The Dragon Hunter and the Mage Read Free Page A

that it was enough to make her stomach tighten. Then the door spun open, and a man with a messy, grey beard entered the shack. Confusion took over the stranger’s face for a moment.
    “What’s this? What are you doing here?”
    Eliran jumped up and the other girls did the same.
    “I am so sorry. We thought this was abandoned.”
    “Abandoned? My house?”
    “ M‒ my apologies,” Eliran mumbled. “That’s not what I meant.”
    The man grabbed the girl closest to him, Rissa, by her arm, making her scream.
    “Who are you?” he asked.
    Eliran felt alarm flash through her, but going back to the Legionary filled streets wasn’t something she looked forward to.
    “We just need to spend the night. We won’t cause you any trouble….”
    “Won’t cause any trouble?” The man pulled Rissa closer to him and she squirmed. “Who are you hiding from? The soldiers?”
    “From no one.” Eliran had her eyes fixed on Rissa. The man was clearly hurting her. “Please let her go.”
    “It’s the soldiers, isn’t it?” The man smiled. “Yes…. You’re little Wizardesses, aren’t you? And if the Legionaries catch you, they’ll snap your little necks.” To demonstrate, he took Rissa’s neck and squeezed it.
    “Let her go, now!” Eliran stuck her hand in her satchel and fumbled inside, looking for the flask of Runium. She would need it to cast a spell, put him to sleep, whatever.
    “Shush, little Wizardess. Do you want the soldiers to hear you?”
    Eliran’s arm twirled inside the satchel. She caught coins, cookies, more coins.
    “You are all going to be very quiet if you don’t want to end up like your teachers.” Once again he squeezed Rissa’s neck until she turned blue. Then he pointed at Lassira. “You, take off your shirt.”
    Like a flock of birds, every girl took a step back.
    Eliran was about to give up and throw a bunch of coins in the man’s face ‒ wherewas the damn flask ? ‒ until she touched something cold. She wrapped her fingers around the object and felt the blade’s metal. Desperate, she pulled it out and held it awkwardly in front of herself.
    The man’s eyes became wide and in that moment, she realized he was drunk. He let Rissa go and stepped towards Eliran. She aimed the knife at him defiantly.
    “What do you think you’re going to do with that?”
    He was a big man, and his nose bore the marks of many tavern brawls. He advanced towards her, his hand ready to grab her wrist. At first, Eliran stepped back out of fear, then out of her own will. The man chased her until she was cornered against a wall. At the last moment, Eliran stepped forward instead of backward.
    Caught off balance the man didn’t even see Eliran grab the knife with both hands and swing it up, clumsily, until the blade drove itself through the man’s chin, into his mouth. He howled in pain, grabbed the knife’s handle and pulled it off. A jet a blood gushed from it.
    The Wizard apprentices panicked and screamed hysterically. Not even Eliran managed not to.
    Scared from the pain and the streaming blood, confused by the screams, the man dashed off in a random direction, bumped into a window, and fell from it.
    Eliran grabbed her satchel firmly, took Rissa by the hand and rushed out the door. The other girls didn’t require her to tell them to do the same.  
     

    It wasn’t hard to understand why the Mages had told them they could only step out from their hideouts when the sun came up. The streets quickly filled with people and life. With the exception of the physical signs of violence from the previous days, everything seemed to have gone back to normal. A group of children strolling down the street looked completely commonplace. Still, though the city was covered with Legionaries and Eliran thought it best to leave the girls behind a fish stall that, apparently, had lost its owner during the riots.
    Accompanied by Flara alone, Eliran looked for ways to leave the city. She talked to merchants planning to