The man had positioned himself behind the young man, his wand in his left hand so he could hold his right hand out for the artefact. Shade stood frozen as the wand pressed against the back of his neck. From this close, any bolt could cause his head to explode like a grape. “Don’t try anything stupid” Valerius warned.

The two mage factions had had been at war for years finally called their truce in order to access the temple in a unified front. The only faction not a hundred percent on board with this was the mortals, who huddled behind the Realm Guard and the Death-Hunters shivering from the cold. As long as Scarlett remained in the hands of the Death-Hunter, nobody, not even Shade, was going to trust them.

The flight took them further than they had ever travelled before in a couple of hours. Midnight approached steadily like a foreboding cloud.

The spells dissolved the moment the Death-Hunter vanished. The barriers came down and everyone stumbled forward. The magic freezing Shade in place evaporated and the boy rushed forward, sprinting to the spot Balthazar teleported from. He lifted his eyes up and bellowed into the sky in fury, his voice igniting a thunderstorm over their heads.

A few minutes ago…

The visit from the Death-Hunters had been unexpected. But now that they were gone, and now that everyone in their groups were safe, everyone was able to take a moment to breathe and relax. It had been a hectic few days and they all needed a moment.

A hushed silence fell over the mages when Balthazar introduced himself. Of course they knew who he was. Emma learnt about him in school. She looked over at David, who used to talk about him a lot. The man was an inspiration, a legend, among his race. She also heard the stories about what happened to him, how he was locked up. “Is it really him?” she whispered to her dad, who had fallen silent as he stared at the tall man.

There was a fraction of a second before the metal shard pierced Emma’s eye as she watched it approach. She was trying to protect her father, and thus putting herself in danger. The shard cut through the air towards her, the jagged metal sharp and deadly.

They never saw them arrive, too distracted by the confrontation between Clark and her father. Emma was still shaking from the ordeal. She thought Clark might actually hurt her dad. She had never seen the mortal so angry, it was like watching a rabid animal. Suddenly all those tales about him being a part of a group who hunted mages felt true. It was scary.

They made sure the coast was clear before approaching the thick metal door to the cell. Kamau took the lead as they opened it carefully. Fagan had been arrogant enough to leave it unlocked. The door swung open and they peered inside the dark padded room to find Sam was curled up on the floor in chains. Alex instinctively went to aid him, but Kamau held his arm out and pointed to the markings forming a circle around the slumbering young man. She muttered a curse when she saw t

“I beg your pardon?” Valerius replied.

The survivors began arguing over what to do the moment they heard about the imminent Death-Hunter attack. “We have to leave the area” Holloway said.

It took him a while to wake up. The blow to the back of his head left him with quite the concussion. As a result his ears were ringing when he opened his eyes and found himself in a dark room with padded walls. Shade groaned and sat up, shaking the disorientation as he came back to consciousness.

“Run” Shade whispered.

“So you’ve encountered ghouls like them before?”

The hours of the day ticked by slowly, like there was an invisible clock hanging over everyone’s heads as they went about their self-assigned duties. Luke sat on a crate hunkered over the metal case holding the deadly artefact the mages were after, with the elderly Spell-Caster nearby assisting him in passing tools from his rollout kit. He’d been fiddling with the mechanism for the lock, seeing if he could bypass the code sequencer and get it open.

The fire crackled as Kaleb’s eyes opened. He shivered from the chill, his uniform damp from condensation. He shifted on the uneven ground, groaning in discomfort. What he wouldn’t give to be back on his soft feather mattress in his cosy luxurious room. Men of his standing shouldn’t have to suffer such indignities.

Emma’s heart stopped beating when she stared at the empty space where Shade was supposed to be. She dropped the bag she was carrying and rushed over only to find her jacket. “Shade?” she cried, scanning the room in front of her, her mind racing. Oh no, what if those things got him? She thought. She looked up at the door across the room, the only other exit. She leapt to her feet and ran towards it, grasping the handle frantically. But she found it was still locked, exactly a

Emma felt her head droop before her eyes snapped open again. She swore she was only resting her eyes, but one look outside said she must’ve dozed off. It was brighter through the filthy glass and she was able to see the hole in the ceiling and the debris beneath it. It was daylight, morning. How long had she been here? All night? How long have I been asleep?

The General clenched his fist as he contained his fury, looking down at the woman’s body with disdain. Foolish woman he thought as she laid spread out over the floor, blood over her lab coat and top from the gunshot wound to the torso. Her glasses lay smashed beside her, her eyes staring back at him blankly. He turned away from her and left her to rot in this dark corridor she chose to throw everything away in, his men flanking him with flashlights.