A Nameless Witch

Wyst raised his sword in a trembling hand, standing on shaking knees. He didn't have any strength left. 'You won't kill her while I draw breath.'

'Quite correct, but only because I want her to watch you die.' Soulless Gustav raised his bloody palm, and Wyst floated into the air. The sorcerer rotated his thumb. Wyst's arm snapped, but he didn't yell out. Soulless Gustav wiggled a finger. Wyst's legs twisted. He gasped. Tears streamed down his face.

'This isn't your fault,' he whispered.

Even dying, he still thought of me. I wanted to reach out and touch him. To know his kiss one last time would almost make my horrible death tolerable. A current of magic trickled to my call, and I was free for the briefest of moments. Soulless Gustav raised an eyebrow and chains shackled me to the frozen ground.

'Perhaps you've suffered enough, witch. Time to end this game before it grows tiresome.' A coil of black entwined around the Knight's throat.

He smiled painfully at me. 'I love you.'

'Now those are excellent last words.'

Wyst's neck broke with a soft crunch. His corpse collapsed in a heap.

I didn't believe it. I couldn't accept it. The trickle of magic slipped from my heart and onto the dead Knight. Oddly enough, Soulless Gustav seemed not to notice.

'Ah, love. Think about it. You can't touch it. You can't see it. You can't really even describe it. Not without a fountain of ambiguous, pretty words. If you think about it, it's the greatest illusion there is.'

Behind him, magic filled Wyst's body. The white and greens danced along his broken form. His shattered arm straightened. Soulless Gustav seemed oblivious to it, and I wondered how he could be. It might've been because his own power was so great. Like a giant, unaware of the gnats buzzing at his feet.

More magic gathered at my fingertips. I sent it against the chains that held me. They rusted away

'So there's a little fight left in you yet.'

Wyst stirred. I didn't know how. I couldn't raise the dead without touching them, and I couldn't heal them. He seemed perfectly whole. He stood, very surprised to be alive. Not nearly so surprised as Soulless Gustav.

Then I grasped it. I hadn't restored Wyst's life. I'd unbe­lieved his death, and the dribble of magic running through me was different from what I'd called upon before because it was genuine.

Soulless Gustav brought a portion of his incredible might down upon my head. I thrust a cone of red around myself and all that power splashed away without touching me.

I passed my hand at Newt's body. With a slurp and gurgle, skin and feathers wrapped around his organs. He raised his head and glanced at his wings.

Soulless Gustav gaped. 'How did you .. .' He couldn't finish the question, so strong was his confusion.

Penelope hopped to life as the icy depths spit Wyst's horse to the surface. Flesh sprang onto the gray fox's bones. Finally Gwurm's parts rained from the sky, falling into perfect arrangement. All were unbelieved back to life with just a few dollops of magic. Real magic.

'It's done, Gustav. You've lost, and you've only yourself to blame.'

'Oh, no, witch.' His deep, raging voice rumbled, sending cracks through the ice. 'Now you shall behold me as I really am.'

'I already do,' I replied softly. Too softly to be heard over his blustering.

He threw up his arms. Great monoliths of ice thrust their way to the sky. A downpour of steaming rain sizzled the air. The sorcerer grew fifty feet tall. His flesh turned to glittering silver, and his eyes became crackling lightning.

I draped a golden dome over myself and my companions to keep the unpleasant rain at bay. 'I take back what I said before, Gustav. You have more imagination than I gave you credit for. Too much. You've forgotten that this isn't real. That was your first mistake, and I think you made it long ago.'

Ice transformed into sand and rock. Clouds parted to reveal a swirling void. Chunks of earth were ripped from the ground and swallowed into it. Not a hair on any of our heads moved. I wished my friends away from this crumbling madness. They faded, leaving only Soulless Gustav and myself.

'I am a god here!' growled Soulless Gustav.

'God of a dream. A master of glass and shadows. Lord of nothing.' I laughed. I shouldn't have, but I was too amused. 'Here, in this place, your power is at its greatest. But here, in this place, your power is at its most vulnerable. Out there, in the true world, your illusions touch reality, and through that, gain substance. A man killed by a phantom gobling dies because even death can be fooled when the sorcery is potent enough. But here, death is merely a dream. To be accepted or disregarded at one's whim. And I don't accept it. I deny it all.'

I clasped my hands together and released a wave of magic and unbelief. Soulless Gustav's universe ceased to exist. It was too fragile to stand against even the smallest skepticism. Soulless Gustav had foolishly allowed me in, and it was far too easy to unmake it from the inside. It was like waking from someone else's dream. Black surrounded us. A tiny fountain of colors stood between us. The legendary sorcerer was reduced to his normal stature, a little shorter in fact. A dull aura of power surrounded him, far less than godhood. He knelt beside the fountain.

'This is all the magic of your realm,' I explained. 'This is the well of life from which your universe drew existence. Everything else, even your godhood, was merely a delusion. Delusions stacked upon figments piled upon fancies on the shoulders of phantasms. A house of cards.'

The sadness on his face stirred my sympathy 'Your first mistake was allowing me inside. Your second was in bringing the others. I was prepared for my death. I would've believed it, but I couldn't accept it for them. Their deaths, false though they were, showed me the truth.'

I passed my fingers through the fountain and pressed them to my lips. The raw magic tasted of blood and lemons. The fount was just a trickle, a drop borrowed from the real world to fuel a shattered cosmos. I almost felt sorry for Soulless Gustav as I plugged it with my toe and starved away the remnants of his world.

The darkness fell away. We stood amid the field of his impure sorcery, that place where reality and illusion mingled. A flood of power filled me when we crossed the threshold. Soulless Gustav hadn't lost complete touch with true magic. It swelled around him, but he was a broken man. Dreams he could no longer believe in surrounded him, and he wept.

My companions stood by my side. None could look at the fallen sorcerer save Newt.

'Do you want to kill him? Or can I?'

'There s no need.'

'But your vengeance. Surely, you're not going to let him live.'

'Death would be a mercy. Now he lives, forsaken and miserable, without hope or joy or even the hollow fantasies of such. This is my vengeance.'

'Now that is just cruel.' He smiled at me. 'The mistress would be proud.'

'And what about this place?' asked Wyst.

'I could unmake it, but there's no need. It will fade on its own in time, and the world will never know it was here.'

I cast one last glance at Soulless Gustav, sobbing. My vengeance was more than I could bear to witness any longer. I turned and planned on walking away without looking back.

'You dare turn your back on me!' He growled. His voice cracked. I felt the surge of magic as he called upon it. 'You won't be able to unbelieve death here, witch.'

My companions moved to my defense. Their protection was unnecessary but appreciated.

All Soulless Gustav's subtlety was gone. His anger made his sorcery an obscene, vulgar effort. He molded it into a beast of fangs and claws and glaring red eyes of no discernible form. It was too hideous to be genuine, too grotesque and shapeless to be accepted by the universe. It was the final phantom, the stinging bite that woke the dragon. Soulless Gustav unleashed his own doom.

I'd only meant the dragon as a metaphor, but the magic must've enjoyed the notion. The earth trembled as a black and red serpent parted the clouds and filled the sky. It couldn't be seen entirely in its vastness. It opened terrible jaws and a cleansing, white flame washed across the sorcer­ous kingdom. Save for the rumbling earth, it made no sound. The purifying blaze burned without even a crackle. The scorched landscape turned to ash, then nothing. The fire seared my companions without touching them. We were real. I didn't even feel its heat. Soulless Gustav wasn't so fortunate. Twisted and blackened, he lay on the barren earth. Soulless Gustav was soulless after all. He'd been living among illusions too long. Somewhere along the way, he'd become a phantom himself.