Emery Ramaker was supposed to be taking a break.
For the first time in a long time, she wasn't on a hunt. She had no bounty, no goals, no trail to follow. She had simply returned to Bellkrath to do the most normal thing she had done in a year: visit her family, give them some of the money she had earned, get information, and leave.
She had at least two days' worth of travel before she reached the small backwater village she'd grown up in, and it had been a day since her last night in a bed--well, kind of a bed, more like pokey hay in a kind farmer's barn. There wasn't another village now until she reached home, so she had to rough it until then, but she'd done that plenty before.
It was good weather for it: clear skies and not too windy for a change, chilly but not unbearable. Just before sunset, she settled down for the evening, watering her horse at a stream before tying her reins off on a branch near the small campfire she had made. It was a quiet night with lots of visibility all around the small copse she'd settled near, and this area wasn't really known for its predators, but it was still difficult for Emery to shift from a constant state of alert to relaxation. She shrugged off her baldric and set her sword beside her, chewed on some of the rations she'd packed, and rested with her back against a tree as day faded to night. She tried and failed to shut up her brain; going home was always rough. It hadn't been her home in years.
The sky darkened and hours passed, and eventually the exhaustion of the day caught up to Emery until not even her racing thoughts were strong enough to fight it. She began to drift, curled up beneath the blankets she'd packed, the campfire long reduced to smoldering embers.
And then the sky exploded.
Light and color flashed beneath her eyelids and her horse, Hilda, let out a whinnying scream that had her scrambling out from under her blankets in panic. The sky was ablaze, bright as day, and then it was night again but loud, a sound ripping through the valley like cannon fire. Hands shaking, Emery grabbed up her baldric and slung it over her shoulder, for one moment worried the war had finally made it this far--but then it was quiet again.
There was no smell of gunpowder, the sound was different, and the color had been all wrong. They hadn't been like any colors she'd ever seen in the sky, at least not at night. No, this was something else.
Heart hammering in her chest, Emery went to calm Hilda as the horse danced nervously and made unhappy sounds, the whites of her eyes flashing. She stroked her and whispered to her until she had settled, and then she packed her things back up and swung up into the saddle. No, no...this was nothing natural. This was something different. Something wrong. She had seen unnatural lightshows before, very rarely, but enough to suspect.
This had to be magic.
And it was big.
And close.
---
It was a surprisingly short ride. She turned Hilda in the direction she heard the crash and rode, figuring that with the scale of that light and that sound, surely she would see some evidence of it eventually. She smelled it first, the smell of smoke and burnt wood--and then through the dark she saw it, dying sparks of flame illuminating gouges in the earth, like something had slid along it for a while, ending in a large broken pit.
Emery drew Hilda up to the edge and dismounted, her hands sticky in their gloves. Was this an attack of some sort? She had never seen anything like it. This wasn't created by cannons or anything she had ever seen the likes of--
She froze, her eyes widening and fixing on a single point at the center.
What the fuck.
There was a person in the center of the crater, pale and strange, and Emery drew her sword in alarm before she realized he wasn't moving. Not that it mattered; that could change in the space of a breath, because who knew what she was dealing with here? Something unnatural, that was certain. Was he what had caused the light show, or had he burst from the thing that had? It didn't matter. What did matter was that unnatural things like that couldn't just roam free, and she had a duty now to ensure he didn't. With the amount of damage he had already caused, all those smoldering trees and broken earth...
God. If this had been a town and not an empty valley...
She shuddered and swallowed hard, wetting her dry throat. This felt beyond her, bigger than her. She had never seen a display of power that had caused damage of this scale.
There was no time to waste.
She had a duty here.
Working fast, she retrieved the tools of her trade from a saddlebag--a pair of iron manacles she had used on many a mage. Carefully sliding down the crater's slope, she took a deep breath to steel herself before she bent and rolled him onto his belly, grunting with the effort. Dead weight was always a bitch to move, but she managed, and then she yanked his arms behind him and clasped the a shackle around both wrists. There. If he was Serenian or some manner of fae, he might find them extra uncomfortable, and that was the point; the iron was meant to burn fae types.
That done, Emery felt a little better already. His magic would be off limits with her around him, but now he would have to work if he wanted to fight her. Tugging them to ensure they were properly locked, she clicked her tongue in satisfaction and rose, dusting off her hands.
Now to get him out of the damned crater. If he was conscious, he wouldn't like this part.
"This'll hurt like a bitch," she said, talking out loud just to hear another voice. She climbed back up the crater and drew a rope from her packs, and tied one end to the saddle's pommel. Then she slid back down into the crater and began to tie that end around the chain linking his manacles together.
So many questions.
And she planned on extracting the answers from him.