“Die!” Dardania screams at the top of her lungs, the sound reverberates through the tavern. The air hangs thick with her spell.

  Trevor is flung across the room, smashes through a table, and slams into the wall. He falls to the floor, splintering it under his weight. I focus all of my energy onto the space around him, dramatically increasing the gravity. I pour every ounce of power I can muster, hoping to crush him into dust.

  He fights against the crushing weight, but his legs eventually buckle and he collapses to his knees. I don’t let up though, I try to channel all the energy out of the room into this single spell.

  Avis groans in agony, breaking my concentration. I whip around turning my attention towards him. Prisha presses a rag against his bleeding chest, rapidly chanting to slow the bleeding. This temporary distraction causes me to falter, giving Trevor the opening. He jumps to his feet and sprints towards me.

  Moments before Trevor reaches me, Madison plants her heel and swings her staff with all her might at his head. Trevor freezes mid movement, pivots, and grasps the end of her staff. Trevor jerks it towards himself, but not before lightning ripples down the staff heading straight for his hands.

  The jolt of electricity sends Trevor flying across the tavern, the lightning arcing after him. His body starts to smoke, but its no more than a mere nuisance to him. He quickly pulls himself back to his feet and stands up tall.

  “That. Hurt.” He growls through bated breath. He rips off his jacket and throws it on the ground. Trevor bends down, picks up a chair, rips off a leg, and immediately throws it at Madison. She instinctively slams her staff into the ground, a barrier forms just in time to stop the chair leg in it’s tracks.

  Before I have time to react Trevor is standing face to face with me, swinging his fist directly at my torso. I try to increase the gravity on him, but he’s moving way too fast. His movements are barely visible and he just moves in a blur. I manage to activate my spell just seconds before he makes impact.

  His fist slams into my torso, and the sheer strength of it makes me feel like my entire body might shatter from the force. I’m hurled across the room and slam into a table, it shatters instantly. Trevor’s punch felt like I was hit by a car. The moment he touched me, I was sure my entire body would break. The jolt reminded of my run in with him in Anz?. I had forgotten that moment, that pain, until just now. I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that Trevor was the killer. He was the one who saved me that night. No, he was the one who attacked me that night. I should have known then who it was. What normal person has that kind of strength? I imagine that even strength enhanced by a spell still wouldn’t compare to this. This was inhuman. It was supernatural even.

  I try to stand up but every fiber of my being hurt. Even the slightest movements sent sharp pains through my entire body, but I have to get up. I have to stop him. After what he did to Avis.

  I stumble to my feet, barely able to stand. I fight through pain until I’m fully upright, though just barely.

  Trevor spins around and pushes off to dash towards me, but I’m able to catch him before he is able to move. The gravity forces him back to the ground, slamming his knees into the floor. Madison swings her staff at full force at his head, the moment it makes contact, he catches on fire. The flames spread to his entire body. He rapidly rips off his clothes, and tries to put the fire out. He whips back up to face Madison.

  “You bitch!” The moment the words leave his mouth, my fist collides with his face. I concentrate every ounce of energy I can muster and push it into my fist at the moment of impact. Theoretically it should have increased the mass of my fist, basically increasing the gravity of it at the moment of impact. I’m not a scientist, so all I can do is hope it works.

  Trevor slams into the floor, buckling under the weight. Every bone in my hand feels like it shatters on impact. The vibrations ripple up my arm, fracturing several bones as it moves. Punching an immovable object with such force hurt me just as much as him.

  My right hand falls limp at my side, I am unable to move it.

  Madison grips her staff, and her hand starts to glow. The staff slowly starts shrinking, and a bracelet begins to snake around her wrist until she no longer is holding her staff. She falls to the ground, palms first, and begins chanting.

  The ground underneath the tavern starts to violently shake. Trevor scrambles to his feet, and moves just in time for the floor to crumble in the spot he was just in. He continues stumbling backwards while the floor collapses. As he backs into the wall, he freezes, now backed into a corner. He takes one look at it, lifts one foot up, places it against the wall, and pushes off.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  He shoots through the air, tackles Madison, and slams her to the ground. He climbs on top of her and raises his hand to start pummeling her.

  “Slash.” Several slashes appear across his chest, blood begins pouring out of him. He jumps off of Madison and stumbles backwards. He holds his hands over his chest attempting to stop the bleeding, but it doesn’t do any good. The blood continues gushing, pouring out from between his fingers, and drips onto the floor.

  Madison tries to move but winces in pain and falls back onto the floor, unable to move.

  Trevor stumbles out of the doorway and into the street. I try to move after him but Dardania screams at me to stop.

  “Let him go.” She yells, before turning her attention back towards her brother. Prisha has stopped chanting, and the bleeding has appeared to stop, but he still hasn’t woken up.

  “Don’t you die on me asshole.” Dardania mutters as she continues to press the rag against his chest. “Don’t you die.”

  * * * *

  “Why didn’t it work?” I ask.

  Prisha looks up from the sink behind the bar where she was washing her hands of Avis’s blood.

  “Why didn’t what work?”

  “Dardania’s spell, her first one. Why didn’t it work?”

  Prisha grabs a towel, dries her hands, and tosses it onto the counter before leaning against it.

  “What is death? Sure, we literally know what it is, it’s the end of life. But in the grand scheme of things, we have no idea what it is; hell we don’t even know why we live. We don’t know what happens when we die. We don’t know why the body knows how to die. Death is still one giant mystery, all we know is that it exists at the end of your life. So, it’s not a complete thought to just tell him to die. She can’t truly imagine or understand what it is. So, yeah.”

  “Well, next time I will just have to be more specific.”

  We both turn to see Dardania standing on the other side of the bar, covered in her brother’s blood.

  Prisha looks as though she was going to say something, but she opted not to. There was a million things to say, but I’m not sure I could even figure out what half of them were. My mind was all over the place and I couldn’t seem to land on a single thought.

  “How’s he doing?” I ask, it truly being the only question that matters to me.

  “He’s stable. We need to move him somewhere more comfortable so he can heal.”

  With that Madison walks back into the tavern, goes behind the bar, fills a mug with ale, and chugs it. Upon finishing it, she slams it down on the bar, and exhales loudly.

  “So, spoke to the inn keeper, they know what happened. They saw Trevor running, but luckily the bartender also saw him attack Avis so they don’t blame us. So, they are in the process of getting us a room on the ground floor for Avis. Said not to worry about the mess.”

  “Well, that’s something I guess.” Prisha says leaning against the bar. Madison puts her mug into the sink and walks over towards Avis to check up on him. Prisha turns towards me and motions for my hand.

  “We should wrap that up.”

  I look down at my hand, which was starting to swell up. It had already started turning purple from the bruises that were slowly forming. I had forgotten that I even injured it, but now that the adrenaline was starting to wear off it was starting to hurt.

  Prisha gently lifts my hand, whispers something, and it vibrates slightly. I wince in pain as the vibrations trickle from my fingers all the way up to my shoulder. I have no clue what she is doing.“Sorry, just wanted to make sure it wasn’t broken. I think it’s just fractured. We should take you to a proper healer to make sure though.”

  She slowly starts wrapping up my hand starting with my fingers and working her way up to my elbow. Even just landing one punch on Trevor completely messed up my arm. The strength that he holds is insane, and hitting him is like punching a steel beam; I’m pretty sure I did more damage to myself than him. Next time, I won’t make that mistake.

  “It’s just super human strength.” I mutter to myself, part of my thoughts making their way out of my mouth.

  “Having that level of strength in his body would require immense pressure on his muscles and bones, so to be able to support the strength they would have to be just as strong.” Dardania answered my question for me, clearly picking up what I was thinking about.

  After Prisha finished wrapping up my arm, I took that time to finally go see how Avis was doing. To be honest, I was avoiding it. I didn’t want to see him like this. I have only ever known him to be incredibly strong, and loud. So for him to be sitting there on the verge of death and so powerless, it was heart breaking.

  I sit down on the ground next to him, and look at his face. In this moment, he didn’t seem like he was in pain. He just looks like he’s sleeping, but I know it’s not that simple. Somewhere deep down in there he is fighting for his life, and god damn I hope he wins that fight.

  “You’re not allowed to die.” I choke on the words as they come out. “I’ve lost everyone else and I can’t lose you. I thought after my dad died that I could never find love or a place to be, but you gave me both. You and Dardania took me in when you didn’t even know me. You saved my life, literally and figuratively.”

  I raise my hand and wipe the tears from my face, but it wasn’t like it helped. They just continue to flow down my face like a raging river. I take a deep breath.

  “So, you need to get better so we can kick that motherfucker’s ass. This time, I mean Trevor because this shit is personal now.”

  The last few words get stuck in my throat. I gently lower my head and rest it against his legs and just cry. At this point I can’t hold it in anymore.

  When it first happened, all I could see was red. I wanted to make sure that Trevor suffered. I wanted to see him dead, and I wanted to be the one to do it. The way he so brazenly attacked Avis and tried to kill him right in front of us, something in me snapped.

  But now—

  Now, I can’t stop crying. I can’t stop imagining a world where Avis might not be in it. I can’t stop imagining that I may have to bury yet another person I care about.

  “You all are the only family I have. You can’t die.”

  Dardania and Madison sit down on either side of me, draw their bodies into mine. We all take comfort in one another as we cry, and pray that he makes it through this.

  The next few get me in my feels.