Utterly Mad

Timeline: Just over 3 years before the cataclysm.

Characters involved: Aurelia

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Among the forest, a tangled mass choking out the the sight of a now-burning mansion, there was a girl. Running, clutching a weathered, blood-stained tome close with one hand, and a silvery dagger with the other. There were shouts close behind, the thunder of magical weapons and an eerie chanting. Latin. The mage hunters had found yet another sanctum.

Among the Ordos Sanguines, young men and woman at times were led astray, taken in when they had nowhere else to go. Raised to follow the Path to Power. Apprentices like her, raised to learn of blood magic and manipulating each other, jockeying for power and favor among the magi.

That meant nothing now. Their research was crumbling, desperate footholds eroding. The shrikes had abandoned them. There was a tentative exchange of notes, a wounded magi passing off sensitive research to a few of the others now that it was clear they were routed.

The chanting was close behind. There were two of them, her and another young man, almost her age. Teenagers, the both of them. Close enough to adulthood, but unfit to take on the duties of a magi. Only to study and aid their betters in routine duties, hoping they could trust each other for another day, and that their mentors didn't decide to set them up for a fatal lesson.

Cold blue eyes looked back for a brief moment. The boy was close behind, and so were the hunters. He was picking up the pace though. There was a slight gesture of the fingers, almost dropping the athame she held.

In but an instant, shadows seemed to shift and swirl, paths through the forest turning only to secretly lead her closest pursuer astray. And more importantly, obscuring how thick the terrain he was now running towards. Her fellow apprentice only just realized she'd vanished into the brush when he slammed full-tilt into a tree, that to his eyes looked like nothing more but a continuation of the path before him.

She in turn slipped off the woodland trail, content to let the mage hunters catch the other, more cautious not to make mistakes like the one he made. She hoped they hadn't seen her, she was much farther ahead of him. And hoped they wouldn't pay much attention to the fading illusions, given they were out of reach when she cast it, their masks would've seen right through it anyway.

On occasion she had to defend herself from her own brethren, earn power and respect like any other. As far as she was concerned, she'd rarely betrayed any of her brethren among the Sanguine Order, and never directly slew her kin except in self-defense.

Given her panic and adrenaline-fueled retreat, it would be quite some time before she could process the events that happened that day. And another day afterward before she resolved that her escape was no different than all the other lives she had to take to survive.

The Sanguine Order was dead, as far as she was concerned. It would be a long three years, and things would only get worse thereafter...