Young Magic I: Shoujo and Shounen Wars

Forty-Five: Defeated, They Drifted To Slumber

What might've sounded a gasp internally felt as a breath longing to forcibly exhale after holding in for some time, an instinct rooted of shock.

That's exactly as Claudia Rivers did, gasping out dramatically as though she had been abruptly awoken, poking out from what overwhelmed her as a crowd of people.

She found herself standing among them, her figure sandwiched and blended in the largely numbered folk.

Preston...! The last thought that came instinctively to her mind thus far.

An unnerving tension was revisited.

There was a united and terrifying commotion from the crowd that Claudia didn't instantly decipher, but based on their expressions and gestures, it easily distinguished to that of an angry mob.

"She's a witch! To ostracize her is not enough!"

"Burn the traitorous descendant! Tainted servant of the apparition!"

"She shouldn't let alone show her face under our clan!"

"Betrayal is punishable by flames, the very weakness of spirits and all other ghosts alike!"

Many of these raged at the subject not at a stage, but at a platform gathered of firewood to support a bigger, taller position of a stake.

The subject was a person already bounded by their back onto the stake, and from beneath, flames were already crackling from the stacked fireplace of rocks and sticks.

The subject strapped was essentially of Claudia's age, if an inch taller in the matching stature, berry-blue hair braided neatly and a tiny gothic top hat sat upon the upper side of her head.

Her gothic attire was welcoming to the ominous and monochromatic atmosphere, as were her face dim by an overbearing shadow, no more pitiful and glooming of her expression than her situation.

I already have my eyes on Preston, but... Claudia thought considerably.

Her state was what Claudia assumed a sentence of burning on the stake, and conveniently she recognized the girl guilty of the identity Ellen Breont, one of the missionary children allied together with herself.

That's when Claudia scowled, breathing that first gasp through gritted teeth.

Any cornered ally requires aid from their teammates! That's how it's supposed to work, right?!

She attempted to flee from out of the crowd, whipping her kite to spread it out for good use before its string then arose and led her up the sky as she held onto it.

"Ellen—!" She shouted, as soon as she rose out in the sky and a few feet above those swarming and rampaging.

Just then, the fires weren't the only force of nature that crackled, since a bluish static zapped throughout the assembled wood, rocketing through the fires and eventually climbing up all over the tied blue-haired female.

Although she was seemingly unaffected by the electricity and in fact appeared to be strengthened by it, as the cybernetic static proceeded to mark more burns over the wood and concrete than the flames did.

Due to this, the electricity topples the sticks behind Ellen Breont that held her captive, even dispersing the ember orbs impossibly just by its paralleling sparks.

And the sticks and twigs went falling down behind her with a collective patter as she stands readily, poised and stoic.

"She survived?! She wasn't exorcised?!"

"Where did that electricity come from?!"

"She couldn't have! We had salt hidden for extra precautions!"