Illusory

I lurched to my feet, and the man did the same across from me, eyes wide in fear and surprise. He opened his mouth to say something, probably to yell for help, but I covered his words with a cry of "Rotundtur Flamma!" I thrust my hand out before me, images of fire filling my mind, and a ball of blazing flame sprang forth and bowled through the short man, his armchair, and the wall behind him.

The crackling of the fire died away much sooner than I expected, and I could clearly hear the sounds of footsteps on a set of old, creaky stairs. I gazed at the charred corpse of the short man for a moment longer, took in the sight of the broken and burned armchair and the still-burning hole in the wall, then turned in the direction of the thundering footsteps.

"What was that?" a tall, gaunt man with a hollow-cheeked face cried as he entered the room through the door Rick had used to take his exit. He first caught sight of the chair and the hole in the wall and the corpse, then he saw me. "What are you doing?!" he screamed. "What have you done?!" He raised a hand, likely preparing to perform some magic, but I beat him to it.

"Rotundtur Flamma!" Another fireball formed before my outstretched hand, and it tore its way through the tall man, the two men behind him, and another wall. Three corpses littered the ground now, one of them still lightly aflame. Rick stepped over them with a chuckle, appearing out of nowhere, it seemed.

"I didn't know you were a practitioner, too," he laughed, stopping in the singed doorway. "If I had, I would've done to you what I'd done to him, no matter how cute you are." He raised his hand as the first man had, but I couldn't beat him to the punch. "Fulgur!" I heard a clap of thunder outside, then a loud cracking sound, followed by another one, closer now, and some instinctual urge sent me rolling sideways across the floor. A split second later, a bolt of lightning shot straight through the wood of the floor with a loud crash much like the ones I'd heard before, and I held a hand in front of my face to ward off the flying debris.

Oh, shit, I thought, staggering to my feet and gazing at Rick's smirking face with wide eyes. Oh, shit! He could create fucking lightning. Not just a little shock. Full-on fucking lightning. I was so, so screwed. My eyes darted to where my purse lay a few yards away, having flown from my hand during the commotion without my noticing. Please come out, Krekkel. I think I'm going to need your help.

"Fulgur!" Rick yelled again, and there was another clap of thunder and the sounds of another bolt of lightning tearing through the roof. I dove to the side again, toward my purse, and the bolt shot through the floor and into the basement just as the last one had.

I reached for the purse, but it was much too far away. Wouldn't Krekkel have been out by now, anyway? Oh, God. What if she's gone?! I began to panic, bolting to my feet and spinning to face Rick's cruelly smiling face once more. I might be on my own here. Surely she would've broken free by now if she were still around. Surely. She was a giant, magical cat, for Christ's sake. There was no way in hell a tiny purse could hold her! Or, at least, that's what I hoped as Rick shouted again, "Fulgur!"

I dove as another rumble of thunder rolled through the house, but this time, Rick followed. He dove on top of me as I fell to the floor behind the couch, pinning me down with his body against mine. "Stop fighting it," he half laughed, half growled in my ear, and his damp breath on my skin was nothing like Van's. "I'm going to kill you. You have no chance of escape."

I glared into his eyes, trying to fight off my rising panic with burning hatred, the hatred that had come from this man's lying to me, leading me on, and promising to kill my friend. "Pectust Introrumpo," I said calmly, coolly, boldly, still gazing right into his dark brown eyes. Those eyes, those cocky, too-cool eyes, widened in shock, but soon drifted to half-mast, momentarily empty and unseeing. It didn't even hurt this time — not until he started to fight. I could feel him squirming around in my grasp, burning and freezing me all at once as I tried to contain him. I fought to keep my hold, though, and I forced him to crawl off of me and lie on the hardwood floor next to me. I kept him there, still squabbling with him in my mind, as I lurched to my feet and went for my purse once again.

I wasn't quick enough, though, and my hold on him snapped with a surge of unfamiliar power before I could even touch the silky black fabric. I was momentarily blinded with pain, stumbling to my hands and knees on the floor, and I heard his deep voice behind me. "Black magic, eh?" he spat, and I listened, panting and still half blind, as he hauled himself to his feet with many a scrape and grunt. "I never would have taken you for the dark type. I was just going to kill you before, but now..." I turned just in time to watch his dark lips move in a slow, accented whisper of "Concrucio."

Instantly, I felt like my body had been struck by the lightning I'd dodged over and over again. It tingled and sizzled all over, and a burning started in my insides much like what I'd felt in my head when summoning Krekkel. I fell to my side on the floor with a scream, curling into a tiny ball and wishing that the pain would go away. But it didn't; it wouldn't. It only got worse, worse and worse, as Rick began to laugh harder and harder.

"You should've learned some real black magic before you came here," he said, suddenly kneeling before me with such a triumphant smirk on his face that I wanted to punch him. But the pain spiked further, and I could do nothing but whimper and lie helplessly on the floor. "Something more useful against other dark magicians than a mind control spell that would barely work on a toddler." He backhanded me, bashing my head into the floor as a result, but the pain in my face couldn't trump the burning within my body, couldn't even come close. It felt like a pleasant tickling and nothing more. "It's a shame that you're so attached to that Van bastard. You definitely have potential in the dark arts." He rested a hand on my cheek, leaned so close that I could smell the cloves on his breath, and began to whisper, "Ful-"

A blow to the side of the head sent him sprawling, and the pain in my body vanished without a trace. I could breathe again. I looked up to find Van standing over the unconscious man with a table lamp in his grip and a scowl on his face.

"Thought you could get the best of us, did you?" he growled, and gave the man a rough kick in the ribs. "Well, you were wrong! You never should have underestimated Ember." Another kick, then he tossed the table lamp aside and turned to me with a cheery, charming smile. "So, what do you think we should do now?"

I looked at him for a moment, pushing myself into a sitting position, then turned my gaze to Rick's unmoving body and whispered, "Accendo." It wasn't black magic, but a sharp jolt of fiery pain sprang through my head as Rick's corpse caught fire.

"Ember, no!" Van cried, but it was too late. The damage had already been done, and I'd discovered that white magic could be turned black. But, then, why hadn't the fireball caused the same kind of reaction? I still had so much to learn about magic that it wasn't even funny.

The pain in my skull subsided, and I pushed myself to my feet. "I think someone's coming down the stairs," I said softly, my words barely audible over the sounds of footsteps thundering in the stairwell, and I wouldn't look him in the eye. He was ashamed of me, I just knew it. And who could blame him?

Two men and a woman appeared in the singed doorway, and I recognized the woman as the one I'd met during Van's battle with the unknown magician; and judging by Van's angry gasp, one of the men must have been that same unknown magician. "You!" Van yelled, and the tallest and bulkiest of the two men smirked and stepped to the front of the group. "I knew you were behind this!"

"Well, duh," the woman remarked, arms crossed and lips pursed in annoyance. "Would he have attacked your plane if he hadn't had something to do with your missing books?"

Van growled, but I skipped the rage and went straight to the spell casting. "Rotundtur Flamma!" A ball of fire hurtled toward them, but the bulky man merely put up a hand without saying a word, and the fireball rebounded. Van held out a hand, and with a mutter of "Restinguo," he made the flame vanish in mid-air.

"These are strong magicians, Ember," he murmured, leaning close to my ear. I didn't realize how much I'd missed having his warm breath against my skin and his warm body against my back until that moment. "I'm not sure if you've noticed, but that man doesn't even have to speak his spells."

"But the man you fought in the forest yelled them," I remarked in a murmur, and the woman's foot began to tap impatiently. "That can't be the same man."

"That's him, I'm sure of it," Van whispered, his eyes drifting down the man's frame to be sure of every detail. "He must have just learned wordless casting. Or perhaps his speaking in the woods was all a ruse to make us think he was weaker than he really is."

"Are you two gonna stand around chatting, or are we gonna fight?" the woman snapped, her eyes narrowed in an impatient glare. "We don't have all day, girly." But no sooner had she spoken than the scrawnier of the two men stepped forward with a cry of "Homo Lapideus!", and Van and I dodged the spell, diving in opposite directions. I wasn't sure what 'Lapideus' meant, but I knew that 'Homo' meant man, so whatever it was was going to effect the human body directly. It sounded like a piece of very, very black magic.

"Van!" I cried, and another rumbling started through the house as a lightning bolt descended upon us, likely a gift from our good buddy the silent caster. It struck neatly between us and went straight through the floor, and I wondered if the man had even been aiming. Perhaps he'd cast the spell before the other man's spell had missed, expecting to destroy the afflicted man with a bolt of theatrically quick lightning. I didn't care either way, but I couldn't stop myself from speculating. It was all too fascinating to just ignore. "Van!" I called again.

"He tried to turn us to stone!" he called in answer, and I heard him grunt as he got to his feet. "Subrigo!" he shouted, and the couch scraped across the floor toward the doorway. One of the men growled, another grunted, but the sound of the furniture colliding with either the doorway or the bodies never came. Instead, I heard the couch scraping back across the floor, and Van cried out. I turned to find that it had not only struck him, but it had also pinned him to the wall.

"Van!" I cried again, springing to my feet and running toward him. "Are you—?"

"Look out!" he yelled, though he sounded obviously breathless. I turned, coming face to face with the charred bodies of Rick and the short man, and neither of them looked — or smelled — very pleasant.

"Oh, God," I whispered, taking a shaky step away from the men.

"God has no place here," the bulky man spoke from the doorway, and I couldn't help noticing that he had an obvious lisp, one that didn't quite befit an evil magician. "I am all-powerful, and no one can stop me, not even Him!" It was one of the most cliched lines I'd ever heard, but I didn't have time to point and laugh at him just yet.

The corpses moved slowly, but they swung with such force that it didn't much matter. I ducked beneath a slow-motion swing of Rick's clenched, still-steaming fist and ran right into the crusty, bony knee of the other man. It knocked me to the floor, and mildly disoriented by the dull ache in my jaw, I could do nothing but lie there for a moment. I was just getting to my feet when Rick landed on top of me, pinning me down much like he had when he'd been alive only minutes ago.

"Ember!" Van cried, and I heard three voices raised in laughter beneath his words. "Ember!"

Rick's hands closed around my throat, fingers tight and unrelenting. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't see anything but Rick's singed face twisted in a grimace and the short man leering down at me over his shoulder. I pushed at the larger man's face, trying to knock him off of me, but I only succeeded in tearing off bits of charred skin. It stuck to my hands, rough and sticky, and blood dripped from the fresh holes in his face onto my cheeks, my lips, my nose. I felt vomit rising in my throat, but it was cut off by his hands just as my breath had been. My eyes began to water, and I wished I could scream.

"Pectust Introrumpo," I choked around his fingers and the bile stinging my throat. I forced the power out, into his head, but nothing happened. I should have expected as much. The dead didn't have minds to control, only bodies, and a much more powerful magician was already in charge of that. I pushed at his face again, seeing no other course of action as my power waned and my vision dimmed along with my consciousness.

"Ember! Ember!" I heard Van cry again, over and over, though his voice was growing farther and farther away, fading slowly into the distance. "Subrigo!" I heard him shout, and again, in a desperate shriek, "Subrigo!" But the couch wasn't moving. He wasn't coming to my rescue any time soon.

I let my eyes drift shut, my arms dropping to my sides. I was too helpless now, too far gone. I just had to accept my fate, I guessed. There was no other choice, not when I was already dying. And I was dying. I knew it.

The sound of fabric tearing. An echoing roar in the distance. The fingers jerked away from my throat, and my head lolled to the side as I took in my first breath in what felt like ages.

What was that? I wondered, though I didn't dare open my eyes.

With each breath, I grew more and more awake. I could hear the sounds of battle all around me: the scrape of that damned couch against the floor, Van's voice and the voices of strangers straining as spells were shouted every which way, the heavy thuds of a large creature's feet against the ground. I felt a soothing heat over me, felt a low growl rumbling through my body where it nearly touched the body of another. Finally, I opened my eyes.

Krekkel stood over me, crouched low in a protective stance that made our bellies touch. She was all black flesh covered by the dancing flames of her fur, three times my size, long teeth bared in a threatening snarl. Spells flew her way from both sides, but growled Latin kept the fireballs and the dagger-like spikes of ice and the flying kitchen utensils at bay.

"Krekkel?" I said, my voice carrying the soft lilt of question, and her red eyes flicked down to me for only a second before rising to follow the movements of battle once more.

"Stay here, tiny human," she growled. "Defend yourself. I'm going to attack." For a moment, I thought she meant that she was going to attack magically, but she leaped over me, the padded black bottoms of her back paws nearly catching my nose on the way over, and started for the three magicians gathered in the doorway with quick, powerful strides.

I sat up and quickly scanned the room, doing my best to take in whatever I had missed in what little time I had to do so. The three magicians — the two men and the woman I hadn't even known could cast spells until this very moment — hadn't moved from their spot near the doorway, though they had moved to stand just outside of it instead of hiding behind it; Van boldly faced the trio, the couch lying torn in two between them on the scuffed wood of the floor; and now, Krekkel was before the magicians, leaving Van to distract the men while she knocked aside a spell and sank her saber-like fangs into the woman's throat. She cried out, but the sound died with a gurgle, and the gurgle was lost beneath the sounds of Van and the two men casting and counter-casting and blocking and dodging about. It was unreal.

Krekkel tossed the woman into the two men with a careless jerk of her head, and they fell to the floor beneath the sudden weight as the big cat threw her head back, letting out a roar that shook the house to its very foundations.

"Get that thing out of here!" the man with the lisp cried, shoving the woman's bleeding corpse off of him as if her death didn't bother him a bit. I think I felt worse than he did about it.

The other man pushed her body off of him as well, but he at least wore a frown while he did it. Of course, her blood was dripping onto his face, so that could well have been the source of his unhappiness. "Y-yes, sir," he stammered, seeming uncharacteristically frightened. He rose hesitantly to his feet, but froze when he found Krekkel glaring right into his eyes.

"Homo Lapideus!" I shouted before he could try anything, and a fresh pain shot through my head as his body turned to stone from the skull downward. I felt like there should have been more to casting the spell, powerful and permanent as it was, but as long as it worked, why question it?

"Ember, stop it!" I heard Van yell, followed by a confident shout of "Rotundtur Flamma!", then, "No more black magic! You can't keep doing this to yourself!"

"I'm fine, Van," I growled back, annoyed at his treating me like a child he had to supervise. Krekkel thrust a paw through the man of stone, shattering his body into pieces for good measure, and I noticed that the other magician, the last one standing, was blocking the flame with one hand and aiming the other at the Hellcat. "Krekkel!" I cried in warning, but it was already too late. The man said nothing, but malice shown in his eyes as the cat's body was ripped apart, one limb torn from her body at a time. Blood spattered; she cried out; tears welled in my eyes. Her limbless torso dropped to the floor, blood spurting from the fresh wounds. She whimpered in pain and wouldn't stop. He'd left her head attached to make her suffer; I just knew it.

"Krekkel," I whispered, the warmth of tears rolling down my cheeks as the ice of sorrow and the heat of rage began to war within me. "Oh, God. Krekkel."

"I told you," the man began, laughter to his voice to match his twisted grin, "even God can't stand against me."

"Consisto!" Van shouted, and the way his face twisted in pain told me that he'd just cast a dark spell. The final magician's mouth hung open, as he'd been preparing to speak, but he could say nothing now, it seemed. He couldn't even move his eyes, his gaze stuck in the middle of a transition between my face and Van's. "Do what you want," Van growled, and the anger in his eyes, the anger likely on my behalf more than Krekkel's, filled me with an odd, feral warmth.

I tore a large kitchen knife from where it had embedded itself in the wall during the magicians' first altercation with the cat and rushed toward the man, unwilling to give him time to recover. I plunged it into his arm, then jerked it out and struck again, and again, over and over until the limb fell away. His mouth began to twitch, his eyes darting to me, and I knew he was beginning to recover from the spell.

"I wish I could do more to you," I snarled, and I watched saliva spatter across his face as I hit the consonants hard, "but I don't have time. I'm glad there's a Hell. I hope she meets you there and does what I can't." The knife tore through his throat much more easily than I'd expected. It didn't make it all the way through his neck, but it went deep enough that blood spurted across my already grimy face, and when he finally fell to the floor, I knew he wasn't breathing.

I stared down at the knife in my hand, covered in the blood of another human being. My chest rose and fell rapidly, my heart hammering away within. It shouldn't have been so easy to take a life like that; it shouldn't have been so easy to feel no remorse. But the knife slid from my bloody fingers, and I rushed to Krekkel's side without giving that wretched man another thought.

"We...We did it," Van stuttered behind me, sounding genuinely surprised. "We just took out a coven of powerful, evil magicians. We did it."

"Oh, God," I whispered, his words barely reaching me. Blood dripped to the floor from the stubs that had once been the beginnings of limbs, and the flames of her fiery coat were beginning to die down to barely a flicker over her dark flesh. Her red eyes were half-lidded, half-empty, but they moved to me and held my gaze. "Tell me a spell!" I cried, body beginning to tremble wildly beneath the worry and the grief and the panic that had suddenly fallen onto my shoulders with the weight of a thousand boulders. "I don't care if it's dark or light or if it'll kill me! Tell me a spell!"

Krekkel couldn't reply, but I could hear a soft thrum in her chest, the ghost of a purr. I began to sob. "Just give me a spell, please," I whispered, and buried my face in the slowly fading flames along the back of her neck. "Just tell me..."

There was a moment of silence broken only by her gentle purr, a purr that might as well have been a death knell in my ears, but then, Van spoke. "The word is 'Resarcio,'" he whispered, and the memory of his healing the cuts in my cheeks in his study back home sprang to my mind with a surge of heat that made me feel guilty, so, so guilty. "Put the legs where they should be. It's going to take quite a bit of power, and it's going to be dark magic the way you're working it. It's going to hurt." His voice was strained, and I turned to look at him, finding a man with a tight, ghostly white face where he should've been standing. "Decide whether it's worth it or not before you go through with it."

I gazed at him for a moment, shock and wonder swirling through my mind as one, but I didn't need to think about it. I arranged Krekkel's limbs where they should have been, lay a gentle hand on her head, and breathed the word, "Rescarcio." My eyes slipped shut to picture the cat whole again, her limbs intact and a catty smile curling her lips around her over-sized fangs. The pain didn't come for a few seconds, but when it did, it was sudden and extreme. I felt like my whole body was aflame, my insides being torn to shreds, my own limbs being ripped away from my body. But I bit my lip until it bled and didn't utter a sound. I just focused on that picture in my mind with every ounce of hope and strength I had left in my body.

"You do me a great service, tiny human," I heard a ghostly voice echo through my mind, but I couldn't get my eyes to open to discover whether she was really alive and speaking to me or not. It sounded too distant, too resonant and distinct, to be real. "I knew there was a reason I liked you."

The world suddenly went completely silent, completely black, completely empty. I was alone in the vast, dark cavern of my mind for a moment…then unconsciousness claimed me.