Light and Dark

Chapter 3: Taylor

Taylor found herself back where she was before the light had appeared. The queen looked both shocked and furious as the dark ball continued to grow in her hands, though she no longer chanted the same way as when it has first appeared. 

"What were you girls thinking, you know the laws banning light magic!" the queen screamed.

"Light... magic?" Fey mumbled. When Taylor looked over at her, she didn't look very good. Her legs were shaking and her skin looked slightly darker than normal. 

"Fey!" Taylor shouted, rushing over as she continued to shake tremendously.

"Guards, seize them!" the queen ordered. Three guards rushed up the stairs onto the stage.

"It's just like my dream, we need to get out of here!" Taylor thought, wrapping Fey's arm around her shoulders. Kira came running up to help with Fey as the rest of the crowd booed and hissed at them.

"I guess we have no choice but to trust that voice..." Kira commented as she, Fey, and Taylor ran to the woods near their home, knowing that they would never be able to return to their old lives. Taylor looked back one last time before rushing into the woods, tears spilling from her eyes.

***

Taylor kept up her pace for about 2 minutes before she had to slow down. When she finally stopped, her heart felt like it was in her throat and she could hear herself wheezing. When Taylor looked over at Kira, she noticed that the young girl also seemed out of breath. Fey seemed to have recovered a little bit, but wasn't fit to move by herself quite yet. Just as her breathing returned to a normal volume, Taylor heard a bush rustle for a second, but when she whipped around to see what had caused the sound, it was gone. 

"We should keep moving, we can't be in plain sight once it gets dark..." Taylor whispered, looking over at Kira. 

"I wonder what this is?" Kira said as she looked behind a bush. "Hey guys, I think I found a trap!"

"Kira, please don't go into the trap. We would need to find whoever set it up in order to get you down." Taylor sighed, setting Fey down.

"Ok Tay, I'm going in!" Kira said before jumping right into the net. The net closed around Kira, whose face Taylor could only describe as that of a child who found a new toy to play with. 

"Kira, are you alright?!" Taylor shouted. She immediately regretted making such a loud noise when there were people looking to catch them, especially with Fey in such bad shape. A soft thump on the head brought her back to reality. When she looked up to see what had hit her, she noticed that the tree that Kira was hanging from was actually a berry tree. She, Fey and Kira had never gone this far in the forest before, let alone seen trees like this. The berry that she had been hit with was a light pink color, about the size of a blueberry.

"What are these?" Taylor thought. Suddenly the thought came to her that they could be poisonous. "Kira, was there anything in the net?" 

"There were some berries..." Kira called down.

"What did you do with them?"

"Well, I ate them, obviously. Who wouldn't eat perfectly good berries, especially when their such a pretty pink!" 

"Did you even consider that they could be poisonous?" 

"No, but nothing this good could be deadly," Kira said, her voice muffled by the berries in her mouth.

"How are we supposed to get you out of there, I can't leave Fey alone or climb up there to get you down!" Taylor said, looking down at the dress, now torn at the bottom.

"I can watch Fey, just go and do what you need to," Kira replied, looking down.

"Alright, but you need to try and get yourself out while I'm gone!" Taylor said, walking away cautiously.

***

"What was Kira thinking, we don't have time for these silly games of hers!" Taylor thought as she walked away from where Kira hung, hearing the leaves shaking.
"Well, I guess she went back to her games..." Taylor continued, undeterred by the fact that this journey they were on was going to be so much more difficult with her rambunctious. "And with that dream, I need to make sure that it never happens!" she thought as her mind wondered back to the still vivid visions she retained.

***

It all started on the stage where she and Fey were going to participate in the Darkness Rituial. She looked around and saw a blinding white figure throwing herself in front of them before being shot by bolts of pitch black lightning. It than flashed to a jungle where one silhouette was hanging in a net connected to a tree branch, the other lying on the ground, seemingly unable to move, than in a flash, a third silhouette appeared, carrying away the unmoving shadow. Taylor screamed to the one in the tree to help her get the other two before she had woken up in a cold sweat.

***

"Wait a second, when we came into this part of the forest, there was a rustling... Oh no!" she exclaimed, now realizing the grave mistake she had made. She quickly turned around and ran back the way she came, hoping she got there before it was to late.