Whispers of Blood & Magic

Chapter Twenty-Four

We tried not to run through the town in fear that we would grab more attention than we already had. We made our way to the stables where our wagon and horses had been kept all this time. The boy had kept his promise and had fed our horses, smiling broadly as Flyn dropped the coin pouch in his grubby hands.

Off we went and when we felt that we were far enough away from both Barrhead and Rutherfrys, Fausto and Scythe helped retrieve the arrowhead from my shoulder. The arrow itself had snapped at some point in our retreat, but the metal bit had still been lodged in my flesh. I had taken a huge sip of some alcohol that I had found in the wagon stash and when it started to seep into my belly, the two of them fished out what splinters they could and finally expelled the metal bit from flesh. I started to feel a bit woozy, so I lay face down on the wagon, sprawled out as much as I could while the whole thing shook and jostled me until the alcohol finally let me drift off enough to actually sleep.

I had awoken some time later, all three of them keeping an eye out while the wagon rolled on and the horses kept a steady speed faster than one would want for a long journey. I was betting we would trade them in at some point in a far away town where our trail was cold enough that we didn't have to worry about a vengeful vampire coming to find us.

Now we had to make a very important decision and I think we all knew it was coming. We had to decide, unanimously, if this powerful crystal would make its way back to the college where it had the potential to put some people in a very high place of magical power, or would we destroy it, keeping the evidence and knowledge to ourselves, hoping that in that decision, we would actually be saving so many lives. Not only the lives of the farmers, but the lives of the wizards that would want to replicate this anomaly of magic, and also the very creatures that they would imprison forever. We had some time to think on this conundrum, but in the meantime, I moved up to the front of the wagon with Fausto as Scythe and Flyn kept guard on either side. I let my head loll backwards, knocking into the wooden backrest of the seat as our wagon hit a dip in the rocky path through the forest.

This book was  based off of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that I ran many years ago. The characters and places in this story were either borrowed from my campaign players or were made up or changed by me. Thanks for reading!