“Shit! Shit! Shit!” The sound of my feet colliding with the ground echoed around me. “Mother of crap!”

I launched myself over a fallen tree breathlessly and stumbled as my rain boots collided with the ground. The breath was being pulled from my lungs, and I hoarsely launched myself from one tree trunk to another. Blood dripped down from my nose into my mouth and onto my face, and I wondered if I would bleed out before I was murdered.

An arrow whizzed by my head- just a few inches shy of a kill shot- and lodged in a nearby birch tree. I gasped in shock and turned myself around so quickly that I tripped up and landed flat on my back. I needed to move slower. I was in no shape to do anything at maximum speed- even escaping.

The slowly dimming sky spun above me through the treetops. The branches looked black against the violet-tint. I let out a sputtering groan as I willed myself to get back up onto my feet. I sounded like one of those old cars that just stop one day after a pathetic final attempt at running their engine.

Pure exhaustion melted through my muscles and into my bones. I’m giving up.

I wanted to throw up. I wanted to breathe. I wanted to disappear into the forest floor and stay there, safe, forever. But, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t do anything but lie there and wait for death. I hoped it would be swift. I hoped that it wouldn’t hurt too much.

Everyone is a coward when they die.

Just as my eyes fluttered closed in defeat, a little tree branch broke off from the foliage above me and hit me square on the forehead. A voice that only I could hear rustled through the branches.

“Use it.”

I knew that voice well, but I doubted that even Her command could get me to move. My heart beat viciously in my ears as I laid still on the forest floor.

“USE IT!” the command came again, more forceful this time. “I forbid you from dying.”

“I don’t really have a choice in that,” I croaked to no one in particular.

As I said it, an otherworldly strength entered me, giving me just enough energy to pull myself up from the ground and examine the stick that had been so kindly thrown on my head. It was strong and smooth with no leaves or moss growing on it, but it wasn’t dead- it came from a healthy bough. It wasn’t consecrated, but it would still make a good wand.

“Thank you,” I whispered through my cracked throat. It’s delivery was anything short of kind, but it would serve me well. As I tested the weight of the makeshift wand in my hand, common sense came back to me and I suddenly remembered that I was about to die.

Sticking the wand into the soil beneath my feet like a spear, I brought my hands up to form a downward-facing triangle. I summoned the very last strength I had within my being and intensely focused on the universe within myself. Everything ached and my head was so light that I worried about floating away, but I grounded myself just enough for my plan to work.

“Protege nos hoc die,” I chanted. The air around me crackled with unseen power like the air before a storm. “Protege nos hac hora. Hoc est meum erit. Hoc est potentia.” My tongue stumbled over the Latin, but I ignored my incompetence and kept chanting.

The pain inside my body, my anxiety and the whole forest slipped away until I was left alone, surrounded by nothingness. It was safe and calm.

“WITCH!”

The harsh shout snapped me back into reality with uncomfortable speed. I lowered my hands from their triangular shape and pulled the wand from the soil. My whole body was quaking with fear, exhaustion, and cold, my face was covered with drying blood, and the gathering shadows among the trees made me look small and weak, but my resolve was as firm and fiery as it could be in that moment.

Another arrow whizzed right towards my head, but just a few inches short of impact, it dropped to the ground like a stone. A shockwave passed through my body as my protection spell deflected it. Just one arrow had already weakened the spell, and I could feel it beginning to disintegrate. It felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside and stitched back together with cobweb.

I knew that I needed a backup plan fast. “Ego invocábo magna flamma!” I shouted after some quick thinking, thrusting my wand to the south. A human shape emerged from the trees with a bow stretched in their hands.

Another arrow was aimed for me- a throat shot this time. “Ego voco super velocem ventis!” I continued with my wand pointed towards the east. It was hard to ignore the specter of death at the edge of my vision. The second arrow fired and fell to the ground just as the first had, but it got closer to me this time. I let out a pained groan as the protection spell tore itself apart even further, but dug my feet into the ground and pointed my wand to the north. “Ego invocábo potentia Terrae!” I shouted. My nosebleed resumed, dripping blood onto the ground by my feet. All I could smell was copper and peat.

A third arrow tore towards me. I felt the kiss of the arrowhead against my skin just before it fell to the Earth. That was the arrow that finally destroyed my protection spell, and I gasped and stumbled backwards with pain as I felt it melt away. I was sure that the effects of my own magic was going to kill me before any arrow did.

“Ego voco super vires aqua!” I croaked with all the authority I could muster- my wand pointed towards the setting sun. “Audi me!”

A clap of thunder rumbled between the trees, and I instantley felt four greater powers beside me. The thunder didn’t bother the archer, who had notched their bow again.

I vomited up a mixture of blood and stomach bile, never once taking my eyes off the bow pointed at my forehead. I really couldn’t have cared more about it in that moment. My spell had just given me a second wind, but even with my new surge of power it wasn’t easy to ignore my current situation .

“Come out of the shadows and face me like a warrior!” I ordered to the archer in the shadows. I was emboldened, but still terrified. Power and strength sputtered and sparked underneath my skin like the beginning of a campfire, but I knew not to overestimate what it could do for me.  “I am Isandra Isadora Abaddon! I am a descendant of Isalinda Isha Abaddon, The Scourge of the Night! I am a Daughter of the Moon, and I demand to fight with dignity!”

A powerful silence stretched between us.

“You, witch, are in no position to demand anything,” hissed the voice from the shadows. I narrowed my eyes and another clap of thunder rolled through the forest. It was a parlor trick, and I had a feeling that the archer knew that. Still, it was worth trying to intimidate them “But,” the shadow continued when the forest went quiet, “I would like to see the look in your eyes when I kill you.” The bow was lowered and a young woman, about my own age, stepped out into the open. Her brown hair was tied back in a tidy low bun, and she was wearing a long, black leather trench coat. “I am Kassia Diane Elkan,” she announced, “descendant of Azra Theron Elkan, and you are going to die by my hand tonight.”

“Elkan,” I gasped. Tingles of fear ran through my chest and I clenched my jaw against them. I knew of that clan. They were infamous. Legends had it that they went all the way back to biblical times, and they had the highest kill rates of almost any Witch Hunter Clan.

“You’re a descendant of The Scourge, then?” the Witch Hunter growled with a wicked smirk. “Your head will earn me a lot of points at home.” She unsheathed a monsterous dagger from the belt at her waist and held it up so it glinted in the remaining sunlight.

Showboating, I mentally noted. Any fighter knew not to do that.

Kassia lunged at me, but I ducked away from the blade and landed a blow to her stomach that left a scorch mark on her shirt.

Leaves herself exposed.

Scowling, the Witch Hunter lunged at me again with the dagger. I used my makeshift wand to try and hold off the blow, and Kassia put all of her behind her dagger to try and overpower me. Seizing an opportunity, I kicked her and sent her flying across the clearing, smacking into the trunk of a nearby tree.

Doesn’t account for her opponent’s other options.

“You’re a novice, aren’t you?” I laughed raggedly. I knew that magic gave me an advantage over her, but I hadn’t expected to be winning this well. “You can’t even land a blow on a half dead witch.”

Provoked by my foolish words, Kassia pounced at me. I threw myself out of the way, thumping against the forest floor and rolling away just before a dagger pierced me between the eyes. The Witch Hunter might’ve been inexperienced, but she was determined and had more stamina than me. I needed something tricky if I wanted to get away.

Noticing the lengthening shadows, I threw myself behind a wide tree trunk and, as quickly as I could, chanted, “Tenebrae ego vocare vobis. Perdere lumen. Extinguere candela.”

I turned, expecting to find someone there, but I was surprised from behind. The Witch Hunter caught me by the throat and pinned me against the tree. Her dagger nipped at my throat and I willed my spell to work faster.

Three, two, one…

T\Finally, the clearing went dark. It wasn’t the kind of dark that you get on a moonless night,  it was the kind of dark that’s so oblique that it feels like ink against your skin.

The loudest clap of thunder yet rumbled around us and filled my ears. Kassia was caught off guard just for a moment- long enough for me do duck out of her grip and make my escape. I knew that, in the shape I was in, the spell wouldn’t last long. So, rather than risk running away, I scrambled up a nearby tree and prayed that the Witch Hunter couldn’t hear me climbing over the echoes of the thunder.

When I was about halfway up the tall tree, the spell wore off and dim twilight suddenly flooded the clearing in place of darkness.

It took the Witch Hunter a moment to realize that I was gone, but when the did the trees themselves shook from her rage.

“GODDAMMIT!” she roared, storming around the clearing that we’d been fighting in. “THAT WAS A NICE TRICK, WITCH.”

Her rage washed over me, nearly knocking me off of my unstable perch. My nose was bleeding again, and I cupped my hand over my nostrils to try and keep any blood from dripping onto the soil beneath. Whatever strength I had gleaned from my earlier spell was waning. The world was spinning and threatening to crush me underneath its weight, and I was all too aware of the dangers of hiding on a rickety tree branch in this state. If I fell, breaking my neck would be the least of my worries.

The Witch Hunter prowled beneath me, and I knew all it took for me to die was for her to look up. Desperate, I silently rattled off a protection incantation. I knew it wouldn’t work, but it was my last resort. Self preservation had replaced my desire to give up, and the only thing that mattered to me in the world in that moment was living.

Sharp tears stung the edge of my eyes and my throat burned from vomiting. I wanted to cry so badly, but I didn’t even let myself breathe for the entire time Kassia was circling the clearing. I was always told that Witch Hunters were like cats- they could hear the smallest noises their prey made.

Terrible, soul wrenching time passed as Kassia sniffed around the trees. I started to think that my family would find my body up in my perch  among the branches. I was commanded not to die, and yet there I was, dying.

The Witch Hunter eventually left the clearing to go tear another part of the woods apart, but I didn’t dare move. I watched the edges of her coat vanish and escape once more into the shadows, and yet I felt like she was still there. Her presence was still at the base of my tree.

Even when the stars began twinkling against the dark sky, I hadn’t moved. The night was provided me with a little comfort, but not enough to move. There was something about the shade of blue that the sky got at night that drew me in hypnotically. I felt like I could see into the universe’s soul through the night sky.  

Another command from Her made its way to my ears. “Go home.”

For the first time that day, I let myself cry. Everything hurt and my nose was still bleeding, and there was someone waiting behind one of those trees that was going to kill me.

“The Witch Hunter is gone.”

I rested my head against the tree trunk and let the pain I was in wash over me. I was afraid, but I had nothing left to lose. I figured that if I stayed up in my perch I was going to die, and if I got down and went home I might be murdered. Possible death seemed more favorable than certain death, so I begrudgingly lowered myself from the tree and started making my way home.