One of the side doors of the small church was cracked open slightly, which seemed kinda suspicious, but I needed somewhere to hide, so that's where I headed. When I was safely and quietly through, I gently closed it using the ancient iron latch on the inside.
Now that I was relatively safe in the dark of the church interior, I allowed myself to breathe and think a little. My mana was dangerously low. I needed to escape… but how? Did I wait it out and make a break for freedom once I thought it was safe? That seemed like the play, right?
As I fretted over my limited options, I glanced at the dark interior of the church, trying to get my bearings. It was one of those churches with a cross-shaped floor plan, where the pews went up the main shaft of the cross and down the sides, while the altar at the top.
Everything was old wood and bare stone — so all in all, a typical protestant church built during the early settlement of the eastern United States. I was willing to bet that some of the massive beams of wood above me were hundreds of years old.
That age created a sort of oppressive, weighted atmosphere, as though time itself was sagging here, tired and badly in need of rest. Then my gauntleted hands sagged slightly. Did they just get heavier? Oh no… this place wasn't right. I couldn’t stay here…
Ugh, I wish I knew how to see magic or sense it somehow, that would have been really helpful. Unfortunately, neither Spiritborn nor mages could actually see magic without some sort of arcane gadget.
Taking great care to move as quietly as possible, I headed for the opposite wing from the one I’d arrived in. However, with every step I took, my gauntlets grew heavier. When a savage wrench forced me to stop, I leaned wearily against the altar and I took a look down at the priceless family heirlooms I was wearing. Why were they failing? Had I used them too much? Had I broken them?
My head began to swim. O-oh man, and why was I suddenly so tired? I couldn't… I couldn't stop here. I couldn't rest, I needed to keep moving—
The front doors of the church creaked open, and the click of steel-toed boots preceded the hunter as he stepped through. Just by his posture, I knew I was in trouble. There wasn't any urgency in his movements. He knew I was getting wrecked by… whatever was happening to me.
“Of all the places to drag yourself,” he chuckled, slowly, deliberately closing the door.
I glared daggers at him. “What are you talking about?”
“This church,” he said conversationally, gesturing around us at the ancient building. “It was built to guard a leyline, long sealed to prevent threats like you from accessing the vaunted powers that my organisation holds so dear. It’s fitting, really, that you will die here. It'll be a homage to the days of glory, when victory over filth like you was not yet assured. When the war was at its apex, ripe with unspilled blood.”
The way he so casually dehumanised me, labelling me as a ‘threat’ — it felt like a blow to my psyche.
“Why? Why am I a threat? I'm just… I'm just a person trying to keep people from getting hurt!”
“Look what you did out there — wanton, senseless violence,” he told me with a shake of his head. “The common man is too marred by sin to be allowed access to the ink of creation. The common man is chaotic, he is unpredictable, he is ungodly. Only those with the strength and trust of the Lord should be allowed to wield his power. You are not one of the chosen — you are a mere Witch. You spew tainted energy from every pore like a rancid fountain. You are a threat to the lives of every law-abiding human.”
Wow. This guy was… missing most of his brain cells — maybe all of them. How did I even begin to process all of that crap?
I wasn't even going to have time to think. The heavy click of his footsteps was echoing through the small church as he approached. There was no way I’d be able to get away now. My gauntlets were all but dead, probably sapped of their strength by the tainted leyline below me, and the tiredness I felt probably came from there too. This… this sucked.
Like, dying wasn’t all that terrible, I wasn’t a big fan of my life. There were parts of tonight that were fun, and my friends… I liked them. But everything else was a weary slog. He sorta had a sort of point, too — the power I’d felt throwing those dudes around had been potent, and I could see how some might be tempted to use it for evil. There was a valid argument for regulation, for control.
Still, I’d used it for good, hadn’t I?”
“What about all the other threats? Look at those protests! The guys I was fighting were going to shoot people. Why not do something to stop that?”
“That is, frankly, not our problem,” he shrugged, giving a dismissive wave of his gloved hand. “With a crowd that large, most would've lived through any deadly conflict.”
I gaped at him. “That's so fucked up.”
This was the fucking worst. I was going to get killed by a hypocritical zealot.
“Again, not my problem,” he snorted, stopping to loom over me. “You, however, are my problem. The operation to control the narrative surrounding what you did tonight will take months, possibly even years.”
“Why? Because if the public realises that magic can be used to do actual good in this messed up world, they might get upset?” I growled, trying to stand up, to raise my gauntlet for one last spell. If I could just…
His steel-toed boot impacted my chest with a thump, sending me sprawling back down across the steps of the altar. I wheezed, and something shifted painfully in my ribcage. That hurt. The steps were made of stone, and my back wasn’t exactly made of the strongest stuff.
Still eerily calm, the hunter stood above me, almost as if observing a mouse he had stuck beneath a cup — a predator’s curiosity before he drowned me in the sink.
“I must ask, how did one as young as you gain such control over your power?” he mused, not really speaking to me anymore. “Certainly, you are the strongest threat I have hunted in years. There must be more of you.”
“Really?” I scoffed, voice hoarse with pain as I struggled to even my breathing out. “You want me to like, betray all my allies at the brink of my death? Blab all the names of my vast and powerful ‘witches’ coven? Get real.”
“I sincerely doubt you will tell me anything useful,” he explained casually, still completely unfazed by my anger. “Doesn’t really cost me anything to ask, though.”
“Well, sorry to disappoint your bloodlust, but it’s just me,” I said, feeling some small satisfaction that he wasn’t going to get to kill any more ‘threats’.
He waved me off. “I will conduct my own investigation to determine that.”
All I could do was snort. It was funny, in a morbid sort of way. Why was he bothering to talk to me if whatever I said would be lies to him?
I received a quizzical look for my amusement, and he said, “You do not seem to care that you will die here.”
“Not really,” I shrugged, feeling strangely truthful despite his predisposition not to believe me. “I hate my life, if I’m honest. It’s shit, it’s boring, and it just feels sort of… empty. Like, I’ll live it if I have it, but dying doesn’t really bother me.”
“Odd girl,” he muttered to himself, staring down at me.
Then, without any ceremony, he drew his gun from its holster and shot me three times in the chest.
For a few moments, my mind sort of stuttered, trying to understand what had happened. The pain hit next, as though boiling water had been poured across my chest.
Eyes slowly fell still, and I slumped as my muscles stopped listening to signals from my brain. Dimly, I was aware of the hunter staring down at me for several long minutes, until he just… just turned and left. Bye, asshole. Darkness closed in at the edge of my vision, a haze of nothing swallowing my life along with my senses. Guess I was going out. Bye mum, bye dad… bye Eva… wait, what was happening?!
I was moving — falling? Without my body? I saw it from beneath, with a strange, fuzzy kind of sight that allowed me to see through everything. Blood was pooling on the steps of the ancient altar, like I'd been sacrificed to a God I didn’t even believe in. That was kinda sad, but hey… I was still thinking, so that was pretty interesting.
My descent began to pick up speed, and I twisted to face downwards, as if pulled by some unseen force. Enveloping me like a cloak, there was a cloying white mist that somehow, I instinctively understood was me.
Below, I could see a mass of glowing white energy, with fat conduits of the same stuff reaching out in six different directions. Something was wrong with it though, it was covered in a strange, tar-like red liquid. It surrounded the beautiful white light like some sort of cancerous alien life form straight out of science fiction.
Sudden, inexplicable understanding hit me. I was staring at the leyline… no, not just staring, I was falling into it. Oh shit, what would that mean for me, for my… my soul, or spirit — whatever the hell I was now.
I really hoped it didn’t hurt, because that would su—
Thump
I hit the ground.
My breath exploded out of me in a rush. What in the ever living fuck was going on? I sniffed, then frowned, confused by what my nose was telling me. Damp soil? Rotting leaves? Why the hell was I in a forest?
My eyes fluttered open to reveal a wide clearing within a dense, unimaginably ancient looking forest. Not just ancient… it was huge. Every tree was five or six times the size you’d expect a tree to be, and even the grass and brush was massive. What the hell?
Mist swirled and danced between the tree trunks and through their twisted boughs, as though alive in a very real and sentient way. Lights danced further out, obscured by the trunks of the trees, distant, fleeting, and unsettling.
Next, I noticed something directly in front of me, and I gave out a startled yelp, scrabbling backwards. What the hell? Whatever it was, it followed me, remaining too close and blurry to make out properly.
A giggle caused me to freeze in place, and I swivelled my head to try and figure out who’d just laughed.
“Who’s there?” I asked anxiously, only to get confused again when my neck didn’t function the way I expected.
“She is frightened by her own snout!” a strange, high, genderless voice chortled from above me. “What a curious little creature.”
“She has the smell of Earth on her,” another voice intoned, deep and rumbling.
“And death,” the first voice purred, its owner stepping out from behind a tree. “Hello little fox, I am so intrigued to meet you.”
The person was huge, and my eyes widened as they approached. Tall and inhumanly thin, they looked as though they were made out of white, petrified wood. A bone-white dryad or something.
“Do not startle the newcomer, Hathaesay, you are scaring her,” the rumbling voice chastised in a gentle tone, and to my surprise I realised it was the tree that was speaking — the one that the white dryad had stepped out from behind. The damned thing had eyes.
“Yes, yes…” the dryad grumbled, waving a willowy limb at the tree in irritation. “Tell me, little fox, how did you come to be here, stinking of Earth and death, hmmm?”
It was about then that I realised that no, she wasn’t really tall, and the forest wasn’t really big. I was small, and as she’d just said… I had a snout… and paws, and a tail. I was a fox.
“What. The. Fuck,” I yelped — voice high and panicked.