Summary: Sylvia has two problems. One is a ghost in her house. The other is her husband. (Tw: domestic abuse, violence)
Morgan is not a malevolent spirit.
Her visitors treat her like one. They crawl through her rotting house with cameras clasped in sweaty hands, hissing about evil and violence. They bring out objects of prayer to ward her off. Some of them try to trick her into speaking. Into acting. They spend hours recording the whispering of the wind through the cracks in the attic or the creaking of her home sinking into a century old foundation.
Morgan watches them from the slanted chandelier in the foyer and never says a word.
Truthfully, she doesn’t hate them. They’re alive and addicted to the strange cocktail of hormones the body produces when afraid. She can’t hate what is created by nature.
Perhaps that’s why she isn’t a malevolent spirit. She knows addiction and to be alive is to be an addict. Food, water, passion, lust, greed, love, fear. A complex array of cocktails all pumped directly into your receptive brain. The bad ghosts are jealous of it. Greedy for it. And Morgan simply…isn’t.
She has her routines. She stays well out of the way of the people who come to explore her abandoned and withering house. When those who need the shelter of her walls find themselves there late at night, she makes sure that the wind doesn’t blow the doors open, that they choose the rooms with the best windows, that the pests that have started to nest in the roofline don’t wander down.
On days she has no one, she stares out the window of the master bedroom - what used to be her bedroom - into the garden. Her neighbor’s houses shrink and expand, fall apart, get torn down, and then reemerge like new, brightly colored with gleaming windows, but her garden stays the same. The weeds bloom into late spring, pops of white false morning glory all along her wrought iron fence, and wither into long, thin stalks in the winter. The squirrels she once chastised for eating her tomatoes lay down to rest and their descendents descend on the new vegetable patches in the neighborhood.
Then, one day, a man in a white van pulls up. He cracks open the back door and pulls out a long orange banner. This he strings along her fence with precision, pinning it so that it lays flat. He examines his work, nods, pulls out his phone to snap a picture, and then he’s on his way.
When Morgan goes to investigate, she finds the words UNDER DEVELOPMENT emblazoned on the banner.
The imperial army attacks your village, on a dark moonless night, the time when you, the strongest Solar Mage, would be powerless. However, you are a Star Mage actually.
It is a clever strategy to move at night when your soldiers have quiet feet and you have the foresight to stain their armor black with ash. However, the Emperor has a noted distaste for cleverness that comes from outside his own head and he insists on leading the imperial army himself that night. As a result, the only cleverness to be found comes in the form of one hundred men managing to find the one path through the woods to their remote village that allows them to march two by two rather than single file.
An emergency meeting is called close to 2am, summoning the adults and elders to the community hall. Unlike the soldiers, they do not shine under the full moon and their thin, leather shoes make no sounds as they sneak from home to meeting.
The windows are shuttered and only a small magelight in the chief’s hand lights the two dozen townsfolk. It casts a blue glow across anxious and fearful faces. The light hits right under the chief’s chin and brings to mind the face of a grim reaper as it throws curling shadows under his eyes.
“The only option is to evacuate,” the chief says. Behind him stands his own mother, the chief before him. She nods along with his words. “We know the mountains better than them. We can take the North passage.”
“The North passage is already slick with ice,” a villager says. They speak in the same hushed whisper as the chief. “The children and the elderly won’t make it.”
“We can hide them in caves along the way,” a man says. He’s clutching his hatchet as if its his lifeline. He looks anxiously in the direction of the woods as if he can see the army drawing closer. “Come back for them when it’s safe.”
“Coward,” someone hisses.
The man stiffens. “None of us here can fight ten men, much less a hundred! To survive we need to—”
The crowd shushes him as he raises his voice.
“Why our village?” someone blurts out. Their hands are wringing. “Why us? We’re barely a village at all.”
The floodgates of anxiety open.
“The Emperor is mad.”
“They know about the mines!”
“I think it’s because of a prophecy, that’s what I heard about the last one—”
“If they trample my fields, we won’t have enough for winter—”
“Ach! Winter. Let’s focus on now--
The chief holds his hand up for silence. Reluctantly the room fills with it until the only sound is the distant whinny of a horse.
“They’re very bad at night assaults,” the mage observes. She’s leaning against the wall, her nightgown covered by her latest crochet project. The blanket is nearly finished, but she’s a bit embarrassed that the entire town is seeing her loose ends. She frowns back at the glares she receives. “What? They brought a horse. And the path they’re on has all those low hanging branches so they probably aren’t even riding the—"
The chief pinches the bridge of his nose. “Mage. Please.”
The mage raises her hands as if to say mea culpa and falls silent.
“We will evacuate,” the chief repeats. “It doesn’t matter why the Emperor is here. Our only focus tonight is survival. The army draws close. We must leave before they breach the first gate. Gather only what you can carry.”
There’s a moment when the villagers seem like they’re going to follow his instructions. They like the chief – he works alongside them in the field, shares his kills on hunts, and always mediates fairly. However, he isn’t his mother. He’s young.
There’s a beat of silence. Then—
“Chief, the North passage isn’t safe—”
“We need to get the donkeys from pasture—”
“—ridiculous, they’ll be louder than the horses—”
“Or,” the mage says loudly, no longer whispering, “I can finally do my job.”
They stare. The mage stares back.
“It’s night time,” the woman closest to her says.
“Yes,” the mage says.
“Magic doesn’t work at night,” another villager says.
“Solar magic doesn’t work at night,” the mage says in the town of someone who has explained something many times before. “I’m not a solar mage, I’m a star mage.”
“Wait,” the man who suggested the caves says, “you weren’t joking about that?”
She props her fists on her hips. “Do I seem like the joking type to you?”
“We just thought you weren’t that funny.”
“Hey—”
“You can’t call the sun,” the chief says. He ticks off each of her faults on his fingers one by one. “You can’t warm the earth. You can’t bless our crops.”
“You’re just listing solar magic,” the mage says. She huffs and heads for the door. “I don’t have time to re-explain what I can do. You all should start evacuating. I’ll do what I can. If I win, I get to say I told you so. If I lose…” She pauses in the doorway to adjust her blanket. “Well. Maybe the Mage Tower will finally send you the solar mage you all hoped you’d get.”
The village shifts guiltily. Tellingly, no one denies her words.
“You are part of the village,” the chief offers. He clears his throat. “This has become your home.” Even if you’re not useful, goes unsaid.
“Which is why I’m going to do my job,” she says. She strides out. Because she’s feeling a little mean, she takes her blue magelight with her, calling it from the chief’s hand to her own with a thought. “You can use torches. They’re close enough now they must know we can hear them.”
The townsfolk flutter behind her. They’ll evacuate quickly. They have no faith in her abilities. Sure, she graduated top of her class, but why would they care about that? They’ve always just seen what she can’t do.
You are part of the village.
Unfortunately for her pride, she is. The moment the Archmage assigned her so far away, away from the light pollution in the capital, it became her village. And her village may think her incapable, but she knows the truth.
And soon so will the Imperial Army.
The stars hum above her. The moon is a warm presence against her shoulders. She can feel the moonlight sliding down her back, pooling and filling the gaps in her aura. She invites it in, breathes in the night, cajoles the stars to spark at her fingertips. She ran out of her home without shoes and she digs her toes into the chilled earth. Her magic cycles from above to below and then above again, growing more powerful with each repetition.
The army clanks and groans and shuffles. She can’t see them, but knows the path the chief mentioned. Even if she didn’t know it, she’d be able to guess. She pulls starlight under her feet and lets it propel her a little faster. Her magelight winks out, unneeded as her magic sharpens her vision and senses. The chief said they needed to evacuate before they breached the first gate. She intends to get to them sooner than that.
The magic she intends to use will definitely trample the fields if deployed too close.
She makes it to the treeline just as the first man emerges. His eyes have adjusted to the dark, she can tell. He stares right at her, hand on the hilt of his sword. A red cape falls across his shoulders just as the moon falls across hers.
He says, “I am—”
“Leave,” she interrupts. She doesn’t want to hear who he is. Some general or other who has his orders. She has hers. “This will be your only warning.”
“How dare you interrupt the Emperor?!” a soldier snarls. He does draw his sword. “You’ll pay for this slight!”
“You’d be killing an unarmed mage,” the Emperor says. He examines her, eyes lingering on the choker that marks her for what she is. “You have no power without the sun. Pledge your loyalty to me and we will let you live, mage.”
Well. She did warn them.
The first star hits the rearguard. The man screams as the silver orb strikes with the weight of a cannonball, tearing and searing his shoulder through the armor. His horse cries and breaks loose, running into the forest. She’ll need to let the villagers know to send a search party for it after.
The Emperor is frozen at the sight. He can’t see the injured man in the dark – his vision isn’t as good as hers – but he saw the star. He saw the magic. “Star mage,” he breathes.
“At least someone knows,” she says.
The second star hits. Then the third. The fourth. Men scream. People die. At some point, the Emperor lunges at her. Her cloak of moonlight burns him and the next star that falls puts him out of his misery while he’s screaming on the ground.
She does her job.
When it’s over, she surveys the battlefield. Not a single soldier made it past her. Her magic curls in satisfaction. Her village is safe. However, the fields aren’t. This mess will spoil them. She checks her reserves and finds just enough left.
Ice and frost creep out from under her feet. It spins in fractals across the dirt path, running up the blades of grass and spiraling up the trunks of the trees it touches. The ice slips over the bodies like a pall. The moonlight gleams.
She raises her arms to the sky, her blanket fluttering in an ephemeral breeze. The word she speaks isn’t in a language she’s ever been taught. It’s one she’s known since she first entered the Mage Tower at seven years old, excited and giddy with the chance to play with magic.
Return.
The bodies disintegrate. Flurries of snow spin up towards the sky. Some of it is red. Most of it is white. When the snow clears, the path is clean. There are craters from her barrage, but the fields are untouched. She is alone in the night and as much as she wants to revel in such a beautiful evening, she can’t. If she doesn’t go back now, she’ll have to track the villagers across the North passage to coax them back home.
With a sigh, she goes back. At least she gets to say I told you so.
----
Thanks for reading! It's been a hot minute, but excited to share a flurry of stories with y'all! If you'd like to read them a week ahead of everyone else, please consider supporting me on Patreon (X)
Next week's story is already up!
Summary: You are a therapist who believes even villains deserve better mental health. This, of course, means all your clients are villains. (recurring therapist-to-villains here (X))
With a bonus extra two-part story as well!
Summary: Your fiance is a villain. Your family is composed of superheroes. You only knew about one of these facts before sitting down to Thanksgiving.
It's a two-parter about finding new family when the one you have no longer fits...and there's superheroes too.
Hermes clenched his teeth. He lowered the cattle prod, and it turned back to a staff.
“Percy Jackson,” he said, “because you have taken on the curse of Achilles, I must spare you.” (The Last Olympian)
Anyone else think its interesting that the Curse of Achilles effectively puts Percy on level with the gods in terms of power and durability (or perhaps even more so) when considering every book before the last olympian, the gods voted on whether or not they should kill percy (and other children of the big three) because the power they hold and are capable of is far too great for the gods liking???
What if, they offered to make Percy a god not just as a reward for his heroic acts but as an attempt to once more gain control of him now that he has the curse of achilles – he would never be able to rebel because he would be, in essence, apart of them.
If you can’t beat them, join them – or in this case, since we can no longer have the capacity to destroy him, he must become one of us.
And you know how Hera chose Percy to be sent to New Rome and of course it makes perfect sense because naturally you’re going to choose one of the most powerful demigods you have at your disposal, especially the one that quite literally saved all of Olympus three months prior.
But isn’t it almost just too perfect that in doing this she effectively forced Percy to be stripped of the curse that gave him power that could very well rival theirs and all I’m saying is Hera knew exactly what she was doing
This section of the Last Olympian is so small that it may be entirely irrelevant in terms of analyzation, but still I can’t help but think its interesting that when Percy and Annabeth were doing cabin inspections, multiple times Percy tried cheat the scores while Annabeth wouldn’t let him.
When they got to Percy’s cabin and his stuff was messy, he tried giving himself 4/5 and Annabeth pointed out he was being too generous with himself and gave him a 3/5. When they got to the Aphrodite cabin he tried docking a star (when everything was perfect) because it smelled too much like perfume - However to be fair, that may have just been him being sarcastic. Then when we get to Annabeth’s cabin, and everything is clean except for her own bunk, she could have easily done what Percy did and tried to give herself a higher score. She even promptly cleaned her section, but still gave herself a low score because otherwise it wouldn’t be honest. “Three out five - for a sloppy head counselor.”
Obviously this is such a simple thing, but still I feel it hi lights one of the differences of their characters. Percy “Hey lets fudge the numbers when it benefits me” Jackson and Annabeth “No, I have to earn my keep” Chase.
I also just want to clarify that I’m not trying to paint Annabeth as a rule stickler and Percy as a rule breaker, because they both do break the rules or what have you, its just when and how and why that I think creates a distinction.
Like another example of this that I adore is their encounter with the sphinx. Annabeth could have easily answered the trivia questions but just couldn’t because it would have been a slight to her intelligence, her wisdom, her smarts and had wanted to be tested.
And Percy’s just standing there, watching their opportunity to easily pass fade away, and is just like answer the questions Annabeth answer the questions
sometimes I have fluffy ideas come to me while I’m on the treadmill.
then sometimes I get fun ideas like “what if Batman’s cape couldn’t put out the flames on Harvey’s face in the Dark Knight?” swiftly followed by “what if it was fireproof and put out the flames but the cape burned into Harvey’s skin and whenever Bruce sees him after that, he’s got shiny thick burns healed around tiny shreds of his own cape.”
dailybridgerton
turnnoffyourmind
romaincrisis
titsay
2087
ellievsbear
baratheonpilled
discoholicmusic
prguitarman
tangentwithtanner
