“Do you mean that?”
“Of course, I mean it. I swear on my parents’ souls, if you don’t activate that spell, I will.”
Thomil shook his head. “You’re too young to have blood on your hands”—and gods forgive them, it was going to be so much blood—“I’ll…”
I’ll do it, he wanted to say, but the thought of Sciona stopped the words in his throat. He saw her bright green eyes, her springy hair, her perpetually fidgeting hands all coming apart. Like everyone he had ever loved.
“It’s what she wants,” Carra said softly but with certainty beyond her years. “You understand that, right? She wants to die sticking it to those men.”
“How do you know?”
“Trust me, Uncle. It’s a girl thing.”
Before the inevitable riots broke out, the two Caldonnae had packed up Sciona’s spellograph and returned to their old apartment complex. Their high rise in the Kwen Quarter was certainly not the safest base of operations, but it was the only building they could access that had a decent radio signal and a clear line of sight to the Main Magistry. And if Thomil was going to do this, he needed to look it in the face—like a proper hunter.
City guards were patrolling outside the apartment building by the dark morning of Sciona’s trial, ready to shoot any Kwen who tried to leave, but the rooftop was deserted, allowing Thomil the space he needed to set up while Carra stood watch on the stairs leading up to the roof. With stones atop Sciona’s notes to keep the breeze from blowing them away, Thomil kept an ear on the radio and prepared the spell to end all spells.
“At this time, the archmages, highmages, and city chairs have all entered the building for the trial,” the reporter’s voice crackled as Thomil worked. “The guards won’t allow our recording equipment any further, so it looks like there won’t be anything for us to report until the trial has finished. That said, we have been assured that the trial won’t be a long one.”
When the preparation was done and double and triple-checked, Thomil bowed his head low over the spellograph as he once had over his longbow. Eyes shut against tears, he prayed. As if the god of the Hunt could hear a lost son so far from the plains.
I take that I might live.
I take that, one day, I might give back.
Pressing his knuckles to his mouth, Thomil remembered the feel of Sciona’s lips on his, remembered the hope in her eyes—and dropped his fist onto the activation key.
At first, nothing happened. There’s always a few second’s lag on truly expansive spellwebs, Sciona had told him. Wait for it.
Then the barrier expansion spell roared to life.
The Main Magistry building lit up like a star.
The collective wail of terror that crackled from the radio was chillingly familiar, yanking Thomil back to that frozen lake ten years ago. He would have screamed, too, had the sound not locked up in his throat. This thing—the death of a tribe—was too big a thing to hold in a thousand voices, let alone one. All Thomil could do was kneel and shake before the power that had destroyed his people as it turned on his enemies—and on the woman who had put hope back into his heart.
Even though he had told Carra not to leave the steps, she appeared at his elbow to watch with him. His hand found hers, fingers entwined, and gripped tight, trembling, as they watched the barrier expansion spell consume Leon’s Hall.
Above Tiran, the barrier rippled with the infusion of energy and, for the first time since the Age of Founders, began to change shape. Flowing with the life force of a hundred mages and who knew how many guards and politicians, the glittering dome sluggishly ballooned westward. The siphoning site burned brighter, beams of pure white slicing through the Main Magistry’s every window, as the expansion demanded more energy, then more, and more, and more. The spell would keep siphoning until it had consumed every living thing in the building and its vicinity.
This would be Sciona Freynan’s mark on the world: a great red flower in the center of Tiran. And god help the arbiters of history tasked with spinning lies around this moment. Let them scrub with all their might to clear the horror from public memory. Some inquisitive soul was always going to look back on this day and ask why?
What really happened that day when the heart of civilization bloomed red?
It was jarring even to Sciona how instantaneously the men of Tiran’s Magistry and government turned to beasts when they realized what was happening. Mages clawed past their fellows, kicking them aside, stepping on their fallen colleagues as they scrambled for the exits. These last acts of selfishness did them no good, of course, because Blight struck from all directions, stripping their white robes before their flesh, rendering them for the animals they were.
“Witch!” a voice cried out among the shrieks of the dying. “Kwen traitor!”
But true witches—meidrae of the Kwen—had never practiced such evil magic. They had used their knowledge to heal the sick and watch over those they loved. Sciona was no witch. Her place had never been with Thomil and Carra or even with Alba and Aunt Winny. She had always belonged here among these insatiable men, her brothers in greed and ego. Her only distinction among these mages was that she was a more honest monster than any of them, and she would die an honest mage of Tiran: finely dressed and filthy-souled, taking with arrogance what was not hers to take.
I will not turn my gaze, though Light burn me.
By the time the white spirals reached Sciona in the center of the chamber, the draught of sleeping death had made her body numb. She watched her skin and muscle unspool in fascination. Bringham, Perramis, and Orynhel were all fleshless before her, their howls echoing impotently from skeleton jaws. The last thing she saw as she arched back toward Hell was red bursting upward to mar the white robes of Leon, Faene, and Stravos.
But her last thought was not for any mage of Tiran, past or present.
Her last thought was the itch of a question: Had Thomil done this because he loved her or because he hated her? But then—no, she decided, as her blood and being blurred into white light. She hoped this hadn’t been about her at all. She hoped that Thomil had looked inside himself and found what he needed to move forward. Thomil, Carra, Winny, Alba… She hoped they all pushed through this horror to better things.
With her soul in the spiral on its way to Hell, Sciona’s last thought was not of vengeance or legacy. It was of love.
“She is, in my estimation, the greatest mage of her generation. I have confidence that, given time, my colleagues will come to see what I do in her: innovative spirit and determination the like of which Tiran has not seen in a century. She embodies all the virtues we value in the Magistry and lacks the weaknesses common to her sex. Thus, it is my firm belief that her induction into our ranks will herald a new era of magic and expansion.
Feryn tells us that the role of a mage is to shape history where the lesser mind is not equal to the task. I stake my credibility as a mage when I say here is one worthy of that responsibility. Here is a mind equal to the task.”
— Archmage Bringham to the Mage Council, Letter of Recommendation on behalf of Sciona Freynan （333 of Tiran）
“UNCLE THOMIL!” CARRA gulped in rage. “Why am I crying so much?”
“Because you’re human.” Thomil rubbed a hand over his niece’s back, feeling her quake with sobs. “Come here.”