Whatever his magic skills are, they don’t include tracking, Cinderella thought as she slithered out of wagon. All the same, I should head to the patrol point and send word to Friedrich.
Somewhere in all the running, Cinderella wound up in the Erlauf neighborhood. Her red hair stuck out among the fair, straw-haired Trieux peasants, but it was more of a flaming beacon among the small scattering of dark-haired Erlauf commoners who walked the streets.
Cinderella crouched low to the ground to minimize the possibility of being sighted and crept along the houses, ignoring the odd looks from the few commoners on the street.
She crouched behind a cluster of barrels and winced. Something cold pressed against the skin of her chest. Cinderella realized it was the dragon necklace Friedrich gave her when he first presented her to her soldiers. She tried to dig it out from under her dress, for it felt like a chunk of ice freezing to her skin, when she heard crying.
Down the street came the black magic user, dragging an Erlauf woman behind him by her glossy brown hair-braid.
The woman sobbed, her face twisted in pain. “Please, let me go,” she whimpered.
The necklace forgotten, Cinderella peered at those in the streets. They would help the poor woman, wouldn’t they?
The street walkers were statue still, as if carved out of colorful chunks of stone. They didn’t blink, and they didn’t move, even when the black mage clenched a dirty hand around the young woman’s throat.
The woman struggled, clawing at the mage’s hand. She gurgled and coughed as life was choked from her.
If I jump him, he will kill me, Cinderella thought. But if I don’t, he will kill her. An Erlauf woman.
The black mage turned, looking up and down the street. He was waiting for her. When Cinderella didn’t appear, the mage’s fist encased with black vapor, and the woman’s frantic thrashings became more like the twitches of a dying animal.
The smell of burnt flesh filled the street.
Cinderella grimaced, and when the black mage turned his back to her, she pushed her way up a narrow stairway that led to the second floor of the shanty she was pressed against.
The black mage lifted the woman off her feet and held her high above his head, showing off his prize.
The commoners on the street didn’t react, and everything was still—except for the dying woman.
The black magic user lowered the woman—although he kept his hands fastened around her neck.
She choked, her eyes rolling back as she convulsed, almost dead.
The black mage looked down at the nearly dead woman in undisguised pleasure, so he did not see Cinderella when she flung herself off the roof of the house directly next to him.
Cinderella landed on the mage with enough force to knock him to the ground. Sitting on top of him, Cinderella grabbed him by the throat of his cloak. She slammed his head into the ground two times before he blasted her with his dark magic, sending her careening into the front door of a house.
Cinderella was up in an instant, even though her ears rang and her sight was fuzzy. If she stayed down she would die. “HELP!” she shouted, her voice loud but shaky.
The nearly strangled woman was frozen like the others. As Cinderella grabbed a pitchfork leaning against the house, she glanced at the woman long enough to be assured she was breathing.
Cinderella charged the mage with the pitchfork. The mage—who seemed to take an abnormally long time to move—barely slithered aside in time to avoid being stabbed. He grabbed hold of the pitchfork—which Cinderella easily released—and tossed it away.
Cinderella had already armed herself with a wooden bucket when the mage turned back to her. She swung the bucket at the mage and clocked him in the skull.
“HELP!” Cinderella screamed again before winding the bucket back for another pass.
The mage shot a stream of his vaporous magic at her. Cinderella dodged, but it brushed her bucket and disintegrated it.
Cinderella tossed the remaining piece of the bucket—the rope handle—away and groped for another weapon. She found a hoe, but the mage bore down on her.
He blasted her with another wave of magic, sending her crashing into the wagon she previously hid in.
Her head lolling, Cinderella groaned in pain. She struggled to keep her eyes open long enough to watch the mage glide towards her, his skeletal hands extended like claws.
He was almost to her when an arrow pierced his shoulder. He made a choking gasp—the first noise he made since the pursuit started—and the black vapor cloaking his hands disappeared.
“N-no,” he muttered, staring at his dirty fingers Three Erlauf soldiers were on him in an instant. Two secured his arms and a third smacked what looked like a seal drawn on a piece of parchment on the mage’s chest.
The paper clung to the mage’s clothes, and the mage howled. “No!”
The mage thrashed, but the soldiers secured his legs and arms with shackles.
“I apologize, Your Grace; we were nearly too late,” Ivo said, helping Cinderella stand.