AnnouncementContent Warning: Injury, DeathChapter 7: I can actually be kind of competent and stuff. Especially when my life is on the line.

  I just ducked away as another arrow shot past me. Mishka dashed down the next slope. I could barely make out Cassie and Rael sprinting a few dozen metres in front of me.

  Behind me I could hear the snarls and growls of the direwolves. We had been on the run for the past couple hours. Every now and then we almost lost the pack behind us, but they always caught up not long after.

  A dark shape came dangerously close to the right of me and I could see two glowing pairs of orbs in the corner of my eyes. The red eyes of the direwolf were closing in and the yellow slits of the Goblin rider were radiating with manic hunger.

  I pushed Mishka as strong as I could, but the wolf was coming up right next to us. The tip of a jagged spear missed my neck by a hair and I let out a yelp as the barbs tore up my shoulder on the back draw. I turned to my attacker. The goblin grinned at me with his rows of thin needle-like teeth that glistened in the moonlight. His spear darted forward again. But instead of trying to pierce me he swung it in an arc towards my chest.

  I tried to tear Mishka to the side, but it was too te. The spear thumped against my torso. A dull pain reverberated through my body and a second ter I felt weightless.

  Did I just die?

  A moment that felt like an eternity passed and my body crashed into the grassy floor. The goblin rider turned and stalked towards me. I could hear others behind me.

  I hastily rummaged around in my bag until my hand gripped a foot-long copper rod. I wasn’t the best at this, but I hoped it would work. The direwolf was preparing to lunge at me. Its mouth was overflowing with saliva. I pointed the rod up. The wolf pounced. “Vervaflux.”

  The rod let out a soft spark that faded into nothing. I felt the wolf’s form crushing into my body. Then a bright light scattered across the ndscape. I heard a yelp. Then an ear ringing scream. Yellow and blue lightning danced over the bodies of my attackers and their smoking corpses fell away to the side.

  The growls and snarls behind me armed me that this was far from over. I heaved myself up and began running after where Rael and Cassie had gone. Or tried to, at least. My body was still aching all over. Especially my shoulder and chest were pounding with pain. I wouldn’t get far like this.

  My hand slipped into my bag again and felt around for a rge gss marble. I quickly pulled my hand out and slung the marble behind me. I counted in my head. One, two, three. Then I reached out to it mentally. I felt the familiar connection between my own mana and the dormant energy slumbering in the little gss orb. All it took was a simple mental command and the air behind me grew freezing cold.

  I painful bst of icy wind tore over the ndscape. It pushed me back again and I had to use all my strength to remain upright. The screams and yelps behind me told me I hit someone. Or many someones. It was just a simple ice enchantment, though, so I didn’t expect a miracle here. Maybe just enough to slip away. I pushed myself forward again, through the cold.

  I continued in the direction Cassie and Rael went and shot a quick gce back. I could make out a dozen pairs of eyes still glimmering in the dark behind me. A shiver went down my spine. Not because of our hunters, though. The icy cold was still there. That was unusual for a simple spell like this.

  Even more unusual that the cold seemed to spread and soon after I could feel the prickly cold of snowfkes cascading down onto my body. I pulled my hood over my head and the coat around me closer and pushed onwards through the night.

  I had almost lost all hope of finding my travelling companion, when I came across a shadowy figure limping in the snow. Cassie was visibly hurt and Rael was nowhere to be seen.

  The snow became stronger and stronger and soon it grew into a full-on snowstorm. “CASSIE!” I yelled. “ARE YOU OKAY CASSIE?” I shouted through the storm. The freckled girl stopped looked back at me, shivering. Both of us weren’t dressed for this weather, but unlike me, she didn’t have anything to cover her arms or head.

  “There was a wind. I got blown off. My leg,” she winced as she mentioned the st part. I threw an arm around her waist to stabilise her. I could probably fix whatever happened to it in time. Right now we needed to move.

  The grassy pins around us were quickly covered in a thick yer of snow. We pushed on as far as we could, but soon me and Cassie were too cold to continue. I looked back again in the direction of our hunters, but there was no one to be seen. I studied our surroundings for a moment.

  We had found ourselves in a small grove where the leaves above held off most of the snow. The darkness around us showed no signs of glowing eyes or fshy teeth. I couldn’t hear them either. After nothing happened for another minute or so I leaned Cassie against one of the trees.

  The girl felt almost frozen solid. A fire would definitely alert our hunters to our position, but it was obvious that neither Cassie nor I could survive the night without the warmth.

  “Okay Cassie,” I let out shakily. “I’m gonna try and get a fire going. You keep an eye out. If you see any glowing eyes, tell me immediately.” The girl looked at me with almost gssy eyes. Shit. I rummaged around my bag again until I found a red, softly glimmering phoenix feather. I pulled together whatever twigs I could find and held the feather out in front of the little wooden heap. I softly blew against the bristles and a bunch of glimmering sparks flew off it into the twig tent.

  The twigs momentarily burned up into an almost-pilr of fire, then died down to a warm hearth. I helped Cassie to lie down next to the heat. I leaned back against the tree she was up against and gave a quick prayer to Craw. I was never an awfully religious person, but it was times like this that prayer’s seemed like the only option left. I just hoped that the Goddess of Death heard my pleas.

  I gnced back down to Cassie. She was still shivering. I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her head into my p. Please let us survive this night.

  *****

  I felt hot and sweaty. The air was thick and musky and there was a weight on my lower torso. I rubbed my eyes and tried to focus. Cassie’s head was still buried in my p. The fire seemed to have died down overnight. A few rays of sunlight flittered through the canopy above. There was a yer of thaw draped over the grove and I felt like I was sitting in a sauna.

  I watched Cassie sleep for a while. The little minx actually seemed kind of peaceful like this. Her soft breaths were constantly blowing away that one rogue strand of hair, only for it to fall back into her face. I ran a hand through her hair and tugged the strand behind her ear. It felt so soft and smooth.

  A few more minutes passed until my antics must have woken her. She turned her body and looked at me for a while. “Sephie,” she murmured, “I thought I was gonna freeze to death.” She scrunched up her eyebrows and a curious look crossed her face. “What the hells was that?”

  I did remember the ice enchanted marble I threw back at our hunters. It was only a very minor spell though. A small gust of wind followed by a rain of icy spikes. Instead we were engulfed in an entire snowstorm. Something or someone must have tampered with my spell, I decided. That was the only logical expnation. Except, besides me, Cassie and the Goblins there was no one else there.

  “I cast a small ice spell to get one of the hunters off my tail,” I confessed. “But the spell was nowhere near the power level of the snowstorm that followed. Someone, or something must have tempered with it.” I expined.

  My tired companion let out a heavy sigh and tried to right herself up, only to scream out in pain and fall back into my p. “Fuck. I forgot about my leg,” she whimpered.

  Nothing I couldn’t fix, now that we seemed to have some time. I pulled the required materials from my bag while Cassie took in our surroundings. “Hey Sephie,” she asked. “Where did all the snow go? The ground’s barely even wet…”

  I stopped rummaging in my bag. She was right. Even with magic, the ground should have been muddy from all the snow. I scanned the little grove we were in and there was no sign of snow or water residue, besides the thin yer of thaw. Something was seriously wrong here.

  I shook my head. Something to deal with ter. Right now I needed to fix Cassie’s leg. I finally found the st of the ingredients and focussed back on my patient. Her leg was turned in a way that looked very unhealthy. I wasn’t very experienced in setting bones, but if I cast the spell correctly, it should take care of that on its own.

  First, I helped Cassie pull down the overalls to free her leg. Next, I chewed some strawberry leaves and mandrake roots into a bitter paste which I then pressed on the swelling along her leg. Then I opened my spellbook to the right page. I was very good with remembering all the ingredients for potions, cures and tinctures. Arcane words, not so much. So better be safe than sorry.

  I muttered a long and intricate series of ancient elvish and the further into the spell I got, the further the paste seeped into the leg. Once I was finished, Cassie’s leg suddenly snapped back into pce and she let out a high-pitched agonized scream. A moment ter she flicked me a gre that was somewhere between annoyed, impressed and grateful.

  We took another hour or so to get ready and I put some of the healing salve on my own tears and bruises. Then we left our little grove to find our way back to the road. There was no sign of Rael or Mishka anywhere. Cassie said that, if they made it, they would find their way back to the stable.

  The nd around us was covered in rolling hills and little groves. There were no fields or pastures anywhere to be seen. We realised fairly quickly that wherever we were, it was somewhere in the middle of nowhere. From the morning sun I could figure out general directions, but I had no clue how far north or south our escape took us.

  “So… How do we find ourselves back to the road?” Cassie asked the question lingering on both our minds. I knew there was a way. But I would have to take out the compass. That didn’t sit right with me, but our only other choice would be to walk around aimlessly until we ran into some sort of civilization.

  Reluctantly, I pulled out the compass nestled between my breasts. Cassie’s eyes lit up as her eyes fell on the little treasure. I gnced down on the needles below me. I turned the compass so that the sun would be on the side of the rge mountain to the west.

  It had been a while since I checked in on it. The blue needle pointed east-northeast. Of course the yellow needle pointed somewhere else again. I didn’t even bother at this point. The orange needle pointed slightly below east. The red needle had moved southwards and now pointed southeast towards the lighthouse. The green one hadn’t moved. Lastly, the purple needle pointed even further west then before, almost the exact same direction as the green needle.

  As I looked up, Cassie’s face was directly in front of me, staring down on the contraption in my hand in awe. “I can tell it’s a compass, but there’s multiple arrows. What’s it do?” she asked excitedly.

  “The blue needle points to the person I want to meet. They should be near or in Omar right now. If we follow that we should reach the city eventually,” I replied slowly.

  That seemed to raise the girl’s mood a little and we made our way east-northeast shortly after. Naturally, she didn’t stop pestering me about where I got the compass from and why I showed me where that person was and who the other needles pointed to.

  I still didn’t feel ready to talk about it just yet. I realised I felt embarrassed that I relied on a magical artefact to find love, instead of trying it the normal way. I ended up deflecting any questions she threw my way and while she didn’t stop asking them, at least she didn’t seem insulted by my secrecy.

  After about 15 minutes of walking we came across a heap of bodies. Wolves and goblins. About a dozen of each. Their skin was covered in frostbite and I could tell they died in agony. That didn’t sit well with me. I acted in self-defence, but I would never want to hurt anyone more than necessary. At least the goblin and wolf I fried died quickly. Although that, too, should only have dazed them a little. At most it could have knocked them out. But when we came across their bodies a minute ter, they were thoroughly charred.

  Something didn’t just mess with my ice enchantment. Something was messing with all my spells. That wasn’t good. I quickly decided to use as little magic as possible going forward. And write to Gerden about this. He might know what was going on.

  It was around midday when we found the road again. It was a little off the direction the needle gave us, but it would be easier travelling on the road than make our way through the wilderness. Around te afternoon, the first few farmhouses that sat around Omar came into view and we knew we were less than a day’s march away from the city.

  As the sun went down, we began asking the farmers we came across if they had a pce to sleep for us and after a while we found ourselves in a small hayloft inside a cozy barn.

  Muffin_Maeve