Page 44 of Unshaken

Sasha gets to her knees and tries to get up. She doubles over puking up water, and the crowd all laugh again. Some scream, “Ewww!” at her emptying out her stomach. I can’t take it anymore. I want to end this myself.

“Don’t you see what our girl is doing?” Trys says excitedly. “She is trying not to kill her.”

I turn my gaze back to the pit and Micah is watching Sasha with her arms folded over her chest. Sasha tries to get up, but Micah knocks her back down with her Telekinesis. She is formidable, and one hell of a powerful witch. She is impressive, and she shouldn’t be here. She is too good for this school.

“Finish Her!” someone shouts from the crowd, and then everyone in the crowd takes up the chant.

“FINISH HER!”

“FINISH HER!”

Sasha looks like a wet noodle, all limp and lifeless as she attempts to stand again. She looks to the crowd for support, but they see her as a weak mess. Name or not, she is nothing to the mob.

Micah suddenly looks around in alarm, clutching her Anchor key in her hands, she concentrates on something.

“Is she talking to her Anchor key? I’ve seen her look this way before, but I ignored it,” Ty whispers to Trys and I.

“What do you mean, talking to it?” I ask, taking my attention off the ring as the ground below them begins to shake. Micah looks up to finds us then looks around as if she wants to run.

“Somethings wrong,” Trys says as he springs to his feet and runs down the stands. Ty and I get up to follow but we’re stopped in our tracks as a red hazy fog begins to roll over the Pavilion floor.

“Go. Go. Go!” Ty yells, folding himself in shadows just as a red vortex appears vertically, about the size of a six-foot oval behind Micah. It happens so fast if you blinked you would’ve missed it. Large black wings partially block my sight, as massively muscular black arms wrap around Micah, she tries to fight, but there’s no use. Who or whatever it is snatches her and pulls her into the vortex, and then as fast as it appeared, it’s gone. You can hear a pin drop from the dead silence around us.

“Micah!” Trys screams. It all happened so fast that Ty appears in the empty space a fraction of a second too late.

The red haze returns as another portal opens behind Sasha, and she screams in fright, vanishing from sight. I can still hear her screams just as another vortex opens up again and tosses out a bloody mangled lump in the middle of the fire pit.

Someone screams! “Oh, my God! Sasha!”

“RUN!” someone yells, and like sheep the entire pavilion erupts into chaos as everyone scrambles to safety.

There is nothing left of Sasha but a soupy mess of blood and bones; this doesn’t look good. Everyone will think Micah did this. Although, there are no limitations on how someone is killed in the fire pit, opening a portal should be beyond our magical capabilities. Or is it? We all saw Micah taken, but something tells me she will still be blamed.

I watch my brothers calling out Micah’s name, both of them with looks of rage and distress, standing in the circle, watching, and waiting but Micah doesn’t return.

Micah is gone.

The End

. . . wait, wait, there’s more

Epilogue

MICAH

“Micah, it’s time,”Rook announces unceremoniously. Pulling my focus from Sasha as I give her an opportunity to pick herself up off the ground to strike me again.

“Rook, where have you been? I thought you left me for a second there,”I say as I blow out a breath, feeling relieved that he’s still here.

“What’s going on, Rook? What do you mean its time?”I ask as that sense of dread returns from before. I immediately go on high alert.

“Someone has summoned you and expects an audience,”he says vaguely. Well, that’s not giving me much to go on, so I question him further.

“Who, Rook?”I ask just as the crowd in the pavilion starts chanting “Finish Her!” screaming it like we are at some gladiator match and they’re waiting for me to give Sasha a thumbs down.

“They’re coming,”Rook says so suddenly that I panic. Looking around, my eyes widen in alarm, waiting for someone or anything to come at me from any direction. I look up in the stands, Trys, Ty, and even Rodyn all get to their feet and then break out into a run down the stairs. I watch them go as a red fog begins to roll underneath my feet. I was just about to run and jump through the flames, but something hits my back from behind like a wrecking ball. The air is knocked from my lungs as thick corded muscular arms wrap around me so tightly, I know they’ve broken a rib or two. I kick out to fight but there is no hope in getting free before I am yanked away from the pavilion and left to free fall.

The ties that bind me to each one of my Tethers feel like empty voids as I’m taken out of range of them. I scream at the pain in my chest, the loss is so heavy, the grief threatens to split me in two. I didn’t know I needed them, but I do. My soul cries out. If I could speak, I would beg to be sent back. I feel flayed open and raw as I plummet to wherever I’m going.

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