Chapter 21

Lymlock

Chapter 21

I laughed. Akeelay was glaring at me, but I laughed. Of course she was. It made perfect sense. The traitor sorcerer and the girl working against me.

I watched as Akeelay avoided Kaolin’s searching gaze. This was so worth the travel time.

“How sweet,” I managed as my laughter subsided. “Do you feel the same way about her, traitor?” I addressed Kaolin. He knew as well as I did that I didn’t need a truth spell to get him to tell me what he really thought. He knew, better than the other two, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill his friends. He had seen what I could do firsthand.

“Yes.” He growled out the answer, angry at me but looking at Akeelay, who avoided his gaze. I laughed again. I could feel the hostility aimed at me, but the three of them were powerless to do anything.

This was the highlight of my year. I finally had them, and this was proving so much more entertaining than I would have ever expected.

Ha!

Chapter 20

Akeelay

Chapter 20

    I slowly woke up. I vaguely remembered the fight from the night before, and letting a spell get through to me.

     I groaned and sat up, my head throbbing. I was in a square dark room, long enough for me to lay down both ways. The only light slotted in through a small barred window in the door, casting long, thin shadows across the stone floor. Where was I? I wondered. I reached for my knife and found it missing, along with the rest of my stuff. I only had my clothes.

     Had the sorcerers captured all of us, or had it just been me? I hadn’t seen Dossik, but he had gotten rid of a lot of the sorcerers. There had been maybe 50 there?

     There were too many questions that needed to be answered bouncing around my head, and my pounding headache wasn’t helping matters.

     I’ll repeat the question, because that was what I was thinking – Where was I? I hoped we were still in Melzult. If I (or we, if the rest were here) could escape, we wouldn’t have nearly as far to go if we were still in the same general area.

     I waited. I don’t know how long it was. We don’t have very good measures of time. We all know basic time measures from your world, but for amounts of time longer than a moment and shorter than a day, like your “hours,” we don’t have words for. We do use the word “hour” occasionally, but it’s hard to measure. No clocks.

     But anyway, I guess it was about two of your hours before something happened. My headache had subsided somewhat by then, so I could think more clearly.

     In that time, I had checked the door. No handle on my side. No windows. No way out. The view from the barred window in the door was of a dark hallway, but there was light coming out of a door halfway down that was ajar.

     After a couple of hours, like I said, something happened. The light was blocked out, and I glanced up to see who I had supposed was the lead sorcerer the night before swinging open the door.

     “What do you want?” I asked, my voice hoarse.

     “Come with me,” he said harshly. “Don’t try anything.”

     I stood up and walked out cautiously. He pointed me forward down the hallway. “Walk.”

     I walked. I didn’t want to get killed when I still had, hopefully, a decent chance of escaping. He escorted me through a few hallways and into a brightly lit room, closing the door behind him. I squinted at the sudden light and nearly gasped aloud when I saw what the room contained.

     I hadn’t seen Lymlock up close until that moment, but he looked just as he had from far away, only more dangerous. He had deep brown hair and, as I looked at him, hazel eyes.

     “Hello, Akeelay,” he said, with a perfect calm. How did he know my name? That’s right – the trees. So bizarre.

     I was afraid of him, but I tried my best not to show it. “Hello, Malin,” I replied, using his first name.

     His eyes flashed. He had deadly hazel eyes. “Don’t call me that!”

     “Touchy, aren’t we?” I replied without thinking. It was an automatic response; I regretted it as soon as the words were out.

     “I will kill you, Akeelay Pather.” His voice was angry but carefully controlled. I watched, wary. If he was going to start throwing curses everywhere, I would have to run.

     The door banged open.

     “Here are our other guests,” said the sorcerer there.

     Yet another sorcerer (how many were in that place?) pushed in just the two people I wanted to see the most, and didn’t want to see at the same time. Maybelle and Kaolin both were locked in what I assume were caerthin handcuffs and looked ready to kill someone, from the expressions on their faces.

     I wondered why Kaolin wasn’t doing anything. He was immune to caerthin.

     Lymlock laughed happily, smugly.

     “Hello, Maybelle.” She glared at him, but kept silent. He continued. “And we meet again, traitor.”

     “I do have a name, you know,” he said, annoyed. “You seem to forget that, Malin.” I winced, hoping Lymlock wasn’t in the mood to kill.

     “Watch it, traitor,” he snapped. “As your little human girlfriend here has found out, I don’t like being called that.”

     Kaolin shot a worried glance at me, silently asking, “Are you okay?” I nodded slightly in response, relieved that that was all that had happened. I didn’t really mind him calling me Kaolin’s “girlfriend” as much as I would have minded Kaolin dying.

     “And, if you even have magyk left, don’t even think about trying anything,” Lymlock continued. “I wouldn’t mind killing your friends, and I might accidentally slip if you try to escape.”

     “I wouldn’t think of trying anything, of course,” Kaolin said half-sarcastically, teeth gritted.

     “What do you want?” Maybelle asked Lymlock, exasperated.

     “You’re working against me,” he said, in a more serious tone. “You three and that centaur. Where is he?”

     “Of course we’re working against you,” I said. “You took over my home, and I want it back.”

     “How touching,” he replied sarcastically. “And the centaur?”

     “We don’t know where he is,” Kaolin said.

     “Shut up, traitor. I wasn’t asking you.”

     “Like he said, we really don’t know where he is,” I confirmed.

     “Right. And I really believe you.” Sarcasm again. That was quickly getting old. “Verita!” he said, pointing at me.

     “Truth spell,” Maybelle muttered. I knew; I could feel the effect of it, constricting my throat.

     “I’ll ask you again,” Lymlock said. “Where is the centaur?”

     “I don’t know,” I repeated. He glared at me, and I shrugged. It was the truth, whether he liked it or not.

     “Where was he during the fight?”

     “Helping us.”

     “How?”

     “By attacking the sorcerers.” Because he just asked ‘how’ instead of asking how he wasn’t captured, that was as specific as I needed to be. He stared at me suspiciously, but he knew I couldn’t lie.

     “Next question,” he said coldly. This was turning into an interrogation, and that was the one thing – well, one of the few things – I really didn’t want to have happen. “What is the goal of your quest?”

     Like he didn’t know.

     “Well, right now it’s to escape,” I answered. “Then, we’re trying to get the talisman of Turoi to wake up the king and queen.”

Although he hadn’t asked anything really important yet, I didn’t like the truth spell. It felt awful to just have magyk pull the answer out of your head and force it out of your mouth.

“And how did she – “ he pointed at Maybelle – “not get captured with the rest of the wizards at the castle?” Whatever question I had expected, it wasn’t that.

“She was smart enough to go in a different way,” I replied. “But I don’t think that really matters now, so I don’t know why you’re asking.”

The truth spell did have at least one benefit, I realized, even if it was small. It allowed you to say rude things, as long as they were true, and claim that it’s not your fault.

He suddenly smiled, and I knew that couldn’t be a good sign.

“Is there anything you really don’t want me to know?”

I hate sorcerers.

“Yes.”

“What would that be?” He was smirking now.

Especially him.

I tried to resist, but I couldn’t. “That I wish you were dead right now, and I nearly killed Renjin, and that I’m really afraid right now.”

He laughed, sounding both mocking, and impressed by his own brilliance. He didn’t seem annoyed by the fact that I wanted him dead, or that I had almost killed one of his sorcerers.

“Anything else that you don’t want the people in here to know?”

I was doomed.

“I’m in love,” I said unwillingly.

Lymlock snickered. “With who?”

“I hate you,” I said, then continued in the same breath, muttering, “Kaolin.”

Chapter 19

Lymlock

     Chapter 19

     I laughed when I heard. I wasn’t part of the fight, but I was getting there as fast as I could. I had to make sure that Maher, my contact from Lospem, had gathered sufficient sorcerers to final capture the four of them. You know who I’m talking about.

       I had gotten a unicorn to ride. Most magykans, even sorcerers, don’t like to try to control unicorns, even if they can. They worry about losing control. The unicorns, of course, would kill them if they had even the slightest chance. I’ve never been worried about losing control of them, though. Why should I be? I have enough magyk to hold onto one.

       But anyway, the thing got me across the kingdom fast. Unicorns can build up to amazing speeds. It takes a good distance to get up to it, but they can go nearly the speed of light. Because of this, I could get across the kingdom in less than a day.

       When I got to the border forest, I paused a moment. Even though I had a unicorn under my command, and it would kill whatever I wanted it to kill, there were a lot of things in there that hardly anybody knows about, and nobody wants to mess with. But after a few moments I laughed and forced the unicorn to continue. Magyk trumps everything, after all.

       I got through the forest at light – well, almost light – speed. It took hardly any time going straight through.

       Once officially in Melzult, I cast a tracking spell on Maher. Because I knew his name and what he looked like, I could easily find him. Tracking spells are one of the only spells that work from a distance, and one of the most fun. If the tracked person is a magykan, of course, he can feel the spell on him, but he won’t know who cast it.

       I guided the unicorn toward Lospem, following the map in my head. The map stopped at a place where the ground was covered in leaves, with no buildings in sight.

       “What the –“ I started. The unicorn snorted and pawed at the ground. I rolled my eyes, realizing what this was. Maher was really that stereotypical?

       He was. I enchanted the leaves to move and blasted open the trapdoor on the ground, not caring that I was destroying his camouflage. He could fix it in a heartbeat. That was what magyk was for.

       I entered. Although I passed other sorcerers, none tried to stop me. Some recognized me, I could tell, but others just looked away, bored, as I passed them in the thin hallways of Maher’s underground hideout.

       As I kept walking, there were more and more sorcerers passing by. I assumed that I was getting closer to the center, and this was confirmed when I got to the end of the hallway and came out into a place that resembled nothing more than an octopus.

       There were about a dozen hallways branching off of the main center, with a room in the middle. I entered, assuming this would be where the leader was. Maher was one of the most powerful (both in terms of magyk and influence) sorcerers in Melzult. He would be the one running the show.

       Sure enough, as I entered, I saw a line of sorcerers looking like they were about to complain, all leading up to Maher, who was trying to appease three sorcerers at once.

       I nearly laughed. Didn’t that look familiar. I faced crowds like that every day.

       I walked by the line, ignoring their questioning stares.

       Maher glanced up and saw me. He looked surprised, then understanding.

       “Excuse me for a moment,” he said to the angry magykans yelling at him. I wouldn’t have been that polite. I would’ve said something more along the lines of, “Get out of here.” But then, my sorcerers knew I was in charge, and they didn’t protest.

       He pulled me into a separate room.

       “Give me good news,” I said in a warning tone. If there wasn’t, I had gone all that way with a unicorn. I could still feel it through the connection, holding it in place up above. I might as well use it, especially if I got disappointed.

       “There is good news,” he responded. Still, though, I didn’t dare to hope. Others had failed trying to accomplish the same task.

       “We have them. The three. The wizard, the human, and the traitor.”

       “The centaur?” I asked.

       “There was no centaur,” he replied. I raised an eyebrow, and he hurried on with his explanation. “He wasn’t there at all, and I believe he ran away when he saw us. I wouldn’t doubt it. Centaurs may be benevolent, but they know when they’ll be beaten.”

       “Where are they?”

       “They’re all separated. The wizard and traitor are in separate caerthin cells, and the girl is in a normal one.”

       “The boy…!” I said, remembering a certain detail from our conversation. “Do you have a guard on him?”

       “No, why?”

       “He’s immune to caerthin.”

       Maher’s eyes widened, then he shrugged. “It shouldn’t matter anyway. He’s been out cold for a while now. He ran himself out of magyk. If he were awake now he would have a little bit, but it won’t be enough to do a lot of damage with.”

       “Good. Give me the keys and show me where they are. I’ll need some supplies, too.”

       “We’ll get them,” he said.

       This would be fun. For the first time that day, I smiled. Revenge would be sweet.

Chapter 18

Kaolin

Chapter 18

     Sorcerers. Of course they were. The trees had warned us, after all, that Lymlock knew where we were going. He would have known our speed, location, and plans, and would have sent his sorcerers accordingly.

      This was going to be a hard battle.

      I shielded everybody without telling them. Maybelle knew, and looked at me in surprise, but didn’t comment. She knew what I knew, and we were going to need all the help we could get.

      Akeelay slipped her knife out of her sheath. Dossik shimmered into invisibility. Maybelle and I got ready to fight.

      The sorcerers were waiting, watching us arrive.

      “Let’s just keep going,” I whispered to the others. The sorcerers were still a fair distance away, but it seemed like a time to whisper. “We’ll probably have to fight, even if we try to avoid them.”

      They all nodded, except Dossik, but he was invisible, so he might have anyway.

      “We can do this,” Akeelay muttered. She was gripping her knife so hard I was surprised it didn’t break.

      And we stepped out to meet the sorcerers. More ran out from behind, trapping us in a circle, the moment we were close enough.

      Automatically, we formed a little circle of our own. Akeelay, Maybelle, and I stood back-to-back in a tight triangle.

      Dossik was nowhere to be seen, which was good. Probably.

      “Surrender,” said a sorcerer off to my left loudly, drawing all of our eyes. I didn’t recognize him, which meant he wasn’t in Lymlock’s original little band. It made sense. We were pretty far from the castle.

      “Never,” the three of us said in unison.

      “Where is the fourth member of your party?” demanded a different one.

      “I wish we were having a party,” Akeelay responded, laughing. “I’ll bring the cake.”

      I snickered. The sorcerers tightened their circle around us angrily.

      “This is not the time to make jokes.”

      The sorcerer who had told us to surrender, seemingly the leader, flicked his hand. The circle of magykans yelled, “Sensih!”

      I tried not to flinch as the spells headed our way. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. I knew Maybelle wouldn’t move either, but I whispered to Akeelay, “Don’t move!” I wanted them to think we knew exactly what we were doing.

      I wished.

      But anyway, she shot a quick glance at me and nodded. As the spells approached, I could tell by how tense she was she wanted so badly to duck or block it or something, but she stood still and tight.

      All of the unconsciousness spells bounced off our shield and went straight back to their casters. About a third of the 50 or so sorcerers didn’t move out of the way in time, and they went down.

      I didn’t know if they had a shield spell as well, but we were outnumbered either way. There were, I estimated, a dozen of them for every one of us (or 9 if Dossik was hanging around), and our chances didn’t look good. But we had beaten the odds before, so we would try.

      “Imorru,” I said, hoping the “leave” spell would work.

      Luckily, they didn’t have shield spells, or the one I aimed it at didn’t. But he managed to cancel the spell just before it reached him.

      Both sides had fired spells, but there was still a strange peace, like the calm before a storm. Peace wasn’t quite the right word, though. There was a kind of competition in the air. I didn’t know if anybody else could feel it, but to me it seemed like a battle of wills. Who would break down and truly start the fight first?

      It wasn’t us. After a few tensely silent moments, the lead sorcerer slowly nodded.

      “Go,” he said. And the sorcerers started their spells.

      I knew the spells wouldn’t do much good for a while. I had plenty of magyk left to hold all three of my shield spells, but I wouldn’t be able to keep them up forever.

      The sorcerers were firing spells around the circle, so it was like a wave of spells heading for us at any given moment.

      “We can do this, we can do this,” Akeelay repeated to herself. I don’t think she meant for us to hear, but my improved senses heard her nearly silent whispers.

      We waited. Maybelle and I cast a spell occasionally, but now they had shield spells up too, and we didn’t want them to rebound and hit us. I could feel my magyk draining slowly, and I waited for the right moment to release the spell.

      When I had about 55% of my magyk left, I whispered, barely moving my lips, “Get ready to fight.” Maybelle and Akeelay didn’t react, but I knew they had heard.

      The moment I had 50% left, I dropped the spell. We all acted as though nothing had changed, until a spell headed for Akeelay. The rotation of spells was aimed at her, and I cursed (nonmagykal kind) myself for letting that happen. I didn’t care how good she was at reflecting spells with her dagger, I didn’t like her being in danger.

      But she really was good with it, and didn’t have any trouble avoiding being hit by the spell.

      The lead sorcerer announced, in case anyone had missed it, “Their shield is down!”

      Maybelle and I attacked. “Do you want to knock them out, or have them leave, or what?” I asked her.

      “Leave will work,” she said, already shooting the yellow spell out. Spells have color, but only magykans can see them. It’ll identify the type of spell, and sometimes the strength. To humans and other non-magykans, the spells are invisible I don’t know how Akeelay did her reflecting without any idea of the spells heading for her, but maybe she just calculated the trajectory or something.

      I shouted, “Imorru!” over and over again, but I knew it couldn’t last forever. Eventually, someone would have to win. And I had to admit, the odds weren’t looking good for us.

      Dossik was in this, now, too. I still couldn’t see him, but he was knocking down sorcerers one by one.

      Whenever a sorcerer was hit by a leave spell, they would turn around and walk away, no longer participating in the fight. The spells only lasted for a while, though. There was a set amount of time, it wasn’t a held spell, but I didn’t want the fight to last that long.

      After a short while (maybe about 20 or 30 of your minutes?),  heard a distinct thump.  I worriedly glanced to where the sound had come from, seeing Akeelay lying on the ground. I gasped and redoubled my efforts. There were too many left, still about ten. For every spell I sent, they would be able to cancel most of them and send two or three back at me, which I would have to either dodge or cancel. I was getting tired.

      I kept going. My magyk was being depleted quickly. 10%, 9, 8... It hit 3% and my vision started to blur.

      Just before I ran out of magyk completely, my sight distorting all the sorcerers’ shapes into one big mass of color, I lost my balance and fell into unconsciousness. I was out, and it was up to Maybelle.

      The last thing I heard was another thump, and a loud, satisfied laugh.

Chapter 17

     Lymlock

Chapter 17

       I had planned everything out perfectly, of course. They were in for a nice little welcome to Melzult. They just needed to learn exactly what happened if you tried to defeat the most powerful sorcerer on the planet. And it was bad. I had ordered all of their…greeting party to capture them, not to kill.

       This was going to be fun.

Chapter 16

Akeelay

Chapter 16

Right. Well. We were all about to die. So comforting. Kaolin is so reassuring.

But that was pretty accurate. I wasn’t making any progress cutting through the door. I could cut into it, but the wood or whatever the thing was made of was too thick for my knife to reach to the other side.

So I took a break, and glanced around. Everything had been going fine when I started working on the door, but I couldn’t see anything of Kaolin except his feet and a foreboding pool of blood trickling out from his chest. Maybelle was being cornered by whatever it was that Diza had transformed into, and I couldn’t see Dossik.

I moved toward Maybelle, hoping I could help, when Dossik seemed to appear from nowhere beside me and pushed me back.

“What do you think you are doing?” he demanded.

“She’s going to get killed! I have to do something!”

“I have this under control. Wait one moment.”

Diza could almost reach Maybelle and advancing quickly. Dossik silently nocked an arrow and waited.

“What are you waiting for?” I had almost screamed the words, but realized how stupid that would be. Instead I whispered angrily.

“Trust me,” he said back. Just as Diza was about to reach Maybelle, he released the arrow.

I watched its path and nearly screamed again. It was too far to the left.

Suddenly, the arrow’s path curved and hit the bear in the side of the chest. She fell back, hitting the door and crushing the wood.

“Wow,” Maybelle said. “I thought you guys were leaving me to die. How did you do that, Dossik?”

“And where did that arrow come from?” I added.

Kaolin groaned. We all looked over at him, and I gasped as I saw that he had been badly hurt.

“He stepped in front of me and she just hit him out of the way,” Maybelle told me.

“Let’s get him out of here so we can heal him,” I urged, running to his side.

There were claw marks crossing his chest and the skin around it looked pale green. I winced at the color, hoping the wound wasn’t poisoned.

I strained to pick him up and failed. Dossik trotted over to help me and we carried him out of there and to the edge of the trees.

“Is this far enough away?” I asked, tired.

“I don’t know,” Maybelle said. “I never knew that dwarves’ creations repel magyk. But it should probably work. Multo said that we couldn’t cast spells inside ‘something a dwarf has built.’ So it should work now.”

“You’re going to heal him, right?” I checked.

“Fejqan,” she said by way of response.

I watched, amazed, as the cuts in the shape of Diza’s claws vanished and the color returned to his skin and face.

He sat up, looking tired. “What happened?”

“Dossik saved us all,” I said.

A strange expression flashed across his face, then another one, then he smiled.

“I’m glad we’re not dead.”

That first expression…could it have been jealousy?

“So, anyway, Dossik, where did you go, and where did you get that bow and arrow?” Maybelle asked.

“Every centaur has the ability to store a bow and arrow – any weapon, I suppose – in a…I suppose you could call it a locker in the air. Putting it in requires almost no energy, but it is very tiring to take it out.”

“Why didn’t you ever mention this before?” I asked, forgetting about Kaolin for the moment.

“It was never relevant before, and you never asked,” he replied in his blasé way.

“Okay, well, where did you disappear to? You’ve done that before, but I always figured you went off into the trees or something.”

In response, he shimmered out of existence.

“Are you still there?” Kaolin asked, surprised.

He reappeared. “I am, but I am unable to speak while in that state, or I will become visible.”

“So you can just turn invisible and sneak up on people? That’s useful information, I think. That could be really helpful.” Maybelle seemed a little annoyed.

“And can every centaur do that too?” Kaolin asked.

“No, not every centaur can do it. It is a genetic trait, passed down to me by my father. I do not know why I did not tell you before,” he said, sounding slightly ashamed. “I thought that you might be afraid that I was spying on you.”

“We trust you, as long as Lymlock doesn’t give you any apples,” Kaolin said. I wasn’t sure if he was serious or kidding, and I didn’t think he knew himself.

“Let us just go,” Dossik said. “We still have some time before the sun sets, and I would like to get away from this hill.” He glanced back to the doorway, where the dead bear we had all had to climb over to exit still lay.

“I agree completely,” Kaolin said.

“That’s a first,” I said. The two boys looked at me for a moment and then laughed.

“She’s got a point,” Maybelle said, and for a moment everything was perfect. There we were, just four normal (as normal as possible for Mithden) people joking around. After all, all of us but Dossik were pretty much teenagers. We were actually enjoying ourselves.

At least until a loud bang could be heard from the forest. All four of us jumped at the same time.

“Well, we should probably get going,” I sighed, sorry for the moment to come to an end.

“Which way is it again?”

“I don’t actually remember either. Can we just go off a little ways and go to sleep? The sun’s going to set soon and I’m sure we’re all tired from the…um…day’s events,” I said.

“That proposition sounds good to me,” Dossik said. “For once, I am actually tired from the events of the day.”

“Stop bragging,” I pretended to grumble. “The rest of us are always tired from ‘the events of the day.’”

“That’s true,” Kaolin agreed.

“Let’s just go,” Maybelle said.

And so we went, watching very carefully for trip wires tied between trees.

We all slept well that night. At least until, yet again, we were woken in the dead of night.

Apparently, Maybelle and Kaolin had forgotten to put up a shield spell.

“What are you doing in this forest?” A voice echoed out in the night.

A dragyon had found us, and he didn’t look friendly.

A midnight blue dragyon doesn’t show up very well at night. But dragyons’ eyes glow red, so we managed. None of us spoke for a few beats, although we were all awake.

Finally, Maybelle said, “We’re just passing through. We want to travel through the forest. Our goal is to get to Lospem, the capital city of Melzult.”

“What are you trying to get?” he asked.

This was a good development. He sounded more curious than demanding this time.

Dragyons aren’t good or bad by nature. Most only consider how things affect them. So, they can be deadly (as I mentioned, my family was killed when one attacked my village), but most of the time they’ll leave humans and magykans alone.

I answered his question. “As you may have heard, the Rhellens castle was taken over by sorcerers.” I paused to see his reaction.

“I had not heard that, but go on.” His tone was neutral, what I could see of his face impassive.

“They used a potion to put the king and queen to sleep. We’re going to a museum of magykal artifacts to get a feather that’ll wake them up.”

“That is an honorable reason to be traveling, and I do hope you succeed. Good luck.” He took off. Strange creatures, dragyons.

Suddenly, he landed back down beside us.

“You have a centaur among you. Would he happen to be the same centaur who slayed the dwarf-bear creatures that used to frequent this forest?”

“I am,” Dossik said cautiously.

“Good for you. They were quite a nuisance.”

He took off again, and we all waited for a few moments to see if he would return. When he didn’t, we all sighed in relief.

I’ll say it again: Dragyons are strange creatures.

“That was…strange…” Maybelle said, trailing off at the end.

“It was,” Dossik agreed, staring up at where the dragyon had left.

“We forgot the shield spell,” added Kaolin. “Should we go do that now?”

“Probably,” replied Maybelle, yawning hugely. “There are other creatures in the forest who would like to kill us, even if a dragyon has let us go.”

“That was bizarre,” I agreed, still shell-shocked.

When the other two returned, we went back to sleep.

The next morning, we avoided all eggs and kept walking. The general excitement in our group was growing. We could tell we were getting closer, and the idea of our quest almost being over encouraged us all.

Suddenly, at that moment, I realized we would probably have to walk all the way back. I almost stopped right there, except the others looked back at me as if to say, “You okay?” I had been walking kind of towards the back, lost in thought, and we had been together for so long, we knew how each other felt.

They kept me going. I didn’t really care how tired I was or how much my feet hurt (and they were getting used to the strain by then), I would keep going.

I hoped that we would pass that day without any incidents. I really didn’t want Kaolin – or any of us – getting hurt.

Just as I was thinking that, a huge creature swooped down from above, and we scattered instantly.

Glancing up at it, I saw that it was something I had never seen before. The huge horse was a pegasus, far larger than any I had seen before, but it had a horn.

A unicorn pegasus? That was bad news.

It landed and charged straight toward me. Somewhere off to my left, I heard Kaolin mutter a spell. It evidently missed the creature charging at me. Yet again, I realized, dodging out of its path, a unicorn was charging towards me.

But this time, I wasn’t tied to a tree, and I had a weapon. I yanked out my knife and, as the huge winged unicorn spun to charge at me again, stabbed it quickly in the side.

It wasn’t enough to kill the huge horse, but it paused for long enough for Maybelle to cast a spell to kill it.

Breathing heavily after the exertion, I stared at the winged, horned horse.

“Well,” Kaolin said after a moment. “That’s something you don’t see every day.”

I gave a short laugh. “Let’s keep going.”

 We walked. Most of the time we didn’t talk when we were walking, which sometimes wasn’t very fun. I don’t know about the others, but sometimes I got in that mood where I think, “What if…?”

I hated that. We were having enough trouble without my negativity.

But enough about me. This letter was written to tell you why you’re going to die. No offense, but I’d rather get back to that.

It took another day before we got out of the forest, at almost exactly midday. There were a few more minor scrapes, but there was nothing that we couldn’t handle, and nothing with sorcerers.

We were all so relieved to get out of there. It wasn’t a complete death trap like the rumors went, but it had been a pretty rough trip.

“We made it,” was all I could say as we finally truly entered Melzult.

“We made it,” the others echoed gratefully.

And we walked, now heading toward Lospem, the capital city.

In midafternoon, Kaolin spotted people up ahead. “I hope they aren’t sorcerers,” he muttered as he pointed them out to us.

Didn’t we all?