The Witch's Hunt by Misty Cogburn (top 100 books of all time checklist .TXT) 📕

Trávn sighed despondently. Kalsilk was surely as drained from their journey as he... let the Dragon sleep, he decided indifferently. With that, he tucked his friend back under the warm pelts and turned to face the door of the room.

There was only one exit, he noted.

It lay behind the solid, finely crafted gate of the present door. Yet, Trávn felt a sense of dread fill his being at the thought of crossing its threshold. For surely, it was in that direction those hauntingly pained cries had come...

Approaching the door as if it were something evil, Trávn was hesitant to make a single sound. The closer he came to the door, the more validated his precaution seemed to become. By the time he had made it to the door, those heartfelt cries had turned into near breathless screams of agony.

Trávn felt sick to his stomach at the many sounds. He felt the strong urge to protect the helpless victim, to soothe the injured being's woes; even despite the peculiar silence of his magic.

At the final sound of a long choked sob, Trávn could hold himself back no more... He threw open the door and rushed into the room. Only to find a room similar to that of the one he had just awoken from... it was larger than his own, maybe even more furnished, but most of all... it was empty.

With only the rooms flickering fire to light his path, Trávn stepped forward with trepidation. Those soft cries had stilled, but whimpers still came from behind the thick curtain of the large bed at the center of the strange room.

Whoever was injured surely lay behind its fabric.

Steeling himself to what horrors awaited him behind the curtain's veil. Trávn fought to quell the gore filled images that came to mind in rapid flashes at the sound of the Sea Devil's tortured captive.

What lay behind the curtain? 

He couldn't help but swallow drily at the thought.

Trávn approached the bed without a hero's bravo. Instead, he was overcome with leaden legs and trembling hands. He gripped the thick curtain, before taking a deep breath and forcefully steadying himself for what waited on the other side.

He would save the poor soul, even if he …died trying, he trembled at the thought.

He could do it… he assured himself.

Yet, just as he was about to throw back the curtain's iron wall, a hand snatched his own in a painful grip. With a sharp tug that nearly pulled his arm from its socket, Trávn found himself yanked into the other side of the veil.

He had hoped, with his very core, to stop the senseless violence he had overheard. To halt whatever Devil caused the poor soul’s pain. Yet, instead Trávn found himself straddled and pinned against a bed with a cold blade pressed against the underside of his jaw. Blind in the darkness of the curtain's thick veil, Trávn trembled fearfully.

At his sudden appearance, the strange soulful cries had died out. Now, all Trávn's senses could pick up in the pitch blackness was the sound of panting breaths coming from two mysterious figures.

One from the heavy figure above him and another nearby... somewhere he couldn't detect. Foolishly, he struggled against the other's hold. Nicking his own neck against the razor sharp edge of the other's blade.

With a strangled gasp at the burning pain, Trávn froze.

The grunting language he had heard when he first woke on the Devil's shore snarled down at him from the unknown assailant's lips. In the corner of his vision, Trávn could see a bright flash of blue light. Then in only seconds, magic began to swirl around them in small glowing orbs of pale yellow lights.

At first Trávn cringed, expecting next to be at the end of a Witch's blade.

Yet, as the light began to clear the inky blackness of their encampment, Trávn was shocked to see the third mysterious figure emerge in the orbs' soft glow. It was an impossibly thin boy. Nude as day, Trávn realized with some embarrassment, but it was the boy's eyes that stole his attentions.

They glowed with the use of his magic, the same silvery blue Trávn's own brown eyes turned when he used his gifts. The mysterious boy was a Wizard... a very naked and very small ...Wizard.

As Trávn looked up at the other who had him pinned to the bed, realization struck him both hard and fast. Like a stone of common sense thrown against his impossibly thick skull, it was only then did he realize what he had done...

There on Trávn's chest stood the tall member of his assailant's sex…

With a loud cry Trávn flinched away in disgust, pleading for the man to remove himself from Trávn's person and cover himself. With his eyes clenched shut, Trávn turned his neck to face anywhere.

Anywhere, save where the other sat atop his chest.

It was an awkward moment of silence between the three… Before the other slowly took the knife from Trávn's throat, then there was a sudden clang of the knife being thrown outside the curtain's veil.

Trávn peeked open one eye hesitantly, then once again for a second time as he felt the gripping thighs of his assailant's legs loosening its hold. When he realized the other no longer intended to pin him against the bed, Trávn shot upwards.

Rolling the larger man off of his form as he scrambled backwards in an attempt to distance himself from the strange pair. Fully aware now, of what he had interrupted, Trávn found he couldn't meet the others eyes.

He fretfully looked anywhere other than where the two sat.

With their wide stares boring into his person, Trávn timidly locked his gaze to the fisted fabric of his woolen nightshirt, crinkled inside his clenched hands.

Never before had he heard of two men rutting….

Yet, even now the bedding smelled of sex and sweat. How could this large man fornicate with such a small boy? Trávn marveled in his thoughts, his mind supplying images he would have rather never seen.

It was no wonder the boy's cries had sounded so pained! Trávn nodded sagely to himself, deep in his thoughts.

Oh Gods! Trávn swallowed thickly in horror.

What if ...the larger man, had forced himself on the boy?

Cowardly, Trávn bit his lip. His first thought being he didn't want an altercation with such a enormous man, but he couldn't allow such a thing to happen to such a delicate looking person! Could he...?

Surely it wasn't his place to quarrel in such private matters as these…

He warred within himself, too pathetic to speak out this thoughts or even look at the other two. Unbeknownst to Trávn, the longer his thoughts kept him, the heavier the tension had become around the three males.

Lost in his own world, Trávn felt safe…

Before finally, a sharp cry broke Trávn from his thoughts.

Flinching from surprise, Trávn looked towards where the boy lay posed against the beds soft pillows. His eyes had never been wider than what they opened at that moment. Here he had been pondering if he should rescue the boy… or not, and this is what greets him?

Feeling as if his eyes were burned from what he saw, Trávn's jaw dropped. His back went rigid at the sight of the small boy stroking himself in abandon. In front of the two others on the bed, the small red-headed wizard moaned in an urging manner at himself. The boy's blue eyes blazing in a magical glow filled with raw lust.

He had looked only for a second, yet Trávn's face flamed with shame.

In a wild whirl Trávn fled from the bed, running back to the room from which he had come and slamming the door behind him with a loud bang.

Somehow taking his prompt retirement as their cue, the pair in the other room continued. Already cries and garbled grunts filled the air around him, echoing from within the outer room adjoining his own.

Trávn cringed, his magic suddenly returning to envelope him like a comforting sleeve, set to soothe his distress at that what he had just witnessed. With a wave of his hand, his magic tossed a large chair to rest against the bedroom's door, blocking entry from any unwanted parties.

Then, with his hand pushed outwards as if he were halting the offending sounds, he spelled the room to be silent. Keeping any unwanted cries from entering the room. Till only his own panicked breaths could be heard within the room's walls.

Why had he entered such a strange situation? He wondered in horror. He was no hero, if anything he was more cowardly than even Kalsilk's scaly hide.

Why did he think he could save that 'tortured soul'? He wondered completely mortified by his own stupidity.

He was no hero, how could he think himself to be courageous enough to face a Sea Devil alone?  With no magic, BY GODS?!

The entire venture had been pointless, it had earned him nothing more than shameful embarrassment and a grunted word from the Devil's own tongue... Arëgen. Somehow it seemed his magic was slowly supplying the language of the Sea Devils.

It was the first word he could make out in the garble speech of their barbaric tongue.

Trávn stared into the fire of his room, wishing more than anything for his Sire's counsel in his current matters. Yet, he was alone, as he had been for months… ever since the Witches had cut the link between them...

Nothing he knew could explain the importance of that single word. Why, of all the muddled words he'd heard, did that one word seem so important?

Was it because it came from the small Wizard's lips?

Once again greeted by the mental image he had just witnessed, Trávn turned from the fire in a heated huff to restlessly pace the room.

There was no way that shameful being was a Wizard, Trávn denied it savagely. No Wizard would allow himself such faults…

Stomping his foot to affirm his conviction, Trávn yelped madly. Only then noticing his feet were chilled to the point of ice. Pins and needles prodded at the tender flesh of his feet in numbing agony.

Even the northern temperature seemed to war with his body, Trávn sighed. Come winter he would freeze for sure, he thought stiffly without a single ounce of humor.

Climbing back into his provided bed, Trávn curled around Kalsilk's warm form. It was almost stifling being in the room with a fire and having a dragon beneath his sheets and furs. Yet, to Trávn it reminded him of the heated nights of his humid home.

He closed his eyes picturing the starry sky of the delta regions his foster family had farmed. Who was he to judge what a Wizard should be, when he himself was but a pathetic, cowardly, farm boy?

Trávn sighed deeply as he shut his eyes.

These northern lands were strange to him. The constant rain and chill in the air, the thick blinding mist that seemed to settle across the landscape, the dense woods, beasts, and people; all of them, odd to what he had been taught to know on his humble farm.

His home was in the flatlands, beneath a long stretch of mountain ranges. The land was fertile, and the heavens generous with ample rainfall. From well before dawn, till the sun faded from sight, the villagers would work the land farming and irrigating water to new plots to plow.

Like most of those from the Helios, Trávn's hair was blond and his skin tanned by the long hours he'd worked under the sun. Here the people were deathly pale, and thick blooded enough to stain their hair such a strange fiery red…

He'd met many strange peoples along his journey; however the Devils were the oddest in variety. Why would his Chosen be birth to such a culture, taught to revere blood and theft? Trávn wondered as he exhaled deeply from his nostrils.

Was it his penance? For all the death that he had amassed along his journey, was this the Gods way of telling him that he deserved no Chosen? Only death…?

Did he deserve to be