The night was beginning to fade and the first light of dawn bloomed over the horizon. Spindly rays of morning light filtered through the thin curtain and slowly crept across the sparsely furnished room. The slight shift was all Lukas needed to slip from his dream and rise into wakefulness. He let out a heavy, resigned sigh before allowing his eyes to flutter open. As he stretched out his long limbs, his feet slipped from under the warm blanket and were instantly chilled by the crisp late autumn air. Reflexively he pulled them back under the protection of the blanket but it was pointless. He knew he had to get up and like ripping off a bandaid it was better to do it in one quick motion. The covers flung back and the cold air rushed in. Lukas shivered as he sat up and ran his finger through his sleep matted hair. It was too dim by the pale morning light to see much in the small room, but it didn’t matter. Lukas could have found his way even on the darkest of nights. Surrendering his last protection against the cold he slipped off his night shirt and quickly pulled on a pair of slacks and a warm woollen shirt. He put on two pairs of sock before lacing up his boots but still his feet felt cold; hopefully they would start to warm once he started moving. Lastly he grabbed his coat and hat; he thought about taking his gloves but he would spend more time taking them off, then keeping them on. He double checked he had all the tools and equipment, even though he had double checked it, twice, when he packed it the night before. But still he ran his fingers through the bag to find the sheath of papers, waxed and plain, a few small glass vials, a coil of twine, three pairs of tweezers and the leather pouch with his small thin knife.

No one else was on the street at this hour; even those who planned to get an early start would still be in bed for another hour at least. Lukas’ boots thumped against the cobblestone, echoing in the silence. At one point he mistook the sound and thought that someone was following him and let out a hollow laugh at his own paranoia.

“No one would be out here at this time of morning without a very good reason, not even thieves or bandits.” Lukas muttered to himself as he left the road and made his way into the lush greenery of the forest that surrounded the town of Roads End.

The aptly named town was little more than an outpost. It marked the extent that settlers had managed to push north before succumbing to the wild lands beyond, and now served as a way point for adventurers journeying to the wild northern lands, or those stumbling back from it.

That wilful forest was the reason Lukas was up so early. If he had been apprenticed to a wordsmith as a boy he could have written countless tales of fae, goblins and ghouls, indoors, by a warm fire, but instead he had become an apothecary. This forest was home to the many plants and herbs he required for his mixtures and through his studies he had discovered that most of those plants had the greatest potency when harvested in the dawning light of morning. And so here he was, carefully stepping over rocks and raised tree roots that he could barely see, to find small plants that he could also barely see. Fortunately Lukas knew this forest well and the first item on his list should be just behind that large oak tree.

Waves of old man’s beard hung from every branch of the old tree and, nestled amongst the gnarled roots, grew a patch of small white mushrooms with a slight blue tint hidden beneath the cap. If you were foolish enough to eat one of these sneaky mushrooms you would get painful stomach cramps; two to three and the cramping would lead to vomiting bile that would leave your mouth and throat burning. If you ate four or more, after days of vomiting, you would die. But if you boiled them first, left them to dry and then ground them into a powder, it could be used in small doses to, strangely enough, reduce stomach aches. A single mushroom could produce enough powder for quite a few doses and as this was the only patch of them that Lukas had found, he would only ever harvest a few mushrooms at a time.

Taking a piece of waxed paper from his bag he placed it on the ground between the mushrooms, careful not to touch any of them. He drew his small blade from its sheath and with practised skill he sliced off four caps, before wiping the blade on the waxed paper and sliding it back into its sheath. Making sure to only touch the edges Lukas folded the paper over and secured it with a piece of string. As an extra precaution he wiped his hands on a nearby patch of grass and set off to find the next plant on his list.

At this time of morning even the inhabitants of the forest were not stirring. The night predators had returned to their nests and burrows and the diurnal animals had not yet woken. The quiet stillness gave the forest somewhat of an eerie and unnerving feeling but Lukas actually revelled in the silence. It gave him a chance to think and ponder. And in the quiet his mind drifted back to the fading fragments of last night’s dream. The details, as always, had begun to fade as soon as he had woken up but he remembered being in a large room full of books. It had been full of people all wearing masks. Lukas thought it must have been a party or masquerade ball, but the mood of the room didn’t feel very celebratory. Instead Lukas sensed an overwhelming presence of malice. Though it may have just been his imagination— it wasn’t like he could see the expressions on the people’s faces, and Lukas never really felt comfortable in big crowds. Beyond that he couldn’t remember much else, what the party was for, or what happened. The only thing he could remember with clarity was his face.

It had first started over a year ago. Lukas had never had very memorable dreams in the past, but this was a hard face to forget. He was simply stunning. His hair was as black as a moonless night and flawless skin of golden olive. But most captivating of all were his dark amber eyes.

The day after the man had first appeared in his dream, Lukas had spent most of the morning trying to capture his likeness, but he just couldn’t get those eyes right. The way shadows pooled or how the light caught at the edges.

Master Allwood had been furious when he had woken from his drunken stupor just before noon and discovered the shop hadn’t been opened yet.