Sorry about the length of this chapter...I swear that normally they shall be MUCH longer! :)

FULL SUMMARY:

Max is a young witch, only fifteen years of age and still playing with petty little school-girl spells.… Despite that, everyone believes she's going to be pretty powerful like her mother was...you know, once she's a woman. When the council assigns her a new "assistant" that she must train, her world is flipped around completely. But her new assistant isn't all that he seems to be. There's dark things lurking behind the walls of the castle, and even darker things seem to be coming out. And worse: they're targeting her.

Read and review, pllllleeeeassse! XD

~HFFN~

Chapter 1: Plaything

There is fog everywhere, coming from all directions, surrounding me. I can't see everything…just blips of things. Only half of them.

(If even that.)

The sky is a dark gray, like…like it's made out of concrete. There are black clouds too and I see lightning illuminate the sky, temporarily letting me see that I'm in the woods. The rain beats down on me and I bask in how good it feels against my aching skin. Water droplets drip down my back and down my dress, making the green cloth stick to me. My normally blonde-brown hair is a dark brown since it's wet, and it hangs in heavy clumps, weighing me down. It usually flows freely down to my waist.

(I really need to get a haircut soon.)

"Such a beautiful girl," they'd tell me. Not that I really understand why, since there were plenty of even more stunning girls in the town, making me pale in comparison. Like Maggie Task, with her platinum blonde hair and sparkling green eyes. Or like Sierra Bonne, with her black hair and deep brown eyes, ones that always seemed happy. Both of them are the kind of girls that will always make you happy, simply just because they're happy. Whereas I can't do that. I'm not nearly as pleasant to be around as they are.

I feel an invisible hand pulling mine and I look around but see nothing. Absolutely nothing.

("A ghost," they would have said.)

"Life's a game we're meant to lose, you know," I hear someone tell me casually, like it's an everyday thing to talk about.

(Which it might very well be.)

I whip my head around, looking for the source of the noise, but I don't see anything. Just dark, exactly like before.

I look down at my pale hand, luminescent against everything else, were I can still feel something cradling it, and I do see another hand this time. It's attached to an arm, but then the fog is covering up the rest of whoever it is. I hear another voice, a woman's.

"Max, come home! Come home, Max! We miss you! We love you!" she cries urgently. I try to say something. I try to tell her, "It's alright, I'm right here! I'll come! I'll come! I need to find my way out first!" but when I open my mouth, no noise comes out.

"Max! Max, where are you? Are you okay? Did they get you? Oh, I need you here with me! I can't stand it any longer!" I hear another voice sob. This time, it's a little girl's voice. A little girl who couldn't be anymore than six or seven.

(Though she sounds very heartbroken, and might very well be older.)

And I try to run; I try to make my way towards them, but that hand holds me back, not letting go. No matter how hard I pull, I can't get away. I can't run. I hear a whisper right next to my ear. "You're mine now," it says. I shiver at the tone of it. Hungry. Hungry like a wolf. Like…like it's about to take me and eat me and…

"I'm not letting you get to them. You aren't about to get away from me that easily!" it continues. There's another flash of lightning and then a clap of thunder.

I scream. There's something clawing and biting at my leg and I try to shake it off, but it won't let go. It's stubborn. It has a firm grip. And that won't help me at all. No, no, not at all…

"Max!" I hear them all yell simultaneously, except this time there's a boy's voice added in. He sounds familiar, but I can't put my finger on it. If I had the time, I would be trying to wrack my brain to remember whom it belongs to, but I don't, so I can't.

"NO! You're MINE!" the…Wolf, we'll call it, howls. The thing that's still attached to my leg growls angrily.

"Let…me…GO!" I scream at the Wolf, tugging and pulling as hard as I possibly can. I need to get to them. I need them. I need them desperately.

I furiously rip my hand away the Wolf's, punch him in where I assume is his gut, and run, my skirt billowing after me. That thing flew off of me when I pulled away.

(Thank God.)

My hair is whipping my face, and I can't see well at all. But I guess it doesn't make much of a difference, considering the fog makes it nearly impossible for me to be able to see anywhere but five feet in front of me. Something terrible could be right in front of my nose and I wouldn't even know it.

There's a clap of thunder in the distance that frightens me. I scream out and run in another direction.

I end up tripping over something that I can't manage to make out and land in the mud. I accidentally scrape my arm on something on the way down, and it stings very badly. My hands are covered in mud, as is the rest of me, but I don't have time to clean myself off, because I hear footsteps running towards me. And shouting. Plenty of shouting. More than what I appreciate.

"This way!" the woman tells me and I can barely make out a figure a couple of feet to my right. Her hand is outstretched and I take it gratefully. She runs swiftly along the blind road like she's done it every day of her entire life, while I stumble after her like a drunkard.

We can still hear the pounding footsteps and the storm in the distance, but she doesn't say anything about it. We make plenty of twists and turns. So many, in fact, that no matter how hard I try, I can't remember how many there are and the ways back like I normally can.

(I've always been very good at memorizing things. I used to live in a huge city with my mom and dad and two sisters, and that gave me loads of practice.)

"He's catching up!" I shout, like she doesn't already know that. She ignores me though and we keep running. Sooner or later, we end up at a clearing, which I can see because the fog and the storm are both lifting up.

It's a field. A plain, wheat field, but there is a cute little cottage and two other people standing in the middle of it. I run towards them like my life depends on my getting to them.

(Which it might very well.)

I see that the two people are the little girl and a boy who looks to be about my age, fifteen. The little girl has blonde hair and bright blue eyes, while the boy is basically the exact opposite of her, with his black hair and his dark eyes.

I smile at the sight of them and the girl beams back at me. The boy just sort of grins, and I know that he doesn't normally do that. I'm nearly to them now.

"MAX! LOOK OUT!" the little girl warns me, looking alarmed by something. I turn around in time to see the Wolf pounce on me. He's now some sort of mix between a wolf and a man, his face elongated, a snout and a tail, but he still has plenty of human features.

I yell out in panic as he pins me down to the ground, paws/hands on my shoulders. He bares his teeth and growls at me, eyes glowing a sinister red. I press the side of my head to the ground, trying to get as far away from him as I can, but that doesn't do much.

"I told you that you can't get away that easily," he says, his lips curled back in a smirk, directed at me, like it's all some sort of joke.

(It probably is to him.)

I understand now. I was never going to be able to get away from him. He was just letting me run for entertainment.

We were just playing cat and mouse.

Apparently my expression shows something of realization, and he laughs freely at me and then smiles, something that has a sarcastic sweetness behind it.

"Such a pretty thing," he coos, tipping his head to the side to get a better look at me. I gulp as his half-hand-half-paw comes up and strokes my cheek. He drags one claw down my cheek, drawing blood. "I think…I might not kill you," he says, almost to himself. "You could be my plaything for a little while…before you get boring. But I'm sure there are plenty of other friends of mine who wouldn't mind having you either…" he trails off.

"So what do you think, honey?" he asks me sweetly, like I have any say at all. My face contorts in rage and disgust.

He smirks. This just angers me even more, and in a moment of adrenaline, I spit in his face. He pulls back and I take this as my chance, punching him in the gut and pushing him off of me. I jump to my feet while he sits there in shock for a second.

By the time he's come to his senses, I've already run away as fast as I possibly can, in the opposite direction as the cottage.