Branded Souls

Fallen

Abby's POV

I most certainly did not have the energy to deal with this. But if this person was responsible for the cyclops, well, I suppose I had to.

Even if, as far as I was concerned, I was supposed to be dead.

I watched as they dragged her toward me. Fear covered her face. She couldn't have done this on purpose.

"I didn't! It followed me!" She cried.

Oh. I looked up. The villagers glared at me, wanting one thing alone.

Her. Dead.

I looked at her, and in my exhaustion, I suppose it might have looked angry. I raised my stick to call the villagers' attention to myself, in hopes that I could calm them down.

"Petrificus!"

My arm couldn't move. "What the-?" I looked at the girl, who I was now certain was a wizard.

She gritted her teeth. "Praetervolo!" She screamed and disappeared.

"Great Nebula!"

"So she is a daemonium!"

"Oh wizard please!"

"Nebula!"

Nebula, Nebula, Nebula, Nebula, Nebula! I closed my eyes. The voices rang in my ears, begging for me to hunt down the "daemonium."

Meanwhile, I could barely breathe, several of my bones were broken, my muscles sore, and I was in the negatives when it came to Mana. By all accounts, I should have been dead. But I wasn't, and they weren't going to accept that I could barely move, let alone hunt down a human being.

I turned and began to limp away. "I will find her."

I had barely crossed the forest's threshold when everything went hazy. I collapsed, gasping for air. Then everything went black.

In my dreams, all I could see were the villagers screaming "Nebula," begging for me to save them.

From what?

There wasn't any threat.

A cyclops that could be defeated by a stick to the heel. A werewolf that simply needed to be called home. A vampire that would die as soon as light hit it. A orc that could be taken down by a thread around its toe.

What threat?

None of these things required magic to defeat.

Nothing ever required magic.

After all, magic never cured my insomnia.

Magic never saved my village.

Magic never kept me alive when I used more mana than I had.

Magic never caught an evil wizard.

Magic never did anything.

I opened my eyes hazily. Everything still hurt. I had minimal Mana, and two jobs to complete.

Defeat the daemonium.

And kill Nebula.