Wish-Granting

     It was a sister's warning, but the words reminded Skyleur that whatever she had once known about magic, whatever power she used to wield, was lost to her. It had been since her transformation into a star. She didn't know whether that was part of the magic of the Lupe's potion--she didn't think it was--or the time she'd spent as a star, or even time itself eroding her memory of how to do those things, but when Eviamnora uttered that last warning and watched Skyleur step out into the night, the Aisha was acutely aware that she had little defense against the supernatural threats that lurked in the Woods.

     She had Crealiana's Lightmite to dispel some of the darkness, and she'd become stronger since she returned to Neopia--Eviamnora's adventuring kit, slung over her back, included a couple of weapons the Poogle pilfered from their other sister's stash, and though they were right on top, Skyleur hoped very much she wouldn't have to touch them--but none of that felt like it was enough. Not against the kinds of things that used to be hidden in her tower.

     Skyleur glanced back at her home, lit up against the dim street and dark night, whispered a promise that she'd come home, and followed her map into the Woods.

     Having lived in the relative safety of the inhabited parts of the Haunted Woods--the shops and residential streets, the parts that were mapped and easy for travelers to reach--had pushed the knowledge of how dangerous the deep woods truly were to the dark recesses of Skyleur's awareness until she was out there, swallowed up by the darkness except for the soft yellow glow of a single Lightmite.

     Ghosts inhabited the trees here. They wriggled the roots like the fingers and toes they no longer had, making the ground roil, and threatening to trip Skyleur with every step she took. They spoke to each other, their voices the voice of the groaning wind, and whenever she turned her head, she thought she saw, out of the corner of her eye, a misty appendage reaching out from a trunk to ensnare her.

     Small, dark things darted between the trees too, some of them skittering across the ground, some of them fluttering through the air. Spyders, Skyleur tried to reassure herself. Just wild Spyders or Batterflys, Grembles or Bat Boys. What else could it be?

     Meepits, she recalled. The largest colony of scheming, wild Meepits in the world dwelled in the Haunted Woods, and if--

     Skyleur shook herself. Meepits or Grembles or Spyders, the things moving through the shadows were almost certainly wild petpets, and there wasn't much harm a wild Petpet could to do her if it accosted her in the woods. A swarm of Meepits might be troublesome, and if she got caught up in their schemes... But their schemes hardly ever included lone travelers through the woods.

     It was the ghosts she had to worry about, and other Neopets. Her reason for being this deep in the woods so late at night was a pure one--if she'd left during the day, she'd have to explain where she was going to her whole family, and she wasn't ready for that yet--but any others she encountered--

     Skyleur stopped.

     She stood under the boughs of a Bent Tree and listened to her thoughts, really listened to them, for the first time since she'd become a star, at least. Maybe ever.

     This is what Eviamnora meant about different sides to the same story. If she'd come across another Neopet in the woods, she would have been wary of them. Extraordinarily wary. They could be travelers just like she was, but if she didn't know what their intentions were, she would have assumed they were up to no good--scrounging around for mushrooms or other regents for a mysterious master, laying in wait to rob passersby, meeting with a partner in crime where no one was likely to overhear.

     The revelation bolstered her.

     She knew what her intentions had been in the tower. She'd been questing after knowledge, nothing more.

     She hadn't found anything like that. The things that had come to her tower and come there after they'd already been used for terrible things--potions that were hideously transformative, spells that caused sickness or brought bad fortune, puzzles that hid the locations of evil artifacts or the keys to the prisons were the villains of Neopia's early history were bound. She always hoped she'd find another use for those things, a scrap of an incantation she could repurpose, or something to add to those wretched potions to make them do different things.

     Nicarina had understood that. The tower guards had understood it too. But from the outside...

     From the outside, it could well look like a sorceress had locked herself up in the tower to tinker with some of the darkest things in Neopia.

     That wasn't her intention, she didn't--

     Skyleur shivered.

     Maybe she had crossed the line once or twice. Experiments she never should have performed. Neopets she never should have used as test subjects--even though she'd asked their permission first, explained the possible consequences.

     Hadn't she? Explained the consequences?

     A ghostly wing brushed her cheek and Skyleur jumped.

     A memory returned to her, painfully sharp. A memory of Nicarina, before she'd been turned Relic, flying up and down the tower's stairs.

     Nicarina, Skyleur's first friend in the tower. Her confidante.

     It happened almost a year before the siege. The Korbat had volunteered to try the potion, meant to enhance endurance, first. It'd been brewed from a thin morphing potion base, infused with rare herbs from the tower stores, and finished with a touch of life-draining magic in the hope that it would allow whoever consumed it, at least for a short time, to absorb health from their enemies. Skyleur knew the exact ratio of ingredients would be essential for the elixir to work the way she intended, but there was that splash, a drop of morphing potion base that she hoped had splashed outside the cauldron and not in it...

     She hadn't thrown the potion out. The herbs she'd put into it would take months of travel and a terrible expense to gather again, and the tower couldn't afford the expense. Not without something to show for it.

     She remembered her conversation with Nicarina in painful detail too:

     Is it safe?

     Nothing experimental is ever perfectly safe.

     Would you drink it?

     I don't have any real use for it--I stay here in the library, in the laboratory. Nothing worth that extra endurance happens here, but you and the others go out and gather things, collect the tools we use here. It's useful for you. If it works, I'll make more. As many more as I can. Enough for all of you.

     Nicarina had trusted her.

     The words echoed through Skyleur's mind.

     Nicarina had trusted her, and even when she asked--is it safe, would you drink it?--Skyleur had sidestepped the question, had concealed her concerns, buried her doubts.

     The potion turned Nicarina to stone. She could still move around the tower, but she couldn't fly up and down the stairs the way she loved to do before.

     Never once had the Korbat ever complained about the outcome. She'd adjusted as best she could, but the day Skyleur stood in their meeting room at the top of the tower and resolved to open the Scroll of the Dark Star to break the siege surrounding them...she'd seemed almost solid. Almost entirely stone.

     The light that used to fill the Korbat's eyes wasn't there that day. Skyleur thought it was because of the siege--they were all tired--but looking back, she thought the light had faded before that.

     I wish I could set that right, Skyleur thought. Go back in time and tell Nicarina everything before she swallowed the potion down in one gulp.

     She wondered again what had become of the tower. Was Nicarina still out there somewhere in the world, or was she--

     Skyleur looked to the ghost-inhabited trees around her, and shivered. She'd long wondered what came first, the trees or the ghosts, and if the land where her tower once stood had been subsumed into the Haunted Woods...

     Standing for a long time in the biting cold beneath that Bent Tree, Skyleur working through the old memories and processing the feelings they stirred up in her.

     Eviamnora was right. This was painful.

     But there was something freeing in it too. A small weight lifted from the Aisha's shoulders. She'd done wrong by her oldest and best friend, but she could see that now. She wasn't the same Neopet anymore, and if she had a chance, she'd fix it. She didn't have that chance. She didn't even have a chance to apologize to Nicarina, but she would find a way to make it right. Somehow.

     Creliana's Lightmite alighted on her shoulder and pulsed a soft warning.

     We need to move…, the small being seemed to say.

     Skyleur nodded, drew her cloak tight around her, and continued forward. The path she'd charted for herself twisted and wound through the Woods, avoiding all the places that had been marked as particularly dangerous on Eviamnora's maps--the site of a bandit camp, one of the Black Pteri's not-so-secret lairs, a stand of trees where a Neopet had reported seeing one of the Spider Grundo's webs.

     With every step, the trees tried to trip her. With every breath, she thought she saw something larger than a petpet darting through the shadows in her periphery. The cold seeped through her cloak, and still, the night managed to grow darker still.

     But the flitting Lightmite at her shoulder seemed to deter the worst of what dwelled in the woods, and Skyleur thought, though maybe it was just her imagination, that the little petpetpet's light warmed her, too. She was glad it was with her, as glad as she was that Crealiana was safe at home with Eviamnora.

     Exhaustion set in when the night was at its darkest.

     Skyleur hadn't considered that. She'd spent the afternoon and evening making preparations with Eviamnora, and as soon as the others had retired to their rooms, she'd gone out into the night. She'd rested for an hour or so after dinner, but that wasn't nearly enough rest for a long trek through the Woods. She was grateful that her feet were numb, otherwise she imagined they would ache awfully. Her neck and shoulders did ache, Eviamnora's pack weighing heavily on them, and Skyleur began to wonder exactly how necessary all the things her sister had packed for her were.

     She didn't have the luxury of stopping though, not before sunrise came and she could find a nice, wide clearing, and that was hours off yet. She needed to stay awake, stay alert to the danger that surrounded her. A story. She could tell the Lightmite a story, or invent a game, or...

     The next thing Skyleur knew, she was on her back on hard earth with the sun shining bright overhead, and a Neopet looming over her...

     To be continued…