-Siena-

Siena had the vague realization that someone carried her out of the great hall. She roused enough to look up and saw Ansgar. Her head was still foggy, and when she tried to focus on him, she saw three of him. A groan escaped her lips, and she closed her eyes again, letting Ansgar carry her. She had no choice, she could not move.

           "I told you to let go," Ansgar whispered to her. "I tried. I'm sorry, Si, I really am. You weren't supposed to get caught up in this."

           Siena's entire body was tingling from numbness. What did he mean, she was not supposed to get caught up in all this? What was this? When she finally opened her eyes again, she tried to see this new person Ansgar had become, but she could not. She saw Ansgar glance down, his eyes lingering on the small, smooth anatase pendant she wore around her neck. Siena never took it off, and he smiled. Maybe he was remembering the day he had given it to her. Siena tried to push that from her mind. That was a different Ansgar, her Ansgar, not a traitor who had tried to murder her fellow Élu.

           "You're not allowed to be sorry," Siena choked. "Not this time, Az."

           He did not respond to this, but his fingers tightened around her. She fell asleep again to the gentle rocking as he carried her down the hall.

           When she awoke, minutes or hours later, Ansgar was gone. She looked around her tiny cell-like room and was forced to realize everything that happened was real. Her stomach churned. Siena leaned over the side of her cot, retching, and was sick.

           Siena reached with her thoughts, searching in vain for her anima. 'Ihi, are you there?' Nothing but an empty void greeted her. She shuddered and wanted to cry. She had never felt so empty, not even before Ihi had first spoken to her. Ihi was a gentle anima who had always comforted her when she most needed it.

           It was unsettlingly quiet around her, too, and Siena could not even feel the passage of time. She tried looking out the tiny window in the cream-colored stone wall, but what she saw took her breath away. It was night, but the type of eternal night that threatened to never give way to dawn. The sky was so dark and deep, and there were no stars. 

Once or twice, a bright light streaked across the sky, like a meteor, and disappeared into the horizon. An endless sea of shimmering, sandy ground stretched uninterrupted save for a few sparse trees that seemed to be made of more of the same kind of stone as the castle wall. The trees and sandy ground resonated with an energy of their own, similar to the limestone found underneath Lutèce.

           In the distance, roaming about in the bleak vastness, Siena could see the softly glowing forms of sanscoeur. She shuddered to think there were so many just outside her window, especially with no magic to call to her aid.

           Plans of escape quickly came to mind. Sanscoeur could create a slipstream directly into the human realm. If she could get out of the castle somehow, maybe she could figure out some way to follow a sanscoeur through the rift and into the human realm. Then Master Mélissa might be able to pick up on her signature and get her home. Siena frowned as she tried to think.

The rift was dangerous to Élu and Déchu alike; she did not even know how she managed to survive the first one into Crystallos. Clearly Günay and the others had figured out a way to do so safely, but Siena did not have access to that knowledge. Maybe it simply was not as dangerous as everyone thought? Siena looked down from her window. It did not look like a terribly long jump to the ground below.

           "I wonder how soft it is," Siena mused, and her voice sounded strange in the absolute silence. The landing below would not be easy, regardless. "If I could get even a little magic," she sighed.

           Siena was a Conjurer, but like many other Élu, her Gift had an elemental affinity. Siena's affinity was stone, which meant she could conjure or manipulate objects out of stone, earth, and wood with greater ease than with anything else. Not all Élu had an elemental affinity. About half those among the Schools of Magic, other than the Elementalists themselves of course, had some sort of affinity.

With full use of her abilities and staff in hand, she could change the ground outside her window so that she might fall onto a surface as soft as feathers. Absently, she reached for the smooth anatase pendant around her neck. When she touched it, she felt a spark of energy in it stir. She jerked her fingers away.

           "Ihi!" she gasped. Although she did not hear her anima's voice, she felt the smallest hint of its presence. She was not alone! She looked at her fingers, rubbing them together as a thought formed in her mind. "Something small, first."

           Brow furrowed in concentration, Siena knelt and pressed her fingers to the cold floor. "Conjuration: Cailloux," she whispered.

           It was a simple spell, one of the first she had learned from Ihi. As with her previous attempt, however, the spell did not respond as she had hoped. Where dozens of pebbles should have begun popping up from the floor, only one formed and only after several moments of concentration. By the time the small marble finally rolled across the floor, fully formed, Siena was out of breath. Despite this drain, she grinned. Magic was not impossible, just more difficult. Without her staff to help channel her magic, and without being able to contact her anima clearly, she was little better than a child first discovering their Gift.

           A scratching sound at the door interrupted her thoughts. Siena did not answer. She had nothing to say to any of them, why should she respond? Every nerve in her body was on edge as she tried to catch her breath. What would happen if they discovered she could summon her Gift, even just a bit of it? There was a pause that stretched for several loud heartbeats. She heard the scratching again, but this time the door opened without a warning. Siena stood, swaying with the rush of blood to her head, and turned to face her visitor.

           It was not Ansgar who appeared in the doorway. Nor was it Kato or Günay. It was a creature unlike any Siena had ever seen before. The thing standing before her was frightening and strange, a human-like sanscoeur with bright blue skin pulled tight over a skeletal frame. It stood straight, not hunched, or twisted like the monstrous sanscoeur. Its hair was blue-white and rather than fingers, four long claws extended from each hand. It wore a simple, sleeveless linen gown like those worn by Novices from the Parisii Order. It stared at her, and even though it was not the strangest aspect of this creature, its eyes unnerved Siena. Its eyes were solid bright blue, with white pupils like vertical slits.

           Siena stared back, unsure whether to scream for help or try to run. Who would come? And where would she go? Something caught her eye when the creature shifted, and her gaze was drawn to the intricate, winding marks that covered the left side of the creature's face, down his neck and left shoulder and arm.

           "Who are you?" Siena asked, her voice hoarse. She tried to keep the fear out of her tone.
The creature walked nearer to her. As it grew closer, the marks shimmered with a subtle, white-hot glow. It was only slightly taller than she was, but it seemed to loom over her in the small room. Siena suppressed a shudder. It stopped when it was near the pebble she had conjured and stared at it for a long moment. Then it reached down and carefully picked up the stone marble between two sharp claws, inspecting it closely.

           "Are you a sanscoeur of some kind?" Siena demanded, finding courage. "Can you speak with that human mouth of yours, or are you as mindless as any other sanscoeur?"

           She sensed nothing, no magic or life force from the creature. It did not disrupt the ocean of magic around her any more than an additional drop of water might disturb a deep lake. The creature looked at her, still holding the small misshapen marble.

           "We are Inanis," it said. Its voice was flat and uninterested. It spoke slowly, as if unaccustomed to speech. "We are He Who is Empty... we are not sanscoeur. We are daemonis. What happened here? The air shuddered from a source in this room."

           Siena narrowed her eyes as he looked around. The room was sparsely furnished. Only Siena's cot and the window broke the monotony of the cream-colored stone walls and floor. The creature, Inanis, peered at Siena and stepped towards her. He cracked the pebble easily, closing his fist around it.

           "The magic from you," Inanis observed, "is not like our magic." He opened his claws and the dust from the pebble floated to the ground.

           "How did you know?" Siena demanded.

           "We felt it," Inanis replied. "We smelled it. It was weak but we noticed it."

           Siena bit back a retort. She was not weak; she was at a disadvantage. The Conjuration School of Magic taught students how to turn a disadvantage into an advantage, how to make the environment work for them. Siena would figure it out, she just needed time.
Inanis took another step towards her, his stride bringing her within arm's reach. He reached to grab hold of her long hair. Siena slapped it away, noticing how cold and hard his skin was, almost like bone.

           "Don't touch me," she growled, placing her hands on her hips.

           This did not seem to faze Inanis, who responded by slapping her hard across the face with much more raw force than Siena expected from him. The result sent her falling fast, her shoulder and arm hitting the stone floor. As she struggled to look up, the room spun. Blood trickled from her lip where she had bitten down hard. Inanis peered at his own hand, then at her. Siena tried to push up from the floor, wincing as she moved.

           "You are like the Grand Master and the others," observed Inanis, "but also not like them. You are weaker than they are."

           Anger rushed through Siena and with it an unexpected surge of magic. For the briefest of moments, she felt the link to her anima connect.

Ihi!' she exclaimed in her mind. She felt the spirit respond. She glared up at Inanis, deciding to risk it before her connection was lost.

"Conjuration: Crevasse!" she called, but as with the first time she had tried a spell in Crystallos, there was no effect. At least it did not drain her so thoroughly of energy. Inanis appeared to wait for something to happen, his long, pointed ears twitching. When no effect of her spell came through, he looked down at her.

           "What do you want?" she gasped.

           He raised his arm towards her, perhaps to strike her again, and Siena shut her eyes. No blow came. When she opened her eyes, her expression turned to shock.

           "My, my! Came just in time, didn't I, Siena?" Ansgar exclaimed. Inanis stared at Ansgar, though his expression remained emotionless.

           "Master Ansgar," said Inanis in his monotone voice.

           Ansgar released Inanis' clawed hand. "Glad you remember me, Inanis. You might want to rethink what you were about to do. You'll leave now and I expect you to stay away from here."
Inanis blinked his large eyes once and turned to walk back to the door. When he reached the door, he stopped and glanced over his shoulder at Siena.

"No," he said, "you are not like Grand Master Günay and the others." Then he disappeared down the hallway and Ansgar closed the door behind him.

           "I'm sorry, Si," Ansgar said as he came back to her. "They tend to get a bit curious about anything new and unfamiliar. They're supposed to keep to their apartments until they fully develop, but Inanis slipped away."

           Siena's gaze was fixated on the door and she barely registered what Ansgar had said. She felt a grip on her shoulder, and she jerked out of her thoughts. She looked at Ansgar, her brown eyes meeting his pale blue gaze.

           "Siena? You're bleeding," he prompted, crouching down in front of her.

           "What was that thing? Az, what is going on? What are you doing here, and why?" As she spoke, she became more hysterical. Ansgar placed his hands on either side of her face and forced her to look directly at him. She calmed down, breathing more steadily.

           After a moment Ansgar leaned back on his heels and rested one arm across his knees. With the other, he reached out and gently touched the anatase pendant hanging by its plain cord around Siena's neck. He closed his fingers around it and brought it to his lips.

           "I will always know when you're in trouble," he told her.

           She jerked the pendant from his hand and looked away. "This is too far, Az," she sighed. "Even for you. I can't, I don't even know what's happening! The coup led by Günay, please tell me you didn't actually have a part in it?"

           "You were there, Si," whispered Ansgar. "You saw what happened."

           "You've always been ambitious, but overthrowing the Archmage? What good would come of that?"

           "I didn't think you'd understand." Ansgar's voice was still quiet. "It's why I could never say anything. I didn't want you involved in case things went wrong."

           Siena was growing hysterical again. "It isn't even that! You're right, I don't understand, but you started keeping me at a distance! No matter what I did, you didn't let me close to you anymore, Az. And then all this," the words spilled out of Siena. "What am I supposed to think now?"

           "You could trust me. Günay wants to bring peace to the realms. Wouldn't that be nice?"
"Lutèce was peaceful," spat Siena.

           "But the world isn't," argued Ansgar. "The Déchu and the Élu have never been at peace. How many children have died because of that conflict? Your sister and brothers. You told me. How many more?"

           Siena had nothing to say to that. Instead, she kept going. "Since when have you cared about peace with the Déchu?" She hoped to sting him with those words. Ansgar did not show his emotions very clearly, so if he were hurt by her words, she could not tell.
When he said nothing, she turned her back to him. "Just go away."

           Ansgar did not move at first. Then she felt pressure on her injured shoulder, and she winced. He fell along her shoulder and down her arm. "I'm not a Healer," Ansgar said, "but I don't think anything is broken. I can find you something for the pain."

           "No thank you. Just go away!"

           She did not want to cry, but she felt the tears coming anyway. Never in her life had she felt so confused or betrayed. She heard Ansgar let out a slow breath, but then he stood and left.

           "You belong here, Az," she choked. "Dragged down to the depths with all the other monsters roaming about."