It was working. It wasn't everyone, but towns were vacating a little more enthusiastically than before. In time, more and more of them would empty as the people streamed out and escaped what they thought was the vengeful wrath of the human who had turned on her own kind in a fit of insanity and was now slavering over reclaiming land in the name of the elves. Vica had been ready to be blamed and hated, so she wasn't surprised when rumor spread ahead of and around them about the dragon mage, the warlock, who went around terrorizing towns and sending innocent people into paroxysms of fear. Evil, evil, they said. A traitor and a zealot, and insane, too.
But what bothered her even more were the whispers of things she would hear them say of Oren. No one ever outright accused them when they arr
