England, West Coast
Devonshire, Dartmoor
St. George, house of the Jäger family
5 November 1898, 9:12 p.m.

"Benjamin." came Kyle's voice out of the blue with a harshness between the other two that made the doctor turn his head in alarm. The mage was still standing beside the girl's bed. The little light that fell through the open door into the interior of the child's room drew a shadow play of dark spots in the features of his face and his cloak distorted his shadow on the wall above the bed. The play between light and shadow, with the expression emblazoned on it, made Kyle's facial expression seem even more opaque and severe.

Kyle's shadowy figure cast a dark stain on a small spruce nightstand that stood there beside the bed on thin legs. One had probably been broken once because it had been repaired with a slightly different coloured wood. The little girl had painted the replaced and broken area with lots of colourful paint, put flowers on it and painted green vines twined around the leg, winding upwards. Although it could have been simply glued, the child had gone to a lot of trouble to paint over the crack with something beautiful and colourful. Dr Archer wondered for a second if she had done it because she had somehow recognised something of herself in the damaged piece of furniture and therefore wanted to give it special care. How deep-set was the child's hurt, so obviously beyond the burn on her face? What desperation for a more beautiful world lay behind all those images of sunshine and wildflowers?

But Kyle grabbed his attention before he could continue the thought. The mage for he rustlingly pulled out a crumpled and stained paper from the open drawer. A small wooden spinning top rolled to one side and bumped against the barriers of his tiny, angular world. Kyle's fingers on his right hand trembled again and if the doctor had had more time, he would have worried more extensively about the latter's health too. As it was, however, he took the papers and looked at the pictures that drew the disturbing deathly bleach on Kyle's face.

There were childish scribbles on the yellowish paper. There were five or six of them, some simply colourful and without any particular flare. The forest could be seen in each of the little works of art. Brown stripes with green jags painted the image of the forest, and yellow sun or blue strokes drew rain and sunshine. But that was not what made the mage's blood run cold. Kyle showed the doctor one of the pictures, also emblazoned with numerous trees. A cave placed its darkness in the middle of the picture like a wide open mouth. A little further down, however, the childlike, carefree scrawl showed what made both men's hearts slip into their toes: a hulking black figure towering over the little girl to his right, holding her hand. Since it was the drawing of a child, too little could be made out accordingly. But what made Kyle's heartbeat race, and now Dr Archer's chest vibrates under the violent beating, was the red line that had been drawn on the head of this figure.

"A flame... or a feather..." the doctor murmured and Kyle nodded. He opened and closed his right-hand several times as if he could dispel the trembling with it. "I saw a figure like that in the forest before I came across the dead animals. And also at the graveyard on the edge of the forest." Kyle said, wrinkling his nose in surging annoyance. "I thought it was just my imagination. A delusion due to my strained nerves." He confessed meekly and pressed.

"Before I found you in the forest, I also thought I saw something like that standing very close to you." Dr Archer now remembered. It was as if they were pulling something buried under all the other events out of the bottom drawer of their memory. Too many other clues and suspicions had easily displaced these memories that seemed so unimportant. Now they were going to pull their hair out! Viktor had also mentioned someone at the edge of the pond. They had assumed that it had been Elly or the old woman. Now, however, it all frighteningly made more sense.

One was always smarter in hindsight. Then, when the mind finally put all the pieces of the puzzle together and the whole picture wanted to emerge. But no fallibility of human nature in this world changed the fact that they both now felt like the biggest fools. Their hunch had been right all along: Someone or something was helping the girl. Or was solely responsible for all these terrible murders?

Dr Archer gripped the paper tighter. It crumpled in place and crackled plaintively under the firm grip as he bridged the distance to the old woman with muffled steps. The doctor's coat wrinkled and opened over the plank floor of old wood, which creaked under his weight like a feathery tail of cloth.

"Who or what is this?" he showed the old woman the piece of paper and pointed purposefully at the figure in black.

Ms Jäger stared in blank horror and perplexity at the child's drawing and some more colour drained from her features as well. So much so that Dr Archer almost worried it would be too much for the old woman's heart. "I-I don't know." she stammered, her eyes resting on the paper. Her body was sweating and shaking, as if after escaping a nightmare that had rushed her through the night. She reached out and felt for the picture as if she needed to make sure that this was not all just a nightmare. The pulse of fear throbbed hastily against her neck beneath the thin skin. She had never believed that Anna could simply run away in the night! 

And now these men discovered the images of a strange man. Her eyes hurriedly ran over the figure in the picture. "She never told me anything about a stranger." she breathed softly and brittly.

"I see." the doctor exchanged a glance with the mage. "We need to find her." Dr Archer then continued, folding up the paper to shove into his coat pocket. You never knew if they wouldn't still need it.

"Do you have any idea where she might have gone?" asked Kyle, trying to ignore his damp palms. Kyle couldn't explain what it was. But there was a dark foreboding in his gut, sprinkling ice crystals in his blood.

The old woman looked at the other pictures of her granddaughter. They were typical children's pictures. None of the others showed the bizarre figure. She tried to decipher somehow where this place and Anna could be from the colourful scribbles. "There is a part of the forest that the villagers avoid." the old lady finally said hesitantly and put her hands flat on the wood, intending to stand up. Kyle came to her side this time, holding out his hand and helping the aged lady to get to her feet.

"If you cross the forest from our cottage, you will reach Dyowl's Hollow. The villagers say it's a cursed place." the old woman wrung her hands uneasily. "No one from St. George goes there. Everyone is too scared. We sometimes went to collect wood near that place. When the children from the village have been particularly nasty to Anna again, she sometimes escapes in that direction. That alone is usually enough for the children to leave her alone. They don't dare go to that place..." her voice broke and the old woman cleared her throat with difficulty. Kyle wondered how bad the children and people from the village must have been too little Anna just because of her disfigurement that something like this could happen. What had the child gotten herself into?

"Dyowl's Hollow is a small hollow where there are some natural caves. Many of them are probably just wrong ways or dead ends. But I've never taken a closer look at them..." she confessed a little more quietly. "We also never go near the hollow or into the caves. I have strictly forbidden Anna to do so. Not just because it's dangerous. It... doesn't feel good there."

'It doesn't feel good there,' she said. Kyle thought about her words. Was it the intuition of a woman with special powers? The same intuition that had warned him about Elly's spell? Or simply that kind of female intuition of which the sex could proudly boast? Or was it the same oppressive feeling he had felt when he had flown over the forest?

"Then we'll look there first," Dr Archer then said in a firm voice. "Describe the way there in as much detail as you can. Also what obstacles might await us or what landmarks there are." He cast a casual glance at the window where the gloom of night shrouded the forest in blackness. "And... would you have two lanterns to give us?"

The old lady's head jerked up and her posture tightened with effort, but to little avail. Even though she hunched her shoulders a little higher and there was a flash of will in her eyes, her body shortly sank back into the exhausted, life-scarred posture possessed by a woman of her age. "I'll come with you." the old woman said hurriedly, but Dr Archer immediately raised her hand in refusal.

"No way. It's far too dangerous," he said sternly and Kyle immediately agreed with Dr Archer. 

"We understand that you are worried, Mrs. Jäger. But we don't know what we'll find there. Besides, you have to stay here in case she comes back." he tried to appeal to the old woman's reason. "Besides, YOU are all the child has left too. You should not put yourself in danger." Whatever was lurking out there, they couldn't let Anna or Mrs Jäger get their hands on it! There had already been enough victims.

And now the girl was all alone in the darkness of the forest. That thought sent dread through all their limbs and nausea through their stomachs. Kyle would never have admitted that tenacious threads of fear mingled with his sensations. But now it was time to be brave. And even though the mage was no stranger to fear, so far he had always taken the next step anyway.

"What... will you do with her when you find Anna?" asked the voice of a worried grandmother. People were dead and the black shadow of a dark future hovered over their homes, already taken by previous blows of fate. Debilitated, the woman sank onto the bed of her beloved granddaughter and the soft creaking of the bed sounded like a cry for compassion and help that dared not rise to the surface from within her. In her whole posture, her eyes and her lips quivering with revealed grief, there was the deep love of a grandmother.

You are all alone.

Kyle felt the sting that drove under his oh-so-shimmering armour of arrogance and dug into his chest so clearly that he jerked to take sharper, deeper breaths. His fingers trembled more violently, quivering under the wave of emotion that momentarily crushed any clear thought. Inside him, locked-away terrors of his memories rattled the closed doors. Kyle blinked, then pulled the chains taut again. His past must not be allowed to bring him down here. A chill ran down his body anyway, making him shiver once underneath, and then he started to move.

The young mage crouched down in front of the woman and reached for her old hands. He squeezed them briefly and gently as if to give her a little encouragement. His left hand, hidden under his flowing cloak, gripped the wand so tightly that it hurt - but at the moment he needed it to stop the trembling in his right hand and his voice. He needed to sound sure of what he was saying.

"When we find her, we'll bring her here. And then we'll talk to each other. We know people who will help you and Anna and take care of everything." He said a little more gently. "They won't harm her," he promised, though the end that would be out of his hands.

A sob forced its way up the woman's throat and the more she tried to hold back the rising tears, the more unrestrained her body trembled. Sometimes it didn't help to suppress emotions - they broke through the barriers and yet inevitably shook the whole world.

"Please... please find my Anna." the old woman pleaded so heartbreakingly that Kyle's shoulders slumped as well. Her fingers reached for his jacket and rumpled the solid fabric. Immediately, the mage stiffened in alarm. This time, however, Kyle didn't worry about wrinkles. He placed his hand over the woman in an agitated manner. He squeezed it briefly but gently, but then carefully released it from its cramped position around the noble fabric of his waistcoat. 

"We are doing everything we can, Mrs Jäger," the doctor said in a firm voice. They could not waste any more time. With every minute that passed, Anna's lead grew. Especially since they didn't know their way around the forest. Kyle felt Dr Archer's probing gaze on him. Despite the tension in the air, all the crackling flashpoints around the black powder of a climax, he remained calm and radiated complete assurance. The doctor's voice did not rise, and with that alone seemed to ease the fears that thickened hearts and clear thoughts like tough tar. Benjamin was the kind of person who could make one feel safer with his presence, diverting uncertain feelings like a stream into a safe riverbed.

As they accepted the lanterns from the old lady, pulling their coats tighter, the old woman's only hope resting on their shoulders, Kyle felt a strange kind of courage seep into his limbs. The kind that spurred one to act with zeal and made one realise the responsibility that life or death was in one's own hands.

The Seeker still could not believe what had become of this mission that seemed so harmless at the beginning, all the thoughts of superstition and coincidence: an ever-tightening circle of horrors and dark secrets. Now their path led them into the dark forest against an unknown enemy, and it would become clear who and what was really behind the shadow of death that held this place firmly in its grip. In his chest, trepidation wrestled with action as they took the first steps into the cracking undergrowth of the forest. 

A few steps only, then the dense green of the numerous first closed behind them, like a wall of sinister minions. The time had come:

The decisive moment, whether after this night they would fall asleep themselves in wooden boxes under cold earth, or return successfully and above all unharmed to London.