The story continues…
Day 36: Into it was loaded the magical signature of the mage being tracked and then the disk let the tracker see the remnants of their spells.
Into it was loaded the magical signature of the mage being tracked and then the disk let the tracker see the remnants of their spells. Anna knew that her signature was on file. She had even seen it. When all mages came of age they were brought in and they submitted their signature. It was like a fingerprint. Her parents explained it to her as a way of finding her if she was lost, a way to track her.
She remembered the signature that her magic made. It was a combination of pink and purple swirls, the pink was a soft pastel shade like the colors white blushed and the purple was a light lilac. They swirled together with little silvery glitter twinkling slightly around the edges. Anna remembered that she thought her signature was quite pretty. She knew that was the signature that Marcus loaded into his tracking device.
‘But it has changed.’ Anna thought. She still wasn’t certain entirely what to think of the change. The signature was a combination of skill, training and personality, at least that was what she was told. A little over a year ago, she found a device that tested a person’s signature. The device was worth a lot of money if it was functioning. One of her friends was interested in buying it and she had no use for it. Before he would buy it, she had to prove it worked.
He tested it on Jonas and it came up as expected, his signature exactly what it was when he was tested. He then tested it on her. Anna thought it might be a trap, but as the money would hold her for a long time and thus make day to day survival a little easier and a great deal more pleasant, she decided the risk was acceptable. So she had her signature tested. It flared crimson and gold with a thin streak of the deepest purple threaded through it.
Calvin looked disappointed and Anna realized he probably would have sold her out to the authorities if her signature matched. As it didn’t he paid her the price she asked. Anna took the money and left town the next day. She didn’t know why her magic changed but she knew it had and the change kept her safe. One of the things she hoped to find in the lost archives was information regarding magical signatures. While other archives listed a few items relating to signatures, when she looked, they were pulled from the shelves.
Anna managed to cobble together bits and pieces that flickered through other books, but what she learned wasn’t much or explain how her signature changed when everyone said it was impossible.
‘I don’t know what that means for me going home,’ Anna thought. She suspected that she would need to show her signature to prove it was her if she did return.
Anna shook the thought away and returned to studying Marcus. He was searching for her signature and finding nothing. He put the tracker away and took out a different tracker. This one Anna could see was more basic. It just registered magic and it’s presence but couldn’t pull out a single thread. Marcus studied it and got a hit on his tracker. He smiled and began to follow where it led.
Ten til Midnight 