Spellbound
Chapter 18

“AZA WAKE UP I HAVE NEWS!!!” blurted out Nibbles to her Wizard friend who was not sleeping so deeply he didn’t even hear Nibbles return and knock over a few of his treasured possessions in the process. He was really tired from all the magic and death he had to perform but eventually he stirred from his sleep.

“AZA WAKE UP THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!” said Nibbles once again and this time she got a response.

“Nibb’s I know that you are nocturnal....but I am not...so this better be good ok?” said a bleary eyed Azadarin who sat up and rubbed his eyes then focused on one excited little furry talking bat who once she had seen her friend was awake let loose a volley of information at the sleepy Wizard.

“I KNOW WHERE ZELL WENT AND WHERE HIS MOTHER IS HIDING..I FOLLOWED HIM BACK TO HIS MOTHERS LAIR...HE DIDN’T SEE ME...ITS NOT FAR FROM THE RIVER WHERE YOU SET THE FIRST TEST FOR NATHANIEL AND PENELOPE” said one excited bat to her Wizard friend who was now getting up and marching into the dining room to check his map and all the other places he had searched for this Witch.

“Nibb’s come and show me on the map here where it is so I don’t forget and then I can go back to sleep...oh and ...well done you marvellous creature for doing this” said Azadarin now well focused on his map watching Nibbles point out where the hide out was with her fur covered talons.

“So that’s where she is” said Azadarin rubbing his beard and seeing that he had searched everywhere around there in previous years but never where Nibbles was pointing at while she was looking up at Azadarin finally getting her breath back after such an exuberant flight back to the log cabin.

Azadarin drew a red circle around the exact spot, then patted Nibbles on the head and walked back into his bedroom and collapsed on his bed and was asleep in the wink of a blink.

Nibbles flew into Nat and Pen’s rooms to check on them and they were both soundly asleep as well. She could rest now so she went to her bed and closed her eyes and fell asleep as well as the rest of the inhabitants of the log cabin.

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Many years back after the last battle between Blackwatch and The Magic Guardians not far from The Scarlant Forest......Daria Calarook is trudging alone trying to replace a place to hide after loosing the final battle. She is heavily pregnant with her first child and the rain is relentless. She is talking to herself as she rambles on with no set direction or destination......

"Gone...every last one of The Blackwatch...gone, killed , dead and buried. I’m the last of them . We should have beaten those animals because we had the numbers they just had the element of surprise and used their magic in such a way that we all crumbled....it should never have been that way...we were better than them...I have to replace some where to hide because I know they will try to hunt me down. I never thought being pregnant would be so hard on my body. I’m so tired all the time. I must replace somewhere to hide and have this child....somewhere safe and not easy to replace...surely there is some place out here that is suitable?"

Another night goes by for Daria and she sleeps where she falls, waking up with ants in her mouth and a baby inside her womb that is almost ready to be born. She was in a strange part of the land she had never ventured into before so everything was foreign to her. The smells, the landscape and the ever present fear she had that she would be discovered...then killed.

The Magic Guardians wanted her most of all, so the rumours had told her, and she knew that as long as they were alive she would be hunted and terminated just like all of her family, cousins and husband were without a moments grace or mercy. She had to replace somewhere to hide and hide fast. Scores of Wizards were out looking for her and their combined hatred of the Blackwatch fuelled their desire to end Daria and the line of the Blackwatch Wizards and Witches.

Daria picked up a rock and rolled it around in her hand. It was covered in a red clay like mud and soon her hand was coated in this fowl ground between her fingers. She threw the rock away. She noticed something when that happened. She didn’t hear the rock land on the ground. What she heard in its place was the sound of a rock bouncing off stone walls and echoing out from the depths below the ground. That could only mean one thing. A cave entrance was close by. This would be a good place to rest, get out of the rain and re-group. She stood up and walked in the direction she threw the rock. She was right...there was a cave entrance.

It was small enough for her to crawl through and once inside she was out of the rain and just a bit calmer than before.

To enter the cave was to become engulfed in chilling blackness. The absence of light meant the absence of its warming touch. Underfoot the loose stones shifted, twisting her ankle one way and then the other, and the noise of those disturbed rocks echoed off the dense stone walls. Ahead was the sound of water dripping into water. But without even a match to cast light into the black there was no way to tell how deep it was or if her next step would take her into its frigid depths. As afraid as she was she believed this a good place to lay low. The rock would hide her body from the Wizards hunting her and she’d made her way further into the cave by walking in the edge of the lacy tide water, there would be no scent for the hunters to follow either.

For now she was safe but it could be better she thought..... ‘This cave will do for now...but I need to really hide myself in here and away from searching eyes...these walls are smooth and they sound hollow behind the initial crust...I shall make a secret entrance and lock myself inside it till the baby is born and the Wizards searching for me give up trying to hunt me down.’

Daria stood and faced a tall smooth black wall and incanted a spell at the stone.

“Mystifiatis Sanctim” she whispered and the cave wall cracked before her eyes with a door opening in its centre to the other side of the cave wall. It was indeed hollow 2 feet from the door that now opened before her and it would also muffle a new borns cries when finally her child was born.

‘Here I shall hide and give birth....no one will replace me here...it will appear to all that I have vanished from life and land.....this will give me time to heal and the rectify my debt to The Magic Guardians....oh yes....they will pay for what they have done to me, my family and my life’

Daria felt her child move within her so she entered her new dwellings, closed the stone door behind her without leaving any trace of its existence and then set about conjuring all that she needed to rest, eat and wash with. Her son would soon be born and through him she would exact the revenge that was eating away at what was left of her dark soul. Of this she vowed and promised to the unborn child within her body and at once the labour pains began and the cave was witness to the birth of one Zell Morkas Calarook, the new heir to the Blackwatch.