ELARA pushed against the walls of the spikes which Kethra used to restrain her. The fight was taking too long to finish and even Kethra was getting tired. She had seen the old woman stumble upon herself several times, leaving openings for the men to attack her with.
She wondered why Kethra became even more stubborn as the days went by. Perhaps, it came with the age, she thought wryly and pushed more against the spikes. She had no room to wriggle if not, she'd have freed her hands and…
She screamed as one of the soldiers slashed Kethra's back. Kethra fell to the ground, coughing out blood. "No!" Elara shouted. "Please, Kethra, let me help."
Kethra paid her no mind and neither did the soldiers. To Kethra, she was the next sorceress and needed to be protected and to the soldiers, she was nothing but a powerless child. What was she? Five? Six? She was nothing and if only she could break free of this prison which Kethra had put her in, she would have shown them that she was more than that.
She was almost as strong as Kethra. Almost. If not, by now, she'd have broken free and she'd have been standing beside Kethra, fighting by her side. An entire army of the dark lord's men would be nothing against she and Kethra's force.
But she was stuck here, confined to this cage and she could only watch as Kethra struggled to her feet, weaving the threads around the men.
"Please," Elara cried. "Let me help."
Kethra weaved another thread but she was too weak. Her magic was flickering and so was her life's thread. The men saw this opportunity and advanced towards her, hitting her with the hilt of their swords until she was nothing but a lump of dried skin and bones on the forest ground.
"Tharros wants her alive." She heard one of the men say and two of the soldiers lifted Kethra's almost lifeless body from the ground. One of them brought out the Duren – a device which when worn, inhibited the use of magic – and wound it around her wrist.
"What about the girl?" Another asked, pointing to Elara where she glared at them from the prison Kethra had put her in.
The man, who seemed to be the leader of the small army, glanced at her. "She's nothing. We don't need her. We have got what we came for. If she stays in that prison for a few more days without food and water, she would die or she'd be food for the wild animals that prowl this place. The villagers are too far away to hear her anyway."
"Please," Elara begged once more. She licked her dry lips which was patched from crying. "Don't kill her."
The men said nothing to her pleas. They dragged Kethra to the vehicle which they had come with – a strange object which hovered a few inches above the ground – she had heard of the dark lord and his technologies but this was the first time she was laying eyes on something like these.
Usually, they traveled in carts pulled by a gryphon, chimera or any of all the other creatures which were fit for pulling such weights. People like she and Kethra who lived on the meager stuff brought by the villagers or the fruits which grew from the trees in the forest.
They could definitely not afford any of those creatures and getting a cart was just as expensive. For people like them, traveling by foot was usually the only choice they had or they had to come up with enough coins to pay for a transit to transport them to their destinations.
The men left immediately. They vehicle, sliding away.
Elara screamed and struggled but it was as though the spikes only grew stronger.
***
"THE YAJAN HAS BEEN BORN AGAIN, he has reincarnated as a human once more and he has come to purge the land of the darkness and drive evil away."
Tharros glared at the Sorceress as she spoke. Although it had been about a hundred years since he last saw her, he had to admit that she had become quite old. Too old actually.
The last time he had seen her, she had been bustling with health, her thread had been a vibrant blue and it was as thick as his thighs and when they had fought, her magic had almost torn his heart out of his chest.
That woman he saw about a hundred years ago was gone. This woman who stood before him now smelt of death and decay. Her back was bent almost to the ground, her body was wrought with wrinkles and signs of age, her once black hair was now almost as white as the snow which fell only in winter and her thread was as thin as the wisps of her hair.
The sorceress was gone but this shell which she left behind had killed more than half of his men and her stubborn mouth was now telling him about his nemesis. The one who would bring his life to an end. Was that supposed to make him happy? Did she expect him to throw a banquet in his honor after the announcement?
What annoyed him most was the confidence with which she said it. The tautness of her chin as she spoke, the arrogant glint in her eyes and the mockery which sat at the tip of her tilted nose.
He folded his hand into a fist and began to weave the threads around him. Kethra noticed, he saw it in her eyes as she followed the threads which he was weaving.
She began to weave hers too but she was too old, too weak.
The threads were drawing energy from her faster than her body could take and before she had the chance to gather enough threads to block his attack, she was already on the ground. Her head separated from her body.
Tharros closed his eyes, not wanting to look at her anymore. Even in death, her face mocked him.