped tight to his body.  Daniel quickly leapt from the wyrm’s neck and landed on the ground in silence, drawing two things from the packs around Tresriel’s neck, his black leather traveling pack, and his sheathed longsword, the Balmung.  Both went onto his back, the longsword strapped on first and the scabbard’s belt fastened tightly, then the pack.  The Venus adept slipped away from the wyrm a short ways, an ink-black blot against the pristine white snow, then revealed the true power of his assassin’s garb.

            A short incantation made the color of the garments waver and lighten to a dim grey; a second incantation changed their color to a bleached white color--perfect camouflage for the snowfields.  Even his pack and the Balmung’s scabbard changed color.  Satisfied with the change, the adept moved quickly across the snow and towards Imil, the wyrm behind him casting a cover spell on himself so that he appeared to be nothing more than a snowbank.

            Daniel reached Imil shortly, and snuck around the streets, invisible, unseen.  He cast the incantation on his clothing several more times; once to blend in with the brick of the houses, and again to match the blue sheen of the icy pond, before he finally settled on hiding within a snowbank near the entrance to the village, and cast it again to return his garments to their white color.

            Then, he waited.

-~-

            It was nearing lunchtime when Skaield finally reached Imil, and he landed outside, aware that his looks might cause a riot if the townsfolk saw him.  Stopping only long enough to allow his three passengers to disembark, the wyrm then shot back into the sky, possibly to hunt something to eat.  The three adepts, however, were much slower in their progress; they talked as they neared Imil, and walked slowly to avoid hidden snares in the snow.

            “You are sure we can find this person here?” Kaitichey muttered.  “I do hate the cold.”

            “Unless he has moved on, he should be here yet,” Mia assured her.

            “Mia, who is this person?” Sheba asked, confused.  “We traveled with you, but never in our journeys did you ever mention this…what did you call it?  The Oracle?”

            “Don’t worry, Sheba,” Mia assured her friend.  “He’s just somebody I met once I went back to Imil after I started training in the use of the sword.  He said he loves this country, but he was down with a dangerous cough and frostbite, outside the city; I found him and carried him there.  A little Water of Hermes was all it took to cure him, but he was still grateful to me.  He might be visiting, but if he’s not, somebody will probably know where he is.”

            “But what is he?” Sheba inquired.

            “He’s…you might say a fortune-teller.  I really think he’s just a very specialized Jupiter adept that’s only good at one thing--seeing things.  Seeing the future, things far off, the truth, you know what I mean.  He can’t cast a Plasma spell or Whirlwind to save his life, but with the mental strength and abilities of Jupiter--I’d have to say he’s a master.” Mia explained.

            “Hmpfh.  Well, we’ll see about that,” was all Sheba would say.

            The three reached the gates of Imil, and walked in, Kaitichey on Mia’s left, and Sheba on her right.  Kaitichey looked about at the city in disdain.

            “I do hate the cold…” she murmured.

            Sheba suddenly became antsy.  “Mia, I think there’s something…” she began.

            She never finished her sentence, as a white blur sped out of the snowbank to her right, pushed her away, and slammed into Mia.

-~-

            Daniel watched in interest as the three girls entered Imil; he’d been waiting for a while, though this didn’t bother him.  He was in little or no danger of becoming ill from the cold, for reasons he cared not to think about.

            He took a moment to idly contemplate the three; he hadn’t been told about any companions, but he doubted that that complicated the situation any; the girl fit every bit of the description he’d been given.  It would be a simple matter to kill her and move on before they could see who he was.

            In a flash, eh saw his chance, just as the blonde-haired girl turned to tell her friend something.  In a flash, he burst from the snowbank, pushing the talking girl aside and slamming into the blue-haired girl.

            He felt a sudden flash of alien emotions overtake his senses; pleasure, comfort, compassion, and love.  Confused but ever aware of his job, he jerked a knife from his belt and turned to stab it into the girl’s side.

            His heart screamed at how wrong the action was, but his mind refused to listen.  The knife parted the cloth, and clinked off of the Mithril chainmail the girl wore; Daniel uttered a low curse and charged the blade with magical energy, stabbing again; this time it parted the chainmail and slid into the Warriormaiden’s side.

            The assassin felt a sudden brush of fear, terror, and pain; against all reason, he felt his own side split open, had someone stabbed him as well?  He managed a glance back, but all he saw were the two girl’s friends staring in horror, and the blonde in faint recognition.  To his astonishment, there was no knife in his side.

            He turned back to the blue-haired girl, and saw dawning shock and disbelief in her eyes.

            “Isaac?” she muttered, before both fell unconscious.

            At precisely the same time.

-~-