Chapter 9
Exile to Earth

The girl relaxes slowly, setting the pen down with unnecessary care. This chapter has been an emotional up and down for her, but at last she thinks she understands. “You really did love him, Mother,” she whispers to the silence.

She had read her own father’s words saying that he didn’t know of that little child was his or not, but she knew. There was magic in her blood and for many years she had wondered where it had come from. And then she had read her father’s account of the mirror world and she had known. The magic had come from her real father, a man she had never met. She had wondered if she should hate him, if she should hate her mother for betraying the man she couldn’t help but think of as her father. But now she understands at least a little what drove them both.

And she understands too the strength of the love that held them together through pain and betrayal. She is startled to find tears gathering in her eyes. It is a kind of epiphany.

And then she sighs and rests her head on the desk. The sun is well up in the sky. She has written through the night and on into the day. With another deep sigh she gets slowly to her feet and stumbles tiredly down to her room. There is one last story to tell and the account will be finished.

The next night she lifts pen to paper and begins the final story.

“What I’ve written here is by no means complete. Years passed in which many things happened that I haven’t even mentioned. There were times of peace in plenty, but there was one source of turmoil that never went away. For during all the long years from the moment my father learned of his survival to the moment he was at last defeated, the demon Asmodeus never left our family in peace for long.”

The shadows of evening merged and flowed together around the hunched forms of tombstones both ancient and new. A last reddish lance of sunlight provided just enough illumination for the slender half-elven woman who stood staring sadly at a single stone, one of the smaller ones in the cemetery. It bore no inscription save the name “Ariana Lunaris.” She let out a soft sigh and turned to the two shorter figures who stood behind her.

“Let’s go,” she said simply. The smaller of the two, an apparently human girl of twelve or thirteen years, nodded in agreement. The other, a fresh-faced aerian who looked about eighteen or so jumped, and then visibly collected himself before also nodding agreement.

“Sorry, my mind was wandering. Yes, let’s get out of here.”

The half-elven woman smiled. “I would think that you, of all people, would find yourself at home here.”

The aerian laughed softly. “I suppose you might, Corinne. But truth be told I’ve never been fond of ceme…”

A soft whirr sounded and the aerian let out a grunt of surprise and pain as an arrow sprouted suddenly from his upper arm. Before the other two had even registered the sound, he was in motion, leaping over tombstones toward a deep shadow beneath one of the many trees planted throughout the cemetery. A shape darted out of the concealing blackness into the darkening twilight, the pursuing aerian easily able to make out the form of a stocky human male as he raced hot on the archer’s heels. Ahead the wall of the cemetery loomed, a solid stone barrier well over nine feet in height. The archer made a running jump, trying to grab the top of the wall, but he fell short.

His pursuer soon caught up with him, and the archer turned at bay, The white flash of his teeth as he grinned madly was startling in the dimness. The smaller man showed his own teeth in an angry snarl as he advanced on the cornered archer.

“Who sent you?”

The archer laughed, and the sound made the hair on his pursuer’s neck stand on end. His voice was filled with a manic excitement as he shouted, “You know who sent me! A child of hell like yourself should easily recognize a servant of hell like me! I am the tool of your destruction! I’ve sold my soul to the darkness and now I’ll go to meet him in hell!” His grin stretched even further and he laughed again as he added, “I know I’ll see you there soon, for when the great lord Asmodeus wants someone dead, they die! Even you, vampire!”

The aerian rushed close, trying to prevent what he knew would happen, but he wasn’t fast enough. The other man made a quick motion, his hand going from his pocket to his mouth and he swallowed. Then he grinned again and laughed until suddenly his laughter was cut off by a choking cough and he collapsed to the ground.