Sadi was never fond of animals. Anytime she saw them running around in the woods around her mother’s house, she found a strange amount of annoyance with their very existence. Despite this, she did know that they were wonderful for practice. Not only was it good fun for her to try and use her shadow stepping to try and move the creatures from one place to another, but recently she had found that they were extremely useful for training the more disruptive aspect of her magic. And right now, that was exactly what she was working on.

As she sat there staring at the small creature inside of the cage, a malicious smile spread across Sadi’s face. She knew that these field rodents loved to run around in very specific spots around the house and they searched for a particular kind of flower to eat. Sadi had gathered up a few of the flowers and placed small, nearly invisible traps all around the field, waiting to catch one of the rodents. Once she had captured one, she took the trap and moved it over on to a stump a little ways behind her house.

The rodent scurried around inside of the cage, trying to escape, but Sadi just shook her small head, urging the rodent to admit defeat.

“Now now, mister rat, that’s not very nice. I caught you, so you are mine now,” she said, in her high-pitched little voice.

Sadi then raised a hand up, her seal forming underneath the cage, blazing with dark purple light. Because of her young age and lack of experience, the seal was quite simpler, consisting only of a circle with a square inside it, the darkness sigil placed in the center. Pouring a bit of essence in to the sigil, Sadi then moved it upwards, imparting will on to it just like she’d been taught. She visualized the darkness essence flowing out of the seal and in to the air and then seeping in to the body of the rodent, attacking its life force and the essence inside of it. Even the basic mental effort of doing this was causing her to get a little exhausted, but she pushed on.

Her efforts were rewarded as the rodent suddenly stopped squeaking and running around in a panic. It was frozen in place, shivering right over the center of the seal. As she continued to force more and more essence, the effort grew. Even as she was about to pass out, she pushed on and eventually, the rodent began to shrivel up, falling over and wheezing in pain until the effort became too much and Sadi collapsed. The seal under the rodent disappear and by the time she had woken up, it was back to a more healthy physical state. Despite that, it was still terrified, cowering in the corner farthest from the smiling, purple-haired child that had just pushed it to the brink of death.

Just as Sadi was about to go and check one of the other traps, she heard a voice behind her.

“Sadi! Sadi!” the small voice called to her.

She quickly turned around and smiled at the sight of her younger brother, Alistair. Once he reached her, he stopped for a moment, trying to catch his breath, having apparently run the whole way from their home.

Sadi rolled her eyes and chuckled slightly as she turned back around and opened up the cage. Even as she did, the rodent didn’t run out until Sadi shook it out, leaving the cage empty. She then passed the cage through a shadow, returning it to the place where she had originally placed it. She then turned back around to Alistair who was still panting, but had mostly recovered from the run.

“Ali, you really need to get better at your shadow stepping. I mean, if you can’t find me, you’re hopeless…”

Alistair hung his head and frowned. “Yeah… I know… But I’m just not a natural like you…”

Sadi shook her head in disappointment and grabbed Alistair’s hand. She began to walk back towards their house with him, practically dragging him along at first. Once she could tell that he was keeping pace, she released his hand and turned around, walking backwards, so that she could talk to him.

“Ali! I almost did it! I almost killed one of the rodents today! I got so close, but then I got really tired… It was too much focus… Disrupting life energy is so hard and I have to think really hard to do it…”

Alistair didn’t say much. He was never very fond of the obsession that his sister seemed to have with the murder of living creature by destabilizing their life energy. Most people simply used darkness essence to disrupt the magic of others. Alistair had never heard of one of the grown-up direct descendants using their essence to do what Sadi was doing, so it was unlikely that a nine-year-old one was going to crack it. Even still, if she was telling the truth, she was getting really close. Alistair had never known his sister to lie, so it stood to reason that she was right.

“I just wish I could use my shadow essence… I wanna control shadows… I want to make shadows… I think that if I could do that, it would be really easy, but I can’t…” Sadi said, almost pouting as she spoke.

Alistair nodded, opting to simply look down as they walked instead of looking up at his sister. When she was like this, her eyes got almost unsettling to him, so he tended to simply avoid looking at them altogether.

“I haven’t really had much luck with illusions either… I don’t think destruction suits me…” he replied meekly.

“Ha! No kidding. I think you and I should have had the opposite affinities! Shadows are better for me though. And illusions are good for you. We’ll get it eventually! I promise!”

Alistair nodded again and continued to walk along. They would be home pretty soon. Sadi looked around and scoffed silently at the surroundings. The land around their house was so boring. Directly surrounding it was a few hundred feet of just grassland. Around that, there was about a mile of cut down trees. For some reason, the trees in this area were really valuable to some people. The only interesting thing to her was that the grass had a nice purple hue to it instead of just being green. The trees that were further out were about the same, but their leaves were a slightly darker purple.

Still walking backwards, Sadi saw their house was just a few hundred feet back. The tree stumps had just stopped, so they were now on the nice soft grass. Sadi always liked the way that it felt on her feet. She hated wearing shoes. She often told Alistair that, “It makes it harder to shadow step”. She loved to shadow step anywhere she could, even if it was a relatively short distance.

After a few minutes of silent walking, they finally reached the house. It was a relatively simple house. The exterior was made of the same trees that were cut down all around it. The windows all around it were stained purple since Sadi’s mother said that purple light was very pleasant. The wood of the outside was ash grey and the entire outside was coated with an enchantment to reinforce the house. Despite the simple size, the house was rather large. It had three slightly offset stories and each of them were around a hundred feet on each side. At the front of the house, there was a nice large porch with a swing and a few chairs. There were purple lanterns hanging across the roof of the porch, but they dormant at the moment.

Sitting on the swing was the children’s mother. She was wearing a plain white shirt with black jeans and a black apron with purple trim. Her dark purple hair was tied back in a messy bun. There were a few mysterious stains on her face. As the children stepped on to the porch, she smiled softly.

“Welcome back, Sadi. It’s time for dinner.”