Watchers of the Evenfall
Categories: [ Books ]
Sixteen-year-old Hazel is resurrected by a mage. First held by the Inquisition she is released thanks to the influence of the king and invited to join Alistair the vampire, Lara the werewolf and Lyvaelan the dark elf warlock and become the new special members of the Evenfall Vigil, dedicated to protect the kingdom from nocturnal supernatural threats. They first investigate the disappearance of bluecap workers, extremely fast moving, small fae creatures participating to the construction of the city walls. They soon have a first encounter with aufhockers, creatures made of shadows that seem to swallow the bluecaps without killing them. Hazel, despite being the target of the cult of Semeleme the goddess of death, is not a conventional undead as she has premonitory dreams and, thanks to the guidance of Lyvaelan she develops psychic abilities and the capacity to communicate with plants and make them grow. Mortally wounded during the encounter with the aufhockers she manages to heal herself in a few minutes, and when burned alive by the cult of Semeleme she heals in a few days. Hazel also announces a prophecy about a lich of half a day that deeply troubles her colleagues. While investigating, they discover that the aufhockers work for the Alchemist, a person rich enough to have handsomely paid a dozen men to attack them with the help of a blue potion that makes one of them very fast. Pursuing that line of investigation they talk with the head of the university of magic who introduces them to a professor of alchemy. The latter makes a list of alchemists who could be the Alchemist. The professor also advise them to visit Paxton Averly, a very nice alchemist who helps then narrow down the list of suspects. The eventually find a pair of suspects, but it is an obvious setup. Hazel is then set up to notice dead bluecaps in Averly's laboratory, giving him the excuse to attack the team with the support of his aufhockers. Averly's bluecap potion makes him almost invincible, and they manage to vanquish him only because Lyvaelan's warlock side concentrates so much magic that he is close to killing himself while destroying the whole city (a risk of which he is well aware and causes most people to fear warlocks).