"There are four elements to magic," Valentine told me the day we met. There is Intention, Construction, Faith and Use. Draoi of course employ high magic, but it’s the same for common magic, and even special magic." I didn’t understand. "Let’s take an example from common magic." he explained. "A chair is created to do a certain task, but it cannot work without each magical element being properly executed."

"Chairs aren’t magic," I had responded.

"Chairs are very magical. Think about it. A device that prevents gravity from throwing you to the ground when you pick up your feet. Magic. Anyway, the carpenter has to Intend to make a chair, forming the idea solidly in his mind. He must truly believe in chairs to fully Intend to make one. Only then can he Construct the chair. If anything goes wrong in these first two steps the chair will break and cease to be a chair. But it’s still not performing it’s Intended purpose. Someone must instill the chair with Faith, Faith that the chair will support their weight, and then must act on that Faith by Using the chair. In this case that means sitting in it. Even then if you don’t Use the chair properly the magic can break. No one element is enough to create a true chair."

I soon learned that’s how all magic worked. It must be Used correctly, which requires the Faith that it will work. None of that matters if it wasn’t Constructed properly, which cannot be done without believing Intention.

I focused some of my Intention into the salt as I poured it around me-Constructing a circle. My Faith completed the casting and the circle was ready for my Use. The practiced actions blended together as I cast, taking less than three seconds before the construct was in place heightened my awareness of Draft and giving me direct access to its threads.

Valentine was trying to flank the beholden so he could reach the Witherwraith. He had asked me to simply protect myself, but things were different now. Now he needed cover from the beholden. I plaited a few threads of Draft with those connecting the consciousness of the beholden to Valentine. Suddenly he seemed to them as threatening as a bunny. Valentine flashed me a thankful smile as the beholden slid past him. Unfortunately it was all the help I could give him. If any of the advancing people touched my circle, or even crossed the boundary I was toast.

A circle is one of the simplest of magic constructs. Construction is easy, a ring of salt or chalk drawn clockwise around the practitioner. That’s it. And only if you want to be fancy. All you really need is to scratch a line in the dirt. Intention is the hard part, where most people fail. If you don’t believe deep down in what you are doing the magic won’t coalesce. You can’t really intend to do a thing if you don’t believe it can be done. Even if you get the Intention right, and pour in just the right amount of Faith you are still standing in the center of what amounts to a very unstable feedback loop for your senses. I’ve never felt more alive than when in a circle-the Draft is so clear in my mind. And my other senses are heightened as well. But it’s very unstable. If anything physical crosses the boundary the circle will break, causing a backlash of eldritch energy that could put you in a coma, and will definitely make you sick.

I had to keep the beholden back from my circle, and be ready to withdraw my Intention if they got too close. Of course if that happened I could count on their burning knuckles for the coma even if I got out of the circle OK.

So I was immobile, standing on a volatile pocket of magic while a pack of supercharged teens stalked towards me. So much for my handicaps. In the assets column: I am draoithe. I delicately plucked at strings of Draft, rearranging them, letting them vibrate like the strings of a guitar. The song echoed my excited fear. Adrenalin poured into my veins and I used the energy as I braided traps and obstacles around my circle. Plaiting Draft doesn’t require fancy hand motions or a working knowledge of Latin, it’s more like doing long division in your head. Moving number around into the right places. Except with Draft you don’t have to remember where the numbers are because the threads stand out like neon on a dark night. I was able to set my traps without the beholden knowing anything.

They came forward into quicksand as water from the creek inexplicably crept into the surrounding soil. Some made their way past, stepping on the heads of those in front of them only to find their path swarming with spiders, snakes and earwigs. The crawling things were trying to escape the softening ground themselves, and saw the beholden as ladders to safety.

At this point I was glad that the Witherwraith had not made the kids mindless zombies, they began screaming and trying to get back through the quicksand. A zombie wouldn’t have cared about some harmless crawling thing, but your average tenth-grader didn’t want to be close personal friends with a colony of earwigs.

Meanwhile Valentine was facing off with the pretty girl. He hadn’t cast a circle, but instead slowly approached with his staff in his left hand and the rapier drawn in his right. Magical tools could be used to grant a limited amount of access outside a circle. Not much mind you, but some. I just couldn’t imagine that he could take her on without a circle. But then it happened. He was plaiting something like Draft, but darker. Outside a circle.

I cracked a tendril of Draft like a whip knocking one of the beholden back into the shallow quicksand. they were starting to tire. Eldritch fire is an easy and effective magic, but burns through lots of energy. Ha ha burns through oh never mind. The Cliff notes version says that if the beholden didn’t get some food and rest soon they would collapse. If I didn’t want any of them dying in the quicksand I’d have to do something soon.

"Who do you think you are?" the pretty girl shouted at Valentine. She faced his sword, his staff and his terrible dark magic with claws and teeth. "Who are you to oppose me? Adoration is mine. I am temptation and desire, torment and despair. You may strike at me with shadow but I revolve around the sun and my victims clamor to my defense. So long as mothers lie to their children, so long as bedtime stories teach that evil is dark and ugly - so long shall I reign in my terrible beauty."

She pulled it off. I mean come on, she’s standing there monologuing like a comic book villain (not that I read comic books really) and she made it sound terrifying. Maybe it was the fact that her voice echoed, or that she was glowing like an angel. Maybe it was the fluid way she moved, like a shark with blood in the water. But it scared me.

While Valentine and the girl were resolving I had been lashing the last of the beholden into my quicksand. They were all gasping, near exhaustion. Some of them had even begun extinguishing their flaming fists. I pulled some of the water back into the river. A calculated risk. As the mud dried it would stop sucking them down, but when you are buried chest deep in dirt it takes forever to dig yourself out. With a little luck I could lock them in place without the risk of drowning anyone. If any of them weren’t deep enough, however, I would loose my trap and have to fall back on another tactic. I checked my wand. I didn’t want to use it unless I was forced from my circle, and that was something I wanted to avoid at all cost, but better safe as they say.

Valentine hit the Witherwraith with his staff hard enough to throw her twenty feet into the side of a boulder. The sandstone cracked and erupted in a shower of grit, but the girl shook it off like a slap in a cat fight. She retaliated slashing with her liquid talons but Valentine had armored himself with layered tendrils of the strange magic. She couldn’t slice through his protection. It was looking like a standoff. Valentine had told me to watch, but in my circle I could see something he couldn’t. I could see the Draft connecting the girl to the ground, the trees, the sky. I could see how she connected to each of her beholden and even how she connected to Valentine. Her actions and ambitions, everything she had done or planned to do was represented by complex braids of Draft stretching out away from her. The longer I watched the more I could understand just what she was, and what she could be. This would not end well if I didn’t interfere.

I reached out with that part of my mind that could manipulate Draft and I began plaiting my own strands into hers. More and more I interwove the Draft until the subtle net was in place wrapping around each strand between her and her beholden. They were her victims. She was syphoning their qi to power her magic as well as their simple tricks. I was going to put an end to that.

"This is going to hurt," I mumbled as I started to tug my net. The eldritch backlash from cutting so many strands of Draft at once would sting a bit. It would probably be hardest on the Witherwraith, where all the connections originated. She would survive, but probably left on her back-cut off from her main source of power. That’s what mattered. I’d suffer too with severed Draft whipping around me like steel cables snapped under high tension. I hunkered down hoping that I wouldn’t be knocked from my circle. The beholden would feel some of it too, but it would be spread out amongst them. No worse than a bee sting. They would probably lose their special magic flame, but I doubted her hold on them would weaken.

Gritting my teeth I pulled as hard as I could. Everyone felt it. The girl, Valentine and the beholden all stopped what they were doing to stare at me slack jawed. I felt sweat sliding down my neck, my chest, between my breasts. A bead dripped down onto my glasses and left a salty trail as it glided across the glass. I hate that. I mean there you are working hard, sweating from the effort and suddenly you can’t see a thing. I could feel the Draft starting to give.

"No," Valentine shouted as the Witherwraith screamed in frustration. But neither one had my perspective. They couldn’t see what was about to happen. They couldn’t see what I was preventing. Harder. I had to pull harder. One single tendril of Draft snapped. At the risk of burning out the synapses in my brain I focused on the point where the tear had started and wrenched with all my mind. The net tore through the bundle and the Draft parted as if by a giant zipper.

In situations like this I’m not sure how it works but time always seems to distend. Maybe terror makes your body work slower or your mind work faster, but you always seem to see and comprehend without being able to react. As my net began to do its work I saw out of the corner of my sweat-smeared glasses that one of the beholden was free of my trap. The boy was young, too young to drive probably. Somehow I could see the stitching on his clothing, I guess my vision is always clearer in a circle, but my messy glasses should have prevented the clarity I had at that moment. He had doffed his medieval costume and I could see the name brand jeans, the preppy golf shirt, and a haircut that probably cost more than everything I was wearing. He was the son of privilege and he was going to try and kill me to protect his mistress. I knew that in less than a second he would crash through my circle.

At the same time Valentine launched himself at the Witherwraith. At his current trajectory his sword would pierce her heart at about the same time. She would die tearing out his throat. And I hadn’t finished with my net. I was too late. I thought about removing my Intention from the circle, but I just couldn’t give up. I could have tried to stop the beholden, but if I turned even a fraction of my focus away from my net both Valentine and the Witherwraith would die. They probably would anyway, but I had to try to save them.

There was only one thing I could do. I reached out for more Draft. I was using my wand now to help conduct the energy flowing through me, it felt hot in my hands as the wood darkened and started to smolder. I tied my net to the western sky. In a moment I’d probably be dead, but the rotation of the earth would complete what I had started, tearing apart the Witherwraith’s strength. My circle broke as I tied the knot and for one terrifying instant I felt the Draft slipping away from my mind and I thought I had failed but then the knot pulled fast.

Reality hit me like a sucker punch as the circle broke. The beholden stopped in his tracks as I collapsed, and emptied my stomach. Some little girl was crying. Even outside the circle I felt the backlash as my net tore through all that Draft. I thought that the girl I heard crying might have been me. Rain. Thunder? My net tore open the sky as well. I looked up at the young boy standing over me and threw up again. He could have killed me simply by pressing my face into the mud. I couldn’t have fought back, but he ran off horrified. Why was I crying? What had Valentine done back there with that shadowy magic? Valentine! Was he still alive? Yes, definitely thunder. What about the Witherwraith? What had I seen? I needed to save her. At least I thought I did. Why should I save that monster? Or was she a pretty girl. I wretched again. Nothing to throw up now, but my body hadn’t yet received the memo.

Gravity was misbehaving badly, and I was still heaving my empty stomach in the direction I currently thought of as "down" but I was alive. I muttered out a prayer of thanks to God.

"Thank you I’m alive." there must be more, I thought. The gently rolling thunder reminded me. "Thank you for the rain." It felt cool and refreshing. I wondered briefly how it knew which way to fall as gravity lurched suddenly. "Thank you for Sia, Dryael, and for Valentine. Please let Valentine live. And the Witherwraith God, please don’t let her die either."

I wretched again, this time my body found some stomach acid, tangy and burning. I missed down, and groaned. The funny thing was that I really felt grateful. I just hoped that everyone had survived. Gravity switched its course again swinging almost parallel to the ground. I clutched at the earth trying not to slide away. The little girl (me?) had started crying again as darkness started to close around me. If I passed out I might never wake up. I tried to stay awake, shaking my head but the wave of nausea stopped me.

Valentine cast a shadow over me as he approached at a run. He was yelling my name, but he sounded far away. I clung at consciousness and Valentine assisted with a sharp slap across my face. The darkness receded from the pain for a brief instant and I could see him clearly. He was unhurt, concerned for me. Then black nothingness.

Next Chapter: Chapter 3