WARNING - CONTAINS DEPICTIONS OF GORE AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE

“On the corpses of lions, the dogs celebrate, believing they have won. But lions remain lions and dogs remain dogs”

-Old proverb.

  The wizard took a brief moment to contemplate what has just transpired, trusting the marauding Northmen proved to be more costly than he had anticipated. It was supposed to be just a simple job: take the girl, leave no witnesses, and get out of there unnoticed. Not only were they unable to complete such a simple task, but they also let their target escape, completely razed the entire village, and slaughtered innocent civilians. He knew they had to get out of clan territory as fast as they could, the Clan Irfis would not take this affront kindly.

  He looked down at the priest’s body and frowned, the problems only seemed to pile up more and more every time. Now he would also be at odds with the Church. Of course, he had planned beforehand that the blame would ultimately fall on the Northmen, but still… He had to find the girl first.

  The wizard took a small handful of men with him and walked away, there were very few places where the girl could go. Searching through the forest at night would be extremely difficult, and he didn’t want to stay near the razed village in the case those Clan warriors appeared. It would be most convenient to just wait until the morning.

  He would let the Northmen do their thing, however; their leader took the loss of so many of his own at the aging priest’s hands really personal and really pissed him off. They would probably look for the girl through the entire forest if they had to. It didn’t really matter to him, even if they found her, he would just take her from them later.

  Meanwhile, in the forest, the young priestess kept crying for a few minutes more, Nina just knew at the bottom of her heart that her mentor and friend Verkan was no more. She couldn’t explain how she knew it, but she was sure of it. The poor girl was now facing the grim fact that she was all by herself now.

  But she stopped crying when she heard something in the woods. She wiped her eyes with her sleeves and looked around frantically but couldn’t identify the sound’s source, and she couldn’t see anything past a few yards due to the dark. The girl took a deep breath, stood up, and began running away again, maybe she was getting justifiably paranoid, or it was just her mind playing tricks on her, but she could swear that something was following her footsteps. Nina turned again, but the result was the same as before. She could hear, however, the unmistakable accent of the north language being yelled in the distance. She realized the raiders were still looking for her and the danger was far from over.

  Nina kept running at a slower pace to save her strengths, she had a couple of miles of advantage, and they would only be able to spot her in the dark night if they were close enough. If she kept quiet, she would remain undetected.

  The thick foliage and the broken branches lying on the ground made it navigate through the forest extremely difficult. The cloudy sky didn’t help either, as moonlight was lacking, and even though her eyes were slowly getting accustomed to the pitch-black night, she couldn’t help tripping from time to time.

  “Come on, think Nina, think!” the girl kept telling herself, her mind was blank, and as much as she tried to organize her thoughts, she found herself unable to focus. Up until now, Nina kept jogging through the forest without putting much of her mind into it, almost completely by instinct. The only thought she could keep in her head was of poor Verkan, and she teared up every time her mentor popped up on her mind.

  After mindlessly drifting through the forest for what seemed hours, fatigue inevitably took its toll from all the jogging through the difficult terrain. But as much as she wanted to catch her breath for a little bit, the distant echoes of their yelling, and the sight of torches through the foggy forest forced her to keep moving.

  But as the terrain was getting increasingly difficult to traverse, she realized she was getting closer to the mountain range. “Follow the edge of the mountains” the girl recalled her mentor saying, she figured that as long as she ran along the uphill side of the mountain, she would be on the right path.