THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY | on hold

o: a forest all aflame

Here you are again. Running away. You never change, do you?

Mago nearly fell over one of the burning hunks of shrubbery in her way. For fuck's sake, really. She was fleeing for her life and the damned soulless bastard who'd ruined everything, who'd made her run, was still larking about in her thoughts like he had a right to be there.

Shouts and barking of scent hounds echoed at the top of the hill, where Mago was sure they'd already broken out the witchfire torches. Not that those would help. Witchfire was half belief, but even if they believed with all their might, you couldn't kill a warlock with a witch's bane.

She didn't blame them for trying to kill her. It was understandable. A warlock had split the world in two, and it might never be whole again. They were right to be afraid.

Her family had always had a taste for power and blood. Other people's, preferably. Her parents were rotted away by the time she was born. Probably the best thing Mawgan had done in his mad quest was kill them. Horrible people. Not fit to be called human.

So there it was. The Day family, rotten to the last. Not for two generations had there been a good warlock in the Days. Her parents had been murderers at best and near-worldkillers at worst, her brother a chip off the family block, and her older sister dead for trying to escape. Well, Mago wouldn't make that same mistake. She never tried to do anything. She just did it.

For half a second, stumbling through bracken and undergrowth, coughing and waving through the stinging smoke as the forest burned and wailed around her- could those men hear it? The dying screams of the ancient wood?- Mago was tempted to let them catch her.

Gods, but it'd been a rough go of it. Her life. Always peeking round corners and jumping at nothing. She'd been tolerated as long as she was Mawgan's shadow, but the second she tried on being a person of her own- well. She hated to think what would have happened once Mawgan killed their parents and found her the only enemy left. He was good at making enemies out of friends, and she a twin sister was twice any friend. It was understandable that the people wanted her dead, the last of the accursed Day clan, after what Mawgan did.

Damn his rotten soul to hell.

If only she'd been so lucky.

Her thoughts of suicide by dogs and her brother's treachery were batted aside by the rasping memory of her mentor's voice, the one she ought not to have had. No witch can teach a warlock, her father had said, but Mago learned well from one all the same.

You'll have to run and hide and lie as soon as your brother's mad scheme fails, the witch Thea had told her on the last full moon. I won't be there to guide you. You'll be on your own. And you mustn't forget how badly folk hate your kind already, never mind that you're a Day. Don't admit anything, don't speak any names aloud. Keep your magic close. Wait for me by the sea, in Emblyn City, and I'll find you before the year has ended.

I can't lie, or hide my magic, I've never been good at lying, Mago had protested. That was always Mog's specialty. You never heard a story so fine as his lies.

No? But you will have to lie anyway, if you hope to survive.

I can't.

Then learn. Or die.

Leaves swirled up as she sped past, the only heir left to the Waking Wood, and abandoning it as it burned. The ground seemed to pull at her feet like an infant reaching for its mother. Her heart ached for it.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, calling out the same in her mind, though she didn't know whether the forest heard her or not. The cries of agony from the trees and the slumbering earth were unbearable and unending.

"There! Down hill!"

Shit. So those witchfire torches were good for something after all. Burn her, they couldn't, but illuminate? Damn well they would. Mago was amused for a second at the idea of torches in a burning forest, but she focused after that. If she wanted to vanish, she'd need to do it properly.

Gods. What kind of magic would be the least offensive? Mawgan had ripped the heavens and the earth and the world beneath asunder not more than hours ago. Slipping through the edges might be easy, but she didn't know what else would slip out in her place.

A bend in the wind would be difficult to believe. Smoke, though. She could do smoke.

She risked a glance over her shoulder and found the torchlit party much closer than she'd thought, close enough to see the teeth glinting in the mouths of the slavering hounds. Triple shit. She'd have to work fast.

She zigzagged around a burning flare of dry bush and got behind a copse of hazel trees, that would give her a bit of cover. She kept running but she let her sight sink past the veil, into the world that shimmered beneath.

I am here. I am Maragol Day, last of my house. I will do no evil. No harm, only magic wonderful and strange.

It was a stupid little speech, but every warlock needed something to concentrate with, and that was one of hers. It worked well enough. The smoke came easily to her, swirling down from smoldering bark and up from the ground, across the darkening sunset sky to shroud her.

They would already lose her in the sunset if they weren't careful. Mago let the smoke hang about for only a couple moments, enough time for her to find the edge of the wood and throw herself off it, clamping her tongue against the instinctual urge to scream. They'd never think twice about losing her in the smoke, and the veil would stay quiet. That was one problem well solved, as the witch Thea would say.

As for her, well. She'd plummeted to her near death a few times before. It was almost a hobby, these days. And Mago had always loved the sea.