“Arri!”

Green eyes glanced over to the door and a slim, graceful hand reached out to flick a casual finger in that direction. The door swung open to show Kari in her usual purple-and-blue robes. Her hair was slightly damp, indicative of a recent shower.

“Any news?” Arriella asked.

“Not that we know of. We’ve heard of some minor energetic disturbances, but that was nothing,” she shrugged and shut the door behind herself as she walked in. “We’ve had people from all over checking in.”

“Any signs of our friends?” she asked, her voice losing its business tone for a moment.

Kari knew that she meant the twins, Shourron II and Makkian, but she shook her head. “No traces. Sorry.”

For the slightest of seconds, Arriella looked crestfallen – just long enough for Kari to notice.

“I wouldn’t doubt that they’re here, if it helps,” she said quietly. “I know you want to see them.”

“That I do. But what I want and what needs to be done are to remain separate until further notice.”

“Noted. I should perhaps tell you, the lesser disturbances were caused by the more desperate attempting a dimensional breach.”

This made Arriella perk up and pay attention.

“Most of them are way under my caliber, very few rank at mine or above,” she mused and cringed when she realized the actual implications. “How many close calls?”

“Too many. Twenty in the first few hours after the unlocking alone. No casualties.”

A sudden knock on the door made both women start.

“Enter!” Arriella called, irritated.

“Arri!” Another man, by looks no older than either of the two women, was at the door, gasping for air. “You…You have to see this!”

“Okay, okay,” Kari helped him onto one of the rickety twin beds as Arriella unfurled herself from the other, concerned. “Sahr, you want to be specific about this.”

It took a while until Sahr was able to regain his breath; the world that he was from had a different air composition, one slightly more oxygenated than that of Earth. Apparently, he ran from whatever his prior location was to the Bowery and the lower oxygenation, coupled with running like the wind – considering his element type, literally so – did not do him much good.

“From the top,” Arriella said slowly, reaching over to her boots and slipping them on as she got up. “What happened?”

“One of mine…We found him dead a minute ago.”

“Where?” Kari asked, rising from the bed.

“Central Park, by the lake.”

The Seeress gasped. “In public?!”

Sahr nodded.

Arriella, however, was perplexed. More than her having no idea what caused them all to come out of dormancy, having some of their hastily-assembled troops turn up dead just did not compute.

Her last few missions, not just that of the Jemerian civil war, all consisted of the associates of the High Mage trying to get a base planet to restart the takeover operations that their leader had abandoned upon his sealing. On each world, the people of that planet would be the ones that would suffer first. It wasn’t until part of the population was indoctrinated that the troops – whether Cosmic-ordered or planet-specific – would suffer any losses.

As such, the Earth-bound troops’ having their first loss before even one suspicious human incident was puzzling.

Inside job, possibly? One of ours?

No, didn’t seem likely. She knew and got to know everyone staying and gathering at the Bowery Hotel and turned it into the perfect makeshift command center. Everyone that came on business usually arrived because they knew that this is where she was or had a friend in the area. There were no grudges to be had around here, especially with the victim.

“Arri?” Kari’s voice brought Arriella out of her meanderings.

“I’m on it,” she said shortly and promptly leapt out the second-floor window, landing lightly on her feet on the pavement below. Kari and Sahr exchanged looks and followed the same way.

The trip uptown was shorter than one would expect. Sahr carried Kari with little effort and Arriella ran at her full speed without restraint. They reached Central Park quickly enough and before long, found the body of a Fire Hunter, a foot platoon leader from Arriella’s earlier missions.

Arriella shook her head, dismayed, and knelt down by the body.

“One strike,” she said as she pointed out the sizable hole in his shirt that revealed a black scorch mark over his chest. “He took quite the hit. Close range.”

“Did he put up a fight?” Sahr asked.

Arriella looked around; the ground around them was devoid of grass and in some places, the dirt was littered with fine ash, undoubtedly from incinerated trees.

“No doubt…” she said. “But apparently, it wasn’t good enough.”

Sahr nodded. “Look at the way he fell and the trees behind him. They’re burnt to a crisp and…”

“…Not by fire,” Arriella finished.

As the three simple words escaped her lips, she fought down a cold dread rising up in her stomach. This was more than what she cared to acknowledge; the dead Hunter was someone that was all of one class lower than herself in power rank. Thus, he was strong enough to handle most normal threats and almost none of those normal threats were fireproof. This was not a normal threat. The High Mage’s associates were not usually that original. Their leader, potentially, but he’s…

“Kari…”

The Seeress turned to Arriella and immediately froze at the look in her eyes. “You cannot be serious, woman.”

“I need to see what happened here.”

“Not even if some of us,” a pointed look to Sahr, “don’t want to see it?”

“Never said I didn’t,” Sahr noted, oblivious to the hint. “Kari, really, this might explain a lot of things.”

Kari noticed Arriella’s glare and nodded, outnumbered. “You guys know what to do.”

Arriella grasped Sahr by the forearm and took Kari’s hand. The Seeress flared her aura in short bursts of pale pink as she searched for residual traces of the decedent’s energy, which she had no doubt that he left behind.

And sure enough, there they were. The traces left behind were a deep gray that echoed of fire and they were closely intertwined with a powerful black energy that they were unfamiliar with.

Slowly, Arriella’s eyes drifted shut.

Instantly, she found herself in a rebuilt vision of the past; it was dusk in the park and she barely felt Kari’s hand on hers; nor did she pay much mind to Sahr’s forearm trembling slightly, the only sign of his fear.

“Something bad happened here,” Sahr noted telepathically as the events of a few hours ago unfolded in front of them. “I don’t like this feeling.”

Arriella squeezed his forearm in a brief gesture of understanding.

“What the—NO!”

The would-be-victim leapt aside and the black blast missed him by a matter of inches.

“You know where he is.”

The voice that spoke was melodious, soft and even, but there was a certain lethal malice in the cadence that made Arriella shiver, even as a third-party observer. His hair and eyes were black; his outer robe was black with silver fastenings and he was very distinctly powerful.

“What the blazes makes you think I’ll tell you if I did?!”

He rushed forward with a powered punch and the two men engaged in a series of attack combinations that were almost too fast for her to see. Soon, though, the young Hunter was catapulted backwards and when he forced himself back up, he had a cut lip.

The other man was untouched.

He’s familiar, Arriella thought and instantly started sifting through the archives of her memory. He’s familiar and in more than just one way; I’ve seen him before…

“I get what I ask for, whelp,” he half-hissed and flung a wide arc of black energy that shoved the young man into the lake.

He stopped short of the water and launched himself forward again, this time with a plume of fire in each hand.

“You—” Every word was punctuated by a punch, “will not – get – your hands – on him!”

The blast of fire that the victim released at the last word knocked his attacker into a tree, charring it and several other trees behind him. The tops of the trees came down in a haze of stiff branches, burying the man in a pile of debris.

He finished his original thought when the dust settled.

“Not if it’s the last thing I do.”

The pile of wooden debris shifted slightly and the Hunter paid no mind as he straightened up and walked away from the lake banks…

…only to walk headfirst into his attacker, who stood unhurt, unscathed and stared him straight in the eye.

The wood debris were nowhere to be seen, but a fine ash littered the area where the pile once lay.

“Last thing you do?” he said, his voice a malicious purr. “That can be arranged.”

In a split second, he grasped the young man by the shirtfront and blasted him point-blank, his free hand directly against his victim’s heart. The victim did not have a chance to scream as the blast engulfed him whole and hit the trees behind him.

The man righted his robes and turned to survey the area, as though he knew that the Hunter did something before he died. Sure enough, there were traces of gray everywhere and they lingered, standing out brightly against the normal, barely-there energies of other life in the area; a fatality trail.

He knew that he wasn’t going to come out of this alive, Arriella and Sahr thought simultaneously, familiar with the technique. This skill was not limited to just Hunters among the energetic spectrum; if they thought that they weren’t going to come back alive, they left a trail of energy behind that captured the events of the area or, if they saw fit, would lead whoever came to investigate where they had gone to their end. Should the person survive, the trail dissipated after a few days.

Nearly all fighters had gone on missions where a trail of this variety was necessary. In the case of Arriella and the brothers, it was only their skill and luck that kept them alive, but this was the first time Arriella ever needed to analyze one.

The man knew that the fatality trail existed as well, for in the reproduction of the events, he turned in their precise direction.

Now that he was facing her, she figured out where she had seen him before. In fact, she saw some of his features – the straight nose, the strong jaw and high forehead – very frequently in her twin best friends. They were close for so many years that she no longer gave thought to their origins, until now.

“The High Mage.”

The words slipped out of her mouth on a shocked reflex, a thought whispered aloud without the realization that they were spoken. Although she was in an energetic reproduction of the events, the High Mage likely knew that this would be seen. He looked her straight in the eye and his lips, uncannily similar to his sons’ in shape, curved into a cold smile before he teleported out.

The shocked looks on her companions’ faces told Arriella that they too knew who he was.

“We’re in trouble,” Sahr said simply.

And how, Arriella thought.

---

The Index Series is available at CreateSpace: Mages | Secrets  and Amazon: Mages | Secrets

Connect with Katherine at: Facebook | Twitter | Blog  and The Index Series on Facebook

---

**Please note - comments take a few moments to appear. Refresh the page to view new comments. If this is your first time posting, your comment will be moderated.