I look over seeing the house completely turned to rumble. Alistar looks at the house a few feet away looking devastated. James helps me to my feet as we run to him. James goes to help Alistar but before he can, Alistar stands up. He looks at us with a look of pain in his eyes.

“You need to get far away from here.” He reaches into his robes and pulls out a sealed letter. He hands it to me. “You guys need to go here. They will protect better than I can.” I take the paper and I realize it’s a map to their location. “I will try my best to hold them off as long as I can.”

“But..” Alistar shakes his head no as he looks at James.

“Protect her.” Alistar pushes us out of the way as the burned priest stabs Alistar in the back. The priest has a wild look in his eyes smiling gleefully.

“FOR I’VE BEEN CHOSEN BY THE BROTHERS’ LIGHT TO PURGE THE WORLD OF ABOMINATIONS!” Alistar turns around shielding us from the priest as lightning streaks across the sky. James goes to fight the priest, but he starts to float away. Before he can react, he gets pushed far away from here. The priest frowns. “YOU WILL NOT TAKE FROM THEIR JUDGEMENT!” I begin to raise up also.

“Master! Defend yourself!” Alistar closes his eyes sending me after James. The last thing I see of Alistar is him fighting the priest with his hands. I fly at full speed for a few minutes before crash landing in a field. I tremble a few times before coming to a stop. I sit up trying to work out the aches from the crash landing. I realize that I am far away from the school. “James!” I look over seeing James fall from a nearby tree. I head over to him as he gets up. “Are you okay?” He huffs angry looking back in the direction we came from.

“Duh. We need to head home. Whatever is going on, we aren’t apart of this.”

“But Alistar said to go to his friends?” He looks at me like I’m dumb causing me to become frustrated with him. “We don’t know what’s going on and he thinks that my weird dreams are connected. I am going to them.” He thinks for a second holding out his hand to me. I look at his hand confused.

“The letter?” I smile slightly happy that I won giving him the letter. He looks over it for a few seconds. “Our town is on the way up their place. So we can make a stop by there.” I try to look at the letter.

“Really? Okay then. Where are we exactly?” James looks around trying to decipher how far away we are.

“I think he flung us at most twenty miles away from the school. So we would be here.” He points on the letter revealing a small map on it. Thunder in the distance alert us to keep moving. “We need to put some distance between us and whatever destroyed the school.” We quickly find a road traveling back home. We travel for a few minutes before it starts to lightly rain.

“Why do the Gods hate me today?” I say trying to lighten the mood. I see James smile slightly at the comment.

“Maybe they are getting back at us for sneaking you into that magic school?” I chuckle slightly feeling a little better. I slowly frown thinking about Alistar.

“Do you think he is dead?” The rain starts to pick up as James scoots closer to me. He takes off his coat putting it around me.

“I don’t know Ash. I just don’t know.”

The rain stops about an hour later. Even though James gave me his coat, we both end of soaking wet. James looks at me as we pass a few signs. “I think there should be a town up the road. We could stop there and get a few supplies.” I touch my body a few minutes looking at him.

“With what money?” He laughs slightly and pats my head.

“Let me worry about that.” I sigh to myself hoping he isn’t thinking about stealing stuff. However, we will need supplies. We head to the town which is about a mile from the sign. Approaching the town, I see the usual start of a wall being built as many towns in the Green Belt. Ever since the massive invasion from the Northern Savages, towns throughout the Green Belt had to build walls to protect themselves from the monsters. This town seemed to not be really affected as much over towns. I heard stories of towns being overrun by those monsters.

We get to this small town as people start to set back up shop since the rain has stopped. It’s about midday with the sun is now starting to peek behind the clouds. The town itself is somewhat small. A few shops in the middle of the town, a few homes surrounding them, and a church toward the edge of town. James points to a few men in military uniforms. “Figured they would have given up recruiting this far west.” I shrug trying to warm up with the sun.

“Maybe they still need everyone they can get.” James nods in agreement.

“I am going to go find some money. Can you find us some dry clothes?” I give him a look.

“Don’t you dare do anything to get us caught.” He smirks and holds up his pin.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He walks away from me going to a nearby alley. I grumble making my way through the streets. James’s magic is on the weirder side of things. He has to use his blood to draws symbols to do the magic. Alistar called him a toolbox mage. He can do a lot of different magic, but it will never be as power as someone who can actually do the same magic. In some ways, I think that’s why James tries to so hard when it comes to magic. I accidently bump into someone causing to snap from my thoughts.

“Oh.. I’m sorry..” I look up and see a priest from the Church of the Brothers. He smiles at me kindly.

“That’s fine my sister. I am just on my to pray at the church. Would you like to join?” I pause slightly worried.

“Um…” He keeps looking at me and I shrug. “Sure?” I know he would have no idea that I am from the school. He smiles happily leading me to the church. I look realizing being closer to it that the church was burned down a few months ago. He leads me to a small building next to it. We head inside. I pause slightly confused and look at him. Inside I see a small bed and an altar. He looks at me and smiles.

“Welcome to the Church of the Brothers.” He goes to the altar and starts to pray. I follow him and act like I am praying. With whatever is going on, I don’t want my prayers answered by the wrong people. . After a few minutes he gets up looking at me. “Thank you for praying with me.” I smile a little wary.

“So.. Can I ask what happened to the church?” He pauses and nods.

“The Church of the Brothers has fallen on hard times. A fire hit a few months ago, and I was given this building. We are trying to do our best with what we have. It seems that the Brothers aren’t answering our prayers.” He looks like he has accepted his position though. Not worried at all the situation he are in. “I will still continue to help people when I can and continue to pray.”

“Oh.. well.. Good luck.” I pause for a second. “Do you have any extra clothes that I could borrow? Me and a friend are trying to go home but we don’t have anything with us.” The priest smiles happy and quickly gives me a few bags filled with supplies. I try to let him know that he doesn’t have to give me all these items but he insists on me taking them. I smile slightly. “Thank you.”

“Anytime sister. I hope your journey goes well.” I quickly leave and start to look James. It takes me an hour to find him. I see him come out of an alley looking angry. I go to him smiling and he sees me with the bags.

“Where did you get those?” I shrug tossing him a bag.

“Does it matter? I got us supplies and clothes.” I smirk happy that I was able to beat him at something. He starts to look through the bag ignoring my smugness. We head behind a building trying to find a go location to change. Once we find a good enough location, I keep watch as he changes. I feel him poke me and I go to change. I make sure he isn’t looking before I start changing. I quickly change keeping my eyes on him. It’s not that I don’t trust James, but it would be weird for him to see me naked. With our new clothes on, we blend into the common population. I go to James. “Let’s go.” He turns around and nods. He still looks a little angry at himself to which I ignore. He has had always a problem with losing.

Once we check everything , we start on our marvelous journey toward home. As we start our way, I stop looking at a group of military men standing outside of the church. James notices that I stopped. “Aren’t you coming?” I stare at the men for a second longer before turning to follow James. I hear a door get kicked causing me to turn around. We see the military men drag out the priest. I frown slowly heading over to them. James grabs me by the arm pulling me back to him. He whispers in my ear. “What are you doing?” I have a worried look on my face trying to plead with him.

“He needs our help.” He lets go of me shaking his head as I run over to the group of people forming around the military men. The priest is thrown into the mud covering himself head to toe. Two of the military men head inside as the other two stand over the priest. The priest doesn’t fight back and stays on the ground. The man who is leading this little military group looks around at the crowd.

“The Church of the Brothers are traitors to the Green Belt and its people.” A few gasps can be heard throughout the crowd. “They are the reason Monsters came back. We lost good men and families in the Fall of the Capital.” No one says anything shocked at the new developments. “We are looking for anyone and everyone to help us purge the world of the Church of the Brothers. Together we will fix the Green Belt.” The priest starts to walk towards the crowd. The crowd slowly swells behind the leader of the military group as yelling starts to come out from the crowd.

“I swear upon the Brothers that this is not true. We would never hur-” The priest gets hits in the head with a rock causing him to drop. I try to go to the aid of the priest, but James stops me. He whispers in my ear.

“We can’t help him.” I frown looking at him. I know this is true. I look back seeing the priest being yelled. We start to leave as the crowd starts to get rile up. Once we leave town, I start to think about what we just did. What is going on in the world? How could the Church of the Brothers caused this? It doesn’t make any sense. We travel down the road. Before I know it, it is well pass dinner time. We stop for a quick snack here and there. Once it gets dark, James creates a fire as I sit down next to a tree. James looks at me and sighs noticing that I still look sad.

“You know the Church of the Brothers hate us right?” I shrug looking away from him. He huffs a little bit coming over to me. He lightly kicks me with his foot. He keeps doing it until I grab his foot.

“Fine. I know. However, not all of them are bad.” I look at him noticing a indifferent look on his face. My frown turns into a grimace. “I am going to bed.” I face away from him when as I lay down. I hear him sigh and move away from me. My thoughts start to wander if I truly had magic, I could help that priest. I could help more people. My eyes begin to flutter slowly closing fully. Before I fully fall asleep, I get that deep weird feeling running through my body.

I force my eyes open in total darkness tied down to a chair.