Finley Cai Aies Hall May 19th,20XX

I flew as quickly as I could back to the campsite, feeling guiltier and guiltier by the minute. A flock of witches had attempted to trail me but after the first wave got trapped in bubbles and suffocated into unconsciousness, the majority of them backed off.

A few more persistent witches followed after me and constantly shouted out instructions to each other. I gathered that they didn't have a leader since none of them reacted negatively to receiving orders from another witch.

I knew that they couldn’t kill me, considering how they had set up a whole elaborate plan so I was a bit more reckless with my counter-attacks than I ordinarily would have been.

They flew in a group of four, one to attack, one to bind, one to support and one to protect. The first, a female witch with dark green hair and a tall spear stabbed at me while her companion threw a bomb at me, muttering a spell to make it explode into a noxious fog beside me. I avoided the spear by flying upwards and cast a bubble around the noxious fog, tossing it back at one of the other witches. The witch that had thrown the device had to swerve out of his path to take the hit. Because of this, I learned that he was immune to his poison. The fourth witch that hung around the edges of the group suddenly rushed me with a lasso in hand and tossed it toward me. I easily dodged and sent him a questioning look. Surely, he couldn’t have thought that would work.

The witch looked embarrassed in return and even went as far as to slow down as I sped away.

The rest of the forest was eerily quiet as I flew through it and I got a sick feeling to my stomach. Jake had the bat and the other two guards, so he should have been able to hold out. I only needed him to hold out long enough for me to get there. One of the bracelets I’d given him was linked to one of my own. It would heat up if Jake was in danger and act as a sort of makeshift compass toward him.

I’d learned my lesson after Sparrow had gone missing.

Thinking about Sparrow filled me with conflicted feelings that I wasn’t ready nor willing to deal with.

There was something wrong with her, and I wasn’t only saying that because she had so clearly betrayed me.

I arrived at the campsite only to find it abandoned and battled with a rising sense of hope and a sinking feeling of dread. The feeling was confirmed by the bracelet on my arm heating up and almost searing my skin off.

My wings blurred as I pushed myself to fly faster, changing directions on a pin as the pain faded in and out.

I reached a clearing where a group of familiar-looking witches crowded around an unconscious body. One of them was swinging a familiar-looking bat and the other was playing around with one of the anklets.

The sight of Jake laying on the ground like that made me see red, even if I knew that he wasn’t dead.

I dived into the middle of the huddle, tackling one of them off their broom and onto the ground. He groaned as his back made contact with the hard ground, but I was onto the next target. I grabbed his broom and used it to slam it across the head of another, too agitated to even bring out my wand and use it properly. The witch’s neck snapped sideways as she received the impact and she joined her companion on the floor, twisting in pain.

Two out of the three remaining jumped toward me, one using a short sword to keep me busy while the other used a rope to try and retrieve her unconscious colleagues.

I batted away each vine with a swat of the broom and javelin tossed it her head, effectively stopping the vines. She made a thud as she hit the ground

The one that had stayed behind hoisted the unconscious Jake up by his scruff and held a dagger to his neck.

“Put him down.”

The voice that ripped out of my throat barely qualified as a voice, more closely resembling a growl. The witch holding Jake flinched in response. His hand tremored as he tried to look threatening and the knife’s shard edge scraped at the surface of Jake’s neck, just lightly enough to avoid cutting.

“Put your wand onto the floor and take four steps back from it.”

I used magic to hoist the two witches beside me into the air, trapping them in bubbles. I put the bubbles high enough that releasing them as they were in their unconscious states would have been little more than a death sentence.

“Put my friend down and take four steps away from him.”

The witch smirked in response and I got a bad feeling.

“Come on, you didn’t expect that to work now did you? Those are my collogues, if I lose them, I’ll just get assigned to come new ones. This fairy on the other hand… seems like he’s pretty important to you.”

“If so much as a drop of blood spills out of him I'll make sure to collect a gallon of yours.”

Before he could respond I shot a blast of magic toward the knife in his hand, getting it away from Jake’s neck and launched toward him. I was too focused on getting Jake to safety and neglected to take a proper scan of my surroundings.

I could all but hear Theodulus’s reprimanding voice echo into my ear as a sharp blast of magic screwed into my side and I felt the wind blow out of me.

It hurt. A lot.

It wasn’t the first time I had been hit in this world, heck it wasn’t even the first time I’d been hit this week. But this hurt a lot more than the others, between the pure aggression behind the hit, or the filthy sensation of witch magic on my skin. It was hard to bear.

My vision blinked in and out as I tried to regain my balance and I caught the two witches I’d trapped in the bubbles mere seconds before they crashed into the ground. My assailant took this moment of weakness to attack me again, sending another brick-like magic beam toward my stomach. They simultaneously sent one to my head and hit me square on my unformed horn.

Pain abounded through me as I felt myself falling onto the ground and I completely abandoned supporting the two witches in the air as I writhed on the ground. I felt myself being surrounded and wave upon wave of binding witch magic fell on me.

It was nauseating, I was in pain, I was angry, and I felt betrayed.

Rounds of emotions ran through me as I slowly lost consciousness and the last thing I could remember was a witch with long red hair and a purple outfit straddling her broom as she came toward me, a purple snake-beast on her shoulder.

She had a conflicted expression on her face but there was no hesitation as she cast her spell.

She threw three seeds onto the floor and sickly vines popped into the air, wrapping around each limb of mine and sucking the energy out of me.

It was hard to breathe, and I was having a hard time focusing my magic enough to overpower the weak shell.

I lost consciousness.