Outside, everything was getting darker, and there was chaos as people ran helter-skelter outside, the red cloud sending them all into terror.
I stood panicking where I was, midnight hours away from me.
What was I to do?
The book was still in my hand, I remembered. Maybe all I had to do was to find a curse I would cast that would hold them off until midnight when I could go to the Five Elves again.
Assured that I was on the right path, I flipped through the pages looking for a curse, but my hands shook too much and I was so scared I was finding it hard to concentrate, which caused me to fling the book away in anger and shed tears, feeling hopeless.
My family, my father, sister and mother, I thought, remembering them.
I needed to find them, to be with them.
With this thought I turned to the door, only held back by one thing:
It was me the Other Five were here for, and I did not want my family to be caught up in a broil they knew nothing about. If the Other Five wanted to kill me, they could as well have me right where I was.
I would be happier if I was taken with the rest of my family left to tell the tale.
I fell to my knees on the floor, my eyes looking outside my room's window amidst all the darkness and chaos, and I was sure I could make out the forms of five hooded figures flying around in the sky in a circle, the way vultures do when they come upon a battlefield.
They wore dark hooded cloaks that glowed like Sedlin the Dead's black orb, and seemed to have some dark, black vapour trail them once they passed.
I watched as they scattered and swept over the entire city, one of them stopping before a running woman and holding her as she yelled so loud she could have coughed her throat out. He put his hands on her shoulders and put his face to hers in a pose that looked like a kiss. Terror filled my heart as I saw the woman go from a beautiful light skinned woman to having that skin drier than a desert. He let her go and she remained frozen the way she had been, but this time, she was nothing but a bag of bones with a dried skin covering.
"I need to find a curse that can save everyone," I told myself, crawling around and looking for the book I had flung away in my hopelessness, when all of a sudden, I saw a dark vapour rise from the floorboards.
Instantly, I knew they had found me.
The vapour gathered to form one of the dark hooded figures I had found outside, and he soon hovered above me, suspended in mid air.
"Hello,'' I heard him say.
I looked into that face, but it was not a face. It was like looking at a real human skull that managed to have an expression, and this one looked like it was intense, agonising pain.
Screaming, I pushed myself from behind while he hovered closer, and I knew I was going to die the moment he put his hands upon my shoulders. Those hands had given hope to Sedlin the Dead's, because his had a skin covering at least. This was just bone. Pure dried bone.
For some reason I looked him straight in the eyes, or the sockets, because there were no eyes to look into, but two holes. There, I saw some red glow, and I was unable to stop looking at them.
Intense pain shot through my body and I cried out, aware that this was what I had seen them do to the woman outside. They were doing it to me, and they were going to leave me like a bag of bones made of dried skin, just like they had with her.
Feeling the life leave my body, I shed a tear for all the pain I felt. Everything around me was darkening, fading away, and I was sure I was dying, losing my breath.
"What a terrible way to die." I thought to myself one last time.
It took me a while, but all of a sudden my vision was clearing, and the dark hooded figures were no longer in front of me.
"Am I alive?" I asked myself.
"WAKE UP. WAKE UP!!!" A familiar voice called out to me.
I opened my eyes and rubbed on them, to find Sedlin the Dead right there in my room. He was holding his staff and fighting the hooded figure, who was twice larger than he was.
"Run into that portal before it closes. I will come after you." He yelled.
Looking about, I still could not see the portal he was speaking of.
"The mirror." He yelled again.
The hooded figure's hands were burning, and he would throw the flames in his hands like burning tennis balls at Sedlin the Dead, who was blocking them with his staff.
"I cannot hold him for much longer, and the portal will soon close. Go." Sedlin the Dead yelled at me.
I was weak, truly, and I felt light as though I was plagued by some serious sickness, but I could still move. Slowly, I picked myself up and dragged myself to the portal.
"Fast. Go!" Sedlin the Dead yelled. "I am buying time for you."
I was close to the mirror now, and I fell in front of it, weaker than anything. At the same time, the hooded figure caught Sedlin the Dead and flung him against the wall, breaking it.
With the way the hooded figure paused, looking at me, I was sure that Sedlin the Dead did not matter to him in the least.
He wanted me.
I saw the mirror flash for the moment, and I knew it was about to close. Picking myself up in one last, desperate motion, I fell in through the mirror and into that feeling of falling into eternity.
For a split second I saw the hooded figure follow after me, but something pulled him away and it disappeared, together with the hole I was falling from.