Typhoon & Tempest

Chapter Four

Jack bolted into the northern tree line, expecting Lily to follow but was alarmed when she glimpsed Lily being chased south from her - and that Ms Winters and the remaining wolves were running towards Jack. She clenched her jaw as she gracelessly jumped over roots and under tipping trees, her feet stumbling over loose leaves and dips in the earth.

Jack's magic spiraled over her fingers, her rings flaring up as the wolves ran up behind her, snarling loudly when they nipped at her scuffed shoes. She held back on her magic for a moment - Jack was still haunted by Yuric's screams, and right now they echoed in her mind.

She had been defending her friend and she still failed. Lily's shoulder was scratched up thanks to Yuric, and while Jack might have stopped Yuric from injuring anyone further, it shouldn't have been possible. Witches can only control nature - trees, flowers, earth. Their magic was always a shade of green and connected to the strength of the witch.

Jack knew she was going to be strong as soon as she realised who her mother and grandmother were. She was the daughter of Frieda, the Supernova Witch who had a power with foresight and instinct, not to mention her gifts with herbal concoctions and remedies. No one sought to kill her, but to hear her advice and drink her medicines.

But Freida's mother was Andromeda - the Witch of the Night. The creator of vampires. She was the reason the blood-drinking red-eyed supernaturals existed and no one knew where her kind of power came from.

According to what Lily said, Jack was prophecised by her own mother to be The Witch Who Can Heal. It was the only explanation she had as to how she was able to paralyse Yuric's shoulder. But with all of Jack's jokes about harming people, even though she was tempted to run over Ryan when she realised he made Lily cry, they were just jokes. She didn't mean to hurt Yuric, just to freeze him in his place and stop him from hurting Lily.

Yet these wolves chasing her had to stop. This time she wasn't saving a friend, she was saving herself. Before she was The Witch Who Can Heal, she was the granddaughter of the strongest witch recorded in their history. Jack wore Andromeda's very rings on her own hands - the same hands that now curled into tight fists.

Let's show them what strength really looks like. Jack thought. They thought Yuric was strong? They hadn't faced her yet.

As Jack kept running, eyes now glowing a piercing emerald green, she felt the wolves' breath on the back of her heels. With only a second to recall Yuric's scream and shove the memory aside, she flung her magic into a tree next to her. She knew a lot about nature, every witch had to, and Jack knew what would make a tree fall.

The tree creaked and jolted as the trunk ripped up the earth and tipped over Jack's head to slam into the ground behind her. She heard the yelp of surprise from some of the wolves but a quick look behind her verified she hadn't trapped any under the fallen tree. All they did was run around or over it, but they weren't at her heels anymore, instead keeping their distance.

Jack kept running. Flinging her magic into the ground, her feet stumbled as the dirt ripped up around her. Long submerged roots surfaced, stretching as they felt the heat of the sun for the first time, before intertwining with each other to form a gigantic wall of thick vines; a natural fence to block the path behind her for the wolves. The trees tipped over as the roots kept rising and tying together, leaving a gigantic path of knots in the forest. It would have been visible from the sky, from the village atop the mountain Jack was quickly approaching, but Jack kept her gaze on the ground she was ripping up.

Jack spun around and stopped, seeing the metres of thick makeshift vines behind her and the wolves trying to weave their way in between. "Ha!" She spat. "Chase me though that, suckers! Can Yuric do that? You think he's the strongest of us all? That's only a, a fraction of what I can do!"