Modern Magick

The Heart of Hyndorin: 19

Let it be noted: there are drawbacks to radiating magick like some kind of arcane halogen heater.

It might sound like a good deal, and it certainly has its upsides (see: Zareen's casual exorcism of a ten-strong haunting team, with a flick of her cadaverous fingers).

The downsides, though? For one, it should not be possible for other people to soak up magick like a sponge, just by touching me. It meant I wasn't so much a magickal battery as a broken tap, spewing precious magickal resources every which way with no semblance of control. And if I wasn't in possession of enough hangers-on to take some of the magickal overload, I'd probably burst.

That was really going to play hell with my social life.

For another thing, magick is super fun and all (see: never-ending chocolate pots, and rainbow hair), but it's also scary as hell and dangerous beyond all reason. Give a furious and exhausted woman access to a convenient magickal reservoir, let her be possessed of terrifying necromantic powers, and top it all off by putting her in immediate danger, and... the results are not pretty.

Here's what happened to Fenella Beaumont.

'Shit,' said Zareen, as Fenella rampaged in our direction, wearing the expression of a woman intent on nothing but our total destruction.

It was hard to blame her, even. We did have a regrettable way of wrecking her stuff.

'Do you have any idea what you have just done?' she screamed, mostly at Zareen, but her rage certainly included me. 'Ten waymaster spirits! There probably aren't another ten left in Britain! All that work — what we've expended — the rarity — my castle! Ruined!'

I listened, faintly intrigued. I'd never heard anyone literally splutter with fury before.

It occurred to me that I ought to be more worried, but I felt spacy and detached, like I existed on a different magickal plane to everyone else. Perhaps I did.

Zareen, though, was in no way detached. She squared up to Fenella, our own personal Queen of the Dead versus the woman who enslaved spirits, hauled entire castles from world to world, and had built a magickal organisation to rival every other known to man.

They ought to have been evenly matched.

They would have been, if it wasn't for me.

'Stop there,' said Zareen, icy-cold, and her voice boomed and echoed, as though she spoke from the middle of a thunderstorm. Or as though she was the thunderstorm.

'Or what?' spat Fenella. 'You've already done your worst.' She whipped out a rose-quartz Wand, and power built around her in waves. Pressure built. Two elemental forces faced off against one another.

'Ves,' hissed Jay, and hands pulled at me. 'You need to get out of here.'

I understood where he was coming from. Any bystanders to this particular fight were likely to end up smashed to smithereens, and I was already in a vulnerable state.

But, leaving Zar to face Fenella's wrath alone was not an option. I shook my head, resisting his — and Alban's — attempts to peel me away.

'My worst?' said Zareen, and smiled. 'Not quite.'

I braced myself for an explosion of some kind, but... nothing happened.

Instead, I felt a faint woosh. A small ocean of magick poured out of me; Zareen took it, and with a tilt of her head and a blink of her coal-black eyes, she directed it with devastating force.

Fenella keeled over backwards, and lay inert as a stone.

For about five long seconds, no one spoke.