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“You don’t realise how dangerous you are.”
Fear had never been Maria’s failing. With her blindness, she learnt how to overcome fear at a young age and to step out into the unknown without letting that terrified voice hold her back. Fear was something Maria learnt to use, to throw back on other people, turn their own fears against them.
Fear was what she felt coursing through every part of her body, paralysing her in place.
It’s your own magic, Maria! It’s you! her logical mind scolded her.
It’s you, it’s you, you’re the danger, the fear chanted.
“Your magic is unstable, it’s unnatural!” said an ex-friend, one Maria had long-since left behind. “I’m not saying that it’s evil, but you KNOW how dangerous it is, Maria! You know the stories!”
“How is it unnatural if I was born with it?” she defended in the memory, but the words felt weak now. “I am educating myself, I am teaching myself how to use it safely, why is that wrong?”wHo
“You’re more powerful than you realise, Maria, and no mortal is meant to be trusted with that power. You will kill yourself and take everyone else down with you!”
She was struggling to hear, struggling to sense; the fight was a cascade of noise and screams and heat and cold and the fear made every sensation mount and grow and burn into her skin.
“You’ll destroy everyone! Maria, your own magic will tear you and the whole world apart!”
You’ll kill your friends, you’ll tear them apart, and they will look at you and see the true monster, and you won’t be able to run, the fear whispered, bringing up thoughts Maria had only allowed herself to think in the darkest, loneliest of nights.
These fears are foolish and you know it, Maria, logic whispered. Snap out of it, fight it, it’s your own magic!
“If you truly don’t want to hurt anyone, then give it up! Join us fully, Maria! Learn magic as we do; the right way, the safe way! Please!”
But Maria wasn’t, she didn’t, she turned her back on that place and left her mark emblazoned in the face of that who had once been her most trusted friend. And she was still here, and she was still in control of herself and the magic she possessed. And she could take a deep breath and hear a Daybreak’s voice praying, and she could take another breath and force that fear out of her mind and reach within, and call out for her goddesses.
And receive no answer.
Sometimes she wondered if she wasn’t strong enough. Sometimes she wondered if she was too kind. Sometimes, she just wanted to be a little reckless.
Sometimes she didn’t want to be so patient.
She was a sorceress, not a wizard trained in a set number of spells, nor a cleric bound into duty to a deity, nor a bard confined to the shape of music in the air. She was a sorceress, capable of bending the world and herself to her will, able to express the power within as she wanted to, how she wanted to.
So she did. Perhaps she needn’t have channelled the magic as much as she did and direct it all onto the man calling upon his god, but she did. And she paid the price, but she did it.
And Maria knew she couldn’t extend her magic too much, and she knew her limit was approaching, but she knew that the magic inside her charged and grew with each spell she cast. So she overextended, and she didn’t care, purely to force her fear down the throats of these Daybreaks, into the scout, to make them tremble before her and taste fear as she had; fear in its most pure form.
In the end, Maria wasn’t cruel. The war was dangerous and it drew out the worst of people and out of herself, but when the fight had been fought and the enemies were cowering before her, Maria wouldn’t kill. She knew that many of those following any side had been blinded and convinced by the empty, lofty promises the guilds had to offer. She knew people who had been convinced by those same promises.
The mages? She wouldn’t harm them. They had been led and instructed, and their leader had been killed by her hand, and now they surrendered. They could be sent back to their hold with hanging heads and nursing their wounds. The scout wasn’t for her to call, so she didn’t flinch when she heard the sound of a throat being sliced and rolling, cruel laughter suddenly cut off.
And if her magic screamed with silent burning, urging her to unleash it from her careful control, to hurt and burn and destroy… Then she could calm it again, sing it to sleep, assure it that now was not the time but it would be soon, and it would be okay.
And she would be okay.