Carryl had heard her call to action. If neither Fesure nor the Guard would take action to protect the campus her house had built, then she would. She saw the distance to the campus gate. Running down the stairs, out on the streets, up to the gate would take too long, she would have to make sure she knew where the shadow was heading first.
She looked across the roofs of other dormitories between hers and the campus walls. They were all roughly equal in height and less than six feet apart, a distance she could leap, she reckoned. All roofs were sloping to the streets, so jumping from the crest of one roof to a lower point on the next would give her significant reach. She had understood what she had to do. She stomped her feet once, twice on the roofing tiles, making sure she had ample grip, then she started running.
The first gap came up and she grit her teeth. A single step left to the abyss she only narrowly survived before. All her muscles tensed, her right leg forward, knee bent, she stemmed all her strength and catapulted herself forward.
A moment in mid-air, she looked to the other side. Roofing tiles came closer, but not as quickly as she had hoped. The safety of the next roof and the threat of the ground looming below her battled each other. For less than a heartbeat, Carryl feared the ground might win. With a margin narrower than it should have, Carryl’s foot landed on the next roof. She stumbled forward and fell face first on the roofing tiles. On wobbly feet, she stood up and looked back. The gap was not that wide. She looked forward and saw herself faced with another one and then, an entire street’s width of a gap to the campus wall. She had overestimated her ability to take this challenge. Giving up to preserve her life, maybe confronting the shadow some other way, came to her mind but the thoughts were shooed away by the sound of something trickling onto the roofing tiles.
Her pockets were still full with grain, some had fallen out, but a good fistful was still there. She remembered her makeshift spell for wind; she knew she could make it again.
She stepped back some space to get a running start, then continued her race. She jumped another gap, and no worries came to her that time. Then she saw the end of the roof, time for the moment of truth.
The rims of her robes needed to be stiffened, making sure to get a large area of cloth for the wind to catch, upwards in a 45 degree angle, taking her higher along the vector of the jump.
Her hands shot into her pockets, demanded the life force from the grain and channelled it through her veins. Her heart beat, once as if filled with icy water, then another time as if filled with boiling honey, a feeling of immense strength as through her body flowed pure power, a pain and urge that rewarded her with ecstasy for being felt and followed.
The wind blew from below, lifting her up, pushing her on. Carryl felt herself being lifted just a little further, just the distance she needed. The campus wall came closer, but so did the pavement. She stretched out her arms and legs to cushion the impact.
She impacted the wall frontside, the air pushed from her lungs, her arms slung over the wall's crenelations to hold on, keep her up above the pavement. With wild kicking of her legs she searched for footing on the wall’s white limestone until finally, she somehow managed to heave herself over the balustrade.
With a resounding “Oof” she landed on the floor of the wall’s battlements. They were empty for now, even the guards that were on duty, on the ground, seemed bored and disinterested.
Carryl got up and had a good look over the campus. All seemed quiet and nowhere could she see any sign of the shadow. She walked along the battlements and inspected every street and alley on the campus, but never did a movement from the corner of her eye make her double check what she had seen.
She started feeling like a fool. She had rushed onto campus, and if she was honest, she had not quite thought it through. But just when her doubts started eating away the short burst of courage, she could see a movement at one of the windows of a building on campus.
The window stood open and the last bit of a person had just vanished through it, followed by a dim light moving behind the other windows. Carryl looked left and right and found a tower of the wall that would surely house stairs down onto street level. She sprinted towards the tower and found every door unlocked, every position unmanned. Had she not been in such a hurry, she would have questioned the campus' security.
Carryl made it out towards the building and headed for the open window. She found it and tried to follow the shadow through the window, but it was half a floor above street level; the burglar must have used something like a rope, or maybe magic to help them inside. Carryl started to look around for another way in, even thought about trying the front door, when the sound of bustle and then a breaking window tore through the deceptive silence on the campus.
A loud expletive was heard and Carryl rushed around the corner of the building. There she saw, not far from her, a student of the university on the ground amidst glass shards. She hurried over to them.
“Are you well? What happe-“ As she bent down to the person, he turned around with clenched fist and opened it right before her eyes. A flash of light burned pain into her eyes. She screamed in surprise, then fell backwards trying to escape the assault. A sharp pain shot deep into the ball of her hand as she landed on her rear. She heard footsteps, running away from her, then opened her eyes to see the figure of her fellow student disappear into an alley towards the guards at the western gate.
Carryl got up and immediately, a terror overcame her, she knew the shadow stood behind her. She turned around and knew that she should be seeing someone standing in the window, despite it appearing empty. There was something odd about that area of space that gave it away as fake or wrong. The person jumped down and, for a moment, did not move. Then, it moved to pass Carryl to chase after the student, but Carryl broke out into a sprint towards the alley.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
While she was running as fast as she could, she screamed with all her breath. “GUARDS! GUARDS!”
The alley seemed too distant for Carryl to reach, despite her effort put into her sprint. The presence behind her came closer.
Finally arriving at the alley, she turned around and blocked the way, awaiting the unseen presence. Carryl felt the space between them shrink and dread crept into her. Unwillingly, she took a step backwards. She felt regret bubbling up in her, guilt over having breached the campus, her entire life seemed to come to her, all her stupid mistakes and troubles she caused screamed at her to let this one be handled by someone else, to just get away with her life.
She noticed she had retreated a good dozen feet into the alley, the shadow still walking slowly towards her, unaverted.
She remembered something and reached into her pockets and found a fistful of grain. She gritted her teeth, then remembered her flame. She demanded the life of the grain, shot her fist forward and released it all, a roaring puff of fire came from her hands, bathing the alley in orange and yellow, except for one place, where the light appeared to hesitate; the shadow that was still coming closer.
The light was gone, so was the grain in Carryl’s pocket, when a green flame sprung to life before Carryl, caustic and painful, of the colour of fresh leaves in spring. The green flame engulfed something, like a canvas onto which a fake image of reality had been painted, and behind the fakery emerged a person.
The person was wrapped in dark cloth from head to toe, covering even its face. Over it, it wore a dark green scapular with a hood like some travelling monk, held together with a broad leather belt embellished along the edges with, silver sparkling like the moonlight. It held a staff as tall as the person itself and as thin as its thumb, no crystal nor metal bands, just some rope spiralling around. Its arms and legs were of indefinite proportions, seemly choosing to be as long as they wished to be at the moment, its torso was curved and angled yet straight at the same time. A layer of unreality remained to this entity.
The faceless person came closer and whipped its staff down the alley, sending out a whizzing sound that pierced Carryl’s ears; a warning her body understood and followed with another two steps back.
But Carryl herself protested. She took a step forward. “No! You will stay here until the guards arrive!” a short glance back revealed nothing in the alley to see. Was anyone even coming? When she turned back around, the shadow was almost close enough to touch.
With a scream, she fell backwards, thrust her hand forward and wanted to conjure her flame once more. That’s when she saw the blood dripping down her hand. A shard of glass had lodged itself in the ball of her palm.
The shadow now stood over Carryl, looking down on her. Her pulse raced in her ears, pounded against her skull, and beneath the rhythm she could hear something even deeper. Pleas, screams, beckonings of power. She could hear her ancestors sing, begging her to defend the campus, borrow their strength to further the bloodline. She grabbed the shard and tore it out of her hand. Warm blood gushed forth to the rhythm of her frantic heart. Carryl’s mind seized on her flame, the chorus asked her to use their flame instead, their power, their generations of might and domination; the flame of a dynasty was there, but Carryl grabbed what she knew: her flame.
Fire roared into the alley from Carryl’s hand, a stream of bright sprung forth endlessly, not merely a single puff. A deep red flame that burnt hotter than Carryl ever knew fire to be.
The shadow leapt backwards several feet in a motion that appeared blurred. Carryl looked back to her hand and saw it was coated in burning blood. She felt the heat but was not seared. This fire was hers to control, she held it tightly in her hand. The shadow raised its staff, all it could do in this tight alley was thrust and slam it straight down. Carryl called forth another lick of flame; it held the shadow at bay.
And still no guards. Carryl used the impetus of the moment, took another step to firmly assert her control, but the shadow did not hesitate, did not yield. Instead, the lanky figure came closer, Carryl wanted to conjure forth her flame again, but with movements that appeared as if taking place in the time between seconds, the shadow had already closed the gap, stood there right in front of her, close enough to see sinews and muscles bulge beneath the wrapped cloth. The shadow raised a green flame in its hand towards Carryl’s face. In a moment of clarity, Carryl clenched her fist and brought it down upon the shadows veiled face.
Blood sprayed, still burning like oil, drenched the dark cloth. The shadow recoiled, holding its face, shrinking to normal size and proportion, then released a cry.
“TAFF! YAAARGH!”
The cry and its voice seemed creepily familiar to Carryl. Then she saw the shadow tear the burning cloth off its face and revealed underneath a familiar sight.
Fur, like brushed brass and an eye with a slit pupil sitting in its middle. Carryl recognized the eye, the fur, the voice. It was all Nannade.
It seemed by her expression as if Nannade was just as surprised to see Carryl as Carryl was to see her fellow student, her friend even, in this guise.
Neither of them brought forth a word, because both of them knew they had been seen. Carryl’s mind failed her, she tried to put together an answer to all the myriads of questions in her mind. Nannade meanwhile seemed to have already made a decision. A caustic flame was lit in her eyes and reality blurred again.
Before Carryl could perceive the shift, Nannade, by some odd movement of both the body and the space between them, was already within striking distance. Carryl’s puzzled mind was not yet ready, but Nannade’s hand, flame on palm, was coming right for her forehead. Carryl felt the slap to her skull, then saw a halo of green embers eat away her awareness. Nothing remained of the moment.