~

  Rya brushed strands of her muddy chestnut hair from her eyes. With a furtive glance over her shoulder, she pushed open the single door to the only building within the whole camp. The structure of cracking clay and rotting timbers was a hunting cabin; forgotten about in the winter and besieged by the wear and tear during late spring and summer. 

  The cabin was a single room, warm and damp. It smelled, horribly. The stench of eggs, mildew, and drying plants perforated the air. 

Thin fingers of light filtered through the musty haze that choked the damp room. Dried out lizards, herbs, insects and snakes hung from the rafters. A small network of overcrowded tables filled the room's space, overladen with jars of different tonics, elixirs, body parts, organs, flowers, dust, fur, teeth, claws, nails, and living creatures. 

 Some tonics glimmered and glowed, casting odd multicolored halos of light. Others appeared to swallow the light of day. Thick leather-bound books, which were filled with faded instructions on how to either kill or heal, had crinkling yellow pages. Others were of magical spells and formulas from the Avaird College of magic. But books of true magic, forgotten magic, were so old that Rya feared they would fall apart at a single touch: mold clung to their frying spines, the leather binding was grey and cracking, while a foreboding aurora leaked out from between their brittle pages. 

 Rya walked past a stack of these books, and shut out there impulses. She paused at a table filled with various vials of poison. Once it took hours of drilling to memoriation to be able to differentiate the many poisons and tonics. Now, Rya never needed to look at the labels to distinguish the types of poison, even for the ones that looked exactly the same. 

 That whole table seemed to rattle the air with a power; power that her heart and soul yearned for. ‘It’s all in my head… There’s nothing there. No magic. Just… an assortment of the world’s deadliest poisons.’ She picked up a glass, Gnarsh, a deadly poison that with two spoonfuls, would make a person's muscles clamp and freeze up. With an entire vial a man’s heart would stop for a whole forty-five minutes- long dead. 

 Rya shook the bottle of Gnarsh, the dark purplish liquid sluggishly swished from side to side. Her veins throbbed with tension, and her fingertips achingly burned against the cold glass. Rya slowly closed her hand around the flask and closed her eyes. She focused on the silky cold smoothness of the glass barrier, then the power on the other side. She gave the poison a mental pull, in correspondence its power leached through the barrier with startling speed and warmth. It leached through, straight into her blood. Pleasure filled Rya, her aching muscles relaxed, her tiredness fell away, and all her senses sharpened.  

 With a soft sigh she looked down at the bottle. A stale grey liquid had replaced the thick purplish serum- Useless. 

 “RYA! Quit messing around…. Which one did you take this time? Gnarsh… great! You know how hard it is to make that! Let alone getting the ingredients.” Growled Venner, as he took the flask that Rya had been holding. He shook it once, twice. “Completely useless now! Come on Rya!” 

 Venner Whesh O’Gale was stern yet kind man: hunched with age, dependent on a cane, skin hung in thick wrinkles, brown eyes were kind and bright, mop like hair was all white and wispy.

 “Sorry, Venner…” Murmured Rya, as she looked down at her feet. 

 “You know how hard it is to get those ingredients! Great! Wonderful.” grumbled Venner, as he rubbed his knuckles against his salt and pepper stubble, “Did you at least do your other chores before you came in here and started bugging me?”

 “Yes, you know I always do.” 

 “Heard you got in a fight.” Venner held the useless bottle of Gnarsh to the light, and examined it. 

 “Umm…. more or less.” Rya uncomfortably shifted her weight from one foot to another. 

 “So you say.”

 “Rya! How are you bothering, Venner?!” Angrily asked, a new voice. ‘Grey’. Rya jumped at the sound of his voice and straightened; her hope degraded.  

 Grey strutted in. His posture was rigid: shoulders back, head high, back straight, hands at sides- a perfect military composure. His sudden and silent appearance seemed to swallow all the air in the room. 

 He was tall, pale, and armed with sharp blue-grey eyes, as for his Foraikain heritage. Not a grey hair was out of place on his head. He was young, 36, to have gone completely grey, but there was still youthfulness in the way he carried himself. Grey was clean shaven. He wore almost all black:  long sleeve black shirt, overlaid with a black leather vest, black pants and glossy leather boots. Throwing knives were strapped to the sides of the vest, each one perfectly polished till they gleamed. A grey brown and white dappled cloak hung from his shoulders to his ankles. A short sword hung from his side, along with a dagger. 

 Before Rya could answer, Venner beat her to it. 

 “Nothing, Grey. She’s been helping me. It was- was just a tease.” Venner made an attempt to slip the bottom of Gnarsh into his pocket; Grey’s eyes followed Venner’s every movement. 

 “Then what were the shouts for?” Sourly asked Grey, as he crossed his arms. 

 “A tease. A tease. I mess around with her.” Huffed the old man, as Rya vigorously bobbed her head up and down in agreement. Grey’s mouth twitched. 

 “Let my apprentice speak for herself.” 

 “She isn’t an apprentice anymore, Grey.” 

 “Has she completed her own mission, yet?” 

 “No, but it got cancelled last year. Technically she shouldn’t be an apprentice still.” 

 Grey leaned forward, so that he was in the other man’s space. “And if she were to have failed?” 

 “Come on, Grey.” Venner stepped back, “Have a little faith in her.” 

“I have yet to see a reason, too.” Grey straightened and frowned, his eyes gleamed like daggers in the moonlight.

 “Lilith didn't think that,” for a second hurt and pain flickered across Grey’s stiff expressionless face, then disappeared, “she was one the one who helped Rya obtain her magic.”

 “And at what cost? Her own life. And guess who had to take Rya under his wing- Me. She is my apprentice. And will be till she proves herself.”

 “Her mission got cancelled due to this damn war! Blame those breakaways, the ones that formed that bloodthirsty scum of a lot, the Syndicate of Gale!”

 “Careful there, Venner. You speak close to treason. By Code of Gale the leaders of that scum lot are Gavin Lupus O’Gale, and Mira Lupus O’Gale the former apprentices of our very own Canis Lupus. The King Killer.” A sly smug smile crossed Grey’s features. 

 “I wasn’t speaking bad of Canis Lupus! Have some faith in me! By the Code of Gale bless her!” 

 “Was that a bottle of Gnarsh that you were holding, Venner?” 

 “Is going to be.” Corrected Venner. 

 “She did it again. Didn’t she? Quit covering up for my apprentice. Rya did you absorb it?” Asked Grey, his voice dripping with kindness that never met the pain still in his eyes from the mention of Lilith. 

 “Yes…” Mumbled Rya. 

There was a loud smack.

 Rya reeled back, and fell onto the floor. It was all she could do, not to fall into the tables. Crumbled on the gritty dirt floor, she cupped her throbbing right cheek. Rya kept quiet; just barely holding back the tears and whimpers. Where the back hand had struck, a bruise was already forming. 

 Rya sensed, felt, the power from the poisons on the nearby table. Instantly she knew, exactly what amount of each one, would bring death to Grey. A mental prob was all it would take. Treason. 

 A new bone-chilling fear clawed through Rya. ‘By Code of Gale, to kill another Nightinggale… I would be charged with death. Death by the highest ranking Nightinggale in the area- King Killer….’ All the colour drained from Rya’s face. ‘I would be no better than the Syndicate of Gale… I’d be like those blood thirsty breakaways. There’s nothing I can do, but stand up and apologize.’

 Rya stood up and brushed herself off, ignoring the painful stinging in her jaw and temple. She looked Grey in the eyes. 

 “Mentor Grey Gracelynn O’Gale, please forgive me. I humble myself to you, a higher ranking Nightinggale.” She dropped to her knees at Grey’s feet. “Please forgive me for disrespecting you and Venner Whesh O’Gale. The deed will not be done again.” Rya spoke, emotionless. She knew that it was best to embarrass herself here this way, so that it wouldn’t be later and in front of others. Grey was all about public demonstrations. 

 “Get up Rya. Wipe the dirt from your clothes. This is forgiven...” Rya obeyed, as her Mentor turned to the apothecary. “Venner, do you have the Saskia volume?”

 “Yes… A book of Fae magic… why is that?” Skeptically asked Venner, as he lifted his chin and squared his shoulders. 

 “Canis Lupus was asking for it. Why? I dare not ask.” Lazily answered Grey, as he rested his hand on Rya’s shoulder, who other than pursed her lips remained still. 

 “Cat got your tongue?” Chuckled Venner as he shuffled to one of the book stacked tables. 

 “Laugh all you want Venner. She is a cat that has traveled to the underworld and back, without losing a single life. So to say she has my tongue is an understatement.” 

 “Here you are Grey.” Muttered Venner, as he tenderly handed him a dust covered book, that was falling apart at its seams. “Tell our Lady Killer that I want it back.” 

 “I’ll try… She’s in a fouler mood lately.” Grimaced Grey. He then glanced at his apprentice. “Rya, if anyone asks; you made a mistake in training, and got hit. I want you to go outside and sharpen my blades. Canis Lupus O’Gale mentioned talking to you about you being the Doryu of Poison.”

~

 After giving Rya the chore of sharpening his blades, Grey strode around the building and coughed out a ragged laugh. ‘Me? Help Canis. A cat with nine lives. Oh, please. More like an oaf gifted with too much skill for her own good.’ He held up the Saskia volume. ‘Now, where to hide it?’