365 Days (Part 1) | ✓

83. Magic

83. Magic: Imagine you have a touch of magic, and can make impossible things happen. What would you do?

Cordelia

The power was flowing out of her in rushes like waterfalls. It did not drain her, but it saturated the area around her until it was soaked with magic and practically made the place glow. Each small atom was illuminated to her eyes. The particles of the world swirled around her in rivers. She tried to control the essences, tried to direct them into orderly channels, but they were wily. They slipped out of her grasp like eels, wiggling and then they were beyond her.

"Cordelia!"

The voice drifted through the haze, and she pried open her eyes. Her eyelids felt heavy, as exhaustion seeped through her bones.

"Cordelia! Stop!"

She could not stop; did he not realize that? If Cordelia Grace-Opeia could halt the evil she was doing, she would have. If she had known it was evil in the first place, she would have never tried to harness her magic like the old mage had advised her to. But Cordelia did not understand and she did not know.

There would be consequences for that ignorance.

"Cordelia!" came a long howl, nearer this time. He was fighting the way through the cyclone of dark magic encircling her. He was trying to reach her, but she could feel him in the vortex. Like a sixth sense, she could feel his life force, so strong and good.

The evil magic she was expelling was sapping that same life force as he struggled closer to her. The deeper he went, the thicker he darkness, and at the center would be her.

She was not the victim of the magic. She was the criminal.

"You can stop! You can turn back now! Please!"

He couldn't see her, yet he took it for granted that she was in the middle of this hurricane, because who else but the lovely girl in the lace dress had the power to stir all of the black magic in this godforsaken town into a tornado of fury?

None but Cordelia Grace-Opeia. Lovely and furious and a danger to everyone, including herself.

But she was killing Ryan, and she could feel it. Her own magic, uncontrollable and hateful, was sucking the goodness out of him, and it was his goodness that Ryan derived his energy from.

She was murdering him... the only person who had ever loved her, even with her possessing the evil magic she did.

She had to save him. She had to save him. She had to save him...

It would cost her herself.

She had to save him.

Cordelia tried the one thing she had not done to stop the explosion of magic, though it was the one thing she was sure of working. She closed her eyes again -- they snapped shut with relief, chafed from seeing the swirling magic -- and exhaled.

She did not just expel breath. She gave up everything: forced it all out. Even her magic, even her life.

It was surprisingly easy. The magic had wanted to be free. As soon as she released it, it dispersed through the air, much like steam dissolves into nothingness. The roll of darkness that encompassed Cordelia vanished, but she knew it only hid elsewhere.

As her eyes closed, she saw one brief glimpse of Ryan, pale and with eyes aching with pain, lurch toward her. But he could not catch her before she slammed into the ground.

*

A/N: Believe it or not... this was inspired from an old roleplay I once did that I remembered for some reason through the years... Inspiration comes from funny places.