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To Dream of Darkness

A story by DoggyStyle57

Chapter 3, Written December 2011

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Chapter 3 - Vengence has a bitter taste

After her chores were done, helping to feed the dogs in the kennels and clean up after them, and tending to any other animals that were in her father's care, Sarah spent most of each day studying with her father, or with her mother.

When her father taught her, he would take her out to the barn, and to a rather small forge that was set up in the back corner. The forge didn't get much use. It was there so her father could make and fit horse shoes, if he needed to aid a horse that had thrown a shoe. Father wasn't a particularly good ferrier, but he was good enough for emergency work.

But the real purpose of the forge was to conceal his magical workshop, which he had dug beneath the barn. To a casual observer, the barn had a dirt floor, and less than a foot below that dirt surface was a shelf of solid slate. Outcroppings of slate could be found elsewhere on the farm, and the hearth in front of the forge was a massive slab of slate, four feet on a side, and almost a foot thick. A clever counterbalance system, hidden beneath the floor, and a latch that was fashioned to look like a ring for tying a horse in place, served to open the hearthstone like a door in the floor. Sarah's father had shown her how to twist the ring just so, pull it up a bit, and twist it again, to unlock the latch, and allow even someone as small and weak as she was to raise the massive stone slab, and reveal a ladder leading down into the workshop.

Sarah followed her father down the iron ladder, and closed the hearthstone over them as soon as her father had the tallow lamp on his desk lit.

The workroom had a ten foot high ceiling, framed with heavy, rough-hewn timbers, and roofed with slate slabs. It was a long room, about twelve feet by twenty, with shelves on all the walls, and some shelves close by the ladder. The top shelves closest to the ladder were stocked like a root cellar, with bins of potatoes and other food stores, so that if discovered and given a casual inspection, it would seem to be no more than a place to store food for the winter.

Below the forge was a second hearth, whose hood vented to the same simple chimney that let the forge's smoke out of the barn. Sarah's father used that hearth for warmth when studying in winter, and for cooking up some of his more magical ointments and herbal remedies.

The center of the room was open, and had a slate floor that had been polished smooth. For some ceremonial magic, her father would draw diagrams on this floor with chalk.

At the far end was her father's desk, or what served as his desk - a simple trestle table and bench, littered with books, scrolls and herbal ingredients used to make simple medicines. Behind that desk were her father's most prized possessions, four sturdy, locked chests that contained the scrolls and hand-written books that had been collected and passed down by several generations of his family, starting with that mage ancestor that had turned his family into feral folk. It was here, in the light of a tallow lamp, that Sarah's father taught her to read and write, and taught her to read the more basic scrolls and hand-written books on the magical arts.

Most of what they practiced was simple magic. She did lessons to understand the basic principles of similarity and contagion. She learned the ways of identifying herbs needed for potions, and the ways to prepare simple medicines, whether magical or not. And of course, they worked on perfecting her ability to shapeshift into animal forms.

Occasionally her father would unlock the second chest, with one of several small but complex keys that he kept on a chain around his neck, and they would see if Sarah showed any promise at more advanced spells, such as teleporting a small object, or creating a flame without flint or tinder, or wards to bind a lock or door closed, even to someone that had the key, so the lock could only open for the owner of the lock, or for someone that the mage allowed to pass the wards.

On rare occasions he opened the third chest, and demonstrated advanced magic that he deemed unsafe for her to attempt yet. One such task was summoning small magical creatures from other realms, to gain information, or obtain small but hard to find things. Another was a spell to make cloth very flexible and stretchy, so his tunic and other clothes would not tear to shreds if he suddenly shapeshifted, and became much larger.

"What is in that fourth chest, father?" Sarah would often ask, indicating the smallest chest, which he had never opened in her presence.

"Nothing that you should worry about," he would always reply. "Sometimes I find scrolls or books that have bad information in them. There are some spells that are too dangerous to use, or that exact too high a cost to consider using. Such knowledge should not be left out where a fool or a desperate person might be tempted to use it."

"But if they are so bad, why not destroy them?" Sarah asked.

"Because there is still something important to learn from them - even if it is just to know what paths are too dark and dangerous to safely tread," her father replied. "And because the making of some magical writings places evil energies within those writings, which would be released if the writings were destroyed. It is safer to lock them away. Now, resume with your lesson. Can you make that coin vanish, and re-appear on the other corner of the table?"

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When Sarah studied with her mother, they tended to go on long walks through the woods, away from everyone else. Her mother would think of a word or an image, and challenge Sarah to use her gifts to tell mommy what it was. Sarah was getting very good at that skill. She also had Sarah recite what happened in her dreams each night, and her mother would tell her how to interpret these dreams.

One day, Sarah asked her mother, "How did you meet daddy?"

"Your father saved me from captivity," her mother said quietly. Then she touched her chest, at the point where her breasts met, and a small blue sphere of light appeared, between her fingertips.

"I am still fairly young among my people. When I was younger still, I made a tragic mistake," her mother said. "I befriended a young Human, and trusted him enough to let him see this ball. All Kitsune have something like this. It is a precious part of our life energy. If someone else were to take possession of it, they can control me. That Human suspected what I was, and had befriended me in hopes of capturing me. He was successful, and stole this little ball from me. Then he locked me in a cage, in my form as a two-tailed fox, and took me far to the West, where he hoped to find a magician who would pay a high price for a magical creature, and the means to control her."

"I changed hands several times, and was very unhappy. Each time I was taken farther from my homeland, and my people," her mother said. "My captors usually made me use illusions to cheat people, like making them think ordinary grass was an expensive herb, or 'selling' me to them as some exotic animal, but then forcing me always to escape and return to the one who possessed my ball. And then one day, a young man came into the herbalist's shop where I was held captive. And the most amazing thing happened. He talked to me, in the language of foxes! He seemed kind and compassionate, and was truly troubled by my plight. I told him that I was no ordinary fox, and promised to aid him three times, to the best of my ability, if only he could find some way to free me. He declined any offer of a reward, and tried at once to buy me. The price the herbalist wanted was far too high. So the man left, and later that night, he came back, and stole my ball, and returned it to me. Once I had the ball back, I was able to escape, and I left the corpse of a dead skunk in the cage where I had been."

"Was that man that set you free my daddy?" Sarah asked.

"He was," her mother replied. "And he walked away, asking no reward from me. I followed him, and helped him twice, before he realized I was the one he had freed," her mother said, smiling. "When I showed him my Human form, he asked me to marry him, and to always remain by his side. And thus I granted a third wish for him, and I have never regretted it - especially not after you were born to us, my darling child."

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At eight years old, Sarah was beginning to feel comfortable with her new life. She enjoyed playing with the doggies even more, now that she could talk to them. And she loved to run and play with the wolves in the forest. Everything in her life seemed wonderful. Her mommy and daddy were incredible, magical creatures, and Sarah was finding out that she had some pretty neat magical abilities as well.

It didn't bother her that she had no other Human friends, or any brothers and sisters to play with. The dogs and the wolves were the brothers and sisters that she played with - in some cases literally! She learned that two of the eight dogs in the kennels had been sired by her own father, while he took the shape of a male dog, and they these two, one male and one female, he had kept, because they were so smart and loyal. And three of the female wolves in the forest had borne her father's litters, including Moonlight, who last year delivered three male pups who were Sarah's half-brothers.

Everything just seemed perfect, as Sarah drifted off to sleep.

===

Sarah awoke suddenly. She thought she had heard one of the dogs yelp, as if in pain. She listened closely, but couldn't hear anything outside. She called out in dog speech, but the dogs didn't answer. Convinced that they were all asleep and that she had just had a bad dream, she rolled over to resume her own sleep.

That was when she saw the firelight, flickering on the wall of the room that she slept in with her parents. She leaped out of bed, and ran to the window.

"Mommy! Daddy! The barn is on fire! And I see scary looking strangers in the yard. OH NOOOO! They've killed the doggies!" Sarah screamed. She saw several men, armed with swords and crossbows, advancing across the yard, with the barn burning behind them. Several cruel-looking dogs that Sarah didn't recognize at all were straining at their handler's leashes.

Her parents awoke, and her mother, still completely undressed, caught Sarah up in her arms and ran for the door on the other side of the house. Her father made a horrendous roar, the likes of which Sarah had never heard, and leaped through the window to confront the intruders.

"RUN! Run for your life, my daughter!" Sarah's mother said, as she set the child on her feet in the edge of the forest. "Run for the fractured cliffs! Lose them in the cracks that are too small for them to pass, and seek Moonlight and Grey Shadow's aid! RUN!"

Sarah heard the attack dogs baying behind her, and knew they were saying they would kill her if they caught her. She ran and ran, blindly obeying her mother, until she suddenly realized her mother was no longer at her side!

Sarah looked back the way she had come, and saw her mother, now in her three tailed anthropomorphic form, challenging the dogs and trying to make them back off. The eight year old girl was blinded by tears as she saw her mother fall, and she turned and ran as fast as she could. None of the spells she had ever seen her parents do were fighting spells. They could do almost nothing against trained war dogs and armored men with crossbows and swords.

With the men and dogs in close pursuit, Sarah darted into a crack in the cliff face. The sheer rock wall was fractured in many places, some of which formed cave-like passages, and some of which were dead ends. She screamed in frustration as she realized she had chosen the wrong one. She was facing a dead end, and was still in sight of the entrance. The crack she had wriggled through was too narrow for the dogs to follow, but they had her trapped.

As crossbow bolts began to shatter on the wall around her, she turned and faced the men and dogs that were intent on killing her, and who had destroyed her home and most likely killed both of her parents. Everything seemed to slow down, as her eyes lit up like two green, glowing pits of fire.

"GO AWAY! ALL OF YOU, JUST GO AWAY!" she screamed, and the world exploded around her.

She heard one last crossbow bolt shatter on the rock, just inches from her face.

Then silence...

In the distance, Sarah could hear a fire, and shouting, but that was fading fast, as she passed out.