{Then I became a mage. I was surprised to find out that I could gain magical powers through an artefact.}
….
The slightly cold evening air blew past, forcing Narene to pull her cloak closer to her body. She glanced around and shuddered. They were currently standing in the middle of a pen house where hundreds of goats lay. Dead and cold.
They had arrived just in time when the last one died, convulsing and shaking like something was siphoning its life force and strangling it in the process. The goat fell over with a thud, eyes wide open in horror and glazed over.
The shock and the cold weren't chiefly the things that made her constantly watch her back. She was worried—for the first time since she made the decision to leave home—about her father. What if he panicked? What if he came to Sharen and asked for his help in finding her? How was he handling the news?
She hadn't heard anyone talk about it in the market and it was slightly relieving. Samak was a large place after all and it would be slightly difficult for everyone to know her. Despite this awareness, she worried that she would bump into her father.
There was a reason she hadn't told Sharen that she had ran away. It would make her look rebellious to him and she didn't want to give a bad impression to the Hero. With this in mind, she could only imagine what would happen if her father showed up, telling Sharen that she had left home against his will.
She followed Sharen through the pen, looking at the corpse of each animal. Sharen squatted down, touching a dead goat with a finger. He turned to the man that accompanied them and asked, "When did this start, Khlen?"
The grizzly bearded man sighed, a tinge of worry in his tone. "I have no idea. Most of the people rushed to you while some came to me. One thing is sure, it started this afternoon. Goats, sheep, horses, pigs…every animal began to die off."
"All of them?" Sharen asked standing up again.
"Mostly," Khlen replied, wiping his brow with his palm. Narene noticed the sweat that trickled down his forehead. "Most reports show that some people still have a few animals left."
"This is strange." Sharen said then turned to her. "Narene, what do you think?"
Narene was jolted though slightly. 'He's asking for my opinion?' It meant a big thing to her. She cleared her throat and said, "I think it's abnormal. Even if it's a disease it couldn't have come at the same time."
Sharen nodded, turning to Khlen. "I agree with her. While I touched the carcasses I sensed remnant magical energy in them. This is the work of magic."
Khlen was visibly shaken but this wasn't what bothered Narene. She knelt down and touched a dead goat, wanting to feel the magical energy that Sharen spoke of.
She couldn't feel it. She stood up, sighing. Sharen was better than her at using magic and she reckoned that it was the only way he could sense the magical energy in the dead goats.
"Can you help?" Khlen asked following behind Sharen. Narene did the same.
Sharen shook his head. "There's nothing I can do. I don't even know what's causing this."
Khlen nodded. "I should probably advise them to sell the dead animals to people who are willing to buy at discounted prices though I doubt anyone would want to buy them."
Sharen didn't say anything. They left the pen house, arriving outside. The cold breeze prickled Narene's skin again and she felt tempted. She fell into the temptation and weaved a fire spell that was only mild and it kept the air around her warm.
Why suffer the cold when she had magic?
Outside the pen house was worse. People—a lot of them—cried. Almost everyone raised animals either for domestic use, for farm labour or for sale and all of them dying off in one evening was unsettling.
Those people weren't just going to lose a few Lars but hundreds of them. It made her sad for a bit. She adored magic yet she couldn't help but feel that it was partly evil. Here was someone—whoever it was—using magic to make people's lives more miserable.
It made no sense to her. Then, again, the Haklarans were also magical creatures. She sighed, shutting her ears against the cries of the people that echoed through the village. She turned to Sharen and asked, "What are we going to do?"
"I will think of something."
She nodded, regaining her confidence. Sharen said he'd figure something out and she believed him. He always found a way and that made her respect him more and more.
Sharen turned to Khlen and said, "Find a way to calm the people down. It will be hard but let them know that I will get to the root of this."
Khlen nodded and bowed slightly. The man left the two of them alone, outside the pen house that had become a home for dead animals.