"Don't hurt me!" I pleaded. "I didn't do anything! I didn't do anything!"

" ' I '?" he asked angrily. " ' I '? Don't you mean 'We'?" He looked down at my clothes and decided, "No. You're not him. You're not the Secret Spell flaunter"

While his eyes wandered across the floor looking for some answer, he kept his knife at my throat and I noticed his ring. As strange as it sounds, in that brief moment I admired the pattern on the ring. It was crazy! The guy was about to slice my jugular and here I was admiring the pattern on his ring.

"Where did they go at this time of night?" The young man wondered aloud. I should attack him, I thought. I had just an engraving knife but for all I knew it was my only chance to save myself. The more I thought about doing it, the more nervous I got.

The young man stood up and started pacing, muttering about the possible places the magician and his family could have gone. Now, I told myself. Now is the perfect time to stab him. You don't have to kill him, just stop him. Stab him in the shin. That ought to slow him down.

But the idea just made me incredibly nervous. I began carving into the floorboards behind my back and felt myself relax. The young man looked like he was fighting a migraine.

"They can't just disappear, they can't..." a dawning of recognition came over him and he looked at me, my clothes, as if to confirm his conclusion.

He packed the hunter's knife away in his belt then jumped at me. He grabbed my head and looked me in the eyes sputtering some kind of incantation "VIIIR-TU MASSSS-AAA-CRE."

My body burned. I watched his face wrinkle, his facial hair creeping out at an astonishing rate. I realized my body was experiencing the same thing. I felt dizzy, and images of red splashed through my foggy head.