Author's Games: Magi

Female 1: Shapeshifter Sage Lilja Svana

Sorry, but most entries were too long to actually include all the males and females in two chapters.... so everyone gets a chapter for their entry by themselves from now on :) Sorry that it makes Magi have so many different parts to it :( Enjoy! 

There were once two sisters who loved each other so – two twin sisters, so be more precise. From the day that they were born, they did everything together – from dancing and laughing to wailing and weeping. Of yes, there were times were they thought each other insufferable, even instances were heated arguments would ensure over the pettiest of things. Yet deep down, they still loved each other, and promised to never let each other go.

When one day, unexpectedly, a great force of evil caused the death of the younger of the two sisters, the older could not bear the sorrow. She was so grief-stricken that more than once, when she lay curled in her bed at night and sobbed silently into her pillow, she would contemplate the notion of suicide. In her mind, she had nothing to live for – her village had been destroyed when she was but a toddler, and her parents murdered. Her twin was all that she had, and death had cruelly taken her last remaining family as well. It felt like the final blow; the last straw.

So she did what she had always done when the days were dark and stormy.

She ran.

Lilja Svana was now a fugitive, a runaway, a coward fleeing the scene of battle. She rode on Visaraenar's back, staying at the very edges of the army which was now retreating as Vaxon as his army pressed on. The dapple grey pegasus was panting heavily, even foaming at the mouth after hours of hard riding, and though Lilja wanted nothing but to stop and let poor Visaraenar rest, there was nothing she could do but keep travelling on.

Where she was going, she did not know. Guessing by the climate and their forestry surroundings, Lilja would say that they were still in Elloyn. Where exactly was impossible to tell – they had been escaping the onslaught from Vaxon for more than a day now, and there had been little to no time to stop for rest. Lilja had only dozed off once or twice, and then not more than two hours. Visaraenar, bless his soul, had not gotten a wink of sleep at all.

Lilja knew that Pegasi had more energy than an average human, and could even store energy in their blood for the next day if needed, but one look at the sagging tail, drooped ears and fluttering eyelids of Visaraenar spoke volumes. He was exhausted, but still trotted onwards like the valiant warrior he was.

In a way, the Pegasus reminded her of Chanel – no doubt if she was still alive, she would have been marching with her head high, brave even in the face of danger and death. Lilja swallowed painfully at the thought of her twin sister – her death had been days ago, and though there were much more pressing matters at hand such as the ever-present danger of Vaxon or the possibility of a sudden assault, how could Lilja just push the face of her deceased twin out of her mind?

She let out a melancholy sigh, before suddenly realizing that Visaraenar had paused beneath her, and they were no longer moving forward with the rest of the army. Lilja looked down at her friend in confusion, asking, "Visaraenar-"

He collapsed.

With a muffled shriek, Lilja was pitched off the back of the Pegasus as his front legs buckled, sending both of them crashing to the ground. Her face grazed painfully against the rocky road and she received a mouthful of dirt, which she immediately spat out in distaste. For a few seconds, she just lay in the heap on the road, stunned and with her vision swimming so that everything before her was nothing but a meaningless blur of color. A groan left her lips against her will as Lilja blinked hard, trying to get her vision to focus once more. After a few attempts of blinking, the world had stopped spinning around her and she had propped herself up on one elbow. The sight she saw before her caused her heartbeat to quicken in fear.