Chapter 6: The Fog.

The journey on the way back from Kilbury was exactly like the one we went through to reach it, very few beasts and a lot of time in silence, I had learnt to enjoy it after all this time, but the monotony was always a killer.

But during one particular night that monotony changed.

A full on storm started, with lightning and thunder coursing through the sky, this type of weather was very rare in the Wild Lands, the most we usually had was a light rain every few days.

Storms this violent happened maybe once a year.

The carriage had to stop momentarily until the storm passed, as good as it was, it wasn't made with this weather in mind, but it was probably something we could improve upon, I'll ask father to ask the engineers to think about something to prevent this.

I looked at the sky, at that exact moment a lightning hit not far from us, a few seconds later came a resounding thunder.

"Lightning magic." the realization hit me, I was a fool, I've been stuck on my research for new things, but I never thought about going beyond my usual fire, wind and water.

I used my scanning spell to search for any beasts in a radius of one kilometer (0,6 miles), seeing that there was no movement I turned to look at father.

"Hey dad, I'm going to look at where the lightning landed." He was already half asleep, he only woke up slightly after sensing movement from me.

"Don't get too far, and retreat as soon as you sense beasts, use your scanner spell continuously." Was his reply, his usual warnings for every time I left the safety of our carriage, fortunately he decided to trust me.

Stepping down from the carriage the rain started hitting me, it would have almost been pleasant if not for the soaked clothes, I tried stopping the rain from touching me with water magic by stopping it from just above me.

I stopped after finding that it required too much mana to be sustainable, so I tried a different approach, I created a wind current above me to send the water flying away before reaching me.

It still consumed a bit too much mana to be comfortable, but I had to be satisfied with this for the moment.

I had to walk a few hundred meters to find the landing point of the strike, it was a tree taller than any around it, or at least what remained of such a tree.

The entire thing was stripped of its bark, it fell off and was currently on the ground around it, I got nearer to look at the naked log.

The sap was boiling and steam was rising from certain areas, seeing this I touched the tree and spread my mana inside of it to try using my scanning spell on a small scale.

Unfortunately, my spell was created with scanning wide areas in search of moving targets, it couldn't even help me to understand if whatever was moving was a beast or a carriage.

Using it to look at the internal structure of a tree was asking too much, all that came back was that the tree wasn't moving, no shit.

'Well, I need to develop a scanning spell to use of small things with high accuracy.'

At least knowing what I needed was a step forward.

I had to be satisfied with what I could see with my eyes, the trunk was burned with veiny patterns and it was completely naked from the bark, I had no idea, maybe force of the lightning strike ripped it off, maybe it was something else.

I look up and see another lightning hit a bit farther away, further in the depth of the forest.

I instantly used my scanner spell concentrating it in the direction where the lightning hit, I could feel something moving for barely an instant before it all came back to stillness, it probably was the bark falling from this one too.

As I reached the landing point I noted that it was once again the tallest tree around being hit, but my attention was violently taken away from it from something far weirder.

A depression in the ground, it seemed unnatural, but even more unnatural was the cave inside on the extremity farthest from me.

It looked like a crater, as if something was violently slammed to the ground and whatever was slammed sank into the ground creating a hole.

That wasn't all, the cave was filled with a whitish yellow fog, like a wall, it even emitted a pale light, whatever that was it clearly was magical in nature, it felt filled with mana.

This unknown fog didn't disperse or move at all, it just stayed there and glowed, menacingly.

"Do I go or do I not go, that is the question." But it took no time at all for my curiosity to take the upper hand, making me approach the fog.

But as I reached twenty meters from the cave I felt it, a call from the fog, a voice almost.

It beckoned me to get closer, it wanted me to go inside, 'come… come…' it seemed to be telling be.

"Avys, get away from that cave!" I heard a shout from behind me.

"Dad, why are you here?" it was my father approaching me.

"You were taking too long and I got worried, and it seems like I was right, were you about to enter that thing?"

"Don't you feel it?" I asked him.

"What?"

"The call, it comes from that, it's telling me to go inside."

"Completely the opposite actually, the closer I get the more everything is telling me to go as far away as possible and never come back, whatever you're feeling is probably a magical suggestion like the anti beast barrier in the armored cities," he deduced, "whatever it is, it wants you inside and not me."

I was confused by the situation, I felt that if I didn't enter the cave I'd regret it, it was a mystery to me, who always searched to further my knowledge about anything magical in nature.

On one hand, I was scared, on the other hand I was incredibly curious about the source of the fog and about what it wanted from me.

"We're going back to the carriage, okay?"

"But why?" I asked, the impulse of going inside was getting stronger and stronger, I needed a valid reason to keep resisting.

Mostly because I was really curious, but I could blame the fog's suggestion.

"Because it's a cave filled with magical fog in the middle of the forest during a storm, it's too ominous for my tastes and I want both of us away from this thing."

Not good enough a motivation, I started running toward the cave.

"Ooh no, the suggestion to go is too strong, what can I do?" I said with the most monotone voice ever.

What can I say? I sucked at lying, immediately deciding to never do it again after failing in my first lie in my ten years long life.

"Oh no, you don't!" unfortun…Fortunately, he managed to stop me, seems like he had realized the strength of the suggestion and prepared, yes, the suggestion.

"I'll be back!" I shouted as father carried me away.

He carried me back to the carriage on his shoulder, he was treating me like a bag of grain, I didn't like it, but the only thing I could do was complain.

But even my complains fell on deaf ears.

The rest of the journey was incredibly monotonous and every moment I thought about that cave, I felt that I had lost something, an opportunity.

I swore I would be back, not that I didn't understand father's point of view, to him going away was probably the right idea, but I wanted to know.

On the way back we eventually met Mortimer on his way back to Kilbury, he and father talked for a bit before father asked him about that cave.

"We found a cave filled with magical fog on the way here, do you have any idea what that was? It also had a strong suggestion on it."

Unfortunately, Mortimer replied that he had no idea, he had never seen nor heard about anything of the like.

After the disappointing answer we each went our own ways, both back to our home city.

A few days later, I laid face down in my bed, unbothered by the world around me and the voices I kept hearing while thinking about that cave and whatever magical marvel it could have contained, surely they were just hallucinations.

"What happened?" said a female voice.

"She's just pouting, she'll be fine," replied a voice really similar to father's, but I was sure it was just an impression, "she wanted to enter into a weird magical fog filled cave in the middle of a stormy night, hadn't I been there she would have done it, the little moron."

Was my own imagination insulting me?

"Oh, good job, who knows what might have happened, but now what? She's been like that for half an hour."

"Meh, she'll get over it, in the meantime why don't we read this new magical book on the lightning element?"

Did he just say… lightning element?

That's exactly what I wanted!

"Mine!" I shouted as I jumped on the male figment of imagination, snatch the book from its hand and start reading it furiously.

I had made so many hypothesis about how to recreate the might of the lightnings I saw that night, but I couldn't even begin to produce sparks, I studied the effect, but still had no idea what a lightning actually was.

"See? I told you she'd be back to normal soon enough, just give her a new book and she'll be good."

"I can't believe this, I thought parenting to be much more difficult." replied the woman with delight in her voice, seeing her step daughter happy made her happy too.

"These are the good years, take care of a newborn and we'll talk about it." shuddered the man while immersed in his hellish memories.

'The diapers, the vomit, the flames she sneezed once and burned my eyebrows, thank god she stopped with the accidental magic until she became three, a toddler sneezing fire would have killed me.' he thought while remembering a specific point in the past.

A tender smile filled with reminiscence appeared on his face as he remembered his first wife and just how much she laughed after she saw with half of his facial hair burned off by a sneeze.

The two adults went back to the living room were they kept talking about their daughter.

"Sometime I wonder if she's some sort of weird dragon."

"Why?" asked Sophia already expecting some sort of dumb reason for her husband's words.

"I mean, she's greedy for knowledge and she once sneezed fire at my face when she was one year old, seems enough like a dragon to me" he shrugged, making his wife laugh even more.

"If you put it like that then sure, but at least she exists outside of books and legends."

"You do know that dragons are real, right?" Asked Laurence.