The One Who Saved Us

Chapter 5

The next few days were spent in solitude. Valencia stayed in her room, ocassionally ate and cried a lot. She didn't know what else to do. She knew she was supposed to be learning spells and how to fight, but she couldn't bring herself to get out of bed.

Valencia was in bed, playing with the loose threads of the bedsheet. She had her mobile in one hand and she scrolled through her gallery.

She never did understand why people had always said that taking pictures ruined the moment, because right now it was these pictures that comforted her. She remembered the fuss that was always created within her friends whenever they tried to take a picture. Now looking at the smiles of her friends and the shine in the eyes made Valencia feel like maybe she hadn't lost everything. She went to Celeste's profile and saw the poster that declared Valencia as missing. She couldn't bear to look at it as it reminded her of the pain she was putting her friends through. There were a lot of posts mentioning Valencia and sending prayers to her. Valencia felt extremely guilty for causing all that pain but she also knew that it was necessary to do what she was doing in order to protect her friends.

Then she heard a knock on her door. It was obviously Conrad. She sat up, pulling the sheets around her and asked him to come in. Conrad was a great person to live with, he always came into her room with food and and smile on his face. He allowed her to be alone when she wanted to be and other times let her watch movies on his TV. He joined her sometimes, other times he let her be. Right now, he came into her room with a thick book under his arm. He smiled at her and Valencia raised her eyebrows in question as she saw the book. Conrad pulled a chair beside her bed and sat on it keeping the book in front of her.

"This is a spell book, something you're supposed to be using to learn spells as you are a witch and have an enormous amount of magic at your disposal. I'll help you learn the spells if you want." He said as he opened up the book and flipped through the pages, stopped at one and turned the book around so that Valencia could read it. Valencia pulled the book towards her.

"Don't you mean I'm a warlock? Aren't witches evil?" Valencia asked. Conrad looked at her as if she were crazy.

"No. Witches are females and warlocks male. Didn't you know that?" Conrad asked a small smile playing on his lips.

Valencia shook her head. Then looked down at the book in her lap.

"Atrudirea? What does it mean?" She asked as she saw the word written boldly on the page. The book was old and the pages were a light brown. As she touched the page, she felt a burst of energy surge through her and she immediately withdrew her hand.

"What was that?" She asked surprised.

Conrad smiled. "This spell book is special. It tells you all the necessary spells and also contains some magic in it that you can siphon whenever you are low on it."

"You can run out of magic? I didn't know that was possible."

"You can run out of magic after doing a very strong spell for a long time. It's hard to run out of your magic. Once you run out that's it, you are no longer a witch or a warlock. But whenever you perform a spell, some part of it is utilised and if you do too many spells, you can feel exhausted. In that case, you use this book to get some more magic and do more spells."

"Does the book run out of magic?" Valencia asked intrigued by this information.

"Maybe. It's the only one I've made and haven't had to use it yet. So I don't know. We can try one day."

"How does the book have magic again?" Valencia's mind was buzzing with questions.

"I spelled the book to contain magic. It's a very simple spell. Almost as simple as the one in front of you. Atrudirea. It means to stun someone or something. If you use this spell on someone they'll get knocked down and if you use it on an object, it will fall down and probably break."