I heard my name. Over and over again. Derek. Derek. Every time I heard the word it became louder. Derek Woods it came again. Derek! this time the word itself was deafening and becoming slightly annoying. I felt warm hands press against my shoulder and arm and the hands shook me back to reality. I jolted up. Not quite awake yet, but getting there. I opened my eyes mid-yawn making everything a blur. The face hovering above me was becoming more and more visible with each passing second until I was able to describe the features belonging to the one and only Amelia Cromwell.
I swung my legs off the bed and onto the floor. It felt cold and I immediately jerked my feet back, but I managed to stand and meet face to face with Amelia. She was tall for a woman and had curly, long blonde hair, blue eyes, and she was scrawny. I asked her what was going on and she gave me an almost sympathetic look. She quickly turned that look to one that said something was wrong. In the most serious voice she could possibly have she told me to come to the town hall.
I changed my outfit and walked to town hall at a speed that would almost be considered running. Amelia staying close at my feet didn't say a word. Usually she wouldn't keep her mouth shut, but it never bothered me. I liked more than a friend, but I would never tell her that. I knew it was wrong and I would more than likely be branded for expressing those feelings toward a married woman. We arrived at town hall. I had always questioned why it was called town hall, it wasn't a hall and frankly it wasn't even indoors. I was shook out of my daydreaming when I saw what Amelia had been talking about.
The hall was filled and that thought alone was very unusual. Almost everybody who lived in this town was here, but it was almost silent. Everybody watched in awe as Douglas Black, our town preacher, gave a speech. Since I was in the back of the crowd I had to strain to hear, but this is what I managed to get. Anybody with information must contact the authorities immediately. I realized at the last second he had been holding a necklace the whole time in which he put it in his jacket pocket. As someone passed by I grabbed a hold of their elbow and asked what that whole thing was about. The stranger told me that Douglas suspects there are witches in this town and he took the amulet from them when they left it at his house. He apparently scared them away and anybody that knows anything must tell someone of a higher level.
I had plenty of reasons to believe that Douglas was lying. First of all, he was an attention seeker. That was the reason that I believed he became a preacher, not to mention his long history of lying. my second reason was that his wife died not to long ago. The amulet was probably laying around his house somewhere and he saw it as the passage to attention. Whatever he was trying to do he succeeded in stirring up the whole town.
I walked back to my house alone. Amelia walked with me halfway, but since it was getting late she decided she should head home too. As I took the last steps to my door I realized I didn't have a shadow so I looked towards the sky. There was a storm coming and it was about time. The town hadn't had rain in a while and it was in a drought. Lightning struck in the distance followed by thunder. Even though I was excited for rain I didn't want to get wet so I quickened my pace and shut my door behind me.
This time I woke up to more than one face in my house. I sat up and rubbed my eyes, but in that matter of time I heard the words you are under arrest. This cleared my head and I was fully awake when they grabbed me. Before i opened my mouth they told me that I was suspected for being a witch. This statement struck me as completely insane. As I walked out the door of my house I felt my face get pelted with rain. It was still raining and areas of my yard were flooded.
As we walked passed the bridge I noticed something and fear struck me hard. There were nooses wrapped around three people's necks. I watched in horror as the weight that was tied to their ankles was thrown off the bridge. We continued past the bridge towards the jail. They threw me in a cell that was already packed with people waiting to die. If the authorities continued to do this there would be no place left for them to rule. People from children to women, from black to white filled the cell. I sat in the corner farthest away from the cell door. Since the rain had never stopped water covered our feet to our ankles. A middle aged guy with spiked blond hair walked over to me from an adjacent corner. We watched as people were taken three by three. Once he finished explaining something to me we both stood up and were the next to be taken out of the cell.
We were guided to the nooses. It was becoming harder and harder to breathe with the bag over my head and my hands were becoming sore from the rope, but I was focusing on something else. I stepped up onto the edge of the bridge and I waited patiently as the noose was tightened around my neck. Next the weight was tied to my ankle. While all that was in progress I had already popped my thumb out of socket and had the rope halfway off my arms. The guards dropped the weights over the bridge and I heard someone scream on the way down, but I focused on getting the noose off. When I did I was dragged to the bottom of the river quickly. Once I got the bag off my head I started untying the weights.
I held my breath for a long time while floating while floating downstream. I couldn't come up for air until I was out of sight from the town. I wouldn't know when that was because I couldn't look so I just waited. I heard someone talking to me so I took that as a signal that I could surface. There bobbing in the water next to me was an ally, a newly made friend, and a savior whose name was Michael Hunt. He had came up with the plan in the jail cell. It had many flaws like the fact that me and Michael had to pop our thumbs out of socket, but that was better than dying. I was alive and I was grateful for that. We swam to the edge of the river and sat there for awhile. I laughed in my head about what the guards would think when they found two empty nooses. I then asked Michael why he had saved me. He laughed while he answered my question. He told me that I didn't look like a witch. I laughed with him. It didn't matter to me as long as I was alive.
If we went back to town we would surely be witches to them and we would be burned at the stake, so we had to come up with somewhere to go. We found a place far from the water where we could camp for the night. I never walked in the woods much because I never had a reason and neither did anybody else that I knew. We couldn't make a fire because it would attract the guards so we leaned against the tree. I quickly fell asleep like I had hoped for.
I woke up shivering and wet. It had rained again. I stood up and saw the outline of my body against the tree. Michael was already awake. He lay at a tree in front of me watching me until I woke up. He told me that he knew of a place that we could go and I eagerly agreed. As we walked I asked a question that I thought was stupid and that my fear had to take over in order for me to ask it. I asked him if he thought the storms were associated with the witch thing that has been going on and in return he sneered at me and asked if I actually believed in that stuff. I told him the truth by saying no and we continued to walk.
We walked for what seemed like miles. The forest all looked the same. It was impossible to tell if we were advancing in the forest or just going in circles. I tried to memorize my surroundings so I could tell if we had already been here but that didn't work. That tree looked like that tree and that tree looked like every other tree. I decided to trust that Michael knew where he was going because he seemed fairly confident. I was about to ask Michael if we were almost there, but my mouth froze when a girl jumped out in front of us. I basically jumped out of my socks, but Michael was the exact opposite of me. He was already conversing with her.
Michael had an arm around her shoulder while she had one around his waist. He introduced her as Sabrina Graves. She had short, straight, and brown hair with bright green eyes that were slightly slanted. Michael said that the camp was only a few minutes away. We all walked together to the camp. It was a decent sized clearing in the forest and many people were there. It was like a small village. They had food and stands and furniture.I looked at Michael. You guys are thieves I asked him and he replied that they were rogues. He took my question almost comically. He told me that the difference was that rogues have so much money they don't know what to do with it. He brought me to the front of the crowd and in a loud voice he introduced me as Derek their newest member.
I sat and talked with many of the rogues as I started to accept this title. If I didn't then they would probably turn me in if they didn't kill me themselves. Me, Michael, and Sabrina were going back to town. We were looking for something that struck the group as an item of interest. The amulet. It wouldn't be to hard. Douglas was probably bragging about being the first person to find evidence of witches. He probably put the amulet back in his jewelry box.
We found our way to the edge of town and sneaked into the preacher's house. Luckily I was right he wasn't here but neither was the amulet. We had searched the entire house. We walked into the center of town overly dressed to protect our identities, but no one suspected a thing because it was about to rain. We found Douglas at town hall making another speech. He said that two witches escaped. Only witches can survive being hung and drowned and the two people did except they escaped. We hung back until he finished his speech and we followed him to the bar. I knew exactly where the amulet was so while the others hung back I secretly fished the amulet out of his jacket pocket. Luckily he didn't see me, but when I grasped the amulet I felt a weird feeling like there was a frog inside me.
We walked into the forest making sure we weren't being watched and then we found our way to the camp. Once we got back we noticed an unfamiliar silence. We walked closer and what we saw was horrifying. The corpse of every rogue scattered the camp, but the scariest thing of all was that there was no blood. I gave Michael and Sabrina time to mourn over lost friends until I realized something fascinating. The amulet glowed in my hands. I brought it over to them to show them it, but when I showed it to them it had stopped glowing. I turned around to go sit back down, but I stopped mid-stride. It was glowing again. If I pointed it any other direction it stopped glowing, but as long as I kept it facing this direction it maintained the bright purple glow. I called Michael and Sabrina over and they were as shocked as I was.
We had been following the glow for miles and with every mile it became brighter. It was getting dark and the only light we had was the amulet until it went out once we got close to a cave. We decided it would be a good place to sleep for the night. We stepped in and we were about to lay down at the mouth of it, but then we saw something. I small light appeared at the end of the cave and every second that passed it became bigger and brighter until it stopped right in front of us. It was glowing a bright blue and it was in the form of a woman. Words came from it saying to not let the witch have the amulet or the witch will have more power than anyone could stop.
We all stared at her for a long time until she spoke. She told us that her name was Aurora. She also told us it was fate that brought us together. Everything that she told us seemed even more far fetched than witches. She said that she was a ghost and that our prophecy was to stop the witches. We were the only ones who could guide the townspeople into battle. She kept saying we, but she never took her eyes off me. Her being here was crazy and I must be hallucinating. Her long dress moved in all sorts of ways along with her hair. They defied gravity like she was flying and she kind of was since she didn't touch the ground. What she told me Was to much to take in and I stopped listening. I lay down ignoring her maybe if I did that she would go away. I fell asleep quickly and as soon as I did I woke up. It must of been a dream, right. All of it had to of been a dream, right, I kept asking myself, but I was still in the mouth of the cave.
With barely any sleep that night I sat up groggily. I asked them what had happened last night, but they seemed to not know a thing. Everything was confused in my head so I tried to ignore, but it all rushed back when my fingers curled around the amulet. It immediately started to glow again. I had a feeling that the only reason they followed me this time was because they had nothing to go back to. We walked in silence the entire time until the amulet stopped glowing.
We were at the edge of town. I knew exactly what I had to do. Before Michael or Sabrina could stop me I ran on the stage at town hall. I tried to tell them what was going on, but they wouldn't listen to me. The guards ran up on the stage and drug me off when all of a sudden the amulet in my back pocket made a loud ear splintering noise that dropped everybody to their knees except me. I could hear it, but it wasn't affecting me. After the noise stopped the guards didn't grab me and they didn't yell witch. They stayed on their knees.
They later told me that they knew of my prophecy and they would gladly follow me in battle. They gathered every able bodied person that they could find and Sabrina and Michael came out of the forest to stand along side me. We marched into the forest with weapons loaded and a lot of trigger happy people. I followed the amulet deep into the forest watching it get brighter and brighter until it stopped. We were at another cave. ?We lit our torches and started our journey into the darkness.
We came upon humans. A lot of them, but I could not be that easily fooled. We fired our weapons and my men were dropping like flies. The witches took their true and ugly form. Nothing that we seemed to do would kill them, but then I got an idea. I held my sword over my to torch then walked closer to them. Everybody behind me followed my lead. We had figured out what could kill them. The original weapons didn't work, but fire did. The witches used magic and sorcery to try and stop us, but since we had figured out there weakness we were now fighting fire with fire. Every time they threw a fire bolt at us we could deflect it with our swords and make them hotter. The Witches now were dying quick.
After we finished them off we headed back to town, but something seemed wrong. The amulet still glowed. I followed it back into town and it stopped. I didn't know what it was trying to tell me, so I shook it off. The town celebrated the defeat, but I wanted to go home and sleep on a real bed. I never got to sleep though. Amelia woke me up. She took the amulet and put it around her neck. It was glowing more than ever now. A fireball slowly rose from her hand. My mouth fell open and stayed there. She looked at me laughing slightly and she asked a single question. She asked me if I didn't at least suspect it a little bit. Then the fireball rose from her hands and the last thing I saw was a bright flash.