The last moment

Larissa crouched beneath a tangle of whippet vines surveying the entrance to the grove. She steadied her breathing.

The forest was as quiet as a tomb, as if the animals knew to avoid this dark corner of the world. Larissa knew. But she had given her word to the child in Blue Wizard Bastion and would not return without knowing what had happened to the poor thing’s mother.

The sun was still high but the path leading through the thorns and oak seemed shrouded in a shadow made of gauze. Something you could touch.

“Or something that could touch me,” Larissa thought.

She shivered.

Then she stood. She was Enchanter Larissa of the Hills and she would not be frightened off by shadows and legends.

Her feet skipped silently over the dirt path and she slipped beneath the first thicket of thorns, bending slightly to avoid needles longer than a goblin’s dagger.

She pressed forward.

Still no sounds from the forest. Still no breeze. Just the heavy shadow of the oaks and the reaching spines of the thorns.

Finally Larissa entered the grove.

The tall man stood in the middle of the clearing. Ashen white hair over an obsidian black cloak. Skin etched with the creases of eternity. Eyes burning like stars on a winter's night.

“Your purification… is at hand.” His voice echoed through the stillness and Larissa’s heart skipped.

She steeled herself and stood tall.

“I’m looking for the marchant.” She weaved a charm within the words as they were spoken and was relieved to see the spark in the tall man’s eyes dim.

“The merchant… is ash,” the man smiled. “Returned to the earth.”

She had expected the worst but it still stung.

“You took her father.”

The man gestured around the clearing.

“Fathers. Mothers. They all return to the earth.”

Larissa’s anger rose. The thought of that hopeful sweet face looking up at her in Blue Wizard Bastion burned across her mind along with a blazing desperate command.

Justice.

Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the lunar staff and raised it to the sky. Her voice boomed across the grove.

“Your actions condemn you. You cannot move. You can only burn in the light. Your last thoughts will be of the horror you feel for your misdeeds. You will…”

The man’s laughter cuts through Larissa’s charm.

“You will be silent!”

She focuses on the power of the word but the laughter continues. The man steps towards Larissa and raises a gnarled twisted finger.

“In the garden of Eden only the serpent’s word holds power.”

Flame engulfs the man’s outstretched hand.

“And it demands your soul for the flame.”

Larissa’s last thought is of the child and the warmth of her face.

Then Larissa is no more.

Entered by: 0x13A7…33cA and preserved on chain (see transaction)