Violet made her way through the town as fast as she could. She could sense that she was being followed. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

She gritted her teeth as she ran. William was still there, and yet she had run and left him.

When he had screamed at her to leave, she remembered her master. She remembered the day that she had escaped. It had been her and her master on a cold night. They escaped the hidden base of the Blood Moon Cult and managed to get far.

She had thought that they would escape together, that they would finally be free from the cult, but the cult caught up. She remembered her master screaming those same words to her.

"Run, you have to run. You’ll die if you stay."

She ran that day, through the cold of night and the harsh forest, tears streaming down her face as she did. She left her master behind to be captured while she ran.

Violet gritted her teeth so tight it felt like they would crack.

"I’ll come back for you, William. I swear it on my very life," she promised and kept running.

She made it out of town fast and into the forest soon after, and immediately she felt like she was getting hunted. She was already badly hurt, and so a full-on fight would not go in her favor. The ones chasing her knew about this, and they wanted to use it to their advantage as much as possible.

Whoosh!

A blade ripped through the air. She reacted as fast as she could and pulled herself to the side. The blade slashed through her hair, and a few strands were cut as it went past and stuck into the ground.

She looked up fast, and she could already see the figure cloaked in black standing on a branch of a tree. Her hands moved fast, her fingers crackling with lightning.

She shot out a lightning arrow. It moved through the air fast and hit the figure right in the chest, throwing it off the tree. At that same time, more leaped out of their hiding places with swords in their hands, ready to take her out.

"I can take them all. I have to force them back," she muttered to herself. The marks on her hands glowed, and a tornado of flames surged into the air. It was large and bright, only to distract them while she slipped out and ran.

She rushed through the forest fast. She had managed to buy a few minutes before they would come after her again.

They found her faster than she hoped.

Six of them dropped from the canopy simultaneously, blades already moving, cutting off the angles ahead and behind her in the practiced formation of people who had done this enough times that it required no discussion. She counted the rest in her peripheral vision. Four more hanging back in the trees, watching, waiting for her to commit to a direction.

Ten in total. All of them patient. All of them aware that she was hurt and burning through whatever she had left.

Violet stopped running and stood still in the small clearing they had herded her into, her chest heaving, the wound in her side pulling with every breath. She looked at the six in front of her and let them see her hands.

The marks on her fingers were already glowing.

"You really want to do this here?" she asked.

They moved.

She threw both hands forward, and a wall of compressed flame erupted from the ground between her and the closest three, forcing them back and buying her the single second she needed. She spun left, sent a lightning bolt through the gap between two trees that caught the shadow there in the shoulder and knocked it from its branch, and then dropped low as a blade passed through the space her head had just occupied.

She came up with an uppercut of pure force, not fire, not lightning, just raw magical pressure that connected under the chin of the shadow in front of her and snapped its head back. It crumpled.

Two down. Eight moving.

She ran again, cutting through the forest at an angle, using the trees for cover, throwing bursts of flame behind her without looking. Not aimed shots, just enough heat and light to force them to dodge rather than pursue cleanly. She could hear them gaining anyway. Faster than her. Less hurt than her.

A blade caught her across the back of the shoulder, and she stumbled forward, catching herself on a tree trunk, her hand leaving a smear of light against the bark from the marks on her fingers. She pushed off and kept moving.

Another caught her forearm as she deflected a thrown blade, the edge opening a shallow cut that burned immediately. She did not slow down.

She hit them with a wide arc of lightning that she threw backward over her shoulder without breaking stride, heard two of them go down from the sound of it, and kept running. The trees were thinning ahead. She recognized the ground under her feet, the slope of it, the way the air changed.

The dungeon entrance was close.

Three of them were still on her when she broke the treeline. She could feel them behind her, close enough that she did not dare look back because looking back cost time, and time was the one thing she did not have.

She hit the dungeon entrance at full speed and went through it without slowing, the darkness swallowing her immediately, the air changing the way it always did when she crossed the threshold, heavier, older, the particular weight of a place that was aware of her.

She heard the shadows stop at the entrance behind her. A murmured exchange. The sounds of people deciding whether what was inside was worth following her for. Then they followed.

She slowed to a stop in the first corridor, breathing in ragged pulls, one hand pressed to the wound in her side, the other against the wall for balance. The marks on her hands were dimming, the last of what she had spent running itself out.

"Kael," she said into the dark. Her voice came out quieter than she intended. "I need your help."