Chell blinked more a few times, making sure that it was, indeed, none other than the thief who was kneeling there in front of her. Noct, who had come back and was still alive, who had chosen to honor their truce, despite all that had happened. In those fleeting moments, Chell felt her vision righten several times better. The wooziness in her head seemed to fade away by the gradual seconds. It was almost as if the mere fact of the thief's presence made everything much clearer for her. She could not help but be in awe for a seconds because of his sudden entrance. Still, there was yet another factor that caused Chell to remain frozen in shock. Something more alarming.
He was holding her hand. Directly.
Chell blinked once again for a few more times, unable to move or utter a single word. It took a few seconds until she suddenly realized that the thief was yelling something. He tugged at her hand, attempting to pull her up to her feet. Noct's face was strained as he mouthed a sentence that she failed to discern. Her hearing was still off, and there was a ringing in the distance. So instead, she tried to understand what he was trying to say by reading his lips.
"We have to get away now!"
Her finger twitched. She realized Noct was still holding her hand in his grasp. She abruptly pulled away, using most of the energy she had started to recover. The thief shook his head and instead leaned down to place both his hands on her shoulders, shouting something again with a troubled look. She tried not to flinch by the sudden and unfamiliar contact as a recurring thought passed through her head. He's still alive. Still alive—
"—Hey! Are you trying to get yourself killed!?" Noct screamed at her, this time in the loudest tone he could muster. Chell jolted as his voice roared in her ears, washing away her nausea. "We need to get away, right now! The other witch hunters are coming anytime soon!" he warned.
At those last words, their situation finally dawned on Chell. She struggled to collect herself. Blinking thrice, she felt her eyes focusing their vision. After a moment of pause, she nodded slightly to the thief. Noct noticed this and held out something he was clutching in his right hand.
"The thing you told me to get. I have it!" he said.
Chell could have almost sighed in ease the moment she saw that he was tightly holding her familiar satchel in his grip. It was only in that moment when she felt the pulsing mana of her catalyst inside. The skull. It had been the reason why her conditioned had seemed to stable. It was simultaneously trying to sustain her mana and use its own to feed the necessary fuel it needed for the dead knight to stay anchored to the mortal realm. For a quick moment, Chell glanced at the continuing battle between the dead and the hunter happening a few meters away from them. The knight's form seemed to look more corporal than before, its movements turning sharper, less weak. Chell noticed Worick's expression change from triumph to struggle as he noticed the shift in the knight's energy. She turned back to look at the thief.
"... Th...ank—" Chell as about to say as she held out her hand to take the satchel.
"—Save the gratitude for later!" he said, interrupting her. "Right now, we really need to—!"
Thunk.
Noct faltered in his words and stopped his sentence short when without warning, an arrow suddenly dug itself into the sheet of ice mere inches away from his boot. Any more closer and it would have embedded through his feet. Face turning pale, the thief whirled around immediately, turning towards the direction from where the arrow had come from, high on top of one of the roofs that were thirty feet away from them. Chell followed his gaze, wincing in the setting sunlight. She made out the outline of a cloaked and hooded person standing on top of a slanted section of the roof. From the way his cloak covered his broad-shouldered build, he was undoubtedly a man. He was too far away for Chell to see any more specific details, except for one. Clutched between his gloved hands was a longbow, trained right in their direction. He reached behind his back and took another arrow from his quiver. Then, he steadied it towards them again, its arrowheadhead shining dangerously.
Another witch hunter.
"Watch out—!" Noct cried out too late as the hunter released the string. The arrow blurred in speed, piercing straight through the wind towards them at an alarming rate. Chell attempted to raise her hand, preparing herself to form a barrier of ice to protect both her and the thief. However, the moment she did, she felt the mana in her body fluctuate like an unsteady fire then disappear altogether, leaving her in a temporary powerless state. Chell had miscalculated. She was too weak to do anything yet. The arrow was aimed right at her right eye, quickly closing in as every millisecond passed. She did not have enough strength to move her head and avoid it. In that moment, Chell knew she was going to be hit.
Ten inches away from her face, however, the arrowtip suddenly stopped.
She blinked to make sure that she wasn't imagining it. For a heartbeat, Chell couldn't believe what her eyes were seeing in front of her. As they widened slightly, the scene registered slowly in her brain. Because Noct had caught the speeding arrow in midair with a swift flick of his hand.
Impossible, she thought.
The thief threw the weapon to the side and faced back to Chell, as if he was not aware that he had just saved her life. In a low, serious tone, he evened his voice and said, "Little miss, please. I would really appreciate it if you could stand up now and run away together with me because as I see it, we are at the disadvantage once the other hunters appear. We're both in plain sight and you're too weak. Uldard's forces will be over us soon. Night is coming. We can evade in the darkness. And I don't want to be hunted by the dead."
Chell blinked once again, looking into his eyes, letting his words echo in her head and wondering at the back of her mind what his last sentence meant. Despite the expressions of panic and worry mixed on his face, Noct maintained a look of determination in his eyes that said he had no intention of dying in that place.
"But the... the girl," she barely managed to whisper, her words still too weak. "We need to... save..."
The thief hastily shook his head. He gestured towards their left, at the stake that was surrounded in pillars of ice, right by where Worick and the dead were still currently engaged in battle. There was no sign of the falsely accused witch anywhere. Instead, at the frozen ground, there lay a coil of rope that had clearly been cut away from their previous bindings.
"She probably got away already. Someone who knows her must have saved her in the chaos. Don't worry about her anymore. Right now, you're the one in danger, little miss. And I'm begging you, we really need to get going!" he urged alarmingly.
Chell took a few seconds to nod at him. Noct held out his hand once again, but she refused to take it. Instead, she slowly got up by her own feeble strength, managing to keep herself steady enough to stand. Noct got up as well, turning to look back in the direction of the second witch hunter, who had suddenly disappeared from the roof after the second shot. Chell did not want to imagine where he had gone. As she steadied her footing, she realized that she was still holding the satchel tightly in her hand. Idiot, he reprimanded to her self immediately. She had forgotten about it for the past few seconds.
Fumbling, she turned over the cover and reached inside to take out the skull from within. In the moment her fingers brushed the catalyst, she felt a quick spark of mana coursing directly from the surface of the bone and upwards through her veins, feeding her the needed strength and power she required. The skull began to glow a faint color of pale white, its aura answering to her touch. Chell felt her energy come back bit by bit. She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, the world seemed clearer to her. Chell was more aware of the surroundings now, hearing and feeling the steady rhythm of the sound of thudding feet, the echoed yells of the crowd, the clashing of the nearby blades, the sudden blow of the precarious breeze.
Chell turned her head and nodded at the thief. The thief nodded back to her, reaching his hand out and holding onto her wrist again without warning. Chell flinched, looking at his face, at the seemingly pale yet somehow familiar light in his eyes, but did not pull it away.
"Follow me!" he said. "Don't let go of my hand!"
She nodded back again, clutching the skull tightly in her other hand. As she stared at him, an abrupt shadow of doubt crossed in her mind as she remembered the last time Noct had told her to follow him.
No. She thought immediately. The thief came back, after all. I have to trust him this time.
Chell quietly breathed out. Noct turned around.
Then, they began to run.
----> thank you for reading!