Three Girls

Otherworld BASIC Magic

By: A. Blanco

Prologue

Three Girls

Helam and Rua painted the forest glade in dual hues. Red and blue tinted the fringes of the double shadows cast by the rock outcroppings and trees. It felt almost magical, dreamy, romantic. But the girl running for her life could not spare such romanticism.

Panting, she stopped to look toward the forest; the twin moons gave her blue hair a wraithlike aura. Imperceptibly, she wriggled her long, pointy ears. Yes. They were chasing behind her. They had not dwelt still. She hugged the leather-bound tome tightly against her chest and resumed her frantic flight. Just before the clearing ended, another sound reached her ears, making her heart skip. She stopped; she had no place left to run.

***

She had chosen to pursue by the perimeter; the forest was too dense to run unimpeded, and her eyesight was not good in the darkness within. She raised her face and smelled the air.

“Damn! Sister is faster than I among the trees, and she can see in total darkness.”

The girl quickened her run with the thoughts that she ought to be the first to reach the fugitive, because a good reward awaited her, otherwise...

***

“Heh, heh! Did my sister think she was cleverer than me by sprinting first?” Her upper ears had swiveled to the side when she caught the faint thudding of running feet in the distance. She jumped to a tree limb and, from there, shot to another branch in the adjacent tree. This way, she could progress faster in the forest than her rival.

Light filtered between the trees; she was reaching the clearing, and her irises narrowed into thin slits.

“I found you, Long-ears.” A smile crept to her lips.

***

Tona searched through the old book for an incantation that would save her. Her frantic fingers stopped in a passage; the writing was barely legible, but she recited it in her head before committing to it aloud.

The two girls who chased were within a few strides of her. She began the incantation with a firm but melodious voice. The girl with feline ears stopped in her tracks, and the other, a canid, seeing her companion stop, also came to a halt. They became wary of the high mage. Any spell from them could be deadly.

She finished the spell, and nothing seemed to happen. Tona was sure she had cast a teleportation spell to whisk her out of there. Did she fumble the words? Was it the wrong incantation? Was her tone off? She opened the book again.

The two pursuing girls, seeing that the silver-haired girl’s spell had not worked, cautiously ambled forward. Tona stepped backward. At that moment, sparks appeared next to her, similar to fireflies, and with a muffled thud, a bright light briefly illuminated the three girls.

A white sphere appeared from the light and bounced a few times away between the cat-eared and the dog-eared girl, who both had to fight with all of their might not to chase the receding ball. Having overcome some ingrained instinct by sheer willpower, they looked back at their prey, who, at the moment, had someone next to her.