First Witch's Tale

The air shifted as the thing started to walk towards me. I forced myself to stagger away, feeling its presence pushing back into my mind. It couldn’t see me, I thought, but it could certainly feel me. My blood was all it needed to find me. It would lead the thing to me effortlessly. I was in no state to do anything. My legs might not be broken, or I wouldn’t have been able to walk at all, but they ached so badly I knew they wouldn’t last long. It was painful to move. And yet … a desperate plan rushed through my mind. If it worked …

This is dangerous, part of my mind whispered. I was going to take one hell of a chance - and break a number of rules while I was at it. Bernard would probably expel me if he realised what I had done. And yet, what choice did I have? My thoughts mocked me. Letting it possess me would be even more dangerous.

I gritted my teeth as I drew the knife and cut the rat’s skin, allowing our blood to merge. I let my instincts steer the magic as I reached out carefully, touching the thing’s presence. It was knocking at the door, making all kinds of promises - it struck me, suddenly, that I was hearing whatever I want to hear. No wonder it had seduced Cemburu so easily. It hadn’t so much as made him an offer as let him make the offer to himself. And he had been so tempted he hadn’t stopped to think about the downside. If I hadn’t seen what the thing had done to him …

My heart raced as I opened, very slightly, the door to my mind. The thing rushed forward, passing through the bloodline like a young man desperate to get close to a woman before she changed her mind, and slid straight into the rat. The poor creature’s eyes turned red. I felt the thing’s rage bubbling and boiling as it realised it had been tricked, drawing on the fragments of magic from my blood to cast a spell aimed at me. I could feel the spell taking shape, a nightmarish vision of my body twisting and turning and morphing permanently into a rat. The sight scared me so deeply I didn’t hesitate. I snapped the rat’s neck effortlessly. The thing howled one final time, its presence battering against my mind, then vanished. I felt the rat’s body crumble into dust. It was over.

I heard a thump behind me. I turned slowly, and staggered back to Cemburu. Was he dead? Part of me thought it would be a good thing if he was. He had summoned the thing and treated it as a tutor, using it for lessons in magic … unaware, I realised glumly, that it had been using him too. The rest of me hoped he was still alive. He had bitten off more than he could chew, true, and he had tried not to kill me even though killing me was the only thing he could do to save himself. I wanted to take him back to the castle and let the staff pass judgement on him. Who knew? Perhaps they’d think he had learnt his lesson.

He was lying on the ground, whimpering. I reached out carefully with my senses, just to make sure the thing was truly gone, and then knelt beside him and patted his arm awkwardly. He looked up at me, then down at himself, then flushed bright red. I didn’t want to know what he was thinking. I inspected his body grimly, noting just how thin he looked. Cemburu never been overweight - I couldn’t name a single magician in the school who was - but now he looked like a serf girl who had been sent out to die. His bones were clearly visible in his chest. I suspected he was lucky he hadn’t died like the rat.

But then, if the thing had managed to possess me, it could have used him as an ally, I thought. Cemburu didn’t have the nerve to stand up to the thing. He could have gone places my body could not.

“Janis,” Cemburu managed. His voice sounded weak, a pale shadow of its former self. My cousin had broken his leg and he hasn’t sounded so weak. “I …”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. I didn’t want to hear apologies, if apologies were what he was going to offer. “Worry about what you’re going to tell the staff.”

It was not easy to get back to the school. I felt tired and drained, my legs aching painfully, and Cemburu could barely walk. We leaned on each other as we staggered through the woods and out into the grounds. I was grateful there were so few students in the school. It made it easier for us to get back without being noticed. Bernard met us as we it crossed the wardline. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. We were both tainted with wild and dark magic.

“It was all my fault,” Cemburu said. I was surprised he was throwing himself on his sword for me. But then, he probably couldn’t hope to get away with a lie. “She saved my life.”

“Then you had better work to repay her,” Bernard said. “Come with me.”