Page 2 of Fate & Monsters
He stood at the forefront. I knew without seeing him; I sensed his motivations, the sticky sludge of his wants aimed in my direction. The madness clinging to his mind and the venom of his magic reached far and wide. He was the red haze in my visions. He was a few harrowing seconds from infiltrating my forest, from violating my home.
I wished for the wind to carry me away, to take me back to a time ages ago when men were still living in caves and beating each other with clubs. I wished for the sun to shine down on the crimson moon and wash away the crippling fear in my spirit. I knew no names for the mortal gods, yet in that moment I flung prayers into the heavens, hoping they caught something—anything.
Frightened, I reared back, gathering the energy to soar higher into the air. A silvery wave of glittering magic erupted out from my incorporeal form, rippling over the forest. The burst of magic rushed through the trees, over the grass, mingled with the wind. It clashed against the invaders at the edge of the forest, erecting a glittering shield.
A temporary additional protection, I knew. The wizard’s noxious magic brushed against the surface of my power, twisting my stomach into greasy knots. The soldiers lacked the ability to breach the newly erected barrier, but a wizard would manage it.
Aradia looked at me, jaw dropping upon witnessing a sylph’s magic.Her hair bled with gray before morphing back into a glossy black. Overhead, the blood moon cast flares of garnet, ruby, and crimson. The ruddy light over the woods warned of my fate despite the brief wall of magic.
The presence of doom I’d tried to ignore had come for me. Heart shattering, I realized that this must be it—I truly was the last sylph. Soon there would be none. Nothing more than a myth whispered about in folk tales.
“Run far away from here, Aradia. Go!”I had to send her away from the mad wizard.
“No, I won’t leave you!” She slapped her palms together and magic crackled in the thin air. “As a magic user, as someone who respects creatures such as yourself, it is my duty, nay my responsibility, to protect you! I will not let the Crimson Mage wipe out the sylphs. I cannot let him snuff out the spirit of the wind and sky!”
“If it is my fate to be taken, I will face it.”Even without me the wind would blow, the breeze would rustle the leaves, and clouds would float in the heavens. I was an embodiment of the elements, but they would persist without me coaxing them through the seasons.
A thunderous crack rendered my recent barrier nonexistent. The wizard’s magical barrage ruptured it apart. His horde would be watching a filmy, iridescent wall pop like a glass bubble at that moment.
The crimson light radiated brighter, sending a wave of terror throughme. A blast of heat and smoldering red fire crashed through my forest, turning the layers of my magic into cinders. My chest squeezed my lungs, and my heart hurtled as that magical, murderous fire descended.
“The Crimson Mage is coming!” Aradia cried.
“There is no escaping.”I hovered nearby, wispy form rippling as I floated away from the licking blood-red fire.
The high witch’s appearance drastically flickered from old to young as her emotions swelled. Her fear gripped her, sending her magic into a swirling frenzy that lifted her graying-black hair and whipped up the layers of her robes.
“The fire will drive you to him. It will force you toward the Crimson Mage!” She stepped between me and the towering wall of fire. “But he will not take you if you are not a sylph!”
My head shook faster as the heat licked at my indistinct, cloudy form. It wasn’t fair. I was the last and I would die not having known what he did with my kind. He would exterminate me, and I wouldn’t know where my sisters were or what stories men would tell of magical creatures in the centuries to come.
High Witch Aradia flung her arms into the air, flowy sleeves billowing as the wind picked up, thunder crashing overhead, and visible sparks of lightning crackled in the clearing. A wide plume of pitch-dark smoke swelled from behind her. Smaller bolts of magical light zapped and sizzled within.
“As above, so below, magic come to me and do as I will!”Her voice lifted, booming over the woods. The trees bowed, the flowers wilted, and her dark magic clouded the blood moon. Tendrils of fire assaulted her shadowy barricade, fiery magic hurling itself against her thunderous, black blockade.
My form cracked, ripping a scream from my throat. Incandescent greenish light flared and wavered. Scalding heat flushed through my wispy blood, melted into my cloud-like muscles, and seeped into the elemental air of my marrow. Whatever dark magic Aradia called upon cracked open my intangible body and plunged into my aerial heart with all the force and sharp pain of a dagger. Whispers of her power draped over the luminous, spectral essence of my being, the center of my magic, and caged it behind irrevocable bars of iron.
The darkness of her magic twisted inside of me, sickened me, tainted something ethereal and vital within me.
An agony beyond mortal understanding ripped me to shreds and proceeded to build me back up. The pieces of me, reshaped and transformed, slotted together into something new. A creature never before seen by gods or man.
Aradia dropped to her knees, eyes fluttering closed as she crumbled. Her shield of crackling black smoke withered away into wisps. The barrage of magical fire leapt over us, tickling our skin—searching, assessingas my heart stopped beating—then it soared away. Floating around us, away from us, exiting the clearing before fading from sight altogether.
My body, a now tangible, physical thing, collapsed into the ashen grass, with cinders staining newly solid limbs. And I felt different, grotesquely wrong. I dropped my head, panting from the lingering pain in my muscles and joints. A pale hand rose in front of my face.
An abomination.
Tangible hands, fingers, reached up and caressed my face—skin. I had skin. My body—now a mortal thing of skin and flesh—it failed me, rotting away from within.
“What have you done?” A tortured cry, a wail full of centuries of misery, flew free from my human lips. Breathing fitfully, limbs quivering, I screamed, mourning who and what I was. “No, please no.”
“The Crimson Mage came for a sylph. He cannot take what you are not.”
“What have you done to me?” I repeated, and a whimper followed. My hands, filthy with ash, pawed at my soft, vulnerable body. Nails dug in, scratching and clawing at the ill-fitted flesh and muscle. “I am one with the wind. A sylph!”
“Only in this shape do you have some hope of escaping the Crimson Mage’s clutches,” Aradia panted, quickly losing her energy after that exhausting display of magic.
“This body is mortal!” I shouted, huggingunfamiliar arms around myself. “This is not an elemental body. It will die. I can feel it. You should have let the Crimson Mage have me, because now I will rot and fester, regardless! You—you have cursed me. I am cursed.”
