Page 111 of Found in Obscurity

Kit

The feeling had crept upon him, as quiet as a mouse trailing his steps.

It was hard to hear it over the noise of the spell pulling him, yanking him, compelling him forward. It had diverted his thoughts for these long days since it had been cast. It consumed anything else that threatened to rise up to take its place.

There were only brief moments of clarity when something else broke through the sludge, before the compulsion tomovecame back. And the realization that they weren’t alone was one of those.

It came in stages.

The disturbance in the far distance.

The sound of more steps than theirs.

The foreign scent carried on the wind that he couldn’t pick out, mixing with so many others.

Only one thing was sure.

Something was hunting them.

But Kit needed to find the coven. He couldn’t rest until he did. Until this cord in his chest was snipped by the sight of them finally.

Lorin was the only thing that could get through to him. His anchor when everything was pulling him onward. The one stabilizing force that stopped him being ripped in half by the sheer pressure he felt the spell exerting the longer it went on.

Which was how Kit had finally voiced it out loud, watching Lorin’s eyes widen in fear.

“Following us?” Lorin asked in a whisper.

The screech that followed was deafening and sent them all to their knees. The familiars scattered, Sjena flying off into the distance to try and escape the onslaught. Kit could only cover his ears, feeling like they were about to explode from the pain. Lorin bowed over him like he could help block it, cupping hands over his own on his ears.

The elders began to move around them, debilitated but strong as crystals were pulled out into skilled and marked fingers and incantations fought to push back the din.

It eased. Slowly.

Kit’s ears rang in the aftermath, a few tears escaping his eyes from how much it hurt. The voices around him were muffled, sounding like they were coming from underwater.

Lorin cupped his face, wiping his tear tracks. “Are you okay?”

Kit realized Lorin’s ears were bleeding. He gasped, surging forward and grasping Lorin’s neck gently. “Lorin!”

“I’m okay,” Lorin assured him, even though the pain was clear from his ghostly pallor and sweaty face.

His selflessness and care for him made Kit want to cry for a completely different reason. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Your ears are more sensitive than mine, and I didn’t want you to be hurt again by the coven. They’ve hurt you enough,” Lorin said quietly.

Kit caught his breath, unable to find the words he needed to fully convey the feeling in his chest. “Lorin…”

“We just ran into a spell trap. We have to move.” Lorin’s grandma interrupted them, urging them both up. She was grimacing, her hair standing on end. “They know we’re here.”

They didn’t question it. There was no time. They got to their feet and Kit pointed in the direction he could still feel the pull. The elders took the lead, steering them around any more spells they could sense until a set of blurry, abstract shapes in the distance that seemed to open into a clearing of sorts coincided with the loosening of the noose around Kit’s chest.

They had found it.

And from the commotion Kit could see among the makeshift wooden buildings, the coven knew it too. There was already an ominous feeling of intensity in the distance. A surge of dark magic that felt familiar on Kit’s skin and made him recoil.

Kit shivered in terror, fighting the urge to run away now he didn’t feel compelled to follow. He didn’t want to be trapped again. He couldn’t handle it. What if they failed? What if he lost everything again?

What kept him rooted in place was the idea that if they didn’t, they’d keep doing this to others.