Chapter 3

The Rain subsided and went into a drizzle before it completely stopped falling to the earth. The dark blue clouds cleared and it became brighter. On the horizon appeared some first chromastars, whose pale glow slowly became stronger. The treetops allowed the sparkle in some places into the dense forest. The night was over and morning was dawning.

Some birds chirped happily, full of anticipation for the warm glow of the chroma stars, after a cold, rainy night. Only an exhausted panting and snorting disturbed the harmony of nature. The sound of hooves on the wet forest floor scared away some animals that were looking for food.

Cheyenne had spent the whole night on the back of her horse, fleeing from her hunters. Adocaz had been faithfully by her side all this time, even though he was now so exhausted from all the running that he could hardly breathe and stumbled with every second step. Falconheart was not much different. It had taken a long time before they could finally leave their pursuers behind, but now they seemed out of danger. At least for now. The girl parried the stallion from the gallop into the walk. The brown horse made his neck long and gasped for air. From time to time it coughed. The body of the big four-legged friend trembled and his legs threatened to buckle at any moment. The fairy wolf also slowed down, lowered his head and stuck out his pink tongue. Staggering, he put one paw in front of the other, tried not to stumble, or even to fall.

Cheyenne leaned on her mount’s wet neck and looked blankly at the wound on her right palm. Her eyes burned from the many tears she had shed and so she closed them. The girl was tired. She would love to fall asleep and never wake up. She had lost everything that was important to her; Her grandmother, her grandfather, she didn’t even know if Xaver was okay or if he could escape the knights and after last night she couldn’t go back home. For some reason incomprehensible to her, the knights seemed to want to kill her. If she were to go back to the undercity, all the inhabitants there would be in danger, because the knights seemed to stop at nothing and anyone who stood in their way would probably have forfeited his life. Cheyenne had seen that with her grandparents. The memories of the previous night came back to her mind, she saw in her mind’s eye again her beloved grandparents dying right in front of her, in an agonizing way. Those had been the most horrible minutes of her life.  The girl remembered the words of the knight in golden armor. 

Well, at least you fell nicely into our trap. Your grandparents have also proven to be a wonderful bait. Haha.

Cheyenne couldn’t believe all this. What was suddenly wrong with the world? Yesterday everything had been so beautiful and in order… and now all of a sudden such terrible things happened? Why is all this happening… Why do they want to kill me and have my crystal? Why did my grandparents have to die? Why didn’t I realize it was a trap? Could I have done something differently… change something? If I … hadn’t been unreasonable, they might still be alive… She blamed herself for everything.

She must have done something to incite the knights, but with the best will in the world she didn’t know what. Hopefully Xaver is doing well… He must have escaped them, he must… If the crystal is so important to them, then they should have it, but leave him alone… It’s anyway… just a necklace that my mother gave me for my birth…  For as long as she could remember, she always wore this black pendant around her neck. Her grandparents had told her that the last thing her mother had done before she died after giving birth was to put this crystal on her baby. Since then, Cheyenne was told, she had never taken off the necklace, although in the beginning she always had to put the jewel twice around her neck because it was so long. Over time, the girl grew taller and was able to wear the crystal normally. What do they find in this chain? I… I just don’t understand all this…  It’s just a crystal pendant… You can even buy them cheaply on the market…

Cheyenne racked her brain, hoping to distract herself from her grief. But it wasn’t long before she got a headache, she became dizzy, and the events of the previous night caught up with her again.

The glow of the chroma stars, which sparkled between the treetops, became stronger. Slowly but steadily, it became warmer and the morning glow had a calming effect on the sad girl. Her wet hair and dress were slowly dried, as was the fur of the two four-legged friends she was traveling with. Cheyenne straightened up to see where they were. But they were in the middle of the forests of Luminastrelle and these were known to extend over most of the continent. So they wandered around completely disoriented. Cheyenne had never been here before, she didn’t even know if there was a village nearby, if anything was nearby, had no idea where she was, and even if they found a village or a town, she wouldn’t even have money to buy food and drink for herself and her two companions. She had never been so far from home. The situation seemed hopeless and the girl thought she could not be more desperate than she already was, but she seemed to be wrong.

Just when she thought it really couldn’t get any worse, she heard a growl. It definitely didn’t come from Adocaz. Falconheart laid his ears back completely flat, pulled his head upwards and stopped in shock. The fairy wolf at his side put up his neck fur, raised his tail and sensors and also began to growl threateningly. As if spellbound, he stared in the direction from which the sound came. There was a rustling bush there. Adocaz moved slowly towards it, but Cheyenne whispered an order to him. “Stop, maybe it will leave us alone if we just go on and pretend we didn’t notice.” As soon as she uttered the words, she also knew that this would certainly not be the case. 

Now at last she was allowed to see the healing spell; Glaczio closed his eyes and on the ground at his feet appeared a white magic circle, which turned and from the middle of which a kind of white fire emerged. It traveled over the young man’s body to Cheyenne’s wound, where it burned briefly, coldly, and a little painfully. Something with the color white again? In the end, it’s not a trademark of the knights, or why do I see it here again? This white fire looks just like the white mist that surrounded the wolf that attacked Adocaz earlier… Is this even fog or fire?  I should ask Glaczio…  He certainly knows that.  “Um, Glaczio? How exactly do these healing spells work and what kind of white fog is it?” The young man just took Cheyenne’s hands and cast the healing spell there as well. Her wounds had completely healed and disappeared as if they had never been there. She thanked him and then he explained to her what she wanted to know. “I use a healing spell to transform Lumenium from the environment into the body’s own and then let it flow into the bodies of the wounded. So the body’s own Lumenium does not have to be produced in your body to heal the wound, because I provide it to it and an immediate wound healing occurs. The ‘white fog,’ as you call it, is Lumenium, which I just sourced from earth.”  Lumenium? What’s that?  Cheyenne had never heard this word before, but it seemed to be represented in nature. That was enough reason to learn more about it. “What is Lumenium? And why is it white? I thought this color didn’t exist in nature and it was artificially produced?” Glaczio tilted his head slightly and raised an eyebrow slightly. “You… don’t know what Lumenium is? Didn’t pay attention to geography at school, eh? Lumenium is one of the two forces, or energies, that keep this world alive. All of Terrenox Libertia is built on these two. All living beings and objects are made of this energy. The Lumenium is responsible for the shape of something, so for example, your body is made of this force, or a tree, or a sword. Each physical form is made of Lumenium. The second force, Umbraurore, is responsible for all life. It forms our souls and our will to live, ensures that trees and plants grow and if someone has an enormous amount of Umbraurore in his body, he is able to work elemental magic. So, as an example, I can think of only one thing that you might know; Surely you’ve ever seen those street performers creating fireballs and making them dance in the air? These fireballs arise from their body’s own environment. Lumenium is white in its unphysical form until it takes the form of something, and Umbraurore, if not transformed into magic, is black. I hope I was able to answer your question.” He winked at the stunned  Cheyenne. She had not expected so much knowledge. In addition, Glaczio had explained it in such a way that she really understood it. The reason for her ignorance was probably because she had never attended school and her grandparents had taught her everything so far, but, it seemed, they hadn’t known everything either. But he couldn’t know that and the girl didn’t want to tell him yet. She already felt quite ignorant.

Cheyenne was grateful that he had explained this to her. Maybe she would ask the young man later what it was about this Lumenium wolf she had seen. He would certainly know this too. In the twinkling of an eye, Glaczio also healed the injuries of Cheyenne’s two four-legged friends and sat down next to her again on the stairs. Now he surely wanted for her to keep her promise and tell him what had happened. She was exactly right in her guess. “So, pretty angel. Then tell me what happened to you. You have my full attention, sweetie.”

Cheyenne closed her eyes briefly to think about how she would begin the story. Then she came up with an approach and lowered her gaze until she saw only her feet. “So… A promise is a promise, I’ll tell you everything that happened to me last night, but… it’s not so nice and forgive me if I have to take a break from speaking from time to time to collect myself again… Well, then I’ll start now. Actually, yesterday everything was as usual, I got up, helped my grandmother a bit in the household, I lived with my grandparents until yesterday, then met briefly with my best friend Xaver and then rode out with my horse, it’s called Falconheart, by the way. Adocaz, my fairy wolf, came along as always. I wanted to be back in the afternoon to help grandfather at the market. Until then, I rode to my favorite place and unfortunately fell asleep there. Adocaz woke me up at some point, but there were almost no chromastars left in the sky, so I had overslept and the market was certainly already over. I thought to myself that grandfather would surely be angry with me and would already have prepared a moral sermon, because of being late, when I rode home as quickly as possible. When I arrived home it was almost dark and it started to rain. I had a bad feeling because my neighbor looked at me so strangely. When the door was open and there were traces of blood in the apartment, I thought my grandparents were dead. But nowhere were their bodies to be found and I could have imagined right away that the knights were there and wanted to collect taxes, but we had no money to pay them. A few weeks ago there was a storm that had destroyed most of our harvest and grandfather could no longer earn much on the market with the rest of it. But I was so confused at that moment that I couldn’t think clearly. Luckily, Xaver came and stood by me. We then asked my neighbor Rosi if she had seen something, of course she had noticed something, because my grandmother is … had been her best friend. Anyway, she said that my grandparents had been taken to the laboratory near the capital, gave me a small scroll that my grandmother had entrusted to her and told Rosi to give it to me. But I didn’t really care about the paper at that moment, I rode to the laboratory to free my grandparents, Xaver accompanied me. The building was of course guarded and so we had difficulties getting inside. Two out of three guards could be distracted by Adocaz, but the third caught me and gave me the wounds you just healed. Thanks again for that. If Xaver hadn’t been there and took out one on the guards with his sword, I would be dead now. Then we got into the building, through his cleverness and … actually, I should have noticed something, because there was no one to see in the whole complex. Normally, it would have been teeming with explorers and knights. But I suspected that they were all asleep, after all, it was night, and I didn’t think about it any further. Then we came to this horrible research room, where a researcher made an announcement, coincidentally exactly with the whereabouts of my grandparents. It should have seemed weird to me, but I just ran to my grandparents and was happy to see them alive…” Cheyenne paused, for she trembled again as she had to recall the terrible events she wanted to repress. She breathed deeply in and out, tried to collect herself and suppressed her tears, because she did not want to start crying in front of Glaczio. Then she continued. “Suddenly, a knight in golden armor came… He had six other knights with him. I think he was a higher-ranking knight, he also had a cloak. And a funny haircut… Without introducing himself, he had his men gathered around me, Xaver and my grandparents and started talking crazy stuff. He said I was stupid to wear my necklace with a black crystal attached to it all the time. Then he said that my grandparents hadn’t told me something, and that he had only used them as bait to set a trap for me. My grandfather was so outraged that he insulted the golden knight… and… He then has… given the order to two of his men… that they should… k-kill my grandfather… and they did exactly that…” Cheyenne swallowed and paused again. Now she could no longer hold back the tears and they rolled down her cheeks. The girl wiped them away with her hand, sobbed and tried to be strong. She closed her eyes and continued talking. “Yeah and then… then… my grandmother died next to me as a result of some stupid experiment… She said something about how I was the last hope for the world or something…  From then on, I can only vaguely remember the things that happened afterwards. Somehow Adocaz was suddenly there and destroyed with his magic the enclosure grid where my grandparents were imprisoned and Xaver called our horses and dragged me to them, helped me on Falconheart and then we fled into the forest. But the knights followed us and Xaver said that if we split up, it would be easier to leave them behind. And because they were obviously after me and my crystal, he needed my chain so that they really followed him. Then the six knights split up and I was on the run all night until we finally left them behind. They had these fast white horses, but luckily Falconheart is also an incredibly fast horse, I rescued him from the lab a few years ago. He was to die there because of an experiment that, as so often, had gone wrong and the knights could not use him as a riding horse. Xaver’s horse, Shiva, is also such a case. But… I just don’t understand all this… Why would anyone set a trap for me? For what? I never got into debt. Now I can’t even go home and don’t know where Xaver is. And why does anyone want my necklace, which my mother gave me for my birth? By the way, mother died at birth and I never met my father, I know absolutely nothing about him. In case you want to know that too.” Cheyenne looked up at the sky and looked at some of the colorful clouds and chroma stars among the treetops. They were calming and the girl was able to stop crying.