She felt it, rather than seeing it. A ripple along the lines of entropy flowing around the planet, the ever pervading force of decay that encompassed all things. It startled her. Something else had poked those lines. Something aware.
Something new they were coming.
Trace glanced sidelong at Nicole and found that the bunnymouse had fallen asleep against her, no doubt lulled by the gentle jostling of the carrage and the nearness to her. Trace smiled a bit and gave Nicole's temple a little kiss, then closed her own eyes. She focused on the flow, concentrating her inner awareness to follow the lines, back to it source.
The phoenix had still not gotten used to this, this amplified sense of awareness that Nicole had shared with her via a spiritual connection; a connection and gift that the bunnymouse had shared originally with her grandmother. The Witch Queen herself.
The lines came together and connected, but she was suprised when the elusive 'other' evaded her search. Instead of receiving an image of the 'other', she instead interpreted a series of visions.
A swathing meadow overshot by dark smoke clouds, the scent of burning flesh and screams of the dying.
A lapine male dressed in black armor, hoisting his thick sword upwards and giving a war cry.
And the most horrific: a prone wolf cub laying on her back; a doll clutched to her body as her lifeless eyes seemed to stare directly into Trace's.
  The phoenix jumped and opened her eyes, the bright sunlight of the morning vanquishing these horrible images. She drew Nicole closer.
"You saw them too?"
  Trace looked over to Gordon, seeing his face set and his ears flattened. She nodded slowly. "Yes. But how did you..."
The huge lapine glanced over and smiled a bit.
"Perhaps my mistress has forgotten that I once served as one of the Witch-Queen's generals? I have a touch of her power as well, we all did. It's how she issued her commands to us. Granted, Mistress, I haven't any of the powers you or Mistress Nicole have but I can occassionally see the visions."
Trace nodded and looked out over the bumpy dirt road, lost in her thoughts for a while. She glanced at Gordon again, and he appeared not to notice.
  Trace liked him, she really did. He was genial, conservative and a very warm being...but she also did very much remember what he had been in a previous life, as a young buck. A War Machine, one of the black armored lapines that led Alcott's forces into battle. A trained warrior. A merciless killer.
"What was it like, Gordon?" She asked.
He pondered the question before answering.
"Militant," he said finally. "We weren't people, we were tools. A series of machines on a strict timetable, not allowed to think. We woke, dressed, ate, and fought when she tolds us too. God help us if one of us caught her attention, it was never a good thing. I understand the Hands had it worse, though."
Trace looked puzzled. "Hands?"
Gordon smiled and reached behind him, rummaging through a rucksack before bringing out a wedge of cheese that he handed to the phoenix.
"Hands," he repeated. "Her personal assassins. You never knew how many she had, or who they were. Only she knew that. Even the Hands didn't, each thought they were the only one. We had it rough, they had it bad. It was said that if her hands showed to much faculty, she would herself eliminate them as a threat."
Trace accepted the cheese and nibbled it, then shook her head. "Horrible. She killed children."
Gordon nodded, letting out a little sigh. 
"She did. And she never regretted it."
                                              ***
Tristian and Carrot exchanged looks. Both had overheard the conversation up front.
  The shade elf pressed his lips into a thin line, confusion whirling in his thoughts. He didn't really understand any of it, though he...like all species inhabiting Layleaux...had heard the legends and whispered stories of the Witch Queen. He knew how lapines that heard the name would wince.
  He didn't understand why Mistress Nicole wanted to see her base of operations. This place in the east, this tower. Residing in a horrible, nearly frigid valley where the sun rarely shown and all sorts of horrible creatures were said to take shelter: weasle bandits, stoat killers..ruffians and scoundrels of every type that were trying to evade the law. It was said that the Witch Vale was a place that only Wizards dared walk without fear.
He didn't know what to make of any of it.
                                              ***
Nicole patted Gordon's arm. "We'll stop here."
  The sun was setting, and the carrage was well out of Layleaux Town proper, they had passed through it sometime before noon and had since been travelling eastward along little used roads until finally they had reached only hiking trails. No one came out this far east anymore, no one civilized anyway.
The buck nodded and pulled the carrage over to a large clearing, bringing the horses to a halt. The three pets all ejected from the carrage to take up their duties: Gordon to secure the area against potential threats; Carrot to preapare the evening meal, and Tristian to erect the two tents the five of them would use for sleeping.
  Trace stepped down from the front of the carrage after Nicole and playfully caught the bunnymouse's long, snakelike tail in her hand as she stood looking up and down the road. Nicole turned and smiled, that radiant dimpled smile she gave only to Trace.
"When was the last time you really travelled, Beloved?"
  Trace grinned. It wasn't the kind of question she had expected.
"Not since I was a kid, leaving the aerie for the first time. Far, far west from here. Miles." 
Nicole nodded and stretched languidly to ease the tension from her muscles. Trace smiled a bit and watched that stocky frame move; the way Nicole's hands went above her head and they way her right hip jutted out to cause the strong muscles in her leg to accentuate the magnicifent shape of that limb. Then she frowned.
"Why are we doing this, Nic?"
Nicole turned back and stepped forward to collect Trace in a hug. She looked up into the phoenix's eyes, and her response caught Trace completely by surprise.
  "To purge it, Trace. There's something there...something evil. I want to find it, and eliminate it. We're going to rid the world of *her* evil for once and for all."
  Trace blinked, and then smiled and gave the hug back with a releived sigh.
Nicole chuckled softly.
"Did you think I was going to become her legacy, Beloved? That I was going to claim the title for myself and reinstate the genocide?"
Trace kissed Nicole softly.
"No, of course not. I just...I didn't know why. You just said that you *had* to go, and you didn't tell anyone why. We just..well..we were confused." She looked down at her feet a moment, and then back up. "I felt it to. It was watching us this morning."
Nicole cocked her head. "Was it? I hadn't noticed."
  The phoenix explained to the bunnymouse how she had received the visions while Nicole was sleeping, and of how the 'other' had suddenly become aware that it was being looked for and had set up the blocking visions. Nicole nodded thoughtfully.
"A remaining Hand, perhaps." She said.
Trace didn't ask how Nicole knew about the Hands. Nicole had used her other powers, her Celestial ones, to enter into Alcott's mind many times. She knew everything the Witch-Queen had, from the earliest memory. But she doubted Nicole's assesment.
  She shuffled a bit uneasily.
"I don't think so," She said. "Whatever this thing is, it's more potent than a Hand. Gordon told me about them, a Hand with this kind of ability would have been killed by Alcott as a threat."
Nicole turned and regarded her silently, thinking. Then she nodded, once.
"Your right. How very interesting."

End of Chapter 2