text: [Themes: horror]
  
  Having your mentor there but feeling like you're on your own is driving you crazy, you're so used to getting advice and guidance from her with your studies and this feels like the biggest test of your life. You decide you really need to consult her about the whole situation.
  
  You go to the nearest corner you can find, where the doorframe for the kitchen from the corridor creates a little niche and you whisper "Are you there master?"
  
  "I'm here," she whispers back, "but I don't think it's safe for us to talk. The author of the letter was specific that you should be alone and we don't want to jeopardise your sister's wellbeing.".
  
  "I know," you reply, "but I have no idea what I'm doing!"
  
  "Calm down," she whispers, "take a deep breath. You need to keep a clear head."
  
  You take a deep breath in and slowly let it out. Your mentor waits for you to do this three times before she says anything else.
  
  "Ok," she whispers, "something strange is going on in this house. There's magic in here, I can feel it, but it's dark magic."
  
  "Amelia." is all you can say in reply.
  
  "Yes, I'm afraid I believe your sister is in danger here." you mentor says quietly. "We need to find her, but we need to know what she's involved in too."
  
  "What do you mean?" you ask.
  
  "I don't think she's been taken for the fun of it, they've got a specific purpose in mind for her and I..."
  
  "YOU WERE TOLD TO COME ALONE!" boomed a voice, cutting off your mentor mid-sentence. In your concern for your sister, you and your mentor had quite forgotten to keep your voices to a whisper and evidently, you have been heard.
  
  "I am alone!" you shout back, though you don't sound convincing even to yourself. "I was thinking out loud!"
  
  "LIAR!" screamed the voice and the corridor was suddenly filled with flames.
  
  The fire was so bright, you had to close your eyes and you instinctively put your arm over your face, shielding it from the heat, which was instant and all around you. The next thing you know, your arm has been grabbed and you've been pulled off your feet and sent sprawling onto the floor. You break your fall with your arms and see that you've landed in the kitchen, and there's no fire there. The fire is entirely filling the corridor but stops exactly at the doorway between the corridor and the kitchen.
  
  You look to the side, at the person who pulled you out of the fire, and see your mentor sprawled on the floor nearby, smiling at you, and it's a wonderful sight.
  
  "Thank you!" you say to her exuberantly.
  
  "Anytime you want to repay the favour, please go ahead!" says your mentor jovially. Then her smile drops as she looks back at the corridor. "We still need to find your sister."
  
  You look back at the flames with a panicked whip of your head "You don't think she's..."
  
  "I think she's safe from the fire." replies your mentor calmly. "That seems to have been a very specifically targeted spell. We do need to find her soon though, their power is stronger than I thought, it's not easy to have that much control over fire."
  
  You start looking around the now well lit kitchen for ideas of what to do next, when suddenly it is plunged into darkness as the fire, all at once, disappears.
  
  "Move!" says your mentor in a half-whisper and you hear her scrambling to her feet as your sight tries to adjust to the sudden darkness. You hurriedly get to your feet and rush to the side of the room. Your mentor is already there. She puts her hand on the top of your head and pushes down; you crouch down obediently and she crouches down next to you.
  
  "Under the table." she whispers, pointing to the table in the centre of the kitchen. You are both crawling across the floor when you hear slow, steady footsteps coming from the corridor. You crawl as quickly as you can and you both make it underneath the table just before a figure wearing a dark robe with the hood over the head appears in the doorway.
  
  "I know you're in here." says the voice, it's the same voice you heard shouting just before the fire appeared. "Otherwise I would have already seen your charred bodies on the floor."
  
  You hold your breath, hoping you won't give away your location. You look at your mentor next to you and you can see that she has her eyes closed and is mouthing something over and over.
  
  "Let's shed a little light on the matter shall we?" asks the hooded figure and the room is suddenly lit up as all the candles in the room burst to life.
  
  What do you do now?
  
  > go on the offensive.
  The room was all lit up now and you know you must only have moments before the hooded figure sees you. There is no way you are able to prepare a spell in that time, you need to attack physically and you need to do it now whilst you still have the element of surprise.
  
  You look around in the newly lit room and see a carving knife on the floor half underneath the table behind you. You wait for the hooded figure to take a couple of steps towards you, until they're within an arms length of your hiding place underneath the table; in one motion you reach behind you and grab the knife then propel yourself from underneath the table, stabbing the knife down into where the hooded figure's thigh will be. But the knife hits what feels like a brick wall, the jar of the impact knocks the knife from your grip and it spins across the floor.
  
  You look up at the hooded figure, who is looking down at you, face hidden by the cloak's hood even in the lit room. You see their leg rising and the foot plummeting to your head before you're able to move it and everything goes black.
  
  You slowly start to come to, the first thing you notice is how uncomfortable your arms are behind your back. You drift closer to consciousness and manage to tell your arms to move, to end the discomfort, but they don't respond. This acts as a catalyst to you fully waking and you slowly open your eyes.
  
  The room you are in has no windows but it is lit by about eight flaming braziers around the edges of it. It looks about the same size as the entrance hall to the building, but with a much lower ceiling. There are figures in black cloaks, their heads covered by tall hoods, stood in a circle around the centre of the room and chanting something which you can't make out. You can see through the gaps between them that there is some kind of symbol painted on the floor in white, with candles and other things you can't make out around it.
  
  You shift your body awkwardly, your hands are bound behind your back and your legs are bound together with rope and there is a cloth tied around your head at your mouth, gagging you. You manage to manoeuvre enough to sit upright, your back against a wall of the room, and from your new vantage point, you can see what is in the centre of the circle of hooded figures, what is in the centre of the symbol painted on the floor.
  
  "Amelia!" you cry out, but it comes out as just a muffled noise. None of the hooded figures react your moving or attempted shouting, though it's possible they couldn't hear you over the sound of their chanting which is starting to really unnerve you.
  
  You push your back up against the wall and use your legs to push you up it until you're in a slightly unstable standing position. You have a different perspective now as you look between the shoulders of the hooded figures; you can see your mentor unconscious and bound on the opposite side of the room to you and you can also now see the symbol which is painted onto the floor which swoops around your sister with a line intersecting the curve and forming a solid line around her.
  
  You can see a few of the items which are dotted around the symbol now, they look like figurines of strange, alien, hideous creatures; something about them screams inside your head when you look at them. Your sister is curled up on the floor, there are no tears and you realise she must have expended all the energy she had for crying some time ago, she was probably now into the midst of despair.
  
  You stand there, with your legs bound, with your hands tied behind your back, and you struggle to think of a way in which you can help your sister. You look around desperately for something you can use to free your bonds, something you can do which will help her. You try to think if there is any magic you can do without any ingredients, without any equipment and without even the use of your hands but you can't think of anything which can help.
  
  Then you see a table in a corner of the room, a small table with three large knives laid out carefully on it. As quietly as you can, you start to hop around the edge of the room towards the table.
  
  The chanting abruptly stops and all of the hooded figures turn to face you in unison. You stop dead and lean back against the wall to keep your balance, wishing you could do veiling magic like your mentor can, wishing you could blend into the room and not be seen, but your talents were never for the subtleties of veiling and your emotions right now would probably prevent you from being able to create one even if you had the capabilities.
  
  Three figures break away from the circle and walk over to you whilst you see a fourth one go to the table in the corner that you were trying to reach yourself. You struggle as they grab you but with your limbs restricted, there's only so much you can do and they carry you over to the centre of the room.
  
  They lay you down on the symbol painted in the floor over the line which intersects the curve. Three of them are holding you in place and your struggling only serves to tire you out. One figure holds a knife directly above your face, point down and the hooded figures all start chanting again; they're chanting something different this time, you can't make out the words but the rhythm of the chant is quite different.
  
  You look over to your sister and she is staring blankly at you, curled up, hugging her knees as she lies on her side. You try to yell at her to help you but the gag is muffling your words and Amelia isn't reacting at all, she seems to be completely catatonic and you shudder to think of what they have done to her to put her in that state.
  
  You look around in complete desperation for something or someone to help you, but all you can see is the hooded figures and the knife. A dark mist seems to be curling around you now, slowly winding around each part of your body. Once it has completely encapsulated you, you see the mist start to resolve into a shape with your body within it.
  
  The mist shape becomes a great beast with tentacles sprouting from its face and huge, lumpy limbs which look as though they're formed from many tumours and lesions. You feel your body rise up as the mist figure rises and then you feel the knife slice across your throat and the wet of your blood running down your neck and chest, and then there is nothing but blackness.