A sharp crackling was the only warning before rocks rained down on them. Thomas grabbed Sigrid and shoved her against the cliff, flattening them both. When the storm of debris slowed, they saw a shape atop the crag, a darker shadow in dark fog.
Sigrid examined the cliff side. She tucked the iron stake into her bra. Its rough edges cut the gentle skin of her chest. Using slim footholds and crevasses in the cliff’s sheer sides, she climbed closer to the top, until finally her aching fingers grasped a flat edge with grass and stubborn-rooted plants. Sigrid looked up and saw Thomas peering over the side.
“How did you—”
Before Sigrid could finish her question she felt her toe slipping. “Help,” she gasped.
Thomas just stared.
Sigrid’s grip on the shrubs and barbed plants started to give way, shallow roots peeling back from the crag. With a final desperate heave, Sigrid dragged her elbows over the top. Using the last of her strength, she hauled one leg, then another, over the edge.
On her knees, she took gasping breaths. From the corner of her eye, she saw the filthy toes of Thomas’s trainers. “You rutting bastard,” she rasped, lifting her head.
But past Thomas, through the dawn-like glow of mist pressing in on them, a dusky shape moved . . .
Walking. Toward them.
Thomas turned. Sigrid stood. The figure moved through a halo of golden light. It took the shape of a broad-chested man wearing an elegantly draped tunic with a wide braided belt, and a heavy cloak lined with fur.
“It’s you,” Sigrid breathed.
He had olive skin and a mass of dark curls. His trimmed beard held two prongs of grey. He seemed to hold light, to exude an aura of calm.
“I don’t know your name,” she said.
The man shook his head. “You’ve brought much with you.” He waved a hand and the earth beside him cratered, forming a pit of loamy dirt. With a snap of his fingers, a fire appeared there, absent kindling to stoke the flame. It burned green and sulfurous. “It must all be sacrificed to get what you seek.”
Sigrid shook her head. “How do you know what I’m after?” she asked.
The man held his arms wide. “You seek everything,” he said simply. “Like all the rest. But first you must choose.”
“Choose?”
The man shifted his dark eyes to Thomas. “The others. Or yourself.”
Sigrid shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Only one of you can continue. If you seek to know all, to apprentice the heavens, to shape the universe—you must make a decision.”
Sigrid looked down and gasped. The iron stake was in her hand, biting the thin skin of her fingers.
Thomas stepped back. He stared at her with an eerie calm, the look that had returned fire for so many all-night arguments. The same expression that had gawked, unfeeling, at her as she teetered on the edge of the cliff.
“This was the choice you gave Alice Gray,” Sigrid said, meeting the sorcerer’s black eyes.
He raised an eyebrow. “After a fashion.”
In the end, the expedition had been asked to sacrifice one another so one among them could gain everything. And they’d all said no. Alice had said no.
Extraordinary, Thomas had called them. Brilliant.
Selfless. Stupid. Brave.
Thomas had no weapons, but his hands twitched at his sides, itching to gesture magic into being. Sigrid’s vision began to darken. He was calling magic to him, and pulling her into his sight—he never did learn to control it.
“What happened to saving the world?” Sigrid whispered.
“One of us would,” Thomas said, shaking his head. “And one of us can die trying. A legend. Just like Alice.”
The blackness overwhelmed her vision. Then Sigrid saw herself through Thomas’s eyes, staring back with a look that could cut diamond. Her white-blond hair, loose from its braid, whipped around her head in the chaotic ocean wind. She stood just a few yards from the cliff’s edge, legs spread wide, arms tight at her sides: a warrior’s stance. Her grip on the stake was so tight, blood seeped between her fingers.
Thomas was waiting for Sigrid to follow in Alice Gray’s footsteps. To take the selfless path—to be brave. When Thomas said Sigrid could have it all, he meant until it cost him something. He wanted her to sacrifice herself, leaving Thomas to save magic and take all the glory.
But Thomas had said it himself: if Alice had been half as powerful as they were, things would have been different. Don’t trust the choice. In her final moments, Alice had been filled with terror and regret for her sacrifice.
All Sigrid felt was calm.
Sigrid watched herself advance on Thomas, arm raised. She witnessed the cold glaze in her own eyes as her hand arced down, burying the iron stake in his stomach. Sigrid grabbed Thomas and shoved him back, pushing the stake farther into his soft belly, dragging him to the cliff’s edge. Her hand was warm with his gushing blood. His body twitched, fighting the lightning-fast march to death.
“I didn’t come here to save magic,” she said, her ice-blue eyes calm and clear. “I came here to prove that I could.”
And when she blinked—release. Thomas’s head rolled up to the honeyed sky as his body fell backward to the shore.
In the next blink, Sigrid returned to herself, looking over the cliff’s edge into nothingness. There was no sound of body meeting rock. The fog was too thick to see where Thomas found his final rest. All was silent besides the persistent waves and the steady clunk-clunk of the dingy battering the rocky shore.
She turned back to the man, breathing hard, hair in her eyes.
“Is it resolved?” His dark stare was relentless.
Sigrid began to walk toward him when pain exploded in her belly. She passed a hand over her stomach. It came away wet with blood. In her shock, a partially chewed khat leaf fell from her mouth.
Sigrid blinked and saw the bright arc of sky. She blinked and saw her hand coated in gore. She shut her eyes, mind spinning.
“Is it resolved?” the man repeated. “Have you chosen?”
Daring to open her eyes, Sigrid saw one thing clearly: the magical flame dancing at the sorcerer’s feet. It cast no shadow, nor emitted any heat. It was nothing more than a trick—a figment of something real, created to give meaning to something abstract, subconscious. And on it would flicker, until the sorcerer had no more need of it.
Thomas’s body had made no sound, as insubstantial in death as it had been in life. Just a figment of Sigrid’s whim.
She drew up, the pain in her stomach melting away. The iron stake still lay in the crabgrass, but Sigrid splayed her fingers: no blood or markings remained. She stretched her neck and took a breath, feeling full, buoyed, whole.
“It is done.”
“Good,” the man said. He turned, beckoning her to follow. “Then we can begin.”
SOPHIA LEE’S VILLAIN CHALLENGE TO SARAH ENNI:
A Dark Sorcerer’s Motives for Seeking Immortality or Omnipotence
WILL THE REAL VILLAIN PLEASE STAND UP?
BY SOPHIA LEE
I don’t like villains.
Not because they’re evil or because they’re universally unpopular, but because they’re weak—and I don’t mean weak in terms of physical strength or magical power, but that they’re weak in their characterization. So I asked Sarah to create something—or someone—different.