One I wrote before work, that when I came back to a few hours later had had a few thousand people read it, which was pretty fun for me. Fair warning, it's not funny, at least not on purpose. I was obviously feeling a bit maudlin this morning.
Came from this short passage I read: 'He rushes onwards like a bloody tempest, destroying all in an attempt to free you from the stake that binds you to the pyre at your feet. For before he was a Hero, he was the boy that gave you flowers. And before you were exposed and branded a Witch, you were the girl that taught him love'
The flames had not yet started to nibble at her feet. But by the time they did, it would already be too late. The heat that preceded the flames was a searing blast of angry, poorly directed violence, much like the villager's reaction to her unmasking as a ‘witch’. Their guilt was a powerful accelerant. All those times they had come to her for healing, or to protect their crops or their family members. Now they had to convince others, if not themselves, that they didn’t know. That they believed it was all done with herbs. A good outpouring of anger, a pyre, and a fire. That was a good way to show it.
Clarice tried to keep her mind clear, as she worked out her best move. She used a small charm to direct the heat away from her, and outwards, but that wouldn’t hold for long. The reality was there was nothing she could do to stop this. There was a reason that they burned witches and didn’t drown them, or hang them, or run them through. The relentlessness of fire wore all but the strongest down. So, she thought. Protect her body as long as she could? Or channel her intention into protecting her mind from the pain until her body was destroyed?
While she concentrated on the charm and the plan, she became aware of a commotion. She had been keeping her eyes shut out of mercy. It would have hurt the villagers to have to catch her eye, and she wanted them to be at peace. It was all she ever wanted. It also was not how she wanted to remember them. Faces contorted with rage and the pain that comes from your mind believing two things at once.
When the commotion became screaming, she risked opening an eye. Behind the villagers, there was the clash and clang of steel on steel. He had come.
Damn him.
The villager's screams were in panic only, for the fighting had not reached them. Joseph was engaged with the warriors of the Witch-hunter General. And there was a legion of them. The Witch hunters had grown used to defending their murders from their preys friends and allies. From their lovers.
Even those that had promised not to try and sell their lives to pay her penalty.
Damn him.
Their soldiers were good, but Joseph was better. His sword was the scourge of the land’s enemies, and the people loved him for it. She knew when this was all over they would blame her. She bewitched him. She turned him away from his path. He didn’t know what he was doing. On that last point, they were absolutely right.
One of the warriors fell, with a swift dagger strike from Joseph finding a weak spot in his armour, and Clarice noticed two more already on the ground. Joseph caught her eye and yowled her name. The force of the shout was like magic.
Everyone froze. Clarice knew that it was magic, of a sort. When you summoned the power of the soul that dwelled in your belly and directed it outwards, it could stop people in their tracks. Some learned to use it as a weapon, but it was often accessed by normal people. Only once and in the worst moment of pain in their lives.
The cost of this attention on the fight was the pain starting to creep in again. The charm couldn’t be held without focus, and this was not helping. Clarice thought again about her plan. The child in her started to dream about Joseph rescuing her. Cutting her bonds, and pulling her from the inferno. He was somehow miraculously unharmed, in her fantasy. She pushed the foolish child to one side. With the villagers out of the way, the sheer scale of Joseph’s task became clear.
Even as three had fallen, more were literally queuing to take their places. He was on open ground, so he had to whirl to fight all around himself, as they closed from all sides again. The shouts power had released them to move once more. Behind them all, but still between her and him stood the Witchfinder General, with a small knot of men, charging their crossbows. He had no more chance than she did.
A blade caught Joseph as he whirled. A shallow bite, but a bite, nonetheless. The rivulet of blood down his shoulder made her mind up, and quickly. His whirling slowed as the pain in his arm weakened his sword hand, and the point lowered. The ring of soldiers around him began to tighten, like wolves sensing the end was near.
She couldn’t save them both, any more than he could. Her bonds were designed to hold a witch in place. Spells of relocation would not be able to carry her away from the heat and the steel. But they could move him.
She focused her entire attention on a clearing in the woods. The clearing where she had first lain eyes on him. The place where he had seen her practising witchcraft and instead of running or accusing, had asked if there was anything she needed. When she said no, he had brought her flowers anyway.
Her focus elsewhere, the heat and the pain crashed back over her like a wave. She had only a moment, but that was all she needed.
Clarice screamed the invocation and sent it out into the world. It swirled around the fight, and picked Joseph up, throwing him away from this place with her voice ringing in his ears.
“I love you”, it said.
