Playing with Fire

• Posted by Cinae February 26, 2016 - 800 views

      Aliette was dead. She was beginning to see that the Nords and Redguards were wiser than she had thought. She had laughed at Nords who feared magic, and mocked Redguards who said that to trap a person’s soul was a terrible deed.
      But it was not only Redguards and Nords that she had refused to listen to. Seasoned mages had told her that she was fool-hearted, and headstrong. They told her to practice caution, and invest time in all the magical disciplines. She had seen their pleas as being those of people who only studied magic, and had forgotten how to live it.
       What she had loved had been Conjuration and Destruction magic. She had enjoyed pulling out flaming bound swords, and blasting mer and men apart with fireballs. For her, magic meant feeling powerful and alive. She had no time for either Illusion or Alteration magic.
                 And of course, she trapped the souls of her enemies to fuel a powerful magical staff, a gift of Sanguine.
              But one day, she picked a fight with the wrong mage, a powerful one. She could not escape because she had no way of shielding herself, or of hiding. She fell to him.
            As the mage had bent over her dying body, he whispered into her ear that her soul would be trapped and used to fuel his staff.
         ‘’You are mine,’’ he said.
         Moments later, she found herself in a cold, dark space. She was certain that he had been true to his word.
          She had no body. She was a formless spirit wandering about in a void. Nothing ever happened until the pull.
          These were the times he used his staff. These were the times that she lost memories, one by one.
         The first time, she forgot the color of her hair.
         The second time, she forgot her last name.
         The third time, she forgot who her family back in High Rock supported as King.
            Then she laughed, because that felt like something she should have remembered up to the very end.
        Her memories and identity were giving his staff its power. She was dead, and there would be no afterlife for her because soon she would have no soul for any god to take. This wasn’t an afterlife. It was temporary storage.
       Sometimes she couldn’t remember what was taken from her, only that it was gone. Yet, even then, she knew exactly what was taken from her. A sliver of her soul, lost for all eternity.
           One day, she would forget that she had ever been a mage. Once she forgot she would not remember, ever.
          So in the void, in the nothingness, she told herself the things she still remembered.
          She told herself a tale of a girl who had played with fire, seen dragons, and was fearless.
                                       Let me be brave.