A/N: This was made on a sudden burst of inspiration, so please let me know if I should continue this, or it will probably die... R&R!
"I'm messed up," the girl, barely a proper age and yet the center of all this, admitted. "I've known this for a while, really. Finding out I was a, an… enchantress. It really didn't help at the time." Her eyes glazed slightly, not really looking at anything. "I was… four, was it? Yeah, that sounds about right. I was four when I found out.
"This illness had swept through the livestock, and this horse I loved had gotten the worst of it. I healed him—accidentally—and in one night, he was the strongest and swiftest horse in our village." She chuckled drily. "There was a witch hunt the next day. My neighbor—she had only been there for a week, the same time the illness had been here. You can guess how that went." Suddenly, her gaze sharpened, locking onto the somewhat-horrified expression of the manservant.
"You know how rare it is for an enchantress to be born," she said to him. The others turned to him, but he paid them no heed. "Oh, c'mon, don't ruin my fun! Tell them."
"An—An enchantress is rarer than a w-warlock. B-both are born with magic," he explained to his friend's confused faces, "but warlocks deal with elemental-instinctual magic… enchantresses have emotional-instinctual magic."
"Oh! Yes!" the girl clapped her hands joyously. "Emotional-instinctual! It means I can do magic on and draw magic from emotions. While warlocks can summon storms and typhoons… enchantresses can summon emotions and healings…" She grinned. "I have gotten so good at drawling out the form your emotions take.
"Take Abelard, here." A tall, sturdy man with a long face and brown eyes stepped out of the shadows at the girl's call, wrapping an arm around her shoulders protectively. "You remember that horse I talked about?" The manservant sucked in a sharp breath, but the others couldn't see… "My magic did more than heal the horse and make him stronger and faster… it made him smarter, too. It opened a link between our minds. I understood him better than I did myself. I understood that he shared my love for him, understood his wish to better protect me from my village. So…" she smiled up at the man, and he smiled back. "…My magic understood, too. I'm a bastard, you know. I grew up without a father, and in recognizing this, my magic made it so that the horse could better protect me. As my father."
"You… you turned a horse into a man…" the king breathed, and the girl snorted.
"I didn't. I was seven at the time, with barely a lick of control over my gifts," she shook her head as Abelard retreated back into the shadows, the distinct sound of a door following shortly. "My magic is older than me, though. It has way more fines for things like this, tempered by the minds of many and touched by spells tenfold. It turned Abelard into a human, dear king, not I."
"How is that possible?" asked a dark-skinned knight.
"Ask your—no. What fun would that be to tell you all that now? No, I'll wait."
The knights and king sighed. Their captor didn't seem to be up to answering—
"To answer your question, Sir Knight," she continued. "This land holds the same amount of magic as is did a thousand years ago. One fifth is drawn upon by humans who have learned to channel it. Two fifths are used by magical births—enchantresses, warlocks, dragons—you name it. The final two fifths are split between Albion—the land—and the gods. That is the usual split."
"The usual split?" the king asked.
"You caught that," she chuckled. "Yes, the usual split. In the past, oh, thirty years, the fifth wielded by sorcerers and the two fifths by magicals had decreased. Dramatically." They all knew the cause. "It remedy this, Albion and the gods decided to channel this 'excess' into a few outlets. Fives to be exact. Two fifths of the excess went to two magical-borne. An enchantress, and a warlock. I guess you've all met both."
She chuckled at her own joke, much to the captives' confusion. The enchantress was no doubt she, but then who was the warlock?
"The next portion, another two-fifths, went to two humans, a druid boy and a seer. My later joke applies again. The next fifth was then split into three. One went to the land, the other to Albion and gods to later become a prophecy, and the final… it went to a babe. It became his core, his being. For the babe was the catalyst of the Purge. The magic, well, it became a lock to the babe's true power, and the warlock I spoke of? Well, now, he became the key."
The silence was filled with awe and wonder, and forgotten was the captive's predicament in wake of the enchanting tale. But not all good things were to last, and in this case, it was shattered by a curse unfit for such a suave talker.
"Speak of the devil and he shall appear…" She said darkly as she hopped down from the table she had perched on. "I'll be back tomorrow—with friends. I was just hoping to get to—ah, what's done is done. Bye~!"
Her exit took place in the same spot her foster father's had, leaving the captured men to bathe in the dank sounds of the dungeon. Nothing but the thieving rats and drips of dirty water even scratched the thick-as-stone silence. No-one was brave enough, or foolish enough, to break it themselves, some too deep in thought to notice, while others all to aware. So silence reined until the next creak of the door, not even broken by snores as they all soon fell into a restless sleep.
A/N: Review!