A/N: Just wanting to thank everyone who's following this story and especially everyone who's taken the time to review! Thank you, thank you.
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Sofia
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Cedric looked at her bleeding hand with wide eyes, but the rejection she feared seeing wasn't there. Instead a smile broke over his face like the sun through the trees.
Holding out his hand, he asked her wordlessly for his wand. She handed it back to him eagerly and once he had it he spoke the same spell opening his own hand and reaching out to her.
They moved closer to each other.
"I love you." Sofia breathed, happiness like she'd never known filling her.
Cedric nodded, looking too overcome to make a response.
Their hands were centimeters from each other, when thunder cracked loud and terrifying and a single bolt of lightning split the sky, striking the ground right between their bodies.
Sofia felt herself flying back from the impact of the strike and watched as Cedric was flung in the opposite direction.
"NO!"
Sofia hit the ground hard, pain bolting through the arm she landed on. Panting, she looked up to see O'dessa standing on the alter, Arne by her side at its foot, more of Eldrid's soldiers surrounding the stone circle, and beyond them the dark eyes of the spelled wolf creatures.
They were completely surrounded and utterly outnumbered.
"Kill her!" The Queen commanded, her face a demonic mask as she pointed to Sofia. "But bring me the Sorcerer unharmed!"
Sofia saw the soldiers rush in on Tilly, Graylock, and the other two sorcerers as Arne stalked up to her slowly, completely at ease, as though they weren't in a battle at all.
"I've been looking forward to this moment for almost a decade. Rise lady of light and meet your doom!"
"Arne, no! Why would want to kill Sofia? Why would you want to kill the woman I love?" It was Aleric who spoke, rising from the ground and coming to stand beside her, sword in hand."
"Aleric, this isn't your battle." Sofia yelled, even as she refused to let her eyes leave the advancing sorcerer. "I can't ask you to fight your own brother."
"I love you Sofia. That makes it my fight. Whether you'll have me or not, that makes it my fight." With those words he handed her his own wand and lifted his sword preparing for an attack.
Arne laughed at that.
"Awww, how charmingly noble. It's true Princess. He loves you, pathetically. I've made sure of that. Showing you to him, whispering how perfect you are, how he could never ask for a worthier Queen. He's to pitifully good to question the motives of others. He thinks everyone he loves means as well as he does."
With that Arne sent out a burst of light from his wand and flung Aleric from the circle as though he were tossing a stone.
"But you were right this isn't his battle."
Arne flicked his wand hard again and sent another bolt out.
Sofia raised Aleric's wand and caught it flinging it back at him.
Arne dodged it easily, sneering at her, before changing tactics. Pointing his wand at the ground he caused the earth in front of her to crack, making the ground shake, and the stone pillar nearest her begin to fall.
Sofia crouched trying to protect herself as she pointed her wand and spoke the spell that would float the giant stone away from her. She'd meant to fling it wide of the circle but it was to heavy. Huffing with the effort of holding it up, Sofia began to panic.
She couldn't drop the stone in the circle or people would die, and she was now sure she couldn't fling it. She was paralyzed, disabled, holding the rock above their heads with dwindling strength, her only choices to let it drop on herself or try to fling it and potentially kill others.
Arne sneered and laughed at her in disdain, letting her sweat it out for interminable moments, allowing her to understand how she was trapped. Toying with her like a cat with a mouse, before striking the final blow.
Sofia felt tears coming to her eyes.
She already knew she wouldn't fling the rock, and they were so outnumbered everyone was fighting for their lives, there was no one to help her. Which meant these were her last moments.
With everything she was she closed her eyes and thought of Cedric.
She'd seen him, across the circle, fighting. Everyone at home thought he was such a bumbling coward. But he was fighting like a warrior. It made her heart soar.
She loved him so much and he finally accepted their love and loved her in return. They had been moments from joining, becoming one soul, from finishing the story and beginning a life of untold bliss. And now she would have to leave him.
She felt her heart begin to break.
She wanted to scream and cry and rage but she couldn't give a moment's energy or strength to anything but holding up the rock.
It started almost imperceptibly.
A tingling feeling, only a tiny drop in a vast emptiness, but soon it was filling her, making her whole body vibrate with alien emotions, foreign power.
Then the thought came to her unbidden.
She wanted them to die.
Arne, O'dessa, the soldiers no matter how innocent, no matter how misled by their queen. She wanted them all to die. They were trying to hurt her, to hurt her friends, her love and she wanted to be the one to kill them!
The fact such an idea was completely anathema to all she believed in, to every feeling and principle which guided her life seemed to make no difference.
So Sofia rose, holding the thing above her head for a fleeting second before sending it crashing down on a hoard of Eldrid's men who were surrounding her Aunt.
Arne was shocked enough by her move to let it register on his face, and Sofia saw something like real fear cross his features.
Instead of shocking her out of her state, she felt his fear feeding what she was beginning to realize was a lust for blood.
Sofia's whole body felt as though it were on fire, hot and aching, wanting something she wasn't sure she understood, but the idea of hurting something seemed to soothe it slightly so she sunk into the dark impulse, allowing her whole body to light with the malevolent fire.
Suddenly her hands began to glow.
Smiling at Arne chillingly, she threw her wand to the ground and let a bolt of light shoot directly out of her hand.
He lifted his wand trying to deflect her attack, but though he spoke the spell in time, it was useless and her light hit with startling force, sending him into the alter hard enough to crack the stone.
The other sorcerer slumped to the ground perhaps dead, perhaps unconscious, Sofia didn't know or care.
She began shooting bolts out of her hands, watching as Eldrid's soldiers dropped at her feet.
It was intoxicating, the power to decide who lived or died.
But before Sofia could lose herself in it completely she heard a laugh of pure unadulterated evil.
Turning she saw Cedric, unconscious, in O'dessa's embrace.
The Queen threw her one malevolent sneer of triumph before disappearing in a puff of red smoke that took her son and what remained of her soldiers.
"CEDRIC!"
Suddenly whatever had possessed Sofia left her in a rush, as though all the air had been sucked out of her lungs, and she collapsed to the ground clutching her chest and gasping.
Tilly ran up to her as she sunk to her knees.
"Cedric," Sofia's voice was a choked whisper.
"Sofia are you alright?" Her Aunt was kneeling in front of her now, brushing back her wild hair in a comforting, motherly way and trying to make sure she was unharmed, but Sofia couldn't find the energy to care.
"She took Cedric!" Sofia's voice was a squeak as she grabbed at the lapels of Tilly's green jacket. "What happened? How did she get near him? I saw him before Arne made the rock collapse. Nothing should have touched him!"
Tilly was still looking her over as she spoke.
"I don't know dear. We were all fighting and suddenly he just collapsed. He…." Tilly's voice trailed off as she came to Sofia's left hand.
It was still covered in blood.
"Sofia is all this blood yours?" Her aunt's voice was strange.
Looking down she tried to focus on anything but the fear that was overwhelming her. That snake, she'd been after Cedric from the moment she laid eyes on him. What would she do with him? Sofia didn't think it was just about using his powers. She'd seen the way the Queen had looked at him. She wanted Cedric for herself.
"Sofia, I need you to focus!" Tilly's voice was raised now, as she grabbed Sofia's shoulders and shook her harshly.
"Ohh," Sofia cried out as she seemed to come back to reality.
"Sofia is it all your blood?" There was an urgency to the question now.
Sofia looked down at her hand. The cut she'd made was no longer bleeding but she had blood all over her hand and trails of it were drying down her arm.
"No," she finally answered. "Cedric's wound from fighting Aleric, I touched it when I first entered the circle. Before he healed it. Why?"
"But Cedric, he didn't have any of your blood?"
Sofia shook her head, feeling that hopeless rage again when she thought about how close they'd been to joining.
"That would explain why he collapsed." It was Graylock who spoke as he came up to them, helping to pull Sofia back to her feet.
"What do you mean?" She asked starting to feel angry. "All of you stop talking above my head and tell me what's going on?"
"You read the spell, Sofia. You understand the process to achieve a soul joining." Graylock prompted, a look like sympathy on his face.
Sofia only nodded.
"You had his blood on your hand when you cut your own. It's not enough to fully join the two of you if he didn't also have any of your blood, but it's enough for the blood on your hand to mix and enter you." Graylock motioned to the carnage around them. "You're little killing spree, Sofia, you were siphoning Cedric's powers. You took his strength, but since he'd had none of your blood he couldn't draw anything from you. That's why he collapsed."
Sofia flinched back as though struck, shaking her head even as a cry left her mouth.
"I…I…I didn't know. I didn't do it on purpose. It just came over me!"
Tilly rose then and gave Graylock a hard look.
"She didn't siphon Cedric's strength. She had no idea what even that small amount of their joint blood was capable of. He saw Arne going after her and he gave it to her."
"NOO!" Sofia doubled over then, the pain feeling as though it would overwhelm her.
Cedric had sacrificed himself for her. Damn him! How could he?
("I love you so much I wake in the night shaking with dread that something might have happened to you while I slept, because how can I live if you don't?")
Cedric's words drifted back to her, the one's he'd said in his workshop when he'd confessed how deeply he loved her. It hadn't even been two weeks since then! And now he might have given his life to save hers.
But it wasn't any different for her, how would she live if he died?
"We have to find him! I have to find him! I have to get him back!"
"O'dessa's options are limited." Amina walked up to them now, an injured Aleric with his arm slung over her shoulders. "She could kill him. But I'd wager money she'd rather keep him and kill you Sofia. With you out of the way she could use Cedric's grief to turn him."
"She be better off killing him." Graylock threw in, just in case Sofia wasn't already losing her mind.
"She might be better off, but something tells me she isn't one for making calm, well thought out decisions." Amina countered.
"In which case she'll be trying to lure Sofia into a trap." Graylock acceded.
"At least that will make her easy to find." Tilly added.
"She'll go back to the castle." Sofia whispered.
"We're going to need more than the five of us." Graylock said to no one in particular.
"We need to go after him now! Couldn't I do what I just did again?" Sofia shivered looking at the bodies of the men she'd killed.
The men she'd enjoyed killing.
She suddenly felt sick to her stomach, revolted by the realization of what she'd done.
She'd never killed anything. Never harmed a soul. She didn't even eat meat anymore because, after years of wearing the amulet, the thought of consuming the body of someone she could have a conversation with revolted her. And here she'd slaughtered a hundred men, cut them down without so much as thought.
How could she ever atone for something so horrible? How could she even be entertaining the thought of using such means again?
Yet, if this power could save Cedric, Sofia knew she'd do it. She'd do it a thousand times. It petrified her to understand she'd rip the very fabric of the world in two if it meant holding him alive in her arms again. Was this what he meant when he said loving him would stain her, destroy her?
Tilly and Graylock looked at each other before the older sorcerer shook his head.
"It's not safe to do something like that until you're fully joined. Cedric collapsed because he gave you a great deal of his energy. If you were to pull that much again for too long or pull too much from him without realizing it, you could kill him."
"Sofia, dear, where's your amulet?" Her aunt suddenly asked.
Sofia's hands went up to her neck, and felt nothing but skin.
"Oh, I put it back in the jewel room on my birthday. I thought it was time to let it go, until the next princess who should wear it comes along." She remembered, foggily, how awful her birthday had been. She'd been so distraught by Cedric's rejection she'd pleaded illness and her family had agreed to put off the picnic they'd planned for her until she was better. They'd never gotten around to it.
She thought she'd never, ever feel happiness again that day. Now she would trade all the misery her heart could muster to just have Cedric safe and a tower away, even if he never touched her again.
"Oh dear." Her aunt said.
"Do you think it would help?" Sofia asked, focusing back on her aunt.
Cedric had always gone on and on, during her childhood, about the amulet's unparalleled powers. Even though she'd been given great gifts by it and a few rather unpleasant curses, she'd never understood how the jewel could be harnessed for a specific purpose. Her amulet seemed to have a rather set mind on things, and she didn't see it being very open to persuasion.
"Most definitely!" Graylock, Amina, and Wu-Chang all seemed to answer her at once and their combined voices bounced off the stone pillars, echoing several times.
Tilly stood, offering her hand to Sofia.
"I think we need to pay a visit to Enchancia and then call in the cavalry!"