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Story: The Curse that Binds

With that, he withdraws from me, backing up to his steed. I stand there and watch him ride back into the fray until the mist swallows him up.

Turning, I head back to Ferox, who lies limp on the ground. Alive but barely.

It takes little effort to shove my magic back into him. “Heal.”

One by one, those arrows pop out of him, and his wounds seal themselves up. All the while, my rageboils.

Once the last of his injuries mends itself, I place a new ward on him, then on myself.

Then, grimly, I rise, and with me, so does Ferox.

I glance down at him. “You don’t need to follow me.”

He does anyway.

I cut across the battlefield, full of retribution, Ferox at my side. Every time my eyes fall on a Dacian, I lift my hand and utter a single word:

“Annihilate.”

The spell blows craters into the ground, it tears warriors apart, and it incites terror. The battlefield falls into panicked chaos, Dacians trying to escape. But on one end of the field is me, and the other is Memnon, his blue magic cutting our enemies apart.

Annihilate.

Annihilate, annihilate, annihilate.It becomes a macabre song on my bloody lips.

I’m so consumed by it that I hardly notice the arrows that pelt me as I walk across the misty expanse of grassland, Ferox at my side.

Gradually, I feel my magic depleting. I want to howl against this injustice. There are still countless enemy warriors. My power cannot fail me yet.

I sense it then. A whisper in my ear, or maybe a stirring in the air and earth.

Blood.

So much blood. It soaks the ground and dampens the grass. It’s splattered across skin and armor and strewn across the field like an offering.

Within that blood, I sense…magic. Magic I need.

I stretch out my arms and beckon it, following my intuition.

For a single breath, nothing happens, and I wonder if I imagined it all. But then the blood from a fallen warrior lying a few paces from me sizzles against his face and clothes. The smoke that rises from it is pale orange and streaked through with black, as though it, too, got a little singed. It comes to me, entering my palms before exiting them just as quickly, funneled into more curses.

Need more.

People are screaming, howling, begging. Or else they’re running. Trying to get away from me.

I call out to the blood farther and farther afield. I see it sizzle away, then sense the lines of that power snaking through the earth as they make their way to me. The blood-borne magic enters the soles of my feet, sinking into my flesh and veins before it leaves me once more.

I hold my hands to either side of me, palms out, watching the flow of my black-streaked magic arc across the field, exploding against warrior after warrior.

“Witchhh…”

The voice seems to come from nowhere and everywhere. From the ground and in the air. Next to my ear and in my bloodstream.

“Queeeeen…”

Goose bumps break out along my skin, even as I continue murmuring curses.

The voice pauses, almost as though it’s peering at something. When it returns, it is pitched lower. “Empresssss…” Then, spoken most intimately of all: “Soul mate…”

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