• Two days passed in a blur, and I wasn’t feeling any better. In fact, if possible, I was feeling worse, seeing Fenrir carting a continuous stream of dead bodies of the audience past the hut they kept me in under a threadbare patched blanket. He had spread some kind of orange paste on my burns, which just made them even more painful, and also made it impossible to sleep. I twisted and turned on the rickety bed in the dirty, dank antechamber which was rapidly becoming my own personal hell. I rolled over twice and vomited right over the edge of the bed, into a grimy bucket. Swilling out my mouth from a cracked jug, I noticed Fenrir shouting from outside in the yard. Suddenly Inge burst in.
    “Marsh! Marsh! Dad’s found another live one!”
    My jaw dropped for the third time. I wish it would stop doing that.
    I bolted out of the bed, ignoring the throb from the burns and hurried as fast as I could out of the hut. Inge was running ahead of me towards the cart which had just pulled up in the yard making a large cloud of dust, being whipped away by the wind. Fenrir had scrambled over the partition and was crouched in the back of the cart over something that I couldn’t see. I limped towards the cart, where Fenrir and Inge were talking hushed voices.
    “W-where am I?” came a voice from inside the cart, weakened by two days outside on the streets. It was a voice that was impossible for me to mistake, and my eyes went wide. I grabbed the side of the cart, pain lancing through my side, and lifted myself up into the back, collapsing in a heap next to Inge and Fenrir, who were hunched over a body flat on his back spread eagled and taking up most of the space. I crawled over, and looked over Fenrir’s shoulder. There, with his ginger hair spread round his head like a burning halo, was Aids.
    As he saw me, his face cracked into a small smile, cracking his dry lips and making a drop of blood well up, which he was too exhausted to lick off.
    “Hey” he said, his voice cracking like his lip.
    “Hey man. You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you” I said, grinning.
    “I guess not” he whispered.
    “Er- Marsh? You need to go. He needs food and rest. If you want, you can fill him in” muttered Inge.
    “OK.” I nodded, and slid down to the dirt, making a puff of dust. I leant against the side of the cart, listening to Fenrir and Inge treating Aids in the cart. I tried to stop myself breaking into an uncontrollable grin. Things that had looked so depressing a few minutes ago seemed suddenly brighter and happier. I even stopped complaining to myself about the stabbing pains in my burns. I hobbled back inside and lay on my back, staring at the cracked plaster ceiling. At least the old world I once knew hadn’t totally disappeared. I hugged my scratchy pillow, and finally nodded off to sleep.

    I seemed paralyzed as the white- hot fire spread towards me, scorching the stage and burning people mid step, turning them into blackened, contorted corpses. Everything slowed down as it covered the last few centimetres with an evil crackling sound and spread onto my feet. The first awful stabs of agony hit, and my vision was tainted with red. ’The pain is awful- surely it can’t go on! I just want to die-‘
    I woke up, sitting bolt upright, panting. I stared at the uneven wall until my breathing slowed down and the awful sense of utter panic subsided. I slowly lay back down, shaking, when I heard Aidan’s voice from the back of the room.
    “I think I can guess what that dream was about.”
    I sighed in response.
    “I can’t remember much of that night, to be honest. I just remember the most terrible pain...”
    “There isn’t much more to remember than that” I replied, staring up at the sagging plaster again.
    “What’s gonna happen now, Marsh? I mean, I don’t even know where we are.”
    “I’ve been told to fill you in. Is now a good time for it? And plus it’ll help me forget the dream.” I shuddered.
    “Yeah, sure. Start with where we are.”
    “Well, this town is called Fellemor, and it’s in the South East of the Continent, Balaeth.”
    “How did we get here, then?”
    “The fire thing that got us here was Wytchfire, used by warlocks-“
    “Warlocks?”
    “Yep. It’s used by them to curse their enemies. Basically it went wrong, and should have burnt us all and deposited our dead bodies around this town. Apparently though, I and now you have got some kind of latent warlocky power that stopped us being burnt to a charred scrap.”
    “Wait- did you say we were warlocks?”
    “Apparently, we are.”
    There was a heavy silence. If it had been light enough to see Aids, I bet I would have seen his jaw drop.