“Call it an act of confidence, Nathaniel. The wild, four days. You know where to meet.”
And with that the hooded man melted into the deep night darkness of my garden. I kept my rake gripped firmly in my arms, though I knew he wasn’t there anymore. He never was, no matter how hard I searched. This always made me feel better.

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And without even the merest trace of oddity but for a short-lived bone-chill, we stepped sideways into another dimension. Nothing seemed different. The houses, the fences, the trees, the skies were all the same. Perhaps tinged a little bit redder, but definitely not the jolt I expected. It was only when Skarr’Myett stepped through the solid stone wall beside us that I knew we were in Starwatch no longer.
“What are you waiting for?” hissed his distinctive voice in my mind.
Definitely not in Starwatch any longer.

Alistra couldn’t breathe. She sat in the mud clutching her throat, unable to even scream. Was this another dastardly game the boys from the Mages college were playing on some disgusting, belligerent street child? No, this was something different. This was something really weird.
Those two men had just disappeared into thin air.
“Breathe… can’t… breathe…” Alistra gasped.
She slumped sideways, the short painful gasps she could manage began tasting like dirt. Her lungs burnt like fire, and all long a little voice in her head kept shouting at her; why the hell are you doing this?