Chapter 9: My First Battle

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"Scatter!" Shane screamed at all of us. "Now!" Griffin added.

Doors began to open faster and faster. Warlocks melted out of the cottages and into battle with the unsuspecting witches and wizards. "We need to go." Ivy emphasized, yanking on my arm. She started sprinting, so I followed her through the town.

Our first almost-fatal mistake was stopping to rest. We stopped near a few cottages on the border of Damaskuas' town square, just to catch our breath. Someone came and tried to ruin it.

"Come here, Davie! It's the prince!" some random girl started practically shrieking with delight. "We can get even more credit from mother and father for killing the prince!" she added. My blood quickly turned to ice and my body practically went numb.

"Crap." I said quietly. Something in my body immediately lurched. Whatever was inside of me interpreted "crap" as some kind of spell or whatever, because the teenager who'd screeched at me flew backwards.

She hit one of the cottages surrounding us, smashed through the side of the wall, and lay unconscious in the splintered wood and thatch. "Oh." I muttered in surprise.

"That really wasn't what I thought was going to happen. I didn't even do anything." I looked at Ivy. I could hardly do anything but stand there in utter shock. I couldn't believe what I'd done.

"Come on, she's fine." Ivy said impatiently, yanking my arm again. We started to stretch back into a regular pace—sprinting with whatever energy we had left from walking all day.

While we were sprinting, I was slowly beginning to thank Joey for what he'd done—all the running he'd forced me to do on the treadmill. Without the strain he'd put on me, I'd be asking for breaks every 5 seconds that I tried to jog. It would've slowed us down pretty badly.

But Ivy and I were moving in a full sprint, accelerating, speed increasing, trying to keep away from all the people that caught sight of me. All I knew was that we needed to get away from all the commotion.

I had a strange but interpreting feeling that Shane's first and foremost priority was to find our mother first. He would've wanted to get her to relative safety. And I knew he'd put that need above all else.

I also had the strange but interpreting feeling that Shane would've wanted me to hide away from everything and everyone and try not to get myself killed. And, seeing all the commotion and psychotic warlocks in the town, I was okay with that.

Shane and everyone else probably would've wanted me to be prepared for any serious stuff that I'd need to do later. I could at least keep myself out of a lot of trouble by being away from everyone else. I also needed make sure that all the scorpion poisoning out of my system so I could be sure I was ready for action.

I thought about all of that as I ran. I focused on it for a long time, so I could ignore the pain in my lungs and legs.

Things seemed to go on the same way for a long time—until a knife soared through the air, barely passing me. I thought it had been a pretty terrible shot, until I realized its target.

Another warlock had aimed it at Ivy, who had just run into another warlock in the street. She'd told me that she didn't use her magic, but our situation seemed to be an exception. She was trying to keep me alive, considering I had no idea how to use my magic unless it was by accident.

Ivy was generally the smart one, so I let her do whatever. I hadn't even realized that she'd been trying to use magic to fend warlocks off. People were definitely targeting me, but not extensively.

But yes, a warlock had actually thrown an accurately aimed knife at my best friend's throat. She clearly wasn't going to outrun it before it lost momentum and clattered back into the street.

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