[i]six months earlier[/i]

 

She had nearly made it. The door transcribed three complete rotations before it smashed into the wall in a shower of plaster dust and splinters. Jocasta Jonquille was frozen in the task of shoving papers and belongings into her rucksack as rough looking men rushed through the smoking hole where her door had been, truncheons raised. There was no point in resorting to sorcery. Rychards’ boys all wore amulets of amber set with lead. She considered running, but there was no chance she could wiggle her bottom out of one of the basement’s small windows before the grabbed her. Rychard himself stepped through the low doorway behind his bully boys, long cane clicking on the stones. He took a look at her hastily stuffed sack and clucked his tongue in disapproval. 

 

“Going somewhere Jo?” he asked in his crackly dry voice. Recovering herself, Jocasta tossed her tight bob of white blonde hair nonchalantly.

“Just a little spring cleaning,” she lied patently, casting an accusing eye to the wreckage of her door and wall.

“Ah,” Rychard replied, in acknowledgement but certainly not agreement. He was a heavyset man with large jowels and drooping mustaches, a bastard of Andred’s over inflated nobility some said. Nobility or not, as the chief loan shark of the city, he certainly was a bastard.

 

“Good to see you getting things in order, a smart move for someone who owes me so much money…” he said, casting an eye around the basement. It was a small space, almost every inch of which was covered with tacked up pieces of parchment containing arcane notes, formulae and experiments. Faintly luminous potions were racked along one wall in a bewildering array of glassware that lacked any kind of consistency. Reagents were packed into boxes and vials stacked haphazardly in the center of the room, miraculously untouched by the flying door, save for a crate of mint which had been scattered like confetti by the missile. 

 

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” Jocasta replied, fighting the urge to lick her lips nervously. Rychard arched a bushy eyebrow.

“Really, because one of my associates tried to talk to you at the College and you vanished out a latrine window. Another tried to speak with you in the market and you rushed into a brothel and never emerged,” he accused.

“Well,” Jocasta said, “I obviously emerged…” Rychard narrowed his eyes dangerously. The cat was evidently done playing with the mouse.

“I see a lot of people like you, coming here and going into debt to study at the College. Most of them are smart enough to quit while they are ahead. By my calculation you now owe me one thousand nine hundred and six marks,” he told her. Jocasta winced slightly at the number. Even that was a fraction of what it would have cost to attend the Mythrim Tethir formally. Most of the gold had gone to bribes to get access to libraries and laboratories, or to encourage people to look the other ways while she audited the odd class. The Occult bastion had been a somewhat easier place to gain instruction, but both tuition and tutelage tended towards the criminal. It was a poor fit for Jocasta’s obsession with ancient magics, though like her small potion selling shop, it helped pay the bills. Well keep the bills from becoming crippling too quickly. Come to think of it, she had probably made her share of anti-magic amulets and door breaking charms that allowed thugs like Rychard to collect on loans to his more magical clientele. 

“Do you have one thousand nine hundred and six marks miss Jonquille?” he asked with exaggerated politeness. Jocasta sagged slightly and opened her mouth, but he held up a hand to forestall her.

 

“Because if you don’t, I know a Vrettonian noble who will pay top dollar for… shall we say less willing witches?” he leered. Jocasta shivered with genuine fear at the idea of winding up as fuel for some nobles perversions, be they sexual or political. Rychard was, no doubt, as good as his word. There were rumors of others he had disappeared under similar circumstances. The fear galvanized her into action.

 

“I have seven hundred, I hoped it might buy me an extension,” she all but wined. Rychard grinned his sharks smile.

“With your shop, that might make a full thousand. Why don’t you get it and then we can discuss my terms,” he told her. Jocasta sagged and stood up, surreptitiously lifting the satchel she had been packing when he arrived. She crossed the room to a large trunk made of old leather bound with brass. One of the guards whistled at her as she went but she ignored it. She bent down and opened the trunk.

“It’s empty,” one of the nearby guards remarked, his monobrow crinkling in confusion. Jocasta stepped into the trunk and closed the lid on herself, the latches snapping shut.

“What the…” the confused guard bleated.

“Get out!” Rychard, sharper than his men, blurted. The shelves of potions collapsed in an avalanche of falling glass. Unstable magical elements, mixed and frothed for a long second, spewing forth rainbow coloured vapors. Then the whole mess exploded like the mother of all  Dre Costan cannons.

 

[/i]present day [/i]

 

It took Jocasta a moment to realize she was free. Her mind had been in a fog, partially magical, partially of cold terror. The sight of her few possessions galvanized her into action. She staggered unsteadily to the chest and snatched up her rucksack with its precious notes and pulled her shortsword free. The man, Beren she thought his name was, was yelling at her to move. That seemed like an obvious course though where exactly they should go was less clear. An orc charged past her, skin burning squealing in agony only to meet the talons of one of the undead horrors as it cleared the end of the wagon. All around her was magic, steel, and the reek of blood.

 

“Move!” Beren shouted and shoved her towards the copse. She moved, leaden limbs coming to life as she ran for the cover of the trees. The tall arctic beeches reached skyward like fingers thrusting up from the chilled earth. Under normal circumstances it would have been a foreboding sight. Being caught between the army of the damned and the army of the hammed hardly counted as normal circumstances Jocasta thought and then giggled at her own joke, the sound brittle and hysterical in her own ears. An orc charged out of the thicket, leveling a spear at her. She yelped in panic and swatted the point aside with her, embarrassingly, still sheathed short sword. The axe in Beren’s hand hacked the orc’s arm away just below the shoulder. It squealed and staggered away, gouting stinking black blood that steamed in the snow. They ran into the trees, crashing through the low underbrush. Jocasta’s breath billowed out in front of her in great clouds of steam and her lungs burned from sucking in cold air. She ignored the scratches of twigs and branches as they ran into the copse, her conscious mind not even registering the minor injuries. 

 

“Watch…” Beren shouted as Jocasta ran through a low bush and suddenly found there was no ground beneath her leather snow boots. Jocasta made an inarticulate squawk as she plunged down a steep defile, crashing into sapling and bushes that clung to the shallow rocky soil. The sky cartwheeled dizzyingly over her head until she crashed into a hawthorne bush significant enough to arrest her fall. Her knapsack hit her on the head by way of final insult. As Jocasta lay on her back staring up at the cloudy sky she realized that the sounds of fighting had died away, at least for now.

 

“Are you ok?” Beren asked, as he descended the gully with significantly more grace. Jocasta sat up and spat out a mouthful of dirt, snow and twigs.

 

“Never better,” she replied brightly, reaching behind her to retrieve the still sheathed blade which had whacked her across the head during the tumble.