Kryseia’s blast bounced off her.
Theira strolled forward, her advance activating enchantments with each step, her hair rising to crackle around her, electrified by her power.
Strangled screams echoed in the background as the protections she’d placed on her house reacted violently to their not-quite-subtle-enough intrusions, as beautiful flowers’ poisonous gas choked off the strike team’s air, as the roots under her garden dragged them beneath to feed on.
She paid them no mind. Her garden needed no further guidance from her for sorcerers of their caliber. They weren’t even a distraction from the real battle before her.
Theira reached for the power of her garden, and threw it against Kryseia’s next assault.
Their eyes met, and Theira knew this was what Kryseia had wanted.
Her, too.
She was glad to no longer be part of the endless, stupid, horrible war.
She did sometimes miss the freedom of wreaking rampant destruction.
Kryseia flung spell after spell at her, and Theira deflected every sally without apparent effort, driving Kryseia back step by step.
She’d missed this, too. The matching of power and wits against someone who could stand against her.
But Kryseia, for all her sorcery, was no Varius.
Kryseia could use the life force of the garden, too, but not as efficiently. Theira knew every plant, its location and potential.
She knew every spell she’d woven into the ground.
Kryseia’s breath came increasingly fast as she struggled under Theira’s assault. Her rhythm didn’t break, but Theira could see her casting around for inspiration, for power, for something that could turn the tide.
Theira almost didn’t recognize the feint for what it was, until the mug she still carried shattered in her hand.
Kryseia grinned triumphantly.
A piece of her new home, new life, broken in an instant act of malice. A challenge, that Theira could not, in fact, protect herself or anyone else.
Kryseia’s power closed around her. She’d attempted to break Theira’s flow, and she’d succeeded.
But Theira reached for the wild flame of her own power and exploded it outward.
“Congratulations,” she told the sorceress who’d jumped clear but now watched her warily; Theira was known for not committing her own power. “You have my full attention.”
And then Theira stopped playing.
Kryseia cast furiously, but it was no use against Theira actually tapping into her own power along with the garden.
It was a matter of moments before she’d shepherded Kryseia just where she wanted her: a spell laid in advance. Once she stepped into the circle, poisonous vines snaked around her ankles and thorns bit through her spells and skin, immobilizing her.
In moments she’d be unable to move at all—not a muscle, certainly. But not her lungs, either, or her heart.
She could have still cast, except Theira also pressed her own shroud of power around Kyrseia like a smothering pillow.
It was done, without so much as an explosion to mark her passing, and from Kryseia’s furious gaze, she knew it. She would fade quietly out of this world with nothing to show for it. But first—
“You would do all this,” she hissed, “for a man? An Aurelian worm who’s killed scores of us?”
Which part of Varius offended her most? It didn’t matter.
“This is my house,” Theira said gently. “This is my ground. Here you are supplicant, not master. I will do what I wish, and you cannot force me.”
