At two-thirty on a quiet Wednesday afternoon, the flesh and blood man once called Barren stood before Cadence Grande in the empty one-counter, six-stool establishment called The Eat. It was new, jammed into the corner of the mini-mall in Topanga. She looked up, blinking as her eyes morphed from saucers to steaming slits.
He spoke quietly. “You needn’t be scared, Cadence. Not of me anyway. Here is what it all boils down to. An epic war for knowledge, learning of a kind you cannot fully understand, has erupted. Many now seek to escape. To here. A diaspora of wizards and Dark Elves is upon us.”
She stood in a flash of motion, the chair grating as she moved it between them, her other hand brandishing a puny dinner knife. “I finished that chapter with you. You can’t hurt me now.”
He laughed as if that were the most futile and ridiculous thing he’d ever heard.
“Whether you wish it or not, my dear, we are never free of another’s conjuring. You can and yet fear such as you have never known will still seep about you. They are coming. Mark my words. They are coming for you!”