by Unknown
“Into the forest,” said Noah, already packing a bag. He threw in what little food was in the tent and thrust the bag into Colin’s hands.
“How?” Sidra asked Colin then. “How did you…”
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“It was your husband, Mam. Balloch… after he died, he came to me, told me where she was. I went into Eidolon’s Valley and found her. I’m sorry I never told you. It’s just that Balloch told me not to trust anyone. I should have realized I could trust her family.” He suddenly felt guilty for not seeking out their help before. Then again, his own sister had betrayed him… he buried his anger. He did not have time for it now.
“Don’t apologize, Colin,” Noah insisted. “What you did was more than brave. We’ll never be able to thank you for saving her.”
Just then, a voice shouted nearby.
“He’s not there. Search every tent until you find him.”
“We’ll give you as much time as we can,” Noah said.
“Where do we go after we’re in the forest?” Colin asked, heading toward the back of the tent.
Noah lifted the bottom of the tent so he and Catrina could sneak through. No one knew what to tell him, and there was no time left to figure out any sort of plan. Footsteps approached the Flummer’s tent.
Sidra grabbed Catrina, hugged her and then pushed her to Colin.
“Run. Run as fast as you can,” she shouted as they dipped underneath the canvas and crawled into the woods.
Once in the woods Colin attempted to recast his spell, to hide them both, but it failed. His nerves had gotten the better of him. He could not make it work. Then he froze.
“The Magicante. I left it!”
“We can’t go back, Colin,” Catrina spoke, shakily.
She was right, but he felt useless without the book.
“There they are,” a voice shouted, seeing them at the wood’s edge.
Colin grasped Catrina and ran. He did not know where they were going. He did not know how he was going to save her.
Whoever was chasing them was catching up.
Colin and Catrina were no match in a race on foot.
A voice ordered them to stop but they kept running, darting under branches and over fallen logs. The voice shouted again and Colin recognized it as either Jelen or Jenner, Juliska Blackwell’s personal bodyguards.
“We’re not going to make it,” he said, fearful.
But they kept running.
The footsteps of Jelen and Jenner jutting at their ankles.
Then, Catrina lost her grip and fell. Colin slid to a stop.
The two men caught up easily.
“Stay where you are!” Jelen shouted heavily.
“You are both under arrest!” Jenner added fiercely.
Colin jumped to his feet and helped Catrina stand. She wrapped her arms around his neck, afraid to look at the two men.
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They stepped closer, and then stepped back, gaping at something behind Colin and Catrina.
Colin did not know if he wanted to look, but did. A light began to emanate from a hollowed out tree and a face Colin thought he would never see again popped out from the shadows.
“I see I arrived in time!” a grizzled voice spoke. “Come with me!” He then stepped back into the light.
Colin and Catrina took one look at Jelen and Jenner and knew they had no choice. Behind the men, the entire Svoda caravan approached. It was impossible for them not to see the two escapees, standing in front of the bright light, surrounded by the darkness of the forest.
“Who is that girl?” a voice asked.
Similar murmurings spread throughout the crowd.
No one, it seemed, understood what was happening.
“Stop them!” Juliska Blackwell shouted upon arrival, realizing they were about to escape.
Her bodyguards cautiously approached.
Meghan then raced forward.
“Colin, please, don’t do this!” she pleaded. “Just let him go,” she aimed at Catrina.
Meghan then flew backwards, landing with a soft thud on the thick forest floor. She felt some new force blocking her from Colin’s mind. She tried to penetrate it, but it was stronger than anything she had ever felt before.
Then, the connection she had known and felt her entire life, vanished.
Colin then entered her mind, one final time. His voice was venomous as he spoke.
“I won’t ever forgive you for this, Sister.”
It tore at her very fiber, crushing any hope she had left. This Colin Jacoby was not the Colin Jacoby she knew. Something in him changed, like a switch that flipped, turning him into something else.
Meghan cursed the day her brother discovered this girl, Catrina Flummer.
Jelen and Jenner bounded toward Colin and Catrina, who in turn, jumped into the light, which then dissolved, leaving behind nothing but an empty, hollowed out tree.
A look of fury crossed Juliska’s face and her veins, still flame red in color, looked as though they were popping out of her skin.
The entire Svoda caravan now stood in the forest.
Billie stood close by her brother and his wife, Ravanna. The Sadorus’ nodded politely as the Flummer’s walked passed them, acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened at all.
They pretended to be ignorant of the fact that the girl standing next to Colin Jacoby was a relative. She was in another group after all… How would they know what she looked like?
Juliska shouted for the Viancourt members and Balaton to follow her. A heated, but private conversation began, not too far away.
While they held their meeting, the people started asking more questions. Many stares and glares shot toward Meghan and she backed up, trying to hide in the darkness. She did not know what to say or what was about to happen. It felt like her first day, after becoming stuck in the Svoda world, all over again.
She reached out in her mind for Colin but he was not there. She felt empty. Alone.
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Ivan suddenly appeared at her side.
“What’s done is done,” he whispered, actually sounding compassionate. “You did what you thought was right. Sometimes,” he paused. “Sometimes, Meghan, what’s right is not what’s easy.”
Meghan only half heard him. She felt as though she were about to faint. She wished she could somehow discover a way to go back in time, and stop herself from telling Juliska about Catrina. At the same time, as happy as she was about Colin getting away, she feared for his life. Catrina was still dangerous.
“I might have been wrong,” Ivan then told her. “You might be ready to hear what I have to say about Jae.”
Meghan jerked her head to look at him, her face cold and emotionless.
He walked away.
This moment was not the right moment.
Meghan could not form words. She could barely stand. Up ahead, she heard a voice calling out to the group.
“Look! Look here!” it shouted.
The caravan began a mass movement toward a clearing, not too far away. Another meadow, Meghan noticed. As soon as it came into view, she froze.
“The meadow with the pyres,” someone whispered. Jae Mochrie had said it.
She had not even noticed him step up next to her.
He grasped her arm, gently.
“Ivan told me what happened,” his eyes screamed that he understood how she felt. “I know this won’t make you feel any better, right now, but we all do things we wish we could take back. You can’t change what happened…” he then let go and headed, with the rest of the group, toward the edge of the meadow.
The setting darkness unraveled a horrifying scene.
The pyres were no longer empty.
The caravan stood at the edge of the meadow, looking in stunned abhorrence at the pyres, which now imprisoned the missing Svoda they had been searching for since their arrival.
Gagged men, women and children had been bound to the pyres.
They appeared to be unconscious.
> Fearful gasps and cries then echoed into the meadow, as bodies of the chameleon-like Stripers starting materializing around the caravan.
Juliska ordered silence with a single wave of her hand.
The leader of the Stripers, KarNavan, spoke.
“I will get right to the point. You are surrounded, and don’t even think about using magic…” He then pointed to the pyres. “These unlucky people are about to pay the ultimate price, unless you hand over what we seek.”
“This is low, even for Stripers, KarNavan!” the Banon replied. “Our magic may be weakened, but we still have enough to wage battle, if you force it upon us!” 80
“Actually, I think you’ll find you are wrong,” the Striper leader said. “Go ahead. Someone try to use magic.”
Garner Sadorus stepped forward and attempted a simple spell. Nothing happened. The crowd gasped in horror. They truly were helpless.
“If this is about the Projector...” Juliska was cut off.
“Ah, yes. You see, we have tracked the child’s magic, and the child is here! Alas, though, this is not the only job we are here to do,” he admitted. “We look for another child, too. Or more to the point, something this child possesses.” His words held no compassion.
The surrounded caravan huddled together. Parents held their children close and murmurs spread quickly but quietly.
KarNavan continued his speech.
“We seek a book! An ancient book! One currently owned by a boy named Colin Jacoby.” Meghan’s head jerked up. The Magicante. As far as she knew, it was still at Billie’s. She did not think Colin had taken it. Ivan, standing close by Juliska, glanced back at her, as if to ask if she knew where it was.
She shrugged, telling him she was not sure. All she did know was that she could not let Colin down, again. She would not allow these people to take it.
“How is it, that you are able to weaken our magic?” Juliska then asked KarNavan. “You owe us at least, an answer to this question. We are, after all, descended from the same magical bloodlines.”
“Same magical lines, eh? Interesting theory, Gypsy Queen.” He then winked at Juliska Blackwell. His voice insinuated some hidden meaning behind the words he spoke.
“But why not, seeing as we are on the winning side.”
He then jumped onto a nearby pyre, grasping the pole.
The body bound to it stirred, slightly.
“We were hired,” KarNavan spoke, “to come here and collect two things: the Projector and a book. To insure success in our mission, we were given a most powerful and intriguing weapon.”
He reached into his pocket, as if to take out something, but when he pulled his hand back out, it was empty. He waved around his empty palm.
“Did you really think we’d just tell you?” he toyed with Juliska.
“You can’t hurt a Queen for trying,” she answered sourly.
“I will tell you this… if you give us what we want, we will permit you to leave, unharmed.
Within hours, your magic will renew itself.” He jumped down from the pyre. “However, if you do not heed our demands, you will each be stripped of your powers, completely, and you will watch each of your friends and loved ones burn!”
Voices began shouting at the Stripers.
“Who is this child you seek?”
“Do you know which child it is?”
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It seemed as though the caravan was ready to surrender the child, rather than see everyone they loved suffer a painful fate.
Juliska, once again, silenced her people.
“Do you really think that we would just hand this child over to you freely? There have been no signs of a Projector in our camp.”
Meghan knew this was not true. However, she also knew that the child in question was gone.
“Regardless,” continued Juliska, “if the child was found and belonged to one of our own, we would end the life swiftly, before harm could be done. I would never turn it over to the likes of you. There’s a difference between killing because you must, and showing no mercy or compassion!”
KarNavan smiled.
“Now we get to it, don’t we? You travelers. You think you’re special, don’t you? And yet, you have no idea what is truly happening in the magical world. You have not heard the rumblings. There is a war coming… A war to change the course of our world. And I, for one, will not be left behind when it’s over!”
“Who hired you?” Juliska demanded then.
“You know, already,” he answered scathingly. “Who would have the capabilities to strip power?”
“Grosvenor,” someone muttered.
KarNavan’s savage eyes agreed with the answer.
Ivan worked his way back to Meghan. Jae stood to her other side. Ivan whispered as close to her ear as he could, without making it apparent that he was talking.
“Catrina,” was all he said.
“Juliska must have hid her in the cave, thinking it was a better fate to sleep, rather than kill her,” Jae muttered.
Ivan nodded in agreement.
Meghan stood motionless. Was it good or bad that Colin and Catrina were gone? Had she endangered him even more, by forcing him to flee to some unknown place, with a ticking time bomb at his side? A time bomb he clearly loved.
Or could this whole ordeal be over and everyone’s lives spared, if Catrina had been turned over now?
She sighed. Colin would never forgive her either way.
“There has to be a solution to all of this,” she mumbled.
Just then, a Striper came running out of the forest and into the meadow.
“KarNavan! Wait!” a woman spoke.
“What do you have to report?”
“Our tracking system says the Projector is gone! Not here anymore!”
“Definitely Catrina,” Meghan heard Ivan say.
“What do you mean?” KarNavan demanded.
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“The Projector’s magic has disappeared. Plus, we searched their meadow for the book. No sign of it!”
No sign of it… Meghan wondered what had happened to the book.
“It seems your presence here is no longer required,” Juliska insisted. “The Projector and this book you’re looking for have vanished.”
“Ah, but it was here,” KarNavan spoke tauntingly. “Didn’t you feel the quakes? It’s one of the first signs of uncontrolled magic.”
The caravan looked inquisitively at each other. They had thought the quakes were just something that happened in this place.
“I believe the child you are searching for left this place, not many minutes ago, in fact,” Juliska then admitted to the Stripers. “And your tracking system now proves that! So let us go in peace, now.”
“And what of the book?” the leader reminded. “I still want the book! One of you is hiding it!” KarNavan looked as though his patience was about to break. He picked up a torch and stormed back the pyre he had just jumped down from, minutes before, threatening to light the kindling.
It became apparent that the person tied to the pyre was not completely unconscious, just greatly weakened, as the woman’s eyes filled with fright, but she could barely move. She lifted her head, her eyes pleading for help.
Billie Sadorus then rushed to the front of the group, shouting.
“Maura!” she screamed. “Let her go!” Billie pleaded. “Put me in her place, please, I beg you!”
Tears fell down the face of the woman on the pyre named Maura when she saw Billie.
Garner rushed forward and tried to control Billie.
Meghan then came out of her stupor, when it dawned on her that she did not feel weakened. Perhaps the weapon the Stripers were using did not did not work on a Firemancer’s powers. Then, wouldn’t Juliska have used hers?
“Maybe she doesn’t realize,” Meghan muttered, envisioning what she must do.
She focused on the torch KarNavan held in his hand, as he waved it threateningly over the pyre. The flames nearly swiped Maura’s body and she cried
out in angst.
It took every bit of strength for Garner to hold back Billie. She kicked and beat on him, demanding he let her go.
Meghan lifted her own hand, held her palm open, and then shut it like a fist. The fire on KarNavan’s torch flickered and then dissolved as if suffocated.
Meghan did this repeatedly, thrusting the meadow into darkness.
An eerie smile appeared on KarNavan’s face.
“Who is using magic?” he asked, stalking about, searching for the culprit.
A loud boom and a fiery explosion then set off, at the edge of the meadow, stealing everyone’s attention. A block of trees burned, but not close enough to accidentally light any of the pyres.
“Good job, Meghan!” said Jae, impressed.
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“That wasn’t me,” she replied, just as shocked as everyone else.
Ivan, Jae and Meghan searched the edge of the woods for any sign of their hidden savior, but saw nothing.
The Stripers began to back off from the caravan.
Juliska Blackwell then stepped forward, stepping in front of KarNavan.
“We may not be able to use magic, but…” she finished her statement by punching him in the face.
She still doesn’t know she can use Firemancy… Meghan did not see any safe way to tell her.
KarNavan rubbed his jaw, clearly impressed by Juliska’s blow.
“Stop this madness!” she demanded. “We obviously don’t have what you’re looking for.
What good will come from hurting innocent people?”
“I always have liked your style,” he muttered under his breath.
She glared at him, speaking low, so that only he could hear.
“I don’t know what’s really behind all of this, but it ends, now. None of this is part of the plan, KarNavan.”
“Well maybe the plans have changed,” he shot back.
He then backed away from her, ignoring her questioning gaze.
“What we seek is no longer here,” he told his followers, declaring it was time for them to depart.
The Stripers then walked away. Their bodies dissolved, melting into their backgrounds, but it took many long minutes before the sound of breaking branches and debris breaking under footsteps dissipated, leaving the Svoda, at last, safe.