• "How much further?"
    "If I knew I'd have told you by now."

    The pair of strange men walked clumsily along the forested path. A glowing, fiery man with an appearance of regal, ember stone left a trail of ash and soot from his conflagrated visage as he followed the careful footsteps of the other.

    This leader, this other man, had skin deathly pale, hair dark as sin and eyes a glossy cream, as though his form were a limber corpse. Their clothes, distinct to their individual appearances, held no similarity between each other and it was obvious that their relation was not of any blood. While the corpse man wielded a long, slender pole of a dark, shining metal ending in a glassy orb, the blazing man of ash and ember carried no visible armaments and seemed to leave no harm to the forest in which he burned, leaving not even a singe on a dry leaf in his passing.

    The corpse raised his hand in the air, silently ordering a halt, and pointed forward to a young girl, her feet kicking the water's surface of a pond. Her amber hair hung about her narrow shoulders and a look of shock took her as she noticed them, but before she could flee a terror wracked her heart so fiercely she could hardly muster the courage to rise to her feet let alone scramble away or even scream.

    "We mean you no harm, and understand how we must appear. But we are merely lost on our way to the Great Hall of Al-Thul. Might you be kind enough to point our way? I can reward you for your troubles." Releasing the girl from the icy grips of terror with but a wave of his hand, the girl coughed a little and wiped tears from her cheeks.

    "The place was torn down some time ago. Folks got sick of the wizards and what they'd do to us folk." The girl rubbed a hand over her chest, easing her heart and dragging warmth back into her chest. She tried her best not to look the men in the eyes for fear of what she'd see.

    "Girl," spoke the corpse man, "we're not here to harm you or anyone else. We will defend ourselves if we must, but we seek a wizard who once held council there."

    From behind the girl, startling her quite a bit, the ashen ember man spoke up.

    "The man can help us find a very important friend of ours, one who is in a lot of danger and may lead to lots of trouble for others that never deserved any of it at all. Don't you worry about what people think of us or who we're after. We know he's here somewhere and we need to see that school if we're gonna track him down." Leaning in close to her ear and lowering his voice to a mere whisper, "So, if you'd please, point our way and we'll leave your forest in peace."

    The girl looked down to see a pale blue flame coating what looked like a human hand as though it were crafted from bits of stone. Cupped in the palm was what appeared to be the most vibrant ring she'd ever seen in her life, a marvelous shining metal entwined about a gem of such stunning colorations that she immediately grasped for the precious trinket without thought for the flame. Realizing the fire did not hurt her, nor even seem to produce heat, she stared at him in wonder.

    She looked into his eyes and for a moment she saw what she could only imagine the sun would look like if one could see it with their bare eyes. Brilliant orbs of blazing, bursting flame hovered in the sockets that loosely contained them, thin shards of slate acting as eye lids for eyes that need not blink. She stared as the blaze altered, waving from yellow to orange and peach and pale reds, extending into an oval shape as they pointed about restlessly. These were not the eyes of any man she'd ever seen, but she witnessed in these spheres what she hadn't expected and it calmed her nerves and eased her tension; she could see he was indeed a man, and a man with a soul at that.

    Braking her hypnosis, she carefully stood to her feet and pointed past a ridge of rocky hills rising from the forest. The two men made a nod before smiling at the girl and setting to the direction she'd pointed. As they left her view and could no longer be heard, she stared at the tiny treasure to assure herself it had indeed happened. Placing the ring on her finger, the exhilaration of its true existence gave cause to journal the encounter in case she should ever meet those strange men again.