Ohna was trembling. She honestly looked like she didn’t know what to do next. I don’t know what I expected to happen when Ohna stopped banging on the door, but neither of us expected her to end up injured before me.

  Then, she saw me peeking around the corner and I knew I had made a mistake. I wasn’t careful enough, and I let her see me! Now, I knew I had to haul tail and run once more.

  I heard Ohna start moving quickly through the kitchen toward the hallway, and this made my fear instinct kick in without any hesitation. I sprinted through the hallway, jumped over Peter, and made it into the living room. I fumbled with the back door handle because of how nervous I was, and didn’t have time to open it completely before I heard Ohna step into the room.

  “I finally have you all to myself,” she sneered. “You can’t run away from me now!”

  She kept slowly walking toward me, making sure I saw the sharp tip of the new knife in her hand. She was no longer holding it in her right one, her shoulder must’ve been in too much pain for that.

  How did she get that wound in her shoulder though? Someone else had to have put it there. Was someone outside, were they hurt? I had too many questions running through my mind as I contemplated what to do. I needed to find out if someone else was here though, if so, then I may have a chance to make it out alive!

  “What happened to your shoulder?” I asked her.

  “Oh, don’t you worry your handsome little self over it,” Ohna replied. “I’ve taken care of it.”

  Welp, that didn’t answer my question. I was running out of options. Ohna had already killed my brother, and now I was beginning to believe there was someone else outside lying dead on the grass.

  Then, she appeared.

  A girl slowly crouched into the living room behind Ohna, being careful to not make a single sound. I had no idea who she was, I had never seen her before. Ethel Village wasn’t that big, so I should’ve been able to recognize her in some way. But no, she was a complete mystery, a stranger.

  She had short brown hair that only went down to her shoulders, and brown eyes to match. She was pale, with chubby cheeks that were rosy to boot. She seemed agile, relatively skinny with a little meat and fat on her bones. She didn’t have big muscles, but muscles of someone with a little experience under her belt. She was holding a kitchen knife, one that I had seen my mother using plenty of times. She had bruises on her legs, which must have been put there by Ohna. That was what she meant by ‘handling it’ apparently.

  Ohna was completely oblivious to this mystery girl’s entrance though. She kept moving closer and closer to me, and that malicious grin once again took control of her face. I still couldn’t understand one thing about Ohna though.

  Her eyes still looked sad.

  I don’t know what it was, and I don’t know why I thought so, but they most definitely looked sad in some way.

  Mystery girl was waiting for a chance to strike though, she just needed an opening. Fortunately, without thinking, I gave her one.

  “Why are you sad?” I asked Ohna.

  Her grin immediately disappeared as a look of disgust took over her face in its stead.

  “What?” Ohna said ominously quietly.

  I definitely messed up now, her silence was even more terrifying than her smile. However, that brief pause gave the girl the opening she needed. She jumped at Ohna, raring back the knife in her hand and bringing it down hard in her healthy shoulder.

  “AHHHH!!” screamed Ohna as she fell to the ground. The girl brought back her knife out of Ohna’s shoulder and it made a painfully fleshy sound when she did so. Blood began seeping out of her wound and pooled around her on the floor. I couldn’t tell if she was dead or not, but she wasn’t moving so I hoped for the best. It seemed too good to be true, no way that a witch such as Ohna would stop fighting that easily. She may have simply passed out from the pain, but I held out hope.

  The girl looked at me with an expression of relief.

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  “Are you ok?” she asked me.

  “Yeah… just a little sore.” I had been basically beaten to a pulp earlier after all.

  “That’s good, I’m Wryn by the way, nice to meet you!” she said with a smile.

  “Jack, nice to meet you as well.” I said with considerably less enthusiasm. “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “I ran into your mother on the road to the village. I told her I would come help, and that she should keep running to the travellers and get help from them. I was just walking back to town from their house. I’m their only apprentice, although we’re supposed to be taking on a new one in the next week or so.”

  What a stroke of luck! I was about to be working and living with this girl for a long while and she didn’t even know it. I bet I looked pretty weak though, considering she took down Ohna when I couldn’t. It was embarrassing.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “I’m the new apprentice believe it or not. Thank you for helping me, I look forward to training and working with you. I have basically no experience so far, but I hope I’ll grow to be someone you can trust and rely on.”

  Wryn looked at me with a sparkle in her eyes. “Really?!” she asked. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you for so long, it's lonely being the only apprentice with the travellers. They don’t have any kids, so it's been just them and me for a while now.

  “Yep, I’ll be there soon and my training can begin. I’m pretty excited to start! So it’ll just be me, you, and the travellers?”

  “Yea it’ll just be us four! We’ll be travelling all around handling witches and other stuff.”

  Other stuff? What other stuff could there be besides witches? I didn’t voice this question though, I’d find out sooner or later.

  “Sounds good,” I remarked. I was just thankful to be out of this situation with Ohna. I was tired, sore, and needed some rest after that entire ordeal.

  “It’s good I came when I did,” Wryn said. “You might’ve been a goner if I was five minutes later!”

  “I know, thank you once again, Wryn. What should we do with Ohna now?”

  “Ohna,” Wryn asked quizzically. “Who is that?”

  “The witch,” I casually replied. “She told me that was her name.”

  “Oh no, I haven’t heard of her and I don’t think the travellers have either. There’s eight named witches in the entirety of Lakelia, and Ohna shouldn’t be one of them. Witches don’t receive names until after they’ve completed certain requirements set by the named witches. These tasks are usually very dangerous and are centered around harming common folk just trying to live their lives, so witches who are able to complete them aren’t generally easy to deal with,” Wryn explained.

  “You sure know a lot about witches,” I exclaimed.

  “Well yeah, I am a travellers’ apprentice after all! This is all information I learned by studying under them, you’ll relearn it sooner or later from them as well. They go into way more detail than I just did and it's a lot of information, so you’ll need to always pay attention and take notes to refer back to.”

  “Nghhhh…”

  Ohna made a sound.

  My heart skipped a beat, I was too optimistic. I should’ve known she wouldn’t be beaten that easily. But now I had confirmation, she wasn’t dead!

  “We need to go. Now!” hissed Wryn. “If she's really a named witch then we won’t be able to handle her by ourselves. That stab wound I gave her earlier won’t keep her down for much longer, we need help from the travellers to capture or kill her!”

  “Okay, head to the front door. We need to go quietly so it’ll make it harder for Ohna to follow.”

  We started walking towards the front door. Ohna was still facing the ground, but she was pushing herself up with her hands trying to get up onto her knees. She must’ve lost a lot of blood from the wounds on her shoulders, which I assumed were making it harder for her to get up.

  We tiptoed out of the living room, and kept our eyes forward to avoid looking at Peter again. We made it to the end of the hallway and turned into the kitchen, then kept moving as fast as we possibly could without making a sound.

  We were about halfway through the kitchen when I stepped on a part of the wooden floor that creaked loudly. We froze, and listened. Ohna was still groaning from the living room, but thankfully it seemed like she hadn’t heard the floor creaking. So, we kept moving, almost at the door now. Once outside, we could run as hard as we could toward the travellers’ house and get help from them. I had no idea where they lived at, but since Wryn was staying with them as one of their apprentices it shouldn’t be that difficult to navigate our way there at all.

  By a stroke of bad luck though, the sun had started sinking behind the horizon and it was getting darker outside incredibly quickly. It felt like the sun had been out and shining ten minutes ago! This would make running to the travellers’ house more difficult, but we didn’t have any other options. I trusted Wryn’s sense of direction after all, I had faith that she would help lead us there safely.

  We finally made it to the front door. As Wryn pushed it open for us to leave though, it made a loud creaking sound. Even if Ohna was further into the house than the living room, she would’ve still heard the front door opening because of how loud the creaking was. We froze again. Ohna most definitely heard us this time though, as we heard footsteps rapidly moving from the living room into the hallway.

  We turned, and ran.

  “Go!” Wryn screamed. “We have to make it!”

  We bolted out of the front door and into the warm air of the late spring night. There were no clouds in the sky, and the stars were bright enough to illuminate our way. We had just turned onto the dirt road in front of the house and started into the direction of the village when we heard the front door opening.

  “JACK!!!” Ohna screamed.

  Her voice made me tense up, and I knew I had to stay out of her clutches no matter what. I’m sure Wryn felt the exact same way. We both seemed to run a little faster after we heard Ohna scream, and with good reason.

  She had started sprinting after us, and if we slowed for even a second it would give her the opportunity to catch up.

  We were running solely for the purpose of staying alive.

  The chase had begun, and we knew we couldn’t get caught no matter what.

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