It would be hard to explain the feeling, of rise and fall, triumph and grief that filled me at that moment.

On one side, I had surpassed any expectation of success I ever had. To say so, beyond my wildest dream, I had been able to face Him to a point where I was almost certain and sure, that I had outwitted Him.

But at the same time, whether it was a miscalculation, bad luck, or even the will of a superior power, that hadn’t been enough to reach success.

The weirdest things happened in the less-expected moments and everything that could go wrong went wrong at that moment.

One could say that it was the perfect balance for all the luck I had the last couple of days.

So painfully sat on my knees, I had to watch how the water washed the salt with which I had drawn the Hex on the baseball field.

— That was close —

He said, with his voice roughly scattered by the Seal's effect.

— I will assume for your face, that that was your best play at hand —

White eyes, shoulders down, head tilted back, I stared at him foreshadowing what was about to happen. He was right.

Like someone who has climbed over a cliff, only to fall on the verge of its top. That was I.

His next words nailed my coffin right away.

— I almost feel sorry for how close it was —

Then I realized, I had been left without options, and I moved.

Slowly, and ungracefully, I felt the real estate of my body as I fell sideways to the ground, tired, confused, and sore.

And while I rolled over my body, like Atlas, I felt the world weighing over me.

My right arm, my ribs, and the rest of my limbs hurt beyond any other effort that I had ever done till that moment. Yet, as I managed to crawl a couple of steps back into my knees, and then feet, I knew, that was the state in which I had to go on the run.

So as crappy as it could be, I ran as fast as I could, heading to the stands of the baseball field.

Only one sentence I was able to hear from my numb state.

“I’ll kill you!”

Was enough to give me that little bit of motivation I needed to pull over my last strengths.

And I started to truly run, I ran as fast as I’d ever done.

As soon as I entered the stands, a thought struck my mind. The “notebook” I thought, uncomfortably stretching my arm to my pocket.

Then I saw it between my crippling fingers. A tiny, little made of recycled paper notebook looking scratched and dirty for the fight, but that would look like that even If I hadn’t brought it with me anyway.

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Filled with numerous circles, symbols, and explanations in scrambled inked handwriting, it was in that notebook that I’d been practicing my Hexes for over the past days. As I ran, I shifted the pages in a quick move and found the section from where the sheet containing the expelling Hex was torn.

The memory of the shredded invisible force charging against me still made me shiver, but not as much as the image of the Hex splitting into a thousand breezes.

What I had become able to do, I wasn’t able to understand yet. So as I ran, to know that I still had one of those hexes drawn inside that notebook, among those I hadn’t tested yet, gave me the strength that I lacked. I still had something to defend myself, whatever it ended up being.

It was at that moment when a stroke, striking demolishing sound broke in. Coming from the entry hall and reaching me, it made me stop in the middle of the run to turn back.

There, standing now all composed in the hallway, covered by a dust fog, I saw Him breathing heavily in an image more reminiscent of a predator than the quasi-playing partner he had seemed before.

Slowly but steadily, as I began to be filled with the menacing feeling of being hunted, I turned my feet back to the run, realizing that unlike before, with all my traps and preparation, I had become the prey animal here.

A few seconds later, I was watching how a piece of concrete belonging to the wall through which corner I had passed flew next to my head, dangerously close to hitting me with the right speed to strike me down. A quick, burning overdosing ignition of energy then filled the fibers of my body, this time not belonging to any type of Sympathy, but to the most basic human instinct.

The very same feeling Him had referred to at the beginning of our encounter, was the one pushing me into survival. It was fear.

That way I ran through another corner to find myself in the restrooms, turned left, and went out of the Stadium through a backdoor. Feeling while I did it how a pipe spitted water over me, as steam and sparkles broke under the force of Him's raging attacks.

A jump after, and I had scarcely overcome the fence more or less in the same way I had done when broken in, in such a fashion that by that moment, I wasn’t even sure how I was able to perform that act.

After I had left the Baseball fields behind, I sneaked through the playgrounds, hearing how the steel of the fence I had just jumped folded in Him’s way. Then I headed the the forest on the other side of the nearby road. A place that I knew thanks to my Nightwalks, would lead me to my house's backyard.

By this moment, you probably would be asking yourself ¿where was everyone? we’re not talking about a park in the middle of nowhere, but a public and usually crowded park in the middle of the town.

So even if we were to say that the seasonal movement of the people was low at that time of the year, someone surely would be around to witness the mess that was happening at that moment.

And I can tell you, there was certainly someone, or a few of them, that I only was able to notice once it was too late, as I crossed the street and watched them drive over and their white, rusty, Chevy truck almost hit me.

I didn't mind it at that moment, I mean, who would? in the same way, I didn't think everything would go that south during the fight, little thought did I put into involving others.

so when I looked inside, with my eyes wide open like a deer under its lights, and saw there was a family inside, I cursed in silence. Two children, between six and eleven, a black-haired man around his forties and a blond woman of the same age.

They stood watching with a mix of surprise and guilt, relieved that they hadn’t rolled over me. My first impulse was to keep running, and so I did.

It wasn’t until I had run a few meters inside the woods, looking back to see that nothing followed me anymore, that I realized what I had probably just done.

A sort of foreshadowing from my gut, quickly confirmed by the sound of a truck’s brakes going unrailed.

“Oh Fuck”

Was the only thing I got the opportunity to think as the lights of the truck shone misplaced to the woods inside.

“No, no, that shouldn’t have happened”

In the same way, it had happened with the sprinklers in the field, misfortune seemed to smile at me that night. Not only my victory was ruined by the odds, but it was also my flight.

I wondered for a second about their chances to survive if I just made it as if I hadn’t seen anything, then, the sudden thought of me asking them to take me far away from there a few seconds before struck me. As if my consciousness, or who knows what was telling me that it was my responsibility, I felt heavy.

“You could have saved them”

There were Bollocks, indeed, but before I could take a decision, a voice raised from the streets.

— I know you’re there, Coward! Get out and face me! —

It literally, couldn’t have gone worse than that. I couldn’t do anything else.

— Me!? we’ll you’re more coward for taking hostages! —

— Ha! Do you think I care? Now come here and get yourself killed! —

It was complete nutcrackers, but still, as both of us screamed, my fingers were quickly running through the pages of my notebook, as a clear question searched my mind.

Having played the three cards under my sleeve, and spent all my energy, did I still have something to fight with?

My hands stopped almost at the same time my mind found it.

I did have something.

How could I save these people and still get away alive out of there? Tearing a couple of pages from the notebook, and tearing one of them into even tinier pieces, I headed to the road, to find Him standing still in front of the chevy-truck, now turned upside down.

I was about to do something stupid, and I hoped it worked.