Page 65 of The Warlock's Trial

A man cruelly laughed. “The priestesses said we should take you outside the town boundaries and kill you, but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have a little fun with it first. We dragged you all the way out here so that no one would hear you scream.”

“You don’t understand,” an older man begged. “I have a research license granted to me by the United Supernatural Union. We were welcomed into Octavia Falls?—”

“No Elementai is welcome here!” another voice raged. “You should’ve stayed within your own borders, savage!”

“How dare you talk to my husband like that!” a woman snarled. “Now get out of our way, you withered old witches!”

We came close enough that I could finally see what was going on. A dozen Executors had surrounded a man and a woman in the woods. The woman looked to be in her forties, and the man had to be at least ten years older than her. The woman was beautiful, with long red hair, but the man wore a wrinkled shirt, and his hair was disheveled. He wore glasses and carried a large backpack.

“Who are you calling withered?” an Executor growled.

The woman threw back her head and laughed. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

She threw her hands out, and I expected magic to blast from her palms, but only a tiny flame came out. The man next to her aimed his hands at a puddle on the ground. Water droplets rose into the air, but that was it.

“What did you do to us!?” the woman seethed.

A big, burly Executor laughed maniacally. “Did the priestesses forget to mention the tea at your hotel was laced with noxite? It’s a precautionary measure provided to all visitors who are not of our kind. You should’ve kept your nose where it belonged, and we wouldn’t have to kill you.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” the woman sneered. “Doing so would be a declaration of war against the Elementai!”

“As if they’ll ever know what happened to you two,” an Executor said.

I lowered my voice and whispered to Lucas. “What do we do? These are Elementai. If they’re killed by witches and the tribe finds out, they’ll start a war with the coven for sure.”

“We have to help them. But if we kill the Executors, the priestesses will find evidence we were here,” he replied.

The lion looked up at us with a desperate plea in her eyes. She’d come to find us to ask for help, which meant she didn’t think she could take on this many witches at once.

The woman opened her mouth again, but her husband stopped her. “Eleanor, please. Let me handle this. Whatever the priestesses think they can charge us with, they are sorely mistaken.”

The woman blew a breath. “Elliot, you’re making it worse.”

Her husband continued. “There must be a way we can work this out.”

The burly Executor glanced at the others, then shrugged. “Yeah… I think we can work something out—at the end of a noose.”

The Executors threw ropes around the couple’s necks. Within a moment, they’d tossed the ends of the ropes over a tree branch and yanked, pulling the couple’s feet off the ground. The sound of their strangled rasps filled the forest.

Our cover be damned. These innocent people would die if we didn’t help them.

We leapt from our hiding place in the trees, and battle orbs shot from our palms in all directions. Lucas dropped two Executors at once. My orb hit one Executor in the chest, while the other missed the Executor I was aiming at.

The lion leapt from the trees and aimed her razor-sharp claws at the nearest Executor. His dying screams turned to silence as she swiped her claws across his throat.

Four down. Eight to go.

Lucas threw up a shield around us, and battle orbs ricocheted off of it. I sent deadly orbs soaring through the shield, and Lucas defended all of my attacks. My orbs bounced off the Executors’ shields, spinning off into the forest.

The Executors dropped their ropes, and the couple landed hard on the ground. All together, the Executors turned their attention to the lion. Battle orbs assaulted her from all angles, and the power was too much. Magic knocked the lion off her feet, sending her flying into the base of a tree nearby.

“Naomi!” Eleanor shouted. Her cries were cut off as one of the Executors yanked back on the ropes.

The lion whimpered, before limping to her feet. Fire burst across her body again, but the Executors didn’t back down. One of them walked straight up to her. He threw his hands upward as he tossed her into the sky with his telekinesis. She landed on the ground so hard that the ground sank in where she lay.

“Step aside,” the burly Executor growled. He shoved the others away, and I noticed the mark of a Mortana on the back of his hand. “I’m going to rip this bitch’s soul from her body and send it straight to the Abyss.”

“Um… actually, it’s Aiya Nocshun in Elementai culture,” Elliot choked out past the noose.

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