If it had not been for Benny, Alexei would have gotten the same treatment that she had caused me to give Bruce.

My power was already ready, I didn't even have to reach for it. The will to send one of my fireworks exploding out towards him was all that was necessary for the working to begin.

My time with the warden had been mine.

Sworn to guard me or not, the white haired man should not have been creeping along behind us and watching everything that had happened. The revelation of his presence was enough alone to make me second guess every word I had spoken and every thing I had done since I had woken up that morning.

"Why are you here? Go away!" I had shouted, my eyes still shining blue with my aura.

If the warden knew that I had a guard, one that was around no matter what I was doing, surely he had asked himself why. All it would take for him to dismiss his notions of me being the warden was for him to learn that Alexei had been assigned to guard me because I was a danger to myself and others.

If he had asked me about it, I would have had to lie, and no part of me wanted to do that.

If I had thrown a burst of my azure power at the white haired man, it wouldn't have made me feel any better.

Fortunately, Benny had called over to me from her place on Durath's back before my anger got the best of me.

"Mama! Mama!" She had yelled in her cute little voice and I had been powerless to ignore it.

I had groaned and spun on my heels away from Alexei and marched over the stony beach to where she and Durath sat by the waters edge.

"Why don't you call me Ire?" I had asked, trying my best to not let my anger spill out in Benny's direction.

Benny peered down at me and tilted her crystalline head in confusion. "Not Ire."

The heat that burned within me turned to a lamb of cold fear so quickly that it came with the same white flashes of being that being struck in my face would cause.

I snuck a panicked glance back at the warden, and found small relief at the sight of him talking to my guard.

"Shhh. How do you know that?" I whispered up to her, Durath's once again shifting faces watching me silently as I approached him.

Benny tilted her head in the opposite direction. "Don't know. Smell."

"I don't smell like Ire?" I asked, very nearly tilting my own head in confusion.

The little crystal creature huffed out a breath. She splayed her legs out in a frustrated movement and went belly first onto Durath's back.

Not a moment later, the familiar's eagle face spoke in its cavernous voice. "I DO NOT UNDERSTAND."

"What don't you understand?" I whispered, still terrified that the warden might hear.

The eagle did not stick around to answer my question.

"Ahh, I understand." The man face sighed as he looked down at me.

I stepped over one of the sphinx's massive claws and moved closer to its head. "What don't you understand?"

The lion met me with a fearsome scowl and a deep rumbling growl.

I almost took his scruff back in my grasp, but by the time I brought my aura to my palm, the eagle had returned.

"LADY BENEDICT CAN SENSE WHAT YOU ARE AS WELL AS WHAT YOU CAN BE." It called down to me.

I held my palms out in desperation. "Hey, shhh, talk quieter please."

"I CANNOT. I APOLOGIZE FOR MY INADEQUACY."

Before I could apologize to the eagle for saying something that had made him feel like he had needed to apologize, my eyes blurred as its face shifted again.

"She wishes for you to know that she can feel that you are hiding something with your power, do I have that right, Benny?" The man face asked back at the little crystal creature.

"Not Ire, Be Mama." Benny nodded in agreement, her belly still pressed against Durath's back.

The man face continued. "And, she has asked me to give you something from my hoard so that you may give it to someone she only knows as her."

"What? No. You don't have to give me anything. You should be mad at me for what I have done." I sighed, as the loss from my working took all of the strength out of my legs.

I sagged back and would have fallen to the grey stones beneath my feet if the massive familiar had not placed his paw behind me and caught me gently. The very next moment the lion returned. He snatched his paw away and I did fall to the stony beach beneath me.

"Mad? Mad? No, oh no. I am not mad. I am furious." The lion growled. "I await the day that I can punish you for the indecency you have subjected me to today."

My afterglow poured over me like sudden rain and all I could do at the lion's threat was let out a sad little laugh.

No matter what I did, punishment was all there was.

It was utterly impossible for me to do anything without getting into trouble or taking on some kind of debt. I could not go a day without doing something I shouldn't. Would it have really been that bad for me to accept that I had run out of time on Silkcradle? Would it have been that difficult to not use my power to force Durath to succumb to my will?

"DO NOT CRY. THERE WILL BE NO PUNISHMENT." The eagle tried to reassure me, but my tears had already begun to fall.

With Anna being an unknowable distance away, there was little I could besides waiting for it to pass

That was one thing that brought me some small relief. Completing Precept Seram's assignments and having to deal with my afterglow after each had beaten the knowledge into me that no matter how sad I felt, it would pass eventually.

Before enough time had passed for it to become that eventually, Benny appeared at my feet.

"No cry, mama. For her." She said as she pressed her cold crystalline snout against my hand. She did not charm me, or her charm could not be felt through my after glow, I was not sure which, but I was glad she had come to comfort me.

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Durath raised his paw from beside me and turned its pad up to the sunny sky. "Would you mind telling me who her is? I trust little Benny in saying that she is worth a part of my hoard, but I would at least like to know who will be receiving it."

"She's really pretty and smart. Her hair is dark and she likes to drink wine. She asked me to bring her something back, but it's kind of turned into me taking whatever I can." I whispered through my tears and held up the strange collection of things I had gathered.

The lion returned.

I still did not like the lion.

"A thief as well, you shall-"

The eagle cut the lion off. "WHAT IS HER NAME?"

"Anna." I sniffled. Talking about her had made me start to think about her, and though I missed her terribly, those thoughts had lessened the sorrow I felt from my afterglow.

"Hmmm, see to it that she receives this as well. I could not stand it if you returned to her with a poor impression of me." At his words, streams of sand appeared from nowhere just like my white haired guard had.

They coalesced above Durath's paw and began to form into something, but I had to look away. The scars on my arms and legs itched at the memories that the familiar's sand had brought back to the front of my mind.

I kept my eyes closed until the stomach turning grind ended. When it did, I turned back to find that the gift the sphinx had summoned was a small golden cup.

The sight of the sun glimmering off of it was almost as dazzling as Benny was. It had a thin stem that was engraved with twisting patterns and the cup itself was littered with shining black stones that were so flawless that they looked like drops of collected shadow.

"My lady and I found much treasure in our time. This chalice may not prove to be as sentimental as your quills, feather, or stone, but when your Anna drinks her wine from it, know that she is the first in a thousand years to put it to her lips." Durath's man face said as he pinched the cup between two of his claws and placed it gently in my lap.

I did not have the heart to tell him that Anna was more of a drink from the bottle girl than she was a sip from a cup lady, but I appreciated the kindness nonetheless.

"Thank you, Master Durath. She will be very grateful." I said, enjoying the feeling of the chalices carved pattern as I took it into my empty hand.

Benny snuffled at my other, evidently to get my attention. "Benny swim. Bye mama. See you later."

A smile broke through the last of my afterglow as I watched her start to climb back up Durath's paw. "You know how to swim?"

She was made of crystal. I had arms, legs, and had spent a significant amount of my life floating in water. It would be slightly embarrassing if she knew how and I did not.

"No, she does not," The lion growled in response, his cat eyes still staring at me with obvious anger. "Fortunately for her, she has very large friends."

The sphinx placed the little crystal creature back on his back and stood. He, and in turn, Benny, left me then, each stone shaking step he took into the ocean leaving an impression that the water rushed into to fill.

"Bye, mama!" Benny called back to me as they sank lower and lower from the coast.

"Goodbye, Benny! Goodbye, Durath." I called and waved in return.

"GOODBYE FRIEND OF MORTWYN." Said the eagle. In a wash of white seafoam, the sphinx stopped just deep enough in the water for the waves to wash over its back thinly. Benny broke into a mad dash through them, splashing and jumping all around in what looked like joy incarnate.

My smile widening at the sight, I stood to see something very strange happening between the warden and my guard.

His white sword drawn and pressed against the warden's outstretched palm, Alexei drew his blade back and cut open the warden's hand.

"Hey!" I shouted, collecting my things into the chalice and running over to where the attack was happening. Before I could reach them, Alexei pressed his own hand against the bloody edge of his sword and caused the same harm to himself.

The two men clasped their cut open hands and shook them once, twice, three times by the time I had reached them.

"What was that? Why did you hurt him." I shouted at Alexei with my finger pointed at him.

"Us old enclave men have all kinds of strange things we do," The warden answered for my guard as he waved for me to follow him towards the sphinxless cave. "Everything is settled now, we've got to hurry."

The very strange thing that had just happened between the two men already over and evidently unimportant, I followed after him.

Alexei had begun to walk back in the direction we had come and the realization that he was truly leaving me alone settled over me. I didn't know if I should be relieved or worried, but the warden did not give me much of a chance to think about it.

Almost too fast for me to keep up, the warden crossed into the cave and it grew darker and darker with every stumbling step I took after him.

I ran straight into his back when he stopped suddenly and nearly lost my grip on Anna's gifts.

"Take this," He said as he lit a burner, and then lit a second off the first. "Don't smoke it, but keep it close to you, this will go a lot smoother if you smell like me."

I did as he asked and took the burner between my thumb and forefinger. "What did you say to Alexei to get him to leave?"

What the two men had said to one another was a mystery to me, but I hoped with every part of myself that the warden had not learned of the terrible things I had done.

"All I did was make him a promise. Like what people do with their pinkies, only a little more serious," The warden answered as he stepped forward and lowered himself through the cave floor. "Watch your step, but I'll go down first in case you fall. It's gonna get pretty dark pretty fast."

Framed with long boards of thick wood, a hole had been dug out at the bottom of the cave, and a wooden ladder led down into darkness that was so thick that it looked solid. The warden disappeared into it, only the smoldering end of his burner left to prove to me that he was still there at all.

After a long time waiting, he called up to me. "Alright, come on down. Take your time. We are in a hurry, but there is no need to rush this."

I had climbed the walls of the manor in Erosette more times than I could remember. With monstrous beasts nipping at my heels, I had climbed through razor sharp briars and up a rotting tree with a broken hand. I had climbed down an unimaginably large tree in the shadow of a serpent that would put the skeleton in Lun's hall of conquest to shame.

I had also tripped over my own feet more times than I could count and had earned so many bruises from running into the things that it was surprising my whole body was not purple.

All it took was three steps down the wooden ladder for Anna's gifts to slip in my hand.

I dropped the burner first, and the darkness swallowed the trail of orange light like a ravenous beast.

Second, the chalice and all that was held within it fell from my hands. I jerked to catch it, and did successfully, but my balance was too far gone. I lost my grip and fell straight down into the darkness with a panicked shout.

The very next moment, the warden caught me and spun around to stop my momentum.

"Good thing I came down first." He said with a laugh that dispelled any trace of the fear that had hollowed out my stomach.

I did not just feel safe, I knew I was, and I felt a small twinge of sadness because I knew that my time with the bearded man was coming to an end.

"If you break a pinky promise, your pinky gets broken. What did you promise Alexei and what happens if you break it?" I asked as he put me down and I picked up the fallen burner from the cold stone of the ground.

The temperature had dropped significantly from what it had been above us, and I suddenly found myself missing the warmth of my uniform.

"Well," the warden began, almost completely unseeable with how dark it was. "The promise was to keep you safe."

A sound echoed from somewhere in the darkness. Like the sound of someone running barefoot, it slapped along the rocky walls, but there were far too many footfalls for it to be a person. The closer and faster they grew, the harder my aura pressed against my palm in fear of what was coming towards us.

"If I break it," the warden continued as he took a small step over and placed himself in front of me. "And something happens to you, Alexei is entitled to take my life as punishment."

"Thats. . ." I trailed off as the sound reached us and something rough dragged against the side of my leg faster than I could see.

"Bru, this is a friend, not food. Do you understand?" The warden called into the dark.

The voice of a giggling girl came from behind me and sent a violent chill up my spine.

"If that is true, Morty. Then why does she smell so delicious?"

The rough feeling scraped against my leg once again. Biting my tongue so as not to scream, I looked down to see the burner I held reflecting in a solid black eye that looked at me like Sam would a bird.

It spoke to me as it revealed its rows of knife-like teeth. "Hello, little morsel. Which of your arms do you like the least?

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