Fantasy June Day 22: Spark
Lyanna started, her whispered magic spluttering out on her tongue. The motes of light darting around her fingers dissipated into the early morning air. She turned to see the demon looming over her, peering with his one remaining eye. Although the bandages he threw a hissy fit over undermined the effect a little… “You really need to learn how to not sneak up on people. And right now, you shouldn’t be up at all. You’ll make your injuries worse.”
He bared his teeth. “I will do as I please.”
“Yet you question me when I do as I please?” She wiggled her fingers for emphasis.
“That’s different. Stealth serves a purpose. Undirected magic does not.”
“And how do you know that? You don’t know how humans use magic.”
“Because that’s not what magic is for!” He leaned down towards her; his claws and pointed teeth gleamed in the light of the rising sun, and Lyanna forced herself not to pull back. “Magic is power! It’s strength! It’s for conquering your enemies and proving how much better you are than them! It’s a force to be reckoned with! And if I weren’t stuck in this human body, playing by your pathetic human rules, then I would make you regret wasting it on flickering lights!”
The ideology lined up with more mages’ speeches than she’d like to admit. But that was the fun part: she didn’t have to admit anything. “Is that really all you think magic can be used for?”
“Why would it need to do anything else?”
“It healed you, didn’t it?”
He reached up with a bandaged hand to poke at the bandaged half of his face. She glared; he glared back, but stopped. “That’s just another form of power. Healing or killing, you’re exerting control. And, I might add, you did a pretty poor job of it.”
“I did a perfectly fine job.” She crossed her arms. “It’s not my fault you nearly got yourself killed.”
He stiffened, then snarled. “You are avoiding the point! Sending your magic into the world with no intention to guide it or materials to bind it is pointless and pathetic, and you humans should be ashamed for doing it!”
“Yes, it’s fun. And it helps me relax. Although I suppose you might not be familiar with either of those ideas.” She kept her eyes on him, waiting to see how the insult would land.
It didn’t. “It is a waste of time, energy, and potential. You all waste everything, anyway, but I thought you’d at least have the sense to be efficient with magic.”
“How do you know that it isn’t efficient?”
“Well, have you done it?”
“Have you used magic like that before?”
“Of course not! It’s not using it at all!”
“Well, that means I have evidence.” She smirked. “And you don’t.”
The demon growled. “I don’t need to play your mind games, human.”
“I guess that means we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
He appeared first to puzzle over the concept, and then to find it distasteful. Of course. He turned away and began stalking away.
She stood. “Where are you going?”
“There’s plenty of food in the cabin!”
“I want. To hunt something.”
The demon let out a cross between a screech and a snarl over his shoulder before taking off into the woods as fast as his limping legs could carry him. Lyanna sighed and rubbed her hands over her face. Healing a horrific human-demon-magic mishap instead of letting it die? Letting it into her home? Having conversations with it? She’d never wanted to believe her old mage training classmates, but maybe she was out of her mind.
(Or maybe, she would think that night, watching him send cautious blue-white sparks from his fingertips while he thought she was asleep, she was not.)
