My mother also noticed the sound of someone entering the tent. She tried to scoop me up and hide us but didn’t have the strength Instead, falling to her knees as she tried to push me along. We wouldn’t have long before he found us and unless I could get close enough to touch him and cast a spell I was nothing but a toddler. I pointed to the bedside table and my mother understood and grabbed the small knife. Despite her muscles screaming in agony at her she managed to pull her arm back and stab into the side of the tent and began cutting a hole for us to escape from. The tearing noise of the knife was a dead giveaway though and suddenly the tent began to turn cold as the ugly leader stepped into the bed compartment. He was large, perhaps nearing seven feet in height with a hefty girth to his gut. His arms and hands were thick and covered in greasy brown hair. His face looked like it had never been washed with a short balding crop of scraggly hair adorning his crown. However, despite his looks, there was a reason why he was this group’s leader. In his hands, he brandished a large serrated great axe which was currently coated in a thin sheen of frost. The man shouted something at my mother and let out a deep, horrible laugh. He took a look at me and cocked his head in confusion. For his size, the man could move surprisingly quick and in a blink, he had crossed the tent and with a loud thud kicked my mother in her ribs with a big meaty foot. She cannoned out through the hole she had been attempting to carve and rolled across the snowy ground. The man laughed once more and slammed the butt of his axe on the ground. As he did a line of mana shot from the pommel, along the ground and covered the hole in a layer of ice, stitching the tent closed. The man turned his head to me, his wide smile glinting off of the residual mana glow from the ice and highlighting his missing teeth. Not again. Not after all of this, after coming so far I can’t return to the cycle just yet! But my legs were paralysed in front of the giant. Suddenly, something crashed into my entire body. The man had swung the flat of his axe and sent me sprawling through the tent curtain that separated the room and clattering into and over the table on the other side. Things were broken inside me. I tried to lift myself but nothing came. Every fibre of my body cried in pain. The man plodded towards me and gripped me by the head pulling up to his face height, my body limply swaying in the air. I struggled to keep my eyes open but could see that grotesque smile still on his face. He said something and for the first time, I was overjoyed not to understand for I was sure it was something detestable. At the end of his sentence, the man let out a fat tongue and licked up my face and took a long sniff of my hair. I hope my mother at least manages to get home. The man walked me back towards his bedchambers at least he wasn’t searching for my mother. Through all of the pain and regret, I felt something else, a tingling in my right hand. Tingling! I could feel my hand again! At least one hand but that might just be enough of a chance while he has me so close and has his guard down. In my mind’s eye, I struggled to fight off the fatigue and prepare a spell. One immediately came to mind but it was a gamble. If things went as planned I’d need to act unbelievably fast. Just as the man got within reach of the bed I could feel him slightly pull his arm back as if to throw me onto the blankets. Now!

I snapped my arm out and grabbed the man’s bicep and launched a siphon life spell, his arm withering slightly and grip weakening. The life force ran through my body and temporarily suppressing all the pain and fatigue I had felt. I landed on the ground and could feel one of my ankles rattling despite the spell now numbing all of the pain. The ugly thug fell to one knee in surprise and I rapidly prepared my next spell before diving upwards towards his head, narrowly catching it at the last second and hitting him with a paralysis curse, freezing his body and mana. The tent was filled with silence for a moment with only the sound of the crackling tents outside. We were so close to being done but as I was about to head to find my mother I had an idea. I couldn’t let this opportunity for such good resources go to waste after all, and this putrid man really shouldn’t be left alive…