First there was darkness, then there was light. At least, that's all Arielle remembered after waking up in the cave. She was too old for dares and being baited into dangerous stunts, yet here she was, lying face down on a stone floor with a massive headache. Although, to say they had to twist her arm to get her to do this would be a lie.

Beside her lay the cracked remnants of the Vulpher Family Crest, the ancient family that lived on these lands centuries ago. Legend held that the once prosperous estate essentially vanished overnight without a trace. History said it was the unfortunate death of their sole heir dying due to the plague. 

Legend, however, was more interesting and was what tempted bored teenagers to investigate abandoned crypts (save for the bodies that filled them) and incredibly unstable caves that were liable to collapse at any point. 

Arielle pushed herself up onto her knees and started collecting the pieces of the crest as evidence of her feat. She’d be damned if she had nothing to show Clyde and Eveline after all this. It was strange though, Arielle couldn’t remember how she had gotten to the floor in the first place.

The crest had been at the very back of the cave, strangely clean of dust but old all the same.

Arielle remembered picking it up…and then there was voice.

What did it say again?

Arielle could barely think; there was now a steady pounding working its way through her head. It couldn’t have been that important if she couldn’t remember.

And after whatever the voice said, the crest started to crack and then came darkness.

Staring at the pieces in her hand, Arielle had an unfamiliar sinking feeling in her stomach.

"Those pieces are useless now."

"Shhh, we said we were going to ease her into it."

Arielle immediately dropped what pieces she had picked up and jumped up in a start. She regretted it immediately; her head was still spinning. Arielle wavered slightly before finding her balance. "Who's there?" called out Arielle.

There was a single ray of sunlight illuminating the cave, making it difficult to see anything that wasn't in front of her. Turning in a circle, she was about to chalk it up to imagination, before doing a double take when her eyes finally caught hold of something that was quite clearly not the cave. 

"Hello," said a cheerful white blob with the roundest eyes Arielle had ever seen and a black line which she presumed to be its mouth.

"Greetings," murmured a black blob beside it, with a mouth as black as its body that it was almost indistinguishable. 

"Oh, um, hi," replied Arielle, "saints, I must've hit my head really hard."

Scratching at her head, Arielle willfully chose to ignore the figments of her imagination and started picking up the broken pieces of the crest again. "Like Krad said, those are useless now," interjected the white blob. 

Arielle took a deep breath and pushed through the nonsensical dialogue her brain was coming up with it. "I don't think she believes us, Evol." This was the dark blob, presumably named Krad.

"You're not real," said Arielle lightly before tossing in the pieces into the knapsack she had carried along. "I'm a deranged fool, talking to myself like this."

"Oh, I see, it's not that she doesn't believe us, it's that she doesn't believe in us," said Evol, who spoke with an awe of clarity so great that Arielle would've thought the secret of The Saint was revealed to it.

Eager to leave this behind, and perhaps lay down for a very long rest, Arielle closed up the bag and said, “Well, goodbye imaginary blobs, I hope to never see you again.”

As she started towards the mouth of cave, Krad, with its more gravelly voice said, "The reason the crest is useless is because you already released us. We're bound to you, Arielle Alarie."

The blobs clearly knew her name because they were made up by herself. Of course she would know her own name. Despite this, a growing sense of forlorn was seeping into her bones. Arielle pushed forward, blatantly ignoring the voice and crawling out of the cave. The summer air hit her face like a warm hug, embracing her with a familiarity that immediately dampened the effects of her headache. 

She was so at ease that she hadn't noticed the group of beings crowding the entrance. And in another blink of an eye she was face-to-face with the tip of a sword.