Part 1

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

Knocking on the door was the hard part. In order to do something that seemed so simple Leo had to push to one side the belief that the sorceress within would say no. Being a witch would have made everything much simpler in some ways, but you had to be born a witch, and that was something that was entirely down to luck. Of course, then it was a case of dealing with the covens, instead of being under the tutelage of one sorceress, which was both an advantage and a disadvantage. Once someone had learnt how to use the magic of the world there was nobody there to make sure that the sorceress didn’t use it incorrectly. That didn’t mean that there weren’t entire covens who used their power for the wrong things, but there was someone there to make the decisions with. The difference between the two types of magic user was something Leo had been thinking about for a long time.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

The second magical race of Raenarin, the Sorceresses, are not born with the ability to harness the magic of their world. Once their training was passed down from mother to daughter, aunt to niece, grandmother to granddaughter until one Sorceress chose to train her son as she had no daughters. People told stories of Sorcerers, about what happened when they went insane because that was what they all did, but she didn’t believe the stories, and taught her son everything she knew. After that the system changed. Sorceresses passed their knowledge onto apprentices instead of daughters.

Most Sorceresses are loners, although there are yearly meets when they get together and talk about what’s their year has been like. They live for longer than the witches, on average around 300 years, and have a much greater understanding of the history of Raenarin. A Sorceress will normally take on three apprentices, at the most, at a time and by the end of their lifetime will have trained between 4 and 12 apprentices in their lifetime. Due to this the number of Sorceresses is increasing.

Each Sorceress has their own home, normally gifted to them at the end of their training by their mistress. They are visited more often by people who want magical help, because the covens aren’t easy to approach for anyone who isn’t a Witch or related to them, so a Sorceress will earn money this way, and occasionally by selling things to the merchants who travel to Raenarin.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.

Wrapping her arms around herself Mira kept walking. As long as she focused on putting one foot in front of the other she would be fine. Part of her wanted to turn around and go back through the door, no matter what the outcome was going to be, but it was her mother, her Queen, who had told her to go. Those were orders she couldn’t ignore. Another tear trickled down her cheek. She didn’t bother to wipe it away. It was hard to believe she was never going to see her mother again, or the rest of her family, and she would never get a chance to say goodbye.

Mira couldn’t stop herself from turning to look for the door. When she realised it wasn’t there she wasn’t sure how she’d felt. In a way she was grateful, because it meant she couldn’t go back, but at the same time she felt anger welling up inside her. All of her choices had been taken away by someone who had just destroyed her family and there was nothing she could do about it. Finally, once she had pushed away as much of the anger as she could, she started walking again, keeping her back to where the door had been.

The walkers Mira had talked to had told her about ‘demons’. That was how she knew what she was. Her mother had kept that from her and when Mira has asked why the answer had been one she should have known to expect: having the ability to walk through doors without any tattoos didn’t make her a bad person. Some people with the same ability had done things that walkers didn’t like, which was the reason they were called ‘demons’, but that didn’t make her a ‘demon’. While she walked she kept those words in her mind, because she was almost certain that the people who had appeared in her home were ‘demons’.

By the time Mira got to an edge of the forest the sun was beginning to rise, but her lack of knowledge meant she had no idea if sunrise on her new world was the same as it was on Raenarin. She looked around, hoping for a path to guide her, and found nothing. Sighing, she kept walking in what she hoped was a straight line. There had to be something somewhere, because all of the other worlds were inhabited, so all she had to do was keep going until she found it.

To keep herself occupied she thought about what she was going to do if she didn’t find a town before nightfall. Food was the first thing on the list, because she was beginning to feel hungry. If she had been on Raenarin she would have been able to feed herself with berries and roots, but she wasn’t, so she had no idea what was edible and what would poison her. She was happy she was beginning to warm up, thanks to the sun, even though being warm wasn’t going to keep her alive. Being the last remaining member of her family, who should be the witch Queen of Raenarin, so she was determined to survive.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.