#thexapprentice

the dark. fire. open water. deep water. dying alone. crowded spaces. confined spaces.change. failure. war. loss of control. powerlessness. prison. blood. drowning. suffocation. public speaking. nature. animals. the supernatural. heights. death. dying. intimacy. rejection. abandonment. loss. the unknown. the future. not being good enough..scary stories. speaking to new people. poverty. loud noises. being touched. sex.

There were tall walls around her, and guards moved intermittently atop them, dark shadows visible only as they blotted the stars occasionally from the sky. The cold bit at her, and she stumbled and slipped on the icy pathway. But the thought of resting in a warm tavern made her straighten and continue forward. 

She reached the tavern and tried to drag open the heavy door that led inside to Candlehearth Hall but was stopped when a heavy hand slammed on her shoulder and pulled her back.

Gods damn it all...

“Let go!” she shrieked. The tips of her fingers sparking with magic as she tried to wrestle herself away from her accoster. Thoughts of The Butcher made her struggle harder as she tried to escape.

Saahana had no way of knowing how badly she’d been poisoned. She had managed to duck in time, so the knife had scored a hit at least once. And the poison? Saahana tried to set the worry aside. She had never considered that she could be injured in such a way, let alone what she would feel about it. She could come up with no name for the feeling. Just hollow, she thought to herself. Hollow. And scared. 

“Have a care where your eyes linger, stranger.”

Too late to worry about that now, she told herself. A shadowy figure emerged from the trees nearby. From its size she guessed it was a male. Rolling to her feet, Saahana eyed the stranger warily. “Something you need, stranger?” she asked in a low voice. She did not whisper. Whispers carried further in the dark than speaking in a normal tone.

Up ahead something orange flickered amid the grey and white. The promise of a fire gave Saahala a boost of energy and she gave a shout and a wave.

"More books. We should burn a few to warm our selves up a bit, I should think."

Over the past few days she had see her pursuers twice, catching glimpses of them in the shadows beneath the endless pines. They were long, lean shapes, tongues lolling, eyes blazing with ravenous hunger. Twice the wolves had come almost within striking distance and twice they had withdrawn, as if intimidated by the smell of her beast blood.

The snow crunched below her feet. Chilly wetness seeped through her cracked leather boots and into the thick woolen linen wraps she wore beneath them. Damn…the last thing she needed were her feet to freeze solid in her boots.