Chapter 1
Josephine
There was a beast in the dungeons and the howls never seemed to fade. Even in the grandeur of the Bellefleur mansion, I could hear it from the western towers as clearly as if the Krig was raging beside me.
“Another one of those ratchet things? Really, father?” I grunted as I reached for my favorite yellow longsword on the weapon rack. He was strapping in his dual swords to his back, as we prepared for the weekly hunt.
“Well, Posy, one day it will be the one we want, and I shall never stop hunting.”
I knew that much about his ever long vendetta against the Krigleben, the mutated Djinn that haunted the woods behind our home, the demons that once took his heir, my brother, and never returned him to the world of the living. I don’t remember much about Castan, but his brown oval eyes and wild dark curls, so similar to mine it was as familiar to me as waking up to the sun rising, until one day that part of home had been gone forever.
With our weapons strapped in tightly, we ascended winding stairs after winding stairs, passing Ruben our butler, and several of the waiting staff, before making our way outside. The weather was turning and soon summer would be upon us, yet the breeze of spring was carrying a cold over from the long winter and it still showed around us. The flowers hadn’t fully grown, the colors still dull as the sky was grey.
I followed father into the darkening woods and-
An annoying freckled face with, short-cropped red hair, beautiful green eyes and a strong jaw appeared in front of me with his eyebrows raised. “More, or are we good, Posy baby?”
“Nox!” I shouted as loud as I could, startling him away from my face with a terrified shriek. He dramatically fell backwards off the bed while clutching his heart. “Chaos be damned, Joss, you always scream like a banshee!”
Karnox - my continuously annoying, yet sometimes helpful Djinn - stared up at me from the floor with his usual jokester expression.
“I needed more time in the memory and you know it!”
“Argh, Argh, Posy Pants, you know it by heart by now. You made me play it thirty-six times in the last month alone.”
I raised one eyebrow, “you’re keeping tabs now?”
“Oh, baby girl, I always keep tabs.” He winked at me once before motioning towards my bedroom door and rising from the floor. He dusted off his dark jeans and grey shirt as if that little tumble would do something to him - the drama queen. I saw the present I had given him last Samhain glinting on his pointy ears, it was a gemstone earring infused with Ochre. It glinted orange in the light of dawn filtering through my floor-to ceiling bedroom windows.
“I’m not ready,” I sighed and couldn’t help myself from staring at the door.
“Josephine,” he said sternly with his deep voice he uses when he doesn’t agree with me, and that happened a lot, “you can’t evoke the wrath of your grandmother upon us. I’m an almighty Djinn, but even I cower in the wake of that woman’s temper.”
Yeah, my grandma ran this household with an iron grip, and when she calls for a family meeting at seven in the morning, you bet your ass it’s was about something bad. I loved her profoundly, but ever since father disappeared, all of her motherly chaos had gone inward and festered into an overprotective bundle of menace.
And Karnox and my grandmother never ever got along. He, the mischievous nuisance ever since he emerged by my side at my Awakening, and she, with the absence of her beloved Djinn, ever so alone.
“Come on,” he dragged me out of bed with a groan as I refused to work with him and let my limb body flop around until he managed to wrangle his shoulder under my arm and haul me off my ass. I can’t even count how many times he has caveman dragged me out of places, but it were too many for even him to keep track off.
I watched the back of his legs descend the stairs of Bellefleur Mansion, all hundred of them, until we reached the downstairs kitchen area where my grandmother could be found.
The smell off freshly brewed coffee, sticky buns and the tarty scent of her lemon pies assaulted my nose with the familiarity of home. I also heard my little brother’s, Carter’s five-year old squeaky voice, and my little sister, Joanne’s bratty teenage quips, ringing in my ears.
“Karnox, can you show me Sursoll again, please! Please!” Carter was all up in his space under five seconds flat - as always. I felt my Djinn chuckle as he put me down on the floor and patted my ass one time, as he always did. I watched his tall ass crouch down to my brother’s height with a wide smile. He ruffled the little one’s dark head of curls around before whispering loudly.
“If you keep it between us, my little soldier.” He leaned in closer while giving me a wink. “You know you have to wait for your own awakening and your own Djinn to shower you with gifts and Chaos, but for you, I will use my powers only this one time.” This one time was every day, but hey, we were all suckers for the little cute guy.
“Karnox!” A wooden spoon came down hard on the Djinn’s red hair. “You know what we agreed on! No power wasting on anyone but your own Nabi!”
“Grandmother, we are not in the Solstice anymore, there is no immediate danger. He can use whatever Chaos he wants.” I replied for him.
“Your father is missing, child! Like chaos we aren’t in Solstice anymore!”
I snapped my mouth shut, suddenly extremely haunted by the fact she thought I would ever forget. It’s been almost six months and all around us our world had started crumbling with him gone.
Karnox stepped beside me and sat himself down next to me, his palm shot out and reached for my thigh, grounding me to him and to this moment. I would forever be grateful for his presence, even though I would hardly admit it to him.
Grandmother slapped a piece of paper on the table.
“We have been summoned,” she said with a dire voice, wringing her wet hands on her yellow apron. “Summoned by House Grove and House Steele, in regards to the Ochre Farm.”
Right.
The Farm.
My father had been the Royal Supplier of Ochre to both Kingdoms. The Djinn’s and the Donn’s both couldn’t live without it, and with their biggest supplier missing, things had become dire. I know grandmother had used every last bit of the harvest, but now we were officially out.
It would cost us our house.
It would cost us the life as we know it, if that source of income went away.
“What do the Royal houses want with us?”
“What do you think child? They want what your father could give, and with him gone, we have no options left.”
“We could try and harvest more ourselves! We could, grandma!”
“Child, you know we tried, but they won’t harvest for anyone else, but your father and you know it. The Ochre we have gotten is still only half of the usual amount.” Grandmother sighed deeply, before descending down in the chair in front of us. Even the children were quiet, knowing something was wrong.
“They are holding a pitch in three weeks at the Crosskassing castle, they want a new Royal supplier, child. And if we lose that pitch, we lose everything we’ve build here.” We all knew the other smaller farms couldn’t ever produce as much as my father could have, yet we were doing half of his usual harvest and were now entirely up to par with the others. They could win this.
“We need to join the pitch, grandmother. We need to win.”
“Child, in three weeks’ time we won’t make it to Crosskassing.”
They had deliberately send us the correspondence late. They were furious about their biggest supplier going missing, but if we managed to show up, they were obliged by law to have us pitch. Yet, the only way to Crosskassing was through the Bornor Passing to the left of the Scourge. That passageway went for miles and miles, days upon days, of wasteland trekking. Reaching it took at least a week, crossing it double that time, and then you still have to make it to Crosskassing island.
“Unless we do-“
“No!” Grandmother and Karnox said at the same time. They knew what I wanted to suggest. If we crossed straight through the Scourge we could make it in a week.
“Karnox,” I said to him, “Father crossed the Scourge every month. He always made it there and back again with his Ochre. We can do it too! He told me about the tricks of crossing it! I even have a map!”
“Posy pants, I love you, but that is not safe. I will not allow it.”
“For once I agree with him,” my grandmother said with a dark scowl aimed his way. “Are you insane, child? Don’t you know what lurks there in the dark?”
“Wild Djinns, and Krigleben, and other madness, yes.” At the mention of wild Djinn’s, I noticed Nox freezing up a little. They never liked to talk about the wild ones at the Scourge. The ones who looked like him, yet were anything but.
“I also know father and his Djinns were always granted passage, always made it out and I know for a fact it wasn’t the Scourge that got him in the end. He was one with the land, he was one of the only farmers allowed to cross. I’m his daughter, and I will make my way through it as well.” Determination rang through my voice and I saw Karnox mumbling curses under his breath, as he knew like no other I was as stubborn as they come. He knew I would go, and wherever I went, he went with.
“Child, I cannot condone this!”
“Grandma, I will fight for this family, for this home. For what we have built. I will.”
“Then I’m coming with you!” she snapped as she rose from the kitchen chair with a scrape of steel on hard wooden floors.
“Y-you… you don’t have a-“ I didn’t want to finish my sentence. I would be protected by cover of my Chaos, by cover of my Djinn, but she as a Janat Savant, as a turned Savant, wouldn’t have any protection at all. It still haunted her - how she lost her lifelong companion-Djinn, and she still refused to talk about losing him.
I saw it click in her mind, as steely resignation crept into her bones.
“Come back to us, child. Come back to us with that Royal blessing. Or I swear to all the Chaos in the world, there won’t be a Scourge dangerous enough where I won’t go to find you.”
