Page 35 of In the Dark

Energy crackled at her fingertips until her hair stood on end. She moved steadily forward, and plants sprang forth in her wake, a perverse version of the magic she normally had. Trees burst from the cement and snapped through telephone lines, water pipes. Twisted trunks wound like vines and strangled each other. Glass shattered, metal crunched, and vehicles slammed on their brakes to avoid the surprise forest.

Screams filled the air as people poured from the offices surrounding her. They clustered around the devastation and ran like chickens with no heads. She had no business with them; let them run.

“Come on, you cowards. Stop hiding behind your desks and show me what kind of guts you’ve got! Show me why you’re the best of us and my mother is dying.” A chill crept over her, through her ankles up to her knees and hips. Karsia welcomed it. “Are you scared?” She sent out a wave and buckled the sidewalk, causing any who ran to stumble and fall. “Are you afraid of what I can do? Of what I’ll do to you?”

Feeling them there, burrowed in their offices, had her cranking her power up another notch. Despite the season, she brought rain, hurling it down from the sky to pelt the ground. Each drop struck with unnatural force.

“Karsia, stop!”

The voice had her turning to look over her shoulder. There stood Morgan in the middle of the melee, with his arms held in front of him to protect his face.

“Don’t do this,” he urged her, taking several careful steps forward.

“Why won’t you just leave me alone?” she cried.

Lightning slashed the sky, responded to her unspoken request. Magic with meat behind it.

“I’ll never leave you like this.”

Karsia called the sky down on her. Gales of wind buffeted her as lances of fire struck the ground in a circle around her. Her prison, her curse. Her grief. She called all those forces to her. Light power, dark power, at her disposal. Her slender hands held the fate of the world then. Her hair flapped around her like wings of birds.

Cement crackled and broke while energy arced and danced.

She was alone, with rage and regret her only companions. Her power sang as she embraced those. Magic from beyond the veil rushed through her.

After what she planned to do, she would never be able to go back to her family. Not now. Her need for revenge would push her past the point of no return. Fully dark, fully elemental, giving up her goodness forever. Until she took her fated place.

At least she would get for them the justice they rightly deserved. She was the only one with the means and the unfeeling determination to follow through.

She raised her arms and embraced the tempest. Darkness had done this to her, for her. And she would use it for a worthwhile cause. She would make her sacrifice mean something.

Morgan shielded his eyes from the gusts and took mincing steps forward, trying to keep his balance when the ground buckled and shifted. He lost his footing and flung his arms in front of him like a surfer riding an unpredictable wave.

“Karsia, I’m begging you!” he called to her. “Don’t do this. You’re only hurting yourself.” He had to stop her. If it was the last thing he did, expended every bit of his considerable resources, he would stop her before she hurt anyone. Or hurt herself beyond the point of no return. It would be the final nail in her coffin sealing her fate, and that he refused to allow.

“Morgan.” Huge limbs burst from the ground and reached toward the second story of the building. “Go back and save yourself from me.”

“I can’t.” His face was pale and his shoulders hunched. There was no hint of fear in his presence. He refused to be intimidated.

“You have no right to interfere. Back away now before you get hurt!”

“I’m not leaving you to destroy yourself or this place. The people inside, they didn’t hurt you. They’re innocent. Like you. They’re only trying to do their jobs.”

Morgan leaped out of the way as the forest grew beneath his feet. Limbs scratched at neighboring glass and a terrible keening screech filled the air. He pushed everything aside to focus on Karsia. He couldn’t get any closer without risking electrocution. The lightning she summoned danced in a protective barrier around her, its electrostatic charge causing her hair to rise. She was the angel of vengeance, of death, madness glistening in her eyes.

“They can’t get away with doing this to her. To me! Someone needs to pay.”

“Then don’t let it be you. I am begging you, Karsia,” Morgan pleaded. “Reconsider what you want to do here.”

A dark presence wrapped itself around her, there in the blackness of her pupils, the glow of silver light in her hands. Morgan would never again doubt what she said was true. This was not her. It was something else entirely. A being outside of normal reckoning who would stop at nothing to watch the city burn. A second coming of the great Chicago fire.

“I won’t let those responsible go unpunished,” she insisted in a voice that sounded of doom. “Let me do what I do best.”

As if to prove her words, Karsia imploded the nearest building. Three floors toppled to the ground and a mushroom cloud of debris and fire rose. No life inside, nor would there be again. She’d made sure of that.

People shrieked in terror and the sound was music to her ears. Frightened city folk ran for their lives away from the center of the pandemonium toward safety wherever they could find it. She let them escape; her business was not with them, those lost souls who could not escape their own minds. Couldn’t think outside of themselves.

“If you were completely gone then you would have forgotten your vows and killed everyone in the city without a second thought,” Morgan yelled to her, striving to be heard about the chaos. Then he gave in to himself. To the god he tried to hide beneath the flesh of a man. This time, when he spoke, Karsia had no choice but to listen. “You are not gone, earth witch. Let me help you.”

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