Chapter 7

As the two women were still embracing in the waning late afternoon light, with Kat now only softly crying after getting most of it out of her system, the door burst open and Terrance and Rory came in holding a struggling, screaming to be let go, young boy between them.

"This tyke matches all the descriptions given to us. I'm sure he's the right one because as soon as it became apparent that we were headed here he started to struggle harder," said Rory with a grasp under the boy's right arm.

"We promised to let him meet a mage once we heard he was asking around about one, but once we started here he tried to bolt. Little bugger is pretty fast on his feet," said Terrance holding the other arm.

Seeing the boy Ariel broke free of Kat and dropped to the floor in front of him.

The boy, seeing the pretty woman do this settled down and watched her. He was amazed she dropped to her knees as if she was begging him.

"Please, did you do something to my husband? He has these marks on his chest like someone put their hands on him, but no one recognizes the spell. Can you help please?" begged Ariel desperately.

"Ma'am I'm not sure what you're talking about," said the small boy quietly.

"A large man with muscles, curly hair, and brown eyes. Have you ever seen him at this house before?" asked Ariel.

When she saw the boy look away she knew she had her answer.

"What did you do to him?" asked Ariel quietly.

"He touched my shoulder and something happened. I just wanted him away from me and I pushed him. I didn't look back to see what happened to him. I just ran," said the boy.

Coming to kneel next to Ariel, Kat was still wiping her eyes as she tried to smile through the tears.

"Honey, have you ever done anything like this before?" asked Kat

Seeing a second young pretty woman on the floor in front of him the boy smiled as he nodded at her.

"What have you done that you can remember?" asked Kat.

The boy recounted the first time he destroyed his family's farm. He also recounted the time he managed to scare some wild boars away while he traveled by just wishing them to leave him alone. Kat was sure it was a fear spell, but she waited to see what else he had done.

He mentioned a few other things, like when he managed to put his hand in the water while he was hungry and he thought he had killed several fish and planned to eat them, but as he started making a fire to eat them with they all started flopping around and he had to bash them with a rock to make them stop. Kat was sure he unknowingly cast a form of paralyze spell.

Just what was this boy naturally capable of, she was starting to wonder.

But when he got to the point of describing what happened at the camp outside of Carlson's Grove everyone looked around at each other. It wasn't until he described what the camp looked like that they were sure that he had been there.

This was the mage who killed all those men? It was hard to believe him when he told them he had no idea how all those men died while they were kicking him.

"Honey you are a very powerful black mage. Did you know that?" asked Kat.

The boy just shook his head no.

"Honey you need a teacher. Why don't you have one?" asked Kat.

"I tried. But my first Master was killed by the villagers because he was evil. All he did was hurt others like he did me. I don't want to be like that. I want to be liked because I can help! That's all I've ever wanted to be able to do!" said the small boy frantically.

"Honey, I know what you mean. When you have a power that can be a negative you have to use all the benefits you can to make it a positive," said Kat quietly.

She could relate knowing that her power was fueled not only by sex, but would be seen as a negative in polite company.

"You have the same power as me?" asked the small boy in hopeful wonder.

"Not quite, but I am a mage," said Kat as she waved her hand and it started glowing blue.

"You can't help me because you don't have this same ugly power like I do!" said the boy angrily.

Before anyone could stop him both of his hands started to glow black.

Reaching quickly out with equally glowing black hands, Kat grabbed both of his hands in hers, negating his spell at the same time, just as Rory and Terrance dropped him in fear.

While still holding his hands Kat forced him to look up into her eyes. He had stopped to look down at her glowing black hands when she grabbed his, but now he looked at her in puzzled wonderment.

"Honey I know full well what you are talking about, as you can see I can use black as well as you. But sometimes there are those who still have it far worse than you do. You have to do what you can to help them. Please believe me I only want to help you," said Kat quietly.

The boy's hands stopped glowing as he threw his small arms around her neck and started to cry. Kat just held him close and stroked his hair as she let him cry. For the first time in his young life he found someone who seemed to understand and he didn't feel so alone.

After a few moments when he seemed to settle down Rory asked "What about Nate. How does this help him?"

"Honey, what is your name?" asked Kat taking her cue from Rory.

"Jarrod. I don't have a last name since my family threw me out and said to never tell anyone where I came from," said Jarrod quietly.

"Jarrod, can you tell me what you did to my friend? He's very sick and getting worse," said Kat.

"I don't know. Sometimes the power just starts on its own without me having done anything," said Jarrod.

"What does this mean?" asked Ariel as she looked at Kat over Jarrod's head while watching all of this play out.

"It means, we now have a problem," said Kat quietly as she looked over at her.

Having taken the boy, fed him, and put him down to go to sleep in the other room, everyone then assembled in the main room.

"What it means is that he's untrained. He has no control over his power and no way to tell us what he's done. I'm not sure what to do now. Most of my plan was around either getting the mage to tell us what they did or if he was male then I was going to read his mind," said Kat.

"YOU CAN READ MINDS!" roared Terrance at the top of his lungs.

"Yes I can," said Kat quietly.

"So when were you going to tell us this?" asked Rory quietly himself.

"I wasn't ever. It is something that I have to make myself do it because it takes power to even do it. It's not like I just read the mind of everyone I come in contact with. And I don't have to read your minds to know how much both of you hate me, so just why would I ever bring it up?" ask Kat.

"Any other tidbits you want to share with everyone else since you're in such a sharing mood?" asked Terrance spitefully.

"Just this, I am so sorry and I was wrong. I don't think I ever apologized, but I need to. I was blaming all men for something I caused myself. I hated all men because I wasn't strong enough to face what I did. I can never ask for your complete forgiveness, but can't you see by my actions and by the actions of those I've helped I've changed?" asked Kat hopefully.

The two of them sat glowering and ignoring her last question, but before Terrance could speak again Ariel quickly asked "So can we still save him? Is still possible?"

"To be honest I'm not sure. We need..."started Kat but she never finished.

The next sound everyone heard was the loud sound of the bedroom door where Nathan was sleeping completely being wrenched off its hinges.

Looking back startled they could see the wide eyes of Nathan staring into the room as he savagely threw the door behind him into the bedroom.

He was delirious and sweating profusely. The black handprints almost seemed as if they were now glowing. Apparently in his poisoned delirium he had managed to somehow dress just only in his pants.

"Where is my wife?! Where is Brianna?!" roared Nathan.

"I'm here honey. Honey what's the matter? You're sick, you need to stay in bed," said Ariel as she tried to rise slowly and worked her way to him.

As she approached him, he pushed her down on the ground hard.

"Where is my WIFE?! Where is BRIANNA! Where is she! I'm not going to let any of you take her from ME! WHERE IS SHE!" yelled Nathan looking wildly around the room.

Jarrod, hearing the noise came to the doorway and barely opened it.

He could see what was going on, but was too scared to leave the room. He closed the door and covered his head with his hands in fear. His hands started to glow again, but thankfully nothing resembling power left the room and so no one died.

Rory and Terrance, thinking to restrain Nathan and take him back to bed each grabbed an arm. The next thing they knew they were flying across the room in separate directions to crash into things that were in front of the walls.

As they hit things Terrance took out a bookcase and Rory took out a table, and they both lay unmoving in the wreckage of whatever they hit.

Kat had never witnessed anyone show this type of brutal strength before. The effortless way he flung them around made it look as if they had no real weight at all. He might as well have been throwing small rocks around in the room as hard as they hit.

She started to cast a spell to restrain him, but Ariel quickly reached out and stopped her as she started to get up.

"We don't know what other magic's might do if they interact with that unknown black magic do we? We got lucky with the white, but with the way he looks now we can't take any more chances, so isn't it best we don't do anymore experimenting until we do know?" asked Ariel.

Kat nodded, but right as she did Nathan raced for the door, lowered his shoulder, and hit it with his full weight. The door was match sticks in seconds as it almost appeared to explode outwards.

Nathan didn't stop but kept going at a full bore run, barefoot, out into the night.

Looking over at Ariel in surprise, both Ariel and Kat jumped to their feet and sprinted after him. Ariel was so surprised she left her both of her weapons behind.

As she tried to catch him Ariel was easily outpacing her as she followed Nathan, but if he didn't stop soon they would both be gone from Kat's sight.

The young man was always watching the house where that female he had a deep desire for was staying. He preferred the wide open sky to being confined inside a structure, but there were times when he went inside when he needed too.

As he saw the door explode outwards and the man come racing outside, he watched for a moment before he saw the female in question he desired come racing outside followed closely by another.

"Maybe she's finally tired of him and was giving him a sporting chance to get away before she killed him?" thought the young man with hopeful glee.

Racing after the group he wanted to see how the kill went.

Kat stopped to catch her breath after having lost the two of them long ago in the darkened night. She couldn't believe how fast they were. They lost her in minutes as they quickly disappeared into the night.

Suddenly she heard the deafening sound of large spells going off in the night in the distance.

Trying to look where she thought the sounds were coming from, after a few moments she could suddenly now see various different flashes of light that completely lit up the night sky.

Now having a direction to go towards Kat took off sprinting that way.

As he ran Nathan was reliving the night that he almost lost Brianna from the Dragon. He didn't recognize any of the faces in the room with him as he desperately tried to find his wife. He was running trying to locate her in a forest, a forest that he didn't seem to recognize as being anything familiar or close to his former home.

He vaguely recalled the two men who tried to stop him from finding her, but he shook them off in seconds. He did what he had to, to prevent them from stopping him, this was far too important.

Nathan also recalled that there was one woman who looked almost like his wife, but his wife always braided her hair a certain way because he liked it like that and always wore her guild colors. So he knew that the woman who trying to trick him because she didn't look like any of that.

His driving thought was that he had to get away from them. They were keeping him away from Brianna. He needed to do something to slow them down.

He would find Brianna on his own with his own power.

Nathan shouldn't have been that much faster than she was, but somehow he was, and she was having problems catching him. She was sure he was using his blue magic to enhance his abilities. As she focused on him with her enhanced eyes, she could then see the faintly perceptible magical glow, so now she was sure he was.

No matter how hard she tried he was steadily pulling away from her and the distance between them was growing. Even with her enhanced strength and abilities he was still running wildly away from her.

Yet to her surprise, and all of a sudden, Nathan started using magic to cast spells and attack things wildly around him without turning around.

As she looked on, Ariel saw him hold out his right hand and snap his fingers.

Suddenly the tree just in front of her he had just run past exploded from the inside out and red debris rained down around her. While she ran through the flaming and falling wood, at first she was worried about a forest fire, but then she realized that the ground had been getting enough moisture from the evening dew that it shouldn't be an issue, and so she pressed on.