Chapter 1- Watcmen and Golems
“Hey, stop moving so fast!”
“Ouch! Who stepped on my foot?”
“Shut up you two! We’ll get busted if you don’t keep quiet.”
“Like you can talk.”
“Which genius’ idea was it to make a camouflage sheet?”
“Someone’s coming!”
We pressed ourselves up against the wall and held the sheet still in front of us. Although for one heart stopping moment the silhouette of the person stopped in front of us, it carryied on walking past us a few second later. We all expressed a sigh of relief.
“Seth, how far do we have to go?” asked Cassie, who was wedged in between me and Nate.
“We need to shuffle about ten metres then leg it across the road,” I replied. We quietly made the rest of the way without talking and prepared to run.
“Wait, where are we? Isn’t this the wrong side of town?” asked Nate. I pretended to give a start and look surprised. We had ended up in what was known as Dead Street, where abandoned buildings destined for demolition clustered in many numbers. It was a very glum place that tended to attract the nastier characters of the town.
“We broke the curfew to end up in Dead Street?” hissed Cassie.
“Looks like it, what do we do? Go back?” I replied. To be honest I’d planned this all along. I knew that lots of the kids who went on graffiti raids got caught and I had no wish to end up doing long hours of community service. I had hoped the reputation of this place would scare them into giving up this venture.
“Yeah, go back I suppose,” said Nate nervously.
“No, we’re going to get there,” said Cassie.
“Fine, but I'm not going with you!” I snapped. This had been her idea and she was stubbornly refusing to back down. I wondered if an injured pride had led her to this, dragging me and Nate along.
“Well now, what do we have here?” said voice thick with a northern accent somewhere to my left.
“Seth, was that you?” asked Cassie.
“Since when did I sound northern?” I could clearly here loud footsteps coming towards us. Whoever it was, they wearing boots and they were causing a metallic chink with each step so I was certain it was a watchman. Great.
“What do we do?” whispered Nate.
“Isn’t it obvious? Run!”
I threw the sheet away on the word run and sped the opposite direction to the footsteps. I made sure the hood of my jacket was up as I ran quickly; adrenalin providing a much-needed boost. I wondered for a second what had happened to Nate and Cassie. Hopefully they would have had the sense to split up. We might have been able to pretend we were eighteen if we had fake I.Ds because we were demi-mancers, but the genius known as Nathanial Cadwell had forgotten to acquire them for us.
I slipped into an alleyway and hid behind a bin while I caught my breath. In the silence the sound of my beating heart filled my ears. A minute later I heard the thudding of boots approaching. I buried a treacherous thought that wished this ill fortune upon Nate or Cassie and moved myself deeper in to the shadows.
There was a sudden sound deeper in the alley just as the footsteps passed my alleyway. They stopped. I cursed silently and stayed completely still, keeping my breaths to a minimum. There was a clatter as the watchman did something followed by a loud bang which made me jump and topple the bin. There stood a tall man with a smoking musket aimed down the alleyway. He laughed to himself as he put his ramrod away.
“Hello there,” said the watchman with an smug smile. “You’re nicked.”
*
I was led next a military jeep where Cassie and Nate were waiting along with two watchmen.
“Is he the last one?” asked one of the men as we approached. I could see that my friends were incapacitated with binding charms on their hands like me.
“Yes lieutenant, there were only three,” replied my captor.
“The police here are abysmal, they should be the ones catching curfew breakers, not the military,” said the other man.
“The youths here keep causing trouble. It won't be long before the Truebane rebels take an interest in here and things get more sophisticated than graffiti,” said the Lieutenant. “Did that one have spray paint too?”
“Yes sir. Lets just get them to a police station; it’ll be community service for sure. They can clean up the mess their friends made.”
“Agreed sergeant.”
We were ushered into the back of the jeep along with the watchman that had caught me, while the other two took the drivers seat. The engine growled into life and the vehicle began to move. Our guard began to inspect his weapon to pass the time.
“Why can’t we use modern fire arms?” asked Nate after a while. “They never explain it to us at school.”
“So you’re a demi-mancer, eh? No-one knows, its supposed to be something to do with our magical abilities. Even the eggheads among the trueborn can‘t see why. Anyway, until someone does we‘re stuck with old muskets and rifles. Suppose it stops the trueborn from taking over everything. They blast the normals with magic; the normals retaliate with automatics, tanks and explosives. ”
Suddenly, we all lurched over as the driver hit the brakes and the jeep skidded before coming to a halt. I felt something horribly cold pass through me and shivered.
“Spirit! Get the kids out, the jeep's engine is gone” said Lieutenant's voice as he banged the side of the jeep. Our guard quickly kicked open the door, his years of being a soldier kicking in.
“Get out. If it kills or incapacitates us then you’d better run like hell. But don't try and get away beforehand or we'll get you,” he said as he dispelled the binding charms on us. He jumped out of the back and we followed suit.
“Happy now? I‘m sure we can escape community service by having our souls digested by a spirit,” I said dryly to Cassie. She gave me a withering look in return but said nothing. On a normal day I would have savoured this small victory but battling spirits (or watching at the sidelines) after being caught breaking curfew didn’t meet my standards of a ‘normal’ day.
We quickly got out into an abandoned street that had seriously fallen into disrepair or had been trashed. I glanced over to where the other watchmen were. They were both kneeling and had their muskets aimed at what looked like a human shaped shadow. Only it was three times bigger than a person and several times butcher, with no definable features, and thick stumps ideal for smashing instead of hands and feet. Everything about it reeked destruction.
“Do you think its friendly?” asked Nate hopefully as our guard rushed to join his comrades.
“Does anything friendly rip up half the street?” asked Cassie mockingly. “It‘s a golem, they have poor senses but they‘re very strong. Essentially a wrecking ball in spirit form. If we keep still it might not notice us.”
“But doesn’t killing it involve moving a lot?”
“Inevitably. But that’s the watchmen’s problem.” I thought the comment was rather callous but I let it rest. It was said that danger can bring out the best or worst in people. This time it was the latter.
“Fire!”
Completely unprepared for the noise, I jumped out of my skin. I quickly shifted the winds of magic slightly and created a barrier from noise on my ears. The result was very satisfying. Of course, there was still the problem of the twenty foot golem to worry about. I stared in awe as the watchmen fired and sporadically blasted it with magic, fending of its blows with carefully timed deflections.
The golem stopped flailing for a moment and almost seemed passive as chunks of it were torn away and holes shot through it. The rattling of ramrods forcing bullets into the muzzles of the muskets was now clearly audible.
“What’s it doing?” I asked Cassie. I was sure it couldn’t be anything good. Sure enough, I got my answer three seconds later.
A sudden shockwave threw us all off our feet and with a surprising display of speed the golem rushed the soldiers who managed let off another shot before being swallowed by the dark mass of the golem. I doubted that I would ever see them alive again. Having dealt with the watch, it now turned its attention on us. I tried to move but found that I couldn’t. It was as if a giant invisible weight had been put on me. The grunts of surprise next to me told me that Nate and Cassie had fallen into the same predicament.
A fork of green lightning suddenly shot past us and struck the golem. Black tendrils began to smoke from it and it seemed to diminish in size. Next, a stream of lightning bore down on it, steadily reducing in size until it was no more.
I heard the slow, soft footsteps of someone approaching warily. A girl my age with tawny hair came into my view upside down. She wore a frown on her face as she looked at me and after a while waved a gloved hand. Instantly I felt extremely light as if a gust of wind could blow me away. The girl offered me hand and I took it.
A strange green lightning like tendril ran down my arm as soon as I touched her and I felt a sharp pain like an electric shock and quickly withdrew my hand. She did exactly the same with a hiss of pain though no tendril ran down her arm.
“What was that?” she demanded. I realised to my disbelief that she had great white,feathery wings protruding from her shoulders.
“I don’t have a clue,” I said. Then, I realised what she was. “Now thanks for saving us but if you don’t mind we’d like to get away.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because, you are not in the clear yet, mate. You are still in grave danger from an unknown force in this area and until I’ve eliminated the source, you’re staying with me. Unless you‘d rather be ambushed and have your spirits stolen while you try to get home. The choice is yours,” she said with a mischievous wink.
Well, against that ultimatum I didn’t have much choice, did I?
Sorry. I'm not very good at expressing myself, I can just tell when I don't like it, but I can't tell you what exactly is wrong with it. Just hang with me. 
