The resources Sonder had were meager.
A little bag, hardly worth calling such, with only water, bread, and a blanket tucked inside. The villagers had given what they could when she asked, but she had not pressed them. Their kindness was real, but Sonder did not think it appropriate to ask them for more.
At her side she still felt the pressure of the Yellow Mage's work; the rib of pale bone was now hers. It pressed faintly against her whenever she breathed.
Strange, but steady.
She weighed her challenge carefully, knowing it was twofold. On one hand, to find something powerful enough to overcome Vell's unseen sickness. On the other, to hunt down the remaining shards of darkness, wherever they were.
The two tasks crossed into each other.
Her spirit was strong and undeterred.
The sun was climbing when she stepped from the shadow of the Yellow Mage's tower.
A few villagers looked up from their work to watch her go, hands still in soil, in grain, or on their tools.
They were silent, but their silence was not cold. They had given what help they could. The rest was hers alone.
The first step of her new path was clear: she needed someone who could find the rest of the shards.
The Yellow Mage had given her a name, with no judgment or embellishment.
Grimalkin. Not a wizard, by any formal means, but something near enough. Her art was murky and unstudied, and by suggestion of the Yellow Mage, perhaps deliberately hidden from the circles of scholars.
Yet, some called her a sorceress. She was a finder of lost things.
All agreed she could find what no one else could.
She lived far in the south, in the city of Gloam.
The Yellow Mage could tell Sonder little of it.
He had never sought out the city nor Grimalkin himself.
"I have not lost anything I need returned," he had said.
And the words were the entire shape of the man: practical, unsentimental, strange.
Sonder thought him a strange wizard, pragmatic, as she had once read. But he was powerful and, in his own way, behind all of the yellow, kind. She, and Vell, owed him a lot.
She turned south.
The road stretched long before her, empty and quiet.
By day it wound through gentle valleys and soft ridges, a land tamed by plows and tilled earth.
By night it turned desolate.
And Sonder walked it alone, her small bundle weighing at her back.
One evening, long after the sun had dropped, she reached the crest of a hill. She stopped there and looked out.
The world rolled out vast and endless before her. Hills fading into forests, rivers winding through the land.
Not a soul stirred. No smoke, no fire, no village in sight.
Nothing but the wide sweep of nature.
And in that moment, Sonder felt terribly, crushingly alone.