Phantom; Blessed by the devil, Cursed by the gods

Chapter 6 The Fey Land

Walking into Katarina's house Sal marveled at how fast she'd cleaned up in one night, the living room was illuminated by candles placed in a chandelier above them, there was a fireplace at the front of the room, it's embers glowing and warming up the house, the sofa and the armchairs were a dull gray and the walls were painted a stark black.

Sal followed Casmir up a flight of stairs, each floor felt strangely empty, like a shelf that used to hold books but was now a skeleton of its original purpose.

"Kat had roommates once", Casmir said as they walked, "I wonder what happened to them"

"They left" Katarina said simply and they continued to walk in silence.

Soon they reached the third floor and it turned out to be Katarina's armory, Sal wondered if all Shaded beings had an armory in their homes and he wondered if he needed to get one himself.

Katarina's armory was just like Casmir's, except it was larger, and had a wide variety of weapons, there were shields and spears, whips and chains, bows and arrows, crossbows, maces, axes, swords, daggers, basically every weapon you can ever think of, even those weird circular disks that Black Panther's girlfriend uses.

"Ah the chakrams", said Casmir, "I dabbled in them for a while you know"

"And failed" Katarina said.

Casmir frowned at her and went to look at some daggers.

"So, who do we find next?" asked Casmir.

Sal took out the scroll and showed them the name.

"Bloomera Nephity" mused Casmir, "sounds like a fey name"

"They all have weird names, I used to know a fey whose name was Crowbar Sekile" said Katarina.

Sal laughed and looked at the name again.

"A fey huh?, could that pose a problem?" asked Sal, he'd read about how manupilative the fey could be, they were beautiful, unnatural and deceptive.

"It depends, the fey are unpredictable creatures, some of them live here in the mortal plane but most of them stay in Fey Land" said Katarina.

"I'm guessing Fey Land isn't on the world map" Sal said.

"Precisely", said Casmir, "it's in another plane of existence, kind of like this one but created for them, the only way to get there is through a portal"

"I could try locating them" Sal offered.

Casmir and Katarina nodded in approval.

"Watch this" Casmir said as Sal closed his eyes and concentrated, he imagined the glyph he'd seen the first time he used magic, the glyph of Finding, an eye without a pupil.

"Bloomera Nephity" whispered Sal.

He waited for the familiar burning of the mark on his chest, the itching of a glyph being traced on his skin.

But nothing happened.

"Uh, is he alright?" whispered Katarina.

"I don't know, his eyes weren't shut that tight the last time he used magic" said Casmir.

"Uh Sal?, you okay?" asked Katarina.

Sal opened his eyes and shook his head.

"It's not working" he said. "They're not here"

"Which means they're in Fey land" said Katarina. "Which means we need a portal"

Sal felt his mark burn and the image of a new glyph burned into his mind, a pattern of lines that spiralled like the lines on a snails shell.