AN:

This is the first major piece of work I have ever written. I have written plenty things before this, and it isn't even the first I've uploaded, but before I'd realized this had reached 30,000 words, and damn, I think it's actually pretty good. There is one problem; I'm currently in the process of re-writing it. As such, I can't just dump it all immediately. This first chapter is a nice tease; a little taste of the good stuff. Enjoy.

BTW the picture from this story is from 'Sneakiss' on DeviantArt. Check 'em out.

No one knew who she was, the baby that had been left on their doorstep. The act itself was not very surprising; people, who couldn't care for their unexpected children themselves, often left them at the behest of orphanages. However, it was strange, for this place was no orphanage. The temple had been wary to take her in; not a one was adept at raising children, not to mention that they certainly didn't have the facilities for it… But clearly the mother had placed them here for a reason, and who were they to question the will of fate?

They regretted their decision within the week.

The baby had un-precedented magical potential. At this point in time children were supposed to be almost completely inert, and even if they weren't, entirely unable to actually manipulate the magic inside them and in the world around them. But this girl, this probably not even a year old baby, had already manifested her powers. Small orbs of magic orbited around her, every so often popping into and out of existence, especially when she cried or laughed. Strangely, more orbs phased in no matter what emotion or sensation. They had named her Syndra, after a hero that had started off using Dark magic, then turned to the Light and become a renowned saviour of many when she sacrificed herself.

This worried the minders for several reasons; the orbs were made of dark magic, shadow and death and wisps of void. Deadly, easy, uninhibited. Second, the fact that almost all stimulus released her powers showed them that the child already had a massive lack of control over her powers. This needed fixing, and they set about immediately trying to teach the child to reign in her power, stopping it from randomly sparking off and forming the orbs, and additionally tried to get her to draw from another source rather than Dark magic.

Every single method, technique, binding spell and focus failed. By the time she was three, she wasn't walking; she was hovering. A purple, Dark, glow had started to wrap itself around her. The monks had tried to get her to mimic their signs and gestures, woven Light foci into her clothing and toys, tried to dampen her magic with their own… All it had achieved was to anger her, causing her magic to flare further out of control, and by the time she was eight the child had denied them all power over her. She was grateful, thankfully, for they had raised her, given her food and clothes, so she allowed them their petty attempts to chain her down, soon settling into a cycle. She would wake up, get dressed, pray for a small time, have breakfast, discover a new interesting power or affect that had manifested, sit through several hours of rituals and teaching classes and learning magical techniques, remembering all of it, then lunch and the concerted efforts of the monks to control her, followed by shaking off their bindings with ease and going out to play.

The children, understandably, were both terrified, awed, and massively curious about the girl. She treated them much as a Queen would her subjects; useful, amusing, but ultimately weak. She recruited the few who were stronger and larger to her side, then lorded over the others. She played games by lifting the hapless fools into the air and juggling them, which was strangely enjoyed by the children… Of course, then she had been distracted by a bee stinging her and dropped one young boy straight onto his neck. The snap had echoed across the grounds, and everyone fell silent. Syndra had never seen someone die, had never had it explained to her, didn't know what had happened. She had seen bones break, of course, but never had the victims been so… Silent. She considered the fact that this child was likely incredibly brave to be so silent after what had happened, then yelled out at him to stand up. She could carry him to an adult, they could fix him, but he refused. She frowned, crossed her arms, an orb winking into life somewhere nearby. Floating over to the child, she couldn't remember his name, didn't care to either, her magic snaked out and grasped him, pulling him towards her. He stayed limp, like the fish she ate for dinner, his head fixed at a strange angle.

She realized that someone was screaming, but she didn't know why, shook the boy to wake him up. When he refused she sneered, called him lazy, let him flop to the floor again, when she felt a hand clamp onto her shoulder. She turned to face the village Elder, the leader of her temple. She saw that he looked at her the way one would a wild animal; wary, fearful, tense. He told her what she had done, what it meant for the corpse slumped at her feet and the boy's family, and how she could avoid this if she just learnt more control, more balance, in her use of magic. The boy was taken away when she wasn't looking, then she was taken away too, back to her temple. She asked if they could heal the boy; they replied that only if he was still alive could they. She asked for the spell, the technique, and was told she couldn't channel the right lore. They taught her anyway; maybe it would convince her to start channelling Light.

She snuck out after dark, incredibly easy when no one expected her to, and went to the graveyard. It took her a few minutes even though it was only on the outskirts, since she had only vague directions, and found the boy's corpse. She didn't know how; she simply wanted to find it and something inside of her told her. She cast the spell, felt the magic flow into and through her, then into the ground, and felt it touch something inside of the boy. He burst from the ground, moaning, and she quickly helped him stand up, asked him what he felt, that she was sorry. He didn't reply, instead staring blankly. In those eyes was little but death, and they glowed purple, but she didn't know why or what he was and was proud, proud of doing something good that no on had believed she could. She brought the small corpse back to town, shuffling and still broken, as dawn broke.

Suffice to say, no one was very happy with Syndra.

She didn't know why; after all, she had done what they told her she couldn't, had fixed him and her mistake at the same time. After a few hours of guarded watch, she was simply marched out of the village, no goodbyes from her guardians, no news of the boy, simply gone. They travelled for a full day and still hadn't reached their destination, and the trip was fraught with danger and fear, at least for the guards. When Syndra had woven the healing spell into a guard once more after he had tripped and twisted an ankle, it necrotized the flesh, rotting and melting under her power, and when she had poured more magic into the weave the man had stopped screaming and simply lay, still, dead. The other guards would have killed her then, she realized, had they thought they could, but they couldn't, for she was stronger than they were, and a queer pride rose up in her, followed by a lust for death and pain, trailed after by disgust. Syndra knew she could kill them all, easily, almost without a thought, and some part of her, new and terrifying, screamed and raged to do it, to tear and rend and melt and kill-

She opened her eyes as the screams reached her ears. The men were… She turned and vomited onto the floor, the writhing, melting flesh of the men, left on the brink so they could scream in agony for longer, sobbed and begged to die, to be put out of their misery, and when she tried in her shock to pull her power forth and give them their wish, it denied her, laughed in spite, slipped out of her control and into the forest around her. The trees wilted, died, the plants died, the small animals and birds and insects all screeched, boiled, and died. She thought of how to fix this, how to do something, anything, but every answer she could think needed magic and currently it was rampant, out of-

Control.

She grit her teeth and drew in her power on a leash, grasping it with the entirety of her will and pulling, reeling, coiling it back up inside of her, dragging it kicking and screaming and raging and blackandmeltedanddeath- And then she had it. It broiled inside of her in a way it never had, practically bubbling in her veins with the potency. She could feel the men nearby. Their pain, and their thoughts, even though they had stopped screaming and now simply lay there waiting to die, kill me -you did this - please God end - how could - help, and soothed them, wiping the slate of their minds clean. The thoughts stopped, but the pain did not. Their minds were gone but not their bodies, so she plucked those from the world and obliterated them, and only then thought to search them for where they were taking her. She sent out snaking tendrils of Dark power, feeling the devastation and horror she had caused, only eight summers old, and found other lives, other people, nearby. She started to set off then realized she didn't have to walk, didn't have to travel in the ways others did via paths and trails, instead rising into the air and flying.

She felt free, like this, and it was exhilarating, seeing the trees travel beneath her. She left that forever darkened, death-stained patch of forest behind, and soon could see the temple beneath her. She realized, as she landed, that she was keeping busy to stop what had just happened settling in, stop it from affecting her and making her question herself, and then realized it wasn't her that had thought that but the magic, it was trying to overpower her and push her aside, and she crushed it, pressing it into a cage, forcing it to obey her. She stood there for at least an hour as the sun set, thinking on how she had come here, what she had done, what she had been told and warned and prophesised to do; how it had come true, all in one blindingly rushed maelstrom. She stood and dusted her skirt, properly walking up the steps rather than floating, resisting the urge to just cut her ties to the earth, and knocked on the door. She was however still a small, tiny, girl; the sound barely made it through the thick wood. She knocked again, hard as she could, and her knuckles hurt, and when no one responded her anger flared and the cage cracked, her magic bursting through a dam to splinter and crack and then demolish the gate. It crumpled inwards, sending a cloud of shards and dust upwards, and she flinched even as her magic flowed to protect her, a bubble of power in the storm, and then it was clear and she felt the ties to her magic cut, and then she realized she had reflexively started floating again because she fell to the floor and bruised her knees.

A man stood in front of her, shirtless and lean, with a shaved head and a cultured beard, inscribed with tattoos and writings and scriptures, and when he spoke she missed the words. She was busy trying to draw upon her well again, trying to bring the magic forth from wherever it rested when she did not use it, and found she couldn't; a wall, stronger than her entire being, stood between them, and then she saw the small ties and threads leading to the man, to the monk, and focused on him and crap he's talking she should be paying attention, what was he saying? Asking, asking questions, so she stared blankly for a moment before slowly standing, once again dusting her skirt as her magic had failed and dust billowed out over her, before replying succinctly that yes, she was paying attention, and yes, she was indeed Syndra, have you heard of me?, and no, the guards hadn't left her and shirked their duties; they were dead. He was silent, then, and turned from her to the ruins of his door.

"Come in then, child, and let us start your first lesson."

She grew up over the next ten years under his tutorship, along with a small group of other students who had displayed magical talent, though not a one could hold a candle to her raw strength. At least at first. Where the other students could manipulate the elements into complex forms, creating beautiful artworks from stone and ice, elaborate displays from fire, and delicate manipulation of objects with air, along with many other unique forms of magic, Syndra's main talent lay in the complete and utter destruction of… Anything. Dark magic wasn't useful for much else, but a student in control could still have woven it into lines of power and draw, create pools of shadow and move them to pantomime, but Syndra could do little else other than blunt, sweeping gestures. Her talent dissolved down to three key forms; one was the creation of her orbs, which to this day still occasionally popped into and out of the material realm, small spheres of void energy that would cut a living being's ties to this plane, sucking them into the Void.

The second was in telekinesis; she could drag, pick up and fling anything, as well as, with a little effort, keep them afloat. She had, once, picked up her entire room and everything in it, dragging it into the sky, then returned it when Sensei had told her it was not appropriate. After that, she had taken to flying into the air by herself at night, ranging further and further away, studying and revising upside down as she slowly drifted on the air currents. The final form of her power was in imbuement. In almost all cases this manifested as it had before, with the guards; the cellular degradation of tissue, followed by rotting and necrosis, and finally, the destruction of both the body and the soul. This had proved useful in absolutely no situations other than killing, though occasionally that came in handy with spiders and other pesky insects. In rare cases, however, her imbuement could actually prove highly useful. It was, for example, what shrouded her in a purple haze, gave her eyes their hue, and later could actually be formed into clothing and basic objects, though if her magic was disrupted, it would leave her naked or on the floor or both, though even if she was knocked out the magic would sustain itself and protect her, its host. The only time it happened was when Sensei blocked off her magic when she did something dangerous or impetuous, or when he had to prove to her that she had no control and needed to gain some.

There were times that she resented Sensei for this. Not necessarily for nullifying her magic; she knew that at several points without it, she would wave gone too far. The problem was that he did in front of her peers, not that he had much choice. She was their ruler. She was superior to them. But her lying on the floor, naked, sometimes unconscious... That was not strong. That was not impressive. It wasn't embarrassing, per se. She was comfortable in her body, in her nakedness, and couldn't care less for the lucky students that saw it. The problem was that a Sovereign did not black out, naked, in front of her subjects. Nothing should be able to beat them. They should have total power, control, and their will should be iron. So when they can be reduced to a weak, powerless girl in just as gesture, it ruins her image in both her own eyes and those of her subjects. It makes her doubt her powers, her own inner strength. And frankly, it should. That was a lesson that Sensei repeated to her every time this occurred.

A mage with proper control would be able to retain hold on their power even as counterspells were woven against them, as Sensei had shown her when Syndra had replicated his spell and seen it fail. For the first half-dozen years her power had steadily grown, but her control had not; she could perform greater and greater feats of magic, though mainly through momentum. As long as she didn't try to limit the magic that poured out of her into the weave or use great finesse, the spells went quite well. Of course, this meant that when trying to perform either complex or incredibly simple spells it went wildly wrong. She had great mastery over sorcery, being able to weave incredibly dynamic and complicated spells, but simply couldn't apply her mana in a balanced way. Sensei had tried to teach her, drill control into her, but not only did she resist but her magic itself, to the point where if it did go out of control, as it sometimes did, she would be entirely unable to reign it in. In those cases, Sensei had to cut off her mana, and it was one of those rare times when her magic stopped growing.

The other students had slowly learnt to weave greater and greater spells, to the point where they were almost at her level. They spent no small amount of time making sure she knew this, and Syndra had quickly become sick of it, being a girl used to dominion over her peers. She had stewed over their words for a few weeks, channelling her little control into purely denying the urge to dash them against the walls; as such, her prowess in magic had declined, leading to further gloating and teasing, and less control, until one day she truly didn't have any control left and, with barely a small, unintentional gesture, her rival was lying on the floor, bleeding and unconscious. Sensei had arrived as if he was watching and waiting, healed the victim, and quickly stripped Syndra's power before she continued. Kneeling in front of her peers, naked and with a unbearable migraine from the building pressure of her magic, she blacked out.

When she woke up, Sensei told her that it had been several days and the victim had healed completely. She had replied with scorn - she couldn't care less about that bitch - but had wanted to know how long until she could continue learning. Sensei had agreed, and from then their lessons were in private, with Syndra growing further away from the other students in distance, emotion, and humanity. Yet as time went on, over several years until she was seventeen years old, that once excruciatingly crippling headache slowly returned. She didn't know why, and Sensei told her it was unavoidable, so she dealt with it in the only way she knew how. She used a mix of stubborn desensitization and magic shielding to deny the pain. By the time she was eighteen, she was so good at it that when her magic was cut and she fell off a roof, breaking both her legs, she didn't even feel it. And then she channelled Light magic for the first time, which was a great surprise. The source of her headache is the denial of her magic, which, unbeknownst to her, is Sensei's doing. By so effectively blocking off that source of pain, she also cut off that source of magic. And, her body attuned to the spectrum of magic on which Dark took residence, grasped blindly for the next best alternative; Light. This magic, unlike Dark, was entirely benevolent and almost by itself wove the healing spell that Syndra always knew but could never perform. The flesh and bone in her legs healed and joined, and when Sensei floated down from the roof he nodded, as if he had known this would happen all along and was simply waiting. And then her mind broke, straight down the middle, into two perfect lives.

She saw both, two alternate futures happening simultaneously, and yet completely separate, mutually exclusive... Or so she thought.

In one life, she stood and demanded Sensei tell her… Something. She couldn't hear anything, but could tell that her future self was very, very angry. Sensei looked old, older than he already did considering he had lived for many lifetimes, and sad, sadder than he had ever been during those lifetimes. He shook his head gently, then spoke, and the girl in the picture answered and Syndra could see her magic boiling beneath the surface, barely held onto. When Sensei spoke again, Syndra did not reply, but picked him up and dashed him against the wall, cracking his head like an egg and sending blood and viscera spraying. Now she could hear, could hear the panicked yells of the other students as they rushed over, but that stopped when Syndra unleashed her magic on them too. Her rival did not survive, nor that girl's secret lover, but the rest she scattered. They were weak, but served a purpose. They would tell others of her, to be scared. And then Syndra raged at the heavens as her power overflowed, a tsunami of death, shadow, corruption… Dark. The girl, with barely a strain, tore the temple from the floor, Dark writhing and flexing over and under it, dragging it into the sky. She floated up to it, then rode it like a triumphant conqueror, back towards her childhood home.

The villagers there looked up into the sky, and saw that they, and Sensei, had failed to stop this tyrant from rising to power. The temple anchored itself over the village, the shadow it caused from blocking the sun covering every building. When Syndra descended to the Elder, who stood with cane in hand, she demanded something of him. He shook his head, simply, and she yelled out to him, and when he replied back in a soft, weary voice, he simply fell apart. It was like the binding holding skin to flesh and flesh to bone vanished, and left a pile of death and sorrow behind. She laughed in exultation, and called the villagers forth to her. She demanded from them her tithe, taking everything valuable in the village, and then set her sights on the next villager over , left nothing living or standing behind her. And the next, and the next, then the capital, then the world, and no one could stop her. And when Syndra stood, victorious, over the rotting corpse of that planet she turned her gaze upwards and moved to the next.

The pictures in front of her melted away and revealed her once more standing. In this vision, however, she did not speak first and instead Sensei did, and when she replied he waved a hand. Syndra exploded into glorious radiance; yellow and white Light glowed from her, showering the temple and the students and Sensei. She moved back to her village immediately, and the Elder accepted her and she grew up there, protecting them from some sort of invaders, living on as they withered and fell away. Soon no one was left that knew her as Syndra, the girl who had no parents and once raised the undead, but as their Justicar, protector and guardian. They prayed to her, showered her with gifts, loved her, but that girl was sad. And then, another girl came to her. Her parents were dead, she told Syndra, killed by bandits, and Syndra flew forth and destroyed them, tore them atom from atom and obliterated those as well in a fit of rage. She didn't know why; why she did this for a girl she didn't know and when she would normally capture them and bring them before a council, why she gave the girl a bed in her home… Why she fell in love with her, for she could see Syndra and not a Justicar, and made her immortal too, and they raised other orphans like them and gave them immortality and then far in the future it was just her, her love, and their children, and no one could tell her she didn't deserve it or deny her or confiscate it like a toy when she misbehaved, and then she made the worlds and the people on them and loved them even as they forsake her.

And then Syndra was brought back to her own reality, where she was floating slightly above the ground, magic coiling in anger in response to an unknown threat. Sensei stood in front of her, as indifferent as always, even in the face of death. And she realised, then, that he truly was staring at the face of death. In fact, there was the real possibility she would kill him, and she didn't even know why. Judging by the visions she had seen, they had spoken before she had killed him. However, she had spoken first, and, feeling a sentimentality and kindness and fear for what she could become she did not speak, instead having him break the silence, which he did.

It did not occur to her that in the visions she had been standing, not floating above the floor as her magic defied her physical ties.

Sensei spoke, then, weary and old and hopeful all at once.

"Your magic, Syndra, is out of control. Even you can see that. Even a child could see that." She recoiled at the veiled insult, even though she knew he did not intend it to be so and she was simply impetuous.

"Your headache, you still feel it, even now. I said it was unavoidable; I lied." Syndra was more shocked at this than anything. Sensei had never lied, had endlessly preached honesty and truth in all matters, even when she had turned twelve and awkwardly been told of womanhood and all its trials. If someone had told her Sensei would lie, had she seen it in her vision, she would have disbelieved it above all else.

"How… How could you? What else did you lie about?" She remembered herself in the first vision, as her magic roiled as boiling water in a sea, and consciously dampened it. He looked sad now, and old, and she realised that neither of those futures had come by but that the Tyrant was closest-

"It is me, Syndra, me who is blocking your power from growing. That is what is causing your headache. I have denied you your natural growth for the past few years, hoping you would gain more control-" and he was dead, suddenly.

His brain matter was grey, smeared over the ancient stones of the temple wall. She did not feel angry, unlike the vision, and then she lost concept of time and direction and life as her magic, for so long held at bay, drowned her. When she came to, she was once again kneeling in front of the other students, but this time she was not naked, her magic free to sustain her clothing, and she wondered why because normally Sensei would be suppressing her magic so that it didn't lash out at anyone nearby-

The smell of blood and viscera snapped her out of her daze. She stood, unsteadily, and her eyes flicked over to the sprawled corpse of Sensei. She smiled slightly, for she had done it defeated him he couldn't stop her anymore, and just as quickly was sad, for he was dead and she had killed him. She looked at her hands, and though they were clean she saw blood on them, and was sadder still. When one of the students attacked her with a lash of fire, she was startled more than anything. The offender was that prissy suck-up.

"You killed him! You… Sensei! What did you do?!" Syndra saw now that the girl was much as she was; angry, lost, uncontrolled. The girl dropped to her knees and sobbed, and Syndra realized she had been moments from obliterating her. Syndra summoned forth her power, having it enshroud her as much as any real clothing, and the grass at her feet withered and died, and the sky above turned dark and grey, and she rose into the air on Dark currents.

"I could kill you all, and you could not stop me," she whispered, and realized that thought was the Tyrant when she saw the students below her all staring in awe and fear, caught between running from a predator or worshipping it.

"Kneel," she said, almost without realizing it, and all did bar one, who had stood up on her command.

"No! NO! Get up! Sh-She killed him, don't you get it?!" Syndra pressed her magic on the fragile strings that held that fool's life from falling into the Void, and she gasped, collapsed, and started blubbering in fear.

"P-Please… Stop, you-you're scaring m-!" Syndra cut her words off with a thought, was an inch from severing every string and having her plummet. Something roils in her mind, crawling to the surface like a brew bubbling over the edge of a pot.

"You should be scared of me…" It is a realization, a surprise to her. The whisper doesn't make it to the cowering shapes below, and she repeats herself, screaming hoarse, voice charging forth and sending them bowling over like scarecrows.

"God damn right you should be scared of me!"

But then, answering her call as readily as her magic, she saw in her mind's eye the Tyrant standing behind her, whispering and pointing, and wondered then who was truly in control, and grasped the Tyrant and threw her off into the Void. The Tyrant screamed as she fell, but the dying girl in front of her did not, standing up and running instead. Syndra turned from them, ashamed of their weakness and her own, and floated back up to the roof she had fallen off of. The students scattered, and she was not sure whether to laugh or cry.