by Terah Edun
Staring up at him as she slowly rubbed her hands up and down her upper thighs in order to force more blood to flow through them, she said, “So what I saw was real?”
“Yes,” he said.
Seeing that he at least seemed receptive to her questions, she continued, “So what did you do? Open a portal? If so, why couldn’t they see us?”
He gave her a cryptic smile. “I think it’s my turn to ask you questions.”
She couldn’t deny it, so she simply said, “Like what?”
“Like where a certain Sun Mage is being held?”
She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “As if I know that answer.”
She just hoped he wasn’t a mind reader, as well as a mage skilled in deceptive illusions, otherwise she’d very much be in some trouble this day.
He sounded displeased as he replied, “Come now, you have your finger in every pot about that camp. You can’t tell me you don’t know.”
Truthfully Sara answered, “The last time I saw Nissa, she was about to be spirited away by people in command far above my head, and then your Kade brethren attacked, which left all of us kind of busy.”
He was silent.
Then he asked, “And what did you do during that battle?”
She told the truth again. “I slaughtered the lot of them.”
She wasn’t ashamed of that fact, and if he wanted to take out his pain on her for doing so, well at the very least this little tête-à-tête would seem less surreal. But then he changed the subject abruptly.
“So you still don’t recognize me?”
Sara was tempted to spit out, Should I?, but deep in her soul she knew that she should. She did, in fact, and his name was on the tip of her tongue. But even if memories never came back to her—perhaps she could blame that at least on all those blows to the head—she knew that he was someone of significance to her.
“Come on, even if you can’t remember the second time we met, your long-term memory wasn’t affected by the blast, and I can’t be that forgettable.”
She was silent, because as far as her mind was concerned, he was. Even though she had the feeling deep down that his future significance was almost assured.
“Well, it’s kind of dark in here. Maybe if you dropped whatever casting you’ve got going on, I could see through this haze of magic better. Discern who you really are.”
He said, “Well, I would, but that haze, as you’ve said, is the only thing keeping you here…and my head on my shoulders. I’ve heard of your formidable nature in a true fight, and I’m not foolish enough to be trapped in a tiny room with a cornered battle mage.”
After a pause, he said reluctantly, “Still…I can do a bit of something.”
Then he let light flow into the room, and the shadows obscuring his upper half partially dropped away.
“Do you recognize me now?” he said softly with a teasing smile on his face.
Her heart jumped a bit. She did. Against all odds, and it clearly showed on her face.
“I thought you might,” he said. “Now, Sara Fairchild, we have work to do.”
“We have no such thing to do,” she stated as her toes and legs finally announced they were more than awake this time, and the pent-up energy in her lower body said it was ready to attack.
“In fact,” Sara continued, “I would never deign to work or play with the likes of you. Though I’m touched that a traitor to the throne would stand before my very eyes and call for aid.”
“And what do you know of my traitorous activities?”
“Enough,” she snarled as she lunged in fine fighting form. Finally her legs were working, and she wasted no time in sweeping out with a high kick that caught him directly in the face. That is before a thread of bindings, which restricted her from head to toe, made her fall face first into the ground.
Sara was beginning to hate this mage.
Rolling over with her limbs still pinned, she demanded, “What did you do to me?”
He didn’t bother pretending like he had no idea what she meant. Instead, he took a wary step back. “You’re a guest in my mirage. I may not be as keen a fighter as you are, Fairchild, but as long as you play in my world, you play by my rules.”
“What world? What rules?”
He shrugged. “It’s part and parcel with my magic. I can define the world around me, for lack of a better way of putting it. I can also restrict, or at least severely minimize, outside magic, which can interfere in my world, as well, from mages within and without its boundaries.”
All the incidents fell into place then. What she had considered a long-overdue personal collapse was actually due to his interference.
“It’s not just about me not being fully healed, then,” she said. “It’s about you limiting my magic.”
He nodded. “Yes, you have that correct. It’s in my nature to apologize for inhibiting you, but I won’t go that far because I know if you did have the ability to draw on those legendary power stores of a battle mage, you’d be able to do far more than just stand up on your own for a few seconds. You could probably tear me limb from limb.”
He wasn’t wrong there. Unhindered, she could do what he claimed, and she’d do it with glee. But thinking over her options now and over her enforced limitations, she couldn’t do that—he’d already proved it.
“You’re an asshole,” she finally informed him.
He raised an eyebrow as he drawled, “I could say the same thing about you.”
Her lips twitched. “At least I didn’t deceptively drain my opponent’s strength and magic.”
“No,” he said. “You just tried to kick my head off for no reason.”
Sara rolled her eyes. “Hand me my sword and those pretty bruises will be the least of your concerns.”
He chuckled. “And this is why I came for you. Your spirit. Your fire. Your passion. They’re all legendary. Exactly what I need in my forces.”
Sara froze. “You came to…recruit me?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“You know, most mercenary companies just send a proposal, maybe a loaded bribe hinting at the high level of compensation to come. I can’t say I’ve ever heard of someone being dragged through a portal, drained of strength, and then propositioned before.”
He snorted. “That may be so, but you are no ordinary recruit. Like others before you, precautions had to be made. Primarily the ones that would keep you from killing me before I was able to present my offer.”
Sara shook her head and snarled, “Let me stop you right there. You’ve already given me a hell of a headache, a bitch of a black eye, and ruined the hours I intended to use for my nap—there’s nothing that could make me join forces with you.”
“Or your masters—the Kades,” she added as afterthought.
“So presumptuous of you,” he said, leaning forward.
“What?” she said. “The ‘no thanks’ part of that or the ‘drop dead’?”
“The part where you assumed that I work for the masters, as you said.”
She looked around the earthen dome with exaggerated surprise. “Don’t you? No offense, but this isn’t exactly the forbidden lair of a highly valued conqueror. What are you, anyway—your group’s third-rate torturer? Or no, let me guess—the errand boy?”
For a moment, she felt the air inside the dome freeze, as if winter had entered into its sealed circumference, but she showed no fear. She liked getting a reaction from him. It showed that even though he seemed to be fully in control at the moment, he could be outmaneuvered. She just needed to find a way to strengthen her powers and her body enough to get herself out of here.
Her captor said, “I suppose I should have expected this. The empire has no respect for history…or the providence of its enemies. What do they teach you in that capital these days? Certainly not how to recognize a true threat when you see one.”
Now it was Sara’s turn to scoff. “If you’re a threat, I’m a lamb. The only reason I haven’t beaten you to a pulp is beca
use I haven’t yet cracked your shield walls, but trust me, when I do, you won’t live to regret this rather ridiculous proposal.”
“So ridiculous that some of the greatest mages and warriors of the realm have taken me up on it?”
She snorted. “I’d love to see your categorization of greatest.”
“Oh, you will,” he responded.
Sara shifted uncomfortably as she felt sharp tingling in her thighs. She wondered what this incapacitating mage was doing now.
But she wasn’t going to ask.
It wasn’t worth her time if he was just going to evade her desired answers for longer than she was willing to take.
Instead she said, “Just let me go. Let me go home.”
She was speaking with the battlefield in mind, but he latched on to her words like they were a life anchor.
“Home?” he asked softly. “But what is home?”
She stared at him, not offended but resigned. He seemed to only want to question her endlessly and honestly…and as long as she was stuck in this debilitating condition, she had to answer him.
Rolling her eyes, Sara said, “Home is where my friends are.”
Then, frustrated and irritated, Sara wondered what she had done in her life to be trapped in a prison with a lunatic and no way out. Deciding to take charge of this conversation as much as she could, she looked him directly in the eyes.
“Are you at least going to tell me your name? After all, this is a rather personal conversation to have with someone who can’t even reciprocate a little.”
He shrugged. “Sure, why not. It’s Gabriel.”
“Gabriel who?” Sara asked with narrowed eyes.
He smiled and didn’t answer.
“Let’s talk about that family you’re so famous for,” he said, changing the subject again.
“Not much to say,” she said curtly.
“Oh?” he asked. “Not what I’ve heard.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I have no family anymore, so there isn’t anything to talk about.”
“And if that wasn’t true?” he said.
“Which part?” she said. “The subtle answer where I asked you to quit prying, or the fact that I’m an orphan?”
“The latter.”
Sara was fed up and tired of playing his games at that point. “What are you—a long-lost cousin?” she snapped. “Why do you care?”
Laughing, he said, “No, we’re not related.”
“Then buzz off and take me back to my friends,” she said, her voice rising in irritation.
“Can’t do that just yet, my dear,” he replied cheerfully.
“What do you want from me?”
“I want you to tell me what you’d do if your father stood right here and said, ‘Join me’.”
Sara replied, “Well, I’d start by asking for a shadow mage to perform a cleansing, because that’s impossible.”
Gabriel narrowed his eyes and said, “Sara.”
“What? All right, you really want to know? Nothing. Because that is an impossibility. My father died a long time ago, and even if he hadn’t, he’d never join with the likes of you. Whatever half-cocked, undermanned mission you’ve got going on, anyway. So you can stuff your idiocy down the farthest…”
She didn’t get to finish her thought, because he chose to interrupt her. Again.
“Oh?” he asked while studying his nails. “I can’t imagine how that is so. I just saw him a few weeks ago, after all.”
7
She called him a few versions of a son of a bitch and threw in a few elaborate curses for the heck of it.
He tried to intervene by saying, “Your father is alive and I can take you to him. You just have to drop this silly allegiance to an undeserving crown—”
“What did you just say?” Sara said, stiffening.
It was one thing to bring up her father—it was a worse thing to desecrate the sacred duties of the crown and its head. At least in front of her and, as far as she knew, every Fairchild. Her father had been a loyal officer to that crown, and as of this morning, so was she.
Knowing then that everything Gabriel had said was a lie, her father wouldn’t be associated with such filth, Sara resolved to get out of here any way she could.
Oblivious to her internal struggle, Gabriel continued on happily, “Your father will be proud to see you.”
“Yes, he will,” she said softly, and she knew how it sounded.
Like she was accepting that his ludicrous and frankly cruel supposition was true.
But she hadn’t. She couldn’t. Because opening herself up to those wounds, still raw even after all this time, was something she just wasn’t going to do.
What she could do, however, was open herself back up to the core of who she was. The inner darkness that existed just below the surface. The nature that made her a successful battle mage and now—when even her battle magic was failing her, or she was failing to access it—she would push past those issues and let her end this.
She didn’t have any fear this time. There was nothing left inside her but the desire to rip the man in front of her to shreds.
So when her darkness rose from the well of magic inside her, still running nearly dry from her exertions before, she welcomed it, and just before she dropped her mental shields, she communed with the darkness sharing her consciousness.
Asking it what it sought that would enable her to break free from Gabriel’s fabrications. It sent her one word in return.
Freedom.
But it gave her plenty of impressions—mental visuals of what that word meant to it. Freedom for her. Freedom for it. Freedom from being bound. And at that moment, this was enough for Sara—because she was in complete accordance. She wanted freedom, too.
It gave her a taste of that freedom when it broke down the bindings Gabriel had put in place.
Standing up, she felt the darkness rise and saw it appear like spots in front of her eyes that great and grew. Sara thought she should be scared. Any normal person would be. Even a person who had grown up with the legends of the prowess of the battle mage on the field of combat. She felt her power rising like never before, and she realized she was transitioning. Not exactly where and how she had imagined it would happen, but anything to break free at this point.
As the darkness in her eyes dissipated and reappeared like black mist, it poured from her mouth, her nostrils, the corners of her eyes, and her ears, she felt it buzz with vitality. It was alive. Just as she was. Before she could let that fact overwhelm her, it spoke. In the same manner as before. One word.
But one word was all it needed.
War.
“Yes, yes, let’s go to war,” Sara agreed with a soft voice as the last of the black mist emerged from her tongue and she took a good look at the dumbfounded, second-rate mage who stood before her with his mouth agape.
She didn’t have much more time than to glare fiercely at him before the plague of black mist surrounded her in an opaque wall. On all sides and from head to toe, she was covered in living, breathing darkness.
As it buzzed around her, she waited for it to complete its mission. Because she knew, although she didn’t know how, that there was a second part to this transformation.
As the buzzing darkness closed in on her like a second skin, Sara heard it speak again.
This time its voice was insistent, even impatient, and it spoke in an actual sentence.
War Mage now.
Before she could decipher what it meant, it tightened its hold on her skin and, as if a noose were tightening around her neck, she felt her whole body snap into place—every inch bound and bordered by darkness.
Before she could panic, before she could even think, her limbs lifted, her mind opened, and her vision cleared.
She felt the tingling sensation of the darkness directly attached to every inch of her body. But it wasn’t torturous anymore. No, this…this was invigorating.
And suddenly she knew what it meant. Her thoughts clicked in place
, and for the first time since this torturous session began, Sara grinned. She was no longer a battle mage.
She was a War Mage.
It was then that Sara realized being a Berserker wasn’t just a state of being—it truly was a gradual transition. At least for her. And now she had finally reached the last step. As Gabriel began to move forward, she didn’t have time to contemplate the intricacies of her new development—she only had time to fight.
She kicked out at a sloppy angle that was more failed attempt than proper offense.
But the heightened awareness of the War Mage transformation was taking some getting used to. It was still her body, but every sensory perception was at a higher force level. Being in this state was like walking around in the unseeing darkness that she had been in when fighting the Kade’s first invaders team a week ago. But that had been like walking in a haze. This was like fighting with all the fires of a thousand suns burning inside her.
The energy was overwhelming.
The power was breathtaking.
Even her ability to visualize an opponent’s movements and predict the next step in the intricate dance of hand-to-hand combat was pushed to a new level.
But was different, what was unexpected, was her ability to call in new weapons.
Heart beating fast, Sara looked down at her hand, which was now gripping a blade that hadn’t been there before. A blade that she had left behind on the grounds of her tent when she had been blown backward in the wake of that blast.
Yet here it was.
Weapon, said the darkness in an almost smug tone. I bring.
“Yes, you did,” Sara whispered. Then she got to work, because it was either stay still and almost vibrate to death from the sheer amount of energy that was squeezing into her body, or take that energy to strike down her opponent.
Whirling around with a high kick and her sword held close to maintain balance, Sara met her match. He wasn’t some random mage without fighting skills; she knew that now. Because as she had been preparing herself to break past his restrictions and fight him in his world, he had been planning to meet her head-to-head. She only had time to truly look at him now, as her foot continued its trajectory, and for the first time, she had the feeling he wasn’t hiding who or what he was.
