Aurora:
In a world where love had to be earned I would never be good enough. I was the black sheep in the family, the witch without magic.
While my sister excelled in every type of way I had to suffer in silence, tormented by the people I should ha...
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I was relieved that he had listened to me because the noises sounded concerning. Something was definitely wrong. East 2 was the tunnel right next to us, another one of those that needed to be destroyed.
We walked along the circular path that connected the tunnels, the deep void right next to us. Luckily, there were railings that kept us from falling over in the darkness. The closer we got to east 2 the louder and the more distinct the noises became. I was sure that the whole group was trying to put them into context. There were yells and crashes, pained grunts and clashes of metal.
When we finally arrived at the tunnel more than ten minutes had already passed. The words were clearly audible now, people yelling at each other to watch out or calling for help. There was desperation but also residual strength lingering within those words.
Right in front of the staircase, the soldiers of the other group were fighting large quantities of the ghostly. The whole formation was torn apart so much that each of them stood surrounded in a sea of shadows. It was obvious that it was hard to see through the thick air which made fighting even harder.
"Listen, guys" our own leader yelled over the noises. Some members of the other group heard him, new hope growing.
"We'll have to distribute. We don't know how the situation is at the north tunnels so half stays here, half goes with me" he ordered. His authority and the direness of the situation forced us to make a quick decision. There was no 'but I want to go there'. Instead half followed the leader and whoever was at the back stayed.
Lilac and I were two of the people that stayed amongst maybe twenty others. While the other half of the group cut themselves a path through the ghostly to move past the tunnel we had began actually fighting them. All of them needed to be gone before the mission could be considered done.
There was no alternative: All I knew was that we needed this mine to survive.
I fought alongside the others as if I had known them for years. We helped each other by calling out warnings and responding to calls of help. It was stressful but we would be stronger if all of us survived.
My sword destroyed one more shadow, my vision clearing up for a moment before a new shadow took its place. From what I saw in those few seconds the masses weren't getting smaller.
"This isn't working" I yelled towards Lilac who fought to my left. "Yeah, I don't know how long we can keep this on" was her raspy response.
We needed to change something in our strategy. Actually, there was no strategy right now. Everything had been taken over by chaos, the blatant wish to keep them from ascending the staircase our only goal. We had completely abandoned the order to close off the tunnel from the bottom. If the tunnel was destroyed we would be done quickly as less of them would come as backup.
There was only a small amount of magic in me that wouldn't allow me to even move a stone from the ceiling. On the other side I couldn't just order the other witches to go into the tunnel. It would take too long to organize with the sheer volume of the area.
