* * * William * * *

  William woke to Kody shaking him. His vision was blurry, his chest felt crushed, and he had trouble breathing. The back of his head ached in numb, pulsing waves, and he was just about ready to throw up.

  “Will! Will! Wake up!” Kody screamed at him, “He took Zeenie!”

  He suddenly felt a cold panic radiating from his stomach. The adrenaline cleared his vision momentarily, enough for him to take the assassin’s hand and stand up, only to black out for a second. He leaned on the now empty door frame, and took a few, deep breaths. They hurt. Whoever this stranger was, had pushed him with enough force to knock the air out of him.

  “Will!” Kody grabbed him by the shoulder, “Zeenie is in trouble!” He shook him a few more times, then left.

  The world was spinning with William, and after taking a few shaky steps outside the hut, he fell over and promptly threw up. The acrid smell and the acidic, burning sensation in his throat was enough to wake him up properly. He wiped his face clean, then headed after Zeenie and Kody.

  The stranger’s footprints were easy to spot. Deep prints, evenly paced. The man was heavy and marching at a steady pace, not getting thrown off By Zeenie’s thrashing… if she was still thrashing around. Kody’s prints overlaid the stranger’s slightly. Smaller, more shallow, more erratic. He was sprinting after them. After a while he seemed to have lost the trail and veered off in the wrong direction. William couldn’t spare the time to look for him. Not much later, Zeenie’s tiny, reptilian prints appeared, and the stranger slowed down notably.

  He followed their trail, and saw the two sets of prints slowly even out. They must have already reached the river. Abandoning the trail, William ran towards the shallow part of the river Kody had mentioned earlier, hoping Zeenie would be there, unharmed.

  * * * Kody * * *

  Kody had left William at the hut, as he was obviously in no condition to come. He tried to follow in the direction he reckoned the stranger had taken Zeenie. After a while however, not only had he lost track of both the stranger and Zeenie, but he had also gotten lost. The forest stretched endlessly in all directions around him, and he could hear his heartbeat pounding in his throat from the running. He decided to stop, and look for any clues as to where he was. Nothing visible, but he could feel a slight tug, a vague sensation. It was similar to the gate key’s aura, but stronger. It was Zeenie’s magic, used in excess, but nothing was frozen in the vicinity. He tried feeling around for the stranger’s aura, but got nothing, or rather, a distinct lack of a detectable aura. He had one, William had one, and even nonmages had some semblance of an aura, but this person felt like… a void, a hole in the world where magic should be.

  Having determined the general direction, and after a short breather, Kody took off running again.

  * * * Zeenie * * *

  Zeenie had arrived at the river with the stranger. The key’s aura was strong. It was near.

  “Move the water!” he ordered. Zeenie didn’t bother asking how he’d know she could do it, nor to talk back. All she needed was time. William and Kody would be there any minute.

  She concentrated on the river, and tried moving the water. It was different to the lake she’d experimented on before, and so all she accomplished was some slight rippling on the surface.

  “Now!” the stranger growled

  “Give me a minute!” she snapped, “Do you know how hard this would be, even if you weren’t here forcing me to do it? What’s your name anyway?”

  The stranger sighed. “I’m Ezon.”

  “And I’m Zeenie, not that you asked or anything.” she tried again, this time taking into consideration that the water was moving. She imagined a bubble moving upstream, slowly, then faster, growing from the size of a pinhead to something she could breathe in, then further. At first, the water only rippled, but then it split, and the river bed was revealed. Barely two feet deep, she knew it wouldn’t take long to find the key.

  Ezon grumbled. “What’s taking so long?”

  “This is my first time moving a river. If you want to make this faster, I can just freeze it over for you.”

  “Hm… try it!”

  Zeenie sighed in frustration. She abandoned the bubble and the water fell back into its regular flow. She stood in it, feeling the currents around her. She placed her palm on the surface and concentrated. The familiar coldness flooded over her, and the river froze in a six foot radius. Waves splashed over the ice, but quickly froze in place, sheltering her in the middle. She started feeling about for the key. The ice wasn't perfectly clear everywhere, soft cracks and trapped air obscuring the view. She carefully re-melted bits of it and froze it back over to make it clear, letting it fog again up once she had looked.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  It wasn't an ideal situation to practice her magic, but she knew, the more she used it, the easier it would be for the others to pinpoint her based on it. Soon she started feeling the water currents around and through the frozen area, tiny veins of melt-water passing through the ice, like a miniature glacier. She was reminded of a picture-book she'd read back at the camp, about the northern territories, and about Hyperborea. Gods were supposed to live there, past the ice, past the cold sea, all the way on the northern pole. She vaguely remembered dragons originating from there too, and was suddenly overcome by a strange kind of homesickness for a place she had never visited. A soft grunt from Ezon brought her back to reality.

  She had only been searching for a few minutes, and she already felt herself closing in on the key. The magic radiated from it as before, but… it felt different, jittery. She wrote it off as an effect of running water, or maybe the ice, though she wasn’t sure if water could do that. The river burbled around her, continuously overtopping her ice, and freezing onto it. Ezon looked over her from just a few feet away, standing on the ice, his unblinking, glowing blue eyes glaring into her very being.

  As she searched, she could feel William getting closer. Back in their childhood this same feeling had made for a great opportunity to cheat in hide and seek, but now it filled her with a warm feeling of safety.

  “Watch it!” Ezon warned her. She hadn’t noticed, but she had let her mind wander from keeping the ice solid, and it was melting back into the water. She focused again and expanded it further, so now it conveniently reached the river bank.

  ‘I’m here’ she felt William’s mental message reach her, and she risked a glance over in the direction they had come from. She couldn’t see anything, as the trees blocked out most of the moonlight.

  “So what are you planning with this key once you get it?” she asked her kidnapper.

  “I need its power” Ezon answered.

  “Yeah, but for what though?”

  “I need to kill a god.”

  “Gods… don’t exist?” She looked at the stranger, worried. "They're only in picture-books and myths."

  “They do.” Ezon insisted, “They are many and ever-present. One of them killed my family and destroyed my home.”

  “How did you escape?” By this point, Zeenie had stopped searching entirely, and the ice began to shrink again, save for a narrow path touching the bank.

  “Keep looking!” Ezon ordered her, and she half-heartedly returned to searching. The key was close, a few feet away at most.

  “You know, holding up the water and searching is a bit difficult.”

  “The quicker you find it the sooner I can go.”

  She spotted the faint glow of the crystal in the key through a clear segment of ice. She quickly made it so tiny cracks fogged it up, making it white and opaque. She slowly melted it away, inch by inch, making sure to waste as much time as possible.

  ‘William, you better do something, I can’t do this much longer!’

  As if on cue, she heard a soft noise from the trees, like something brushing the leaves, then saw as Ezon… turned around incredibly fast, catching the arrow in his left hand. She had to act fast. In the blink of an eye, she melted all of the ice, and grabbed the key. Ezon fell into the water, but stood up almost as quickly. She threw the relic back out of the river, to where she hoped William was, and leapt at Ezon, transforming mid-air to land on him with her full, dragon-sized weight. She pinned him down momentarily, but he grabbed her left wing and threw her off like she weighed nothing. She flew up into the air, above the trees, and let out a mighty roar, razor-sharp ice crystals spewing from her mouth. Ezon held up his left arm again, a force-field shaped like a bubble shielding him from the blizzard.

  Zeenie spotted Kody, sprinting in from the deep forest. He snatched up the key, and emerged from the woods, William appearing not far from him as well. They had surrounded Ezon, who didn’t seem phased at all. He ran at Kody, who at first, tossed the key to William, then just as Ezon was about to reach him, popped seemingly out of existence, only to reappear a few feet to the side in an instant. Ezon lunged at him, only to miss the teleporting assassin, again, and again.

  William took another shot at Ezon, only for the arrow to shatter against his force-field. Ezon abandoned Kody and was now running for him. He threw the key up, towards Zeenie. She snatched it up, and started flying away, when Ezon grabbed William by the arm, and threw him at her. The two of them plummeted down into the river further downstream, Zeenie trying to shield him as much as she could with her wings.

  As they landed, Ezon was above them. Zeenie was back in her vern form, unsure when she had reverted. He twisted her arm to make her let go of the key. There it was, in her open palm, ready for the taking. Ezon grabbed it, but Kody tackled him into the water, knocking the key out of his hand. It flew and landed on a boulder right on the river bank. A small flash of light emerged from it, illuminating the area momentarily. Both Ezon and Kody bolted for the key, wading as fast as they could.

  Kody was faster. He grabbed the key, and made a strange face as its power coursed through him. As if dropping a hot piece of metal, he let go of the key, and an expression of pain passed over his face. He looked confused and worried.

  Ezon barreled into him, grabbing him by the neck, and smashed him back into the river, holding him down with his left arm. With his right, he reached for the key, now back in the water.

  A shadow passed over them. It was large. Everyone looked up, to see a dark mass plummeting towards them at terminal velocity. Ezon had barely enough time to stand up, key in hand, and let go of Kody, who in turn teleported out of the impact radius. As he popped up and fell over on the river bank, the dark mass had landed, disintegrating the boulder in a small explosion. The river splashed over in a twenty-foot wave, raining down over the other bank. As the water and dust settled, Ezon was pinned again, this time under a large, black dragon, wings high up in the air as his front leg held the helpless man down.

  “Orthus!” Kody coughed.

  “I see you’ve been busy.” Orthus’ voice was deep and rumbling, vibrating through the earth around them.

  Zeenie stood up and ran towards him, William in tow. Just as she passed Kody however, she spotted something glistening on the ground. It was the key. It was shaking, vibrating, throwing off sparks at an increasing rate. She carefully reached for it. Everything within two hundred feet - including everyone present - flashed over in a pale, blue light, then everything went black.