Lightning struck the tallest tower of Saturia Castle, located a few miles from Estreal's capital, Calico. The wind moaned and roared competing with the screams of the Duchess as her Commander broke the news of Lauerline's (once more) escape from their clutches.

The sound was blood-curdling. It's sound reached the outskirts of Calico where fast asleep in bed people stirred: goosebumps rising, the hair on the back of their necks bristling and nightmares taking place of their dreams.

Her laugh turned into the madden laughs of a psychiatric patient. Then her lips barely moving, barely whispering and yet her voice caring across the room, she spoke, no longer laughing, "Do you know what I quality I require my soldiers to fulfil?"

Her blue eyes gazed into his soul and he stood hypnotized under her gaze. She reached out a brushed her hand against his long, unshaven beard.

"That night in the village we had cornered off every exit. We massacred and killed anyone in our way and we burned that place to the ground. Today you came hear meaning to tell me that you lost her? How do you lose a lone girl riding her stead? How do you make the same mistakes over and over every time we receive new of her? Pray, do tell? So, I ask you once more, do you know what I quality I require my soldiers to fulfil?"

She raised her arm to the sky and summoned a bolt of lightning from the storm clouds above.

"-Them to be someone other than you."

The bolt hit the Commander square in the chest and instantaneously vaporized him.

***

"Aye, you there! Sleeping on the job?"  

Laureline woke from the nightmare with a start, sweat-drenched her sheets. She opened her eyes only to see a pair of beady eyes staring right at her.

"You're late," Veronica stated simply.

"It's the crack of dawn," Laureline yawned, pushing back the covers and sitting up. Veronica let out a witch-like cackle.

"It's 10 'o clock in the morning, deary, that's hardly twilight. Mr Bails sent me to tell you that you work in the pub. Lunch is at 2 pm and you clock out at 1 am."

Veronica got up to leave and closed the door before poking her head back in again.

"Oh, and for future reference, we start at 8 love."

***

"That'll be 23 silver pieces," Laureline told an elderly patron who slowly reached back to pull out his wallet, muttering something about prices going through the roof. It was Laureline's 14th  closing time and the pub way emptying slowly. Laureline gazed out into the distance exhausted - the patron trying to calculate the conversion of bronze to silver- when her eye caught the customer at the next table chugging down his beer, his emerald eyes meeting hers.

"I'll be back in a second," she told the man still struggling to get the money together as she moved over to the next table.

"It's closing," she told the man. He was young, about her age and judging by his worn-out clothes, covered in dirt: worse done by. He was beginning to sweat - beads of it forming on her forehead and dripping to the floor.

"How much will it be?" he asked. His voice sounded like it was trying to overcompensate for something, urgency hidden in it. Laureline looked around trying to find her notebook the folds of her uniform. 

"Seven silver pieces," she said looking up, but the emerald eyed man had disappeared and the door of the inn was open and swinging violently. Laureline dropped the notebook and raced off after him. The silhouette of man vanishing into the stables. She hurried forward and just as she closed on the stable doors, they burst open to reveal him riding on a black horse that she quickly identified as Nyx. Inside the stables, a traveller had barely climbed off his horse when Laureline quickly mounted it. Ignoring the shouts and protests from inside she eased the horse into a gallop. The cold night's air stung her face and whipped her air around. She was gaining on him.

"Stop!" she called out into the darkness but instead he pressed Nyx on faster. She urged her horse on and rode side by side with him.

"I command you to stop this instant!" Laureline shouted her voice competing with the howling wind.

"Why should I listen to you?"

"I can help you. Look at you, look at your clothes, look at what you are doing. Would you not like some help? Do not you want this to all go away?"

The rumbling of a carriage approached.

"I don't need your help."

The rumbling was now the roaring of wheels turning fast against cobble. Laureline dodged the carriage going offroad into some mud. The horse whinnied and slowed to a trot, already exhausted from a long journey. All was lost, her longtime animal friend was disappearing into the distance and she could do nothing to stop it. She remembered all the times she had called Nyx when she was along and needed company, and how the stable boys always forgot to close up at night, so it was easy for... That was it. She stuck both index and middle fingers in her mouth and let out a loud wolf whistle. For a moment there was nothing and then out of the darkness came the sound of a man shouting, unable to control the horse he was riding and then she saw Nyx- flying through the night towards her. Laureline climbed of the other horse and waited. Nyx slowed a foot in front of her, her eyes twinkling in the moonlight. The man, trying for a quick escape, clumsily fell of Nyx and into the mud. She swooped down, pinning him to the ground holding the dagger she kept strapped to her thigh against his throat.

"I do not wish to harm you. I need your help and by looks of it, when I take you back to the Inn, you will be in need of mine." 

Staring into his eyes, she gave him a moment to take it in.

"We will ride back to the Inn and I will pay for your orders. You will accompany me back to my room and help me pack after they dismiss me when I refuse to apologise to the man stole this horse from. You will work as my servant for the next month and then your debts will be paid off."

"That seems a little exaggerated."

She pressed the dagger to neck a little harder he raised his hands up in surrender.

"I mean, what about the horse I stole? How are you going to solve that?"

"That's my horse, you numskull. Do we have a deal?"

"Ye-yes."

She removed the dagger from his neck and stowed it away once more.

"I don't believe I've introduced myself properly, Laureline Sciens."

She offered him a hand as she used her adoptive mother's name.

"William Hedley, at your service."

He reached up to grab her hand and she helped him up.