She ran.

Phoise ran as if her life depended on it. And in truth, it did.

She did not have time to wipe away the tears streaming down her cheek. Behind, she could hear voices from what was surely the soldiers chasing her. She imagined she could hear the forest burning behind her. And in her hands, she clutched a smooth wooden box, which was what she was supposed to steal. Only, it had gone all wrong. Her parents were gone, and she was not even sure if the thing — whatever was inside the box — was worth it.

It all began a few days ago when an alleged artifact had been transported to the lord's manor for safekeeping.

***

Everybody who at least dabbled in "dark acts" such as stealing knew that an artifact had arrived at the lord's manor. And of course, all of them were eyeing it like hounds. Phoise and her family were one of them.

Phoise's family made their living from theft, and one might even say they were good at it. Their traditions did not skip Phoise herself either. She had stolen an entire gold coin when she was 12 and had not stopped since then. And despite outward appearances, her parents were compassionate, and frankly, decent people. If the commoners were given a couple of coins during a drought, or a noble mage came to drive off the monsters every once in a while, they might never have taken up stealing. But the nobles were all too eager to keep their money and use their mages somewhere "more important," such as magical duels and extravagant displays of magic to inspire awe in ignorant commoners, of course.

Her family had ended up making temporary alliances with several other underground organizations, which were more gatherings of thieves that call themselves underground organizations. The plan was to rush into the manor in the dead of night and steal everything, including said artifact. A simple, yet effective plan... or it would be if they had not neglected one thing: magic.

Magic. The power to bend reality and unleash destruction to your will. Every commoner child would have dreamed of having magic at some point in their lives, but those dreams were quickly quashed when they learned that commoners could never learn magic. Only nobles could, because their bloodline was meticulously optimized over the generations.

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And indeed, their plan had not involved any sort of magic. Nor were they prepared when a wrong step set off a shrieking alarm that alerted all the soldiers in the manor house, but that was for later.

Phoise had donned her much-beloved leather armour, and a dagger in case anything happened.

Infiltrating the manor was fairly easy, as was sneaking along its dark hallways. Almost suspiciously easy, and Zephrine's mother had double-checked and triple-checked everywhere for traps, but there were none. Their group had split up, as one large group would make too much noise. They had already nabbed a pouch full of jingling coins, and it was going so well that she began to daydream about what she was going to do when she returned home. Perhaps buy new armour? A new dagger? Something el-

A piercing shriek tore through the air, stunning Phoise and her parents. She looked around frantically, finally noticing her foot had stepped on a rune on the floor. Her mother swore silently. They had not expected magical protections as well as mundane ones.

They took off running all at once, knowing that the soldiers must already be mobilizing. Then there came the flames. A patch of the wall lit on fire, blocking her path. She banked a hard left and ran right through a patch of flames. The burns hurt, but she kept going.

After what seemed like an eternity, she paused in a room to catch her breath. Then she noticed that her parents were already grabbing the box in the centre of the room, which presumably contained the artifact. The artifact, she realized with a start, that none of the thieves knew what it was. What if it was just a ploy to take out the underground population of her village?

Before she had time to ponder that prospect, soldiers rushed out from everywhere. "Run!" Her mother screamed and tossed her the box. "One of us has to take it!" She caught it, albeit with some difficulty because of its size, and ran towards a pocket of space the soldiers had not covered just yet. Glancing back, she could see her father fighting already, and several of the other thieves joined in. But it was clear that they would lose.

Phoise ran into the forest, leaving the burning manor behind.

***

She ran.

And she was tired.

Running for an hour straight does that to you.

Which was why she hadn't spotted the log lying on the ground until it was too late.

To be fair, the log was covered in moss and other things that disguised it, but still.

Phoise tried to stop herself, but she was too slow. Her eyes widened, and she watched in almost slow motion, her foot, then her leg, getting caught on the log. Then the wind was knocked out of her, and the ground rushed up-