Once they’d been ready, the queen’s men had led them to the secret passage. It was a small trapdoor camouflaged as a floor tile in the royal kitchen, leading to a rocky, damp cave so small that they’d had to walk one behind the other, and Ophie had ducked his head for the entirety of the way. After what felt like hours,  they’d reached the cave’s exit. Once out, a setting sun had greeted them, far away from Pomphelia and the battlefield.

Now, they were setting camp inside a small opening in a cliff’s base. They’d laid their weapons down beside the wall, leaving Tika with just a red cloak and black shirt and pants, Ander and Edgar in light armor, Lalian in a dirty white one-piece, and Ophie in the same enormous pants he always wore.

Along the way, Tika’s head had spun thinking about Valon and Princess Sedia. The princess had remained inactive during the war, never speaking out about it or fighting. Why, then, would Valon kidnap her out of all people? If it had been to taunt Queen Ydola, why had she waited until now? Tika wanted to discuss this with the others, but she hadn’t found the proper moment.

In their newly found shelter, Tika had spawned a ghost fire: it was a decent flame that radiated heat, but would not burn any living thing that touched it. Edgar and Lalian were currently using it to roast a surprisingly large rabbit Edgar had hunted. Ophie was trying to catch frogs, and Ander sat on the ground beside Tika.

Despite never being very interested or taking the time for men, she couldn’t deny Ander was something to look at, with his smooth dark hair and honey eyes and pronounced cheekbones. For a brief moment, she wondered what Ander thought of her—dark eyes, hair like wood that didn’t even reach her shoulders, dry expression.

“How long have you known the big guy?” Ander asked.

Tika remembered, memories tracing back too many years. “When I was seven, I was in the woods as a task for magician training. A werewolf attacked me, and I couldn’t fight back. I shrieked and screamed but no magician heard me. I was sure I was facing death. Then Ophie appeared, punched away the werewolf, and saved me. We’ve been best friends ever since.”

“That’s nice.” Ander inspected Ophie, who hadn’t caught any frogs and was still chasing them around. “What’s he doing?”

“OMPH GRAH RARS MEK!” Ophie grunted.

Tika translated, “He says frogs are his favorite food. He wants one.”

“Oh, I don’t think you should kill them,” Lalian said to Ophie. Her voice was tiny and barely audible. “This is their house. It’d be very unkind for us to harm them when they’re granting us shelter.”

Tika didn’t exactly care about morality with frogs, but she didn’t say anything.

A chilly sensation hit her. It creeped through her bones, bumping her skin and raising her hairs. She stood in a jump. She knew the others hadn’t felt it, because it was not a physical feeling, but a magical one. She could sense when another magical person was around. If that person used dark magic, the feelings were chills.

“What is it?” Ander asked. Tika mouthed the word witch, and then Ander got his sword, ordering Edgar to grab his bow.

A wave of darkness lashed for Tika. Her hands shot up, creating an invisible shield that dissipated the shadows. A heartbeat later, a woman landed before her. Her skin was wrinkled like an old lady’s, yet her face wasn’t old. She had bright purple eyes, a nose long and thin like a stick, hair as dark as the night sky, and nails long enough to be considered claws. She wore a black torn dress that covered up to her ankles. She was a witch, and Tika recognized her. It was Valon.

“Tika! Long time no see!” Valon said in a shriek. She took in the rest of the group. “New friends, huh? Listen, I don’t like talking too much. My mouth gets tired. So let’s get to the point: you’ve come too far, so now you have to die.” She smiled innocently and snapped her fingers. “Iwore!”

Following the witch’s command, a goblin, who Tika assumed was Iwore, jumped out of a nearby bush and lunged for Ander. He held a deadly dagger in each hand, and used both of them to attack the swordfighter. Ander deflected with his sword.

At the same time, Valon shot a dark blast at Tika, sending her tumbling to the ground. Valon threw herself at the magician and prepared her needle-like nails to dig into Tika’s heart. At the last moment, Tika shot a ray of ice at Valon. The witch collapsed beside her trying to break her frozen hands free.

“Ophie! Edgar! Help me!” shouted Ander, who was struggling against Iwore. But Edgar didn’t point his readied arrow at the goblin. Instead, he pointed it at Valon, still on the ground. Ander shouted again, “Edgar, no!”

Right before the arrow was shot, Ophie passed in front of Edgar on his way to help Ander. Suddenly focused on not accidentally shooting the troll, Edgar moved the bow as he fired. The arrow zoomed in Ander’s direction and passed inches from his head. The distraction gave Iwore time to attack.

The goblin stabbed Ander.

Because of Iwore’s small height, the dagger only pierced Ander’s stomach, and he loudly grunted in pain. Iwore ran away into the night, and Ophie chased after him. Lalian made her way to Ander.

Tika and Valon stood as the witch broke free of the ice. Tika attacked with small fireballs, shooting one after the other from her hands as Valon danced around to avoid them while also attempting to stab Tika with her nails. Edgar readied another arrow, aiming for Valon as the witch kept moving. He ignored Ander’s orders against shooting.

The arrow hit Valon’s shoulder. The witch shrieked and, with the swiftness of a rabbit and a hateful glare at Tika, jumped back into the darkness of the night. Seconds later, Tika saw a figure flying away to then disappear from sight.

Tika and Edgar hurried to where Ander lay down. Lalian had already taken the dagger out and was now lightly pressing against the wound with her hands covered in a white aura. Ander looked at Edgar. “Thank you for obeying!”

“I could’ve killed the witch if you hadn’t distracted me with your orders! We could’ve ended the war!”

“Ending the war is not our mission. Had the witch been killed, we’d have no clue where the princess is being kept. We could’ve caught her, but now she’s gone and I’d be dead if it wasn’t for Lalian.”

“Please, guys, fighting won’t solve anything. Think positive!” Lalian said, but only Tika heard her.

“Even if we’d caught the witch, how could we have kept her from escaping?” Edgar asked.

At this question, Ander looked at Tika. Then Edgar looked at her too, and Lalian.

“Huh? I couldn’t have done anything!” Tika blurted, but then reconsidered. There was an option, but thinking about it made her shiver. “Well, there’s a spell that can strip a magical person from their magic, but… that’s dark magic. I’ve never messed with that. It’s immoral”

Before the conversation could go on, Ophie marched back into the shelter, carrying Iwore with one hand and covering the goblin’s mouth with the other.

“Looks like we do have a clue,” Edgar said.

The next day, they practiced fighting in better coordination and discussed tactics, both for fighting and for finding Princess Sedia. Ander was the one who made the plans, and Edgar was beginning to understand his logic while at the same time giving him some advice, which Ander was learning to take. It was obvious they didn’t get along, but at least they were beginning to tolerate the other.

Iwore proved to be a useful tool in locating the princess. Tika used truth charms to make him speak, so he had no choice but to guide them to Valon’s hiding spot while Ophie held him on a leash they’d crafted from rope. He led them to an old wooden shack in the middle of an enchanted forest in which very little sunlight cut through the canopy. It was three stories high, made entirely of dark oak wood, and creepier than a nest of tarantulas. Every window was shattered, replaced by dust and spiderwebs. There was a thin fog around it, and Tika felt as if a ghost could come out of the collapsing shack at any moment.

They went in. The door almost fell off its hinges as they opened it. Tika felt chills again. Once inside, it was quiet like the dead except for voices coming from the room ahead. Tika couldn’t make out what they were saying until: “They’re here. Kill them, Valon.”

Valon was receiving orders. There was someone superior to her.

Before Tika could give it more thought, the witch fell from a hole in the ceiling and landed on their way to the next room. Ophie kicked her immediately and handed Iwore’s leash to Lalian. Edgar withdrew the daggers they’d confiscated from Iwore. “Go ahead!” he said.

Tika and Ander ran to the door where the voices had come from, with Lalian staying behind as she shot healing charms at Edgar and Ophie and kept Iwore from escaping.

Tika entered the next room with Ander, and the door immediately closed behind them. It was a huge dining room with a two-story-high ceiling and a ruined chandelier hanging from it. In the middle was an ancient dining table, covered with spiders feasting on dust. Eight chairs, as old as the table and the shack, surrounded it, all of them vacant except for one.

Princess Sedia sat there, tied with rope from shoulders to toes. Her blonde and usually neat hair was ruffled and filled with all kinds of trash. She was wearing a pink gown, but it was dirty and ripped. Every inch of her, even her small delicate nose and the bright red lips, was covered in dirt and dust.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here,” the princess said in the sweetest voice. “Did my mother send you?”

“Y- yes,” Ander said, but didn’t move. He was probably getting the same feeling as Tika. Everything in the room seemed too… fake. As if it was planned. Tika realized the chills she was getting in her magical body were stronger than when they’d encountered just Valon.

Something was wrong. Tika had a horrible hypothesis, and she found a way to test it. “Tell me, princess,” Tika said as she created a ball of ghost fire beside her head. It looked real but was not. It would not burn any living thing. “Do you like fire?”

The fireball sped to Princess Sedia’s face. Immediately, a dark shield, a witch’s shield, appeared out of thin air in front of the princess. The fake fireball disappeared. Sedia had fallen right into Tika’s trap.

This was bad.

Princess Sedia was a witch. Not only that, but she was Valon’s boss, and the person behind the war. Because of her, hundreds of people in her kingdom had died. She’d faked being kidnapped, probably to command her troops more closely.

The ropes tying her disappeared. The witch-princess stood. Her sweet face had turned murderous. “No, I don’t.”

The door from which they’d come burst open, and Valon came in running and cackling. She rushed past Ander and Tika to take a spot beside her leader. Ophie, Edgar and Lalian came chasing after her, still holding Iwore hostage, but stopped aggressively as they saw the princess, who had magically turned her pink gown into dark robes.

“Let’s go, mistress!” Valon shrieked. “Let’s kill them!”

“Patience, Valon,” Sedia said.

At the sight of the two witches standing together, Tika realized something. “You ordered your father’s death!”

Sedia laughed viciously yet calmly. “You see, magician, my parents’ kingdom is full of flaws. They’d die eventually, but I’m the youngest of my siblings. The throne would never be mine. So I decided that rather than waiting I’d ally with my family’s old enemies and eliminate them one by one. We will create a new kingdom out of Pomphelia’s blood.”

“That’s enough,” Valon screeched. “Let’s kill them! Fight, fight, fight!”

Sedia smirked her red mouth in the most wicked way Tika could imagine. Her light blue eyes held a promise of death as she stared at Tika and her companions. “Very well,” she said. Suddenly, a dark explosion, produced by Valon and Sedia’s minds, caused a large chunk of the dining room’s wall to collapse, revealing the enchanted forest beyond. Sedia pointed a finger at Iwore, and the rope tying him disappeared. He launched himself at Tika, but Ophie punched him midair, sending him crashing against a wall and knocking him out.

Valon and Sedia exited through the hole in the wall. Tika, Ander and Ophie followed them out. The surroundings were still foggy and dark, the only light provided by small holes in the canopy and glowing flowers that grew beside the trees.

Sedia whistled. Jumping from behind bushes, falling from treetops and running in from dark paths, dozens of goblins, each equipped with two daggers, answered their leader’s call.

“No one in the kingdom can know about me. Kill them,” Sedia ordered. Goblins lunged at Tika and her companions. Ander slashed his sword, cutting off heads and piercing green hearts. Ophie rammed his fists into the enemy crowd, smashing and squashing with his giant hands and heavy feet, letting the goblins’ green blood splash around. Tika shot fire, ice and lightning at them.

Arrows began raining down, and Tika risked taking a look back to find Edgar and Lalian on a balcony in the shack’s highest floor. Edgar shot goblins at the speed of light while Lalian shot healing spells at Ophie, whose thick legs had already received several cuts.

Sedia and Valon watched from the corner of the battle. A ferociously pleased expression had taken over their faces as they heard sword and daggers bang and blood drip on the dead grass. Tika launched one fireball at each witch, and each avoided it with a dark shield. Then Ander was there, sword high as he swung it down at Valon. The witch countered with a dark wave. After Ophie groaned at Tika, assuring he’d be fine, she joined Ander’s fight.

The magician shot lightning at Valon from her hands, but the witch deflected once more. Sedia lashed a dark whip at Ander, who sliced it in half. Valon attacked Tika with darkness, and in return Tika launched Valon against a tree with a blast of fire.

Valon countered and made Tika fall on her back. The witch launched herself over the magician and pulled a dagger out of thin air. She swung down, aiming for Tika’s heart. Tika held Valon’s wrists with all of her strength, but the dagger kept crawling closer, closer, closer... 

Suddenly, Lalian’s voice yelled, “Ander!”

Tika dared to look. Iwore had woken up and now stood behind Ander, raising a dagger as he aimed for the kill. Ander was still focused on Sedia and hadn’t heard Lalian’s warning. Tika wouldn’t be fast enough to save him, and Lalian was too far away to heal him.

But an arrow pierced Iwore’s back and got through all the way to his chest. The goblin opened his mouth in a silenced scream, and collapsed to the ground as he died. Ander quickly gave a thankful look to Edgar, who was still on that balcony.

Valon was distracted, her eyes on her dead minion. Still on the ground under the witch’s weight, Tika sighted Iwore’s discarded dagger and moved it with her mind. The weapon flew through the air until the grip was in Tika’s grasp. Valon only had time to blink before she realized what was happening as Tika stabbed her through the heart.

Valon’s eyes widened, either in pain or disbelief or a combination of both, and she stared into nothing. Tika pushed the witch off herself. Valon’s black clothes soon got a trail of red. Her mouth was as open as Iwore’s had been. Slowly, she raised her gaze to meet Tika’s. With struggle and gasps between breaths, she said, “I… hate… you.” Then she died.

Tika breathed in. She breathed out. Ander and Princess Sedia had put their battle on hold, still on guard in case the other attacked, as they watched one of the two evil witches die. Sedia shook for a second, and then she stopped, realizing her fear showed. Tika smirked at her.

A blast of ice poured out of Tika’s hands. Sedia raised her arms in defense, creating another shield, but became unprotected to Ander’s sword. He slashed, and Sedia only narrowly and clumsily avoided the blow with a tiny wave of darkness. Tika kept attacking. Lightning, then ice again, then lightning. Ander kept swinging his sword. It was a dance between the two fighters, one they’d slightly practiced on their way, except it had been meant for Valon. Sedia used one arm to protect herself from Tika and another to counter Ander, but her moves became clumsier by the shocks of Tika’s lightning and the frost that created in her fingertips.

Finally, when the princess was almost falling down, Tika blasted a river of fire. Sedia’s magical shield broke, and she was thrown off-balance. Her arms flailed out of control around her. Ander used the opening to bury the tip of his sword into Sedia’s side. The princess fell on her back.

Around them, the battle stopped. The surviving goblins, at the sight of their fallen leader, dropped their daggers and put their hands up. Ophie made sure to give them a menacing look before joining Tika and Ander. Edgar and Lalian got down from the balcony and rushed to them.

Princess Sedia coughed as she lay on the damp grass. Blood dripped out of her. It was clear Ander hadn’t hurt any vital organs, but she’d still bleed out to death. “We can’t let her die,” Ander said, “We must take her to her mother to stand trial. Tika can make her speak the truth. Lalian…”

But the healer was already crouched beside the princess, hands over her wound. White light glowed as Lalian healed Sedia, the blood crawling back inside and the wound closing.

When she was healed, she tried to get up to fight again, but Ophie grasped her shoulders and pinned her to the ground. “UPHA GANFT TONTOR!” the troll roared at the witch-princess, and Tika decided not to translate his obscene vocabulary.

Ander held his sword to Sedia’s neck, and Edgar pointed an arrow at her face. “What now?” asked the archer.

Ander looked at Tika in unspoken request. She knew what he was asking her to do, but she also knew he respected her enough to be silent about it. He remembered what she’d said about never having used dark magic, about it being immoral. She weighed every option they had, only to realize this was the only one, the only way that they could carry Sedia back to Pomphelia without trouble. Slowly, she nodded. After all, the difference between a magician and a witch wasn’t only in what spells and charms they used, but also, and perhaps most importantly, in their intentions when they used them.

Tika put a hand on Sedia’s chest. She could feel magic flowing through the princess’s veins and lungs. She concentrated on it, on its essence and movement. She closed her eyes and pulled. Despite the magic’s resistance, she pulled it out of Sedia’s body slowly, piece by piece. It was surprisingly easy, which was true for most dark magic: easy and seductive. She kept pulling, forcing the magic out of the princess like a straw. Finally, she felt no more movement in Sedia’s veins and lungs other than normal blood and normal air. Non-magical. She’d stripped the witch-princess from her magic completely.

“We’re ready,” Tika said.

Without her dark magic, Princess Sedia was incredibly easy to drag along on the group’s way back to Pomphelia. She knew there was no point in fighting: she’d already lost. They’d left the surviving goblins in the enchanted forest partly because they had no way to take them to the kingdom, but also because they’d only been following a leader’s commands, and that leader was the necessary part.

In the palace, Tika used truth charms to make Sedia confess her crimes to her mother. Queen Ydola was both furious and disappointed, and she sentenced her daughter to sleep in the dungeons until she answered to trial and her fate was decided. Sedia’s resistance was minimal. Immediately after, the queen gave the call that the war was won.

Tika, Ander, Ophie, Edgar and Lalian were each granted a hero’s medal. The night they’d first encountered Valon, Ander had stated their mission was not to end the war, but it turned out they’d done just that. The goblins returned to the forests, and the kingdom celebrated. As for Tika, not only did she become famous and respected in Pomphelia for her heroism, but she also realized she’d found a group of unlikely friends on her way, which was likely to last for decades.