A/N

For those wanting some music with this chapter, I wrote this while listening to 'The Heart Asks Pleasure First' from The Piano soundtrack. I didn't want to listen the the main theme of LOTM for this story, because my fandom mind is stubborn and holds it in a silly scared way that belongs solely to the scene of the movie. I wanted something similar but removed. It is also one of my favourite instrumental songs, so I hope you enjoy.

/

Magua led them up a steady rocky incline, the commotion of the crowd fading fast as they left the village far behind and entered into the wilds once more. The path became narrow and winding, the cliff face growing ever higher, and Erin felt its impending threat like a boulder rolling heavily in the pit of her stomach.

Would Uncas listen?

She didn't have any answers, only fearful questions. All she knew was she could now have made it all so damn easy to become the tragedy in the book! Not only had Alice been taken, but now Erin too. Uncas had few reasons not to want to play the hero. The only thing she could cling to was that he did believe her, he had listened and he had promised. Perhaps that was enough to still his chivalrous need to save them.

Erin did not feel confident.

What if he truly couldn't stop himself and he was pulled on his way like a puppet? His movements no more than a manipulation of strings, as fate made him dance to its funeral dirge.

'Please!' It was the only word Erin could think of to repeat over and over in her mind, hopeful that whatever deity or higher power was out there took pity on her desperate begging.

She took a moment to peer over her shoulder and saw Alice only a short way behind her. She was being pulled along by a warrior who had a casual grip upon her upper arm. Alice seemed willing to go where he led as if she were being guided to a lovely picnic up the mountain, her attention only upon the awe inspiring surrounding landscape, eyes going to each feature in dreamy unconcerned wonder.

Erin glanced at Magua who was still leading her like she was no more than his pack mule. His look was thunderous, his jaw clenched so tightly that Erin could imagine his teeth were grinding together. She had to do all she could to buy time, to stall them and make it harder for Uncas to meet his end today. Even if squaring off against this man, with so little pity and kindness left in him, scared her to her very core.

It was her turn to step forward, be the hero and defeat the metaphorical dragon, before Uncas had a chance to put himself fully in danger.

She studied him. Magua was so close that she could see all his scars, cruel looking things that ran across his face and naked torso, telling of countless acts of violence inflicted upon him. He'd lost so much, his past reading like a true tale of undeserved woe. His children dead at the hands of the English. Colonel Munro wholly unaware of the carnage he had brought to one life, ripping all joy and contentment away, and leaving a hollow shell that only thirsted for vengeance and death. His tattoos even reflected his morbid fascination with the fragility of mortality, the blue lines running up his partly shaved scalp in mimic of the fusion sutures that zigzagged across his skull.

Erin tried to imagine this man as a happy husband, bringing his wife into his arms and kissing her with tender passion. A father with a kind smile watching his young children play. His rough hands gathering up their chubby, helpless forms after a fall, gently rubbing a skinned knee and offering words of soothing comfort. Erin tried to see him as a normal man, before this unkind world had touched him.

Pity wanted to well up inside her heart, but Erin sternly forbade it, she didn't have any more time for pity. What she wanted was to see his humanity, because mere men were much easier to face than monsters.

Magua seemed to sense her staring at him and looked her way. Cold flint eyes lingered over her for an uncomfortable moment too long, he was probing her for answers, waiting for her very body and expression to betray her.

With a composed flick of his hand he withdrew her makeshift gag, presumably deeming her words worthy of his time.

Erin took a brief moment to catch her breath, tongue dry and throat ready to constrict into a coughing fit, but she pushed it back with a loud gulp, her mind racing. "You believe me then?" she asked, in gasped Huron. "That's why you took me?"

The muscle in his jaw clenched. "Magua believes there is more to you than what he first saw," he admitted, and gave another cold steady inspection of her.

Something about that look chilled Erin's very bones. It was a ravenous look that spoke of how much he wanted all his plans of revenge to come to pass, and whether she agreed or not, she was going to help him, he was going to make her. Erin wasn't fully sure what that entailed, but she knew it would be a path full of misery and suffering.

She gulped down the fear, hoping her next words remained steady, but she felt the tremor in them as she spoke and cursed herself for the weakness. "Do you... want to know your future?" She noticed his pace was slowing ever so slightly.

They were high enough now that the whole expanse of land looked like a strange patchwork quilt made of green forest, off-white clouds threatening with rain, and grey cold rock. Erin casually turned away as if admiring it, trying to channel her drama lessons of high school, to play the perfect actress, as if she was unconcerned with the fraught and tense situation; as if she held all the power.

"Tell Magua what you see, Red Hair?" He returned his look to the path, seeming to be both curious and unperturbed at the same time. Erin knew if this was a competition of who could play this whole scenario with the coolest head, she wasn't going to win, but she pushed on anyway.

"Your redemption." Erin forced out the words, slowing her own steps even more, compelling him to keep her pace if he wished to listen to this tale. "Your heart healed."

He scoffed. "Then you see false."

"I see what can be, as well as what will be."

He quirked an eyebrow at her, now a little more interested, that hunger in his eyes glowing again like a wolf targeting its prey in the darkness. "What can be?"

"Yes." She paused, her steps only shuffled now and he seemed content to match her. "I can see many paths for you. One is a happy life. No more death, no more loss." In a way, Erin felt like a villain saying these words to a man who had lost everything through the greed of others. She knew there would be no redemption for him, even if he suddenly and uncharacteristically wanted it. Once the group of Mohicans caught up with them, they would kill him, knowing him to be the threat he very clearly was to them all. There was no salvation, only death. That cruel fact was always going to be the end to this story, all Erin could do was try and make the body count two less.

She knew Magua's fate was sealed. She did pity him.

"But, for this to come to pass, you must release the Munro child. Only then will Magua be whole again." She was playing with fire and the moment the words left her lips she could see he was not to be bargained with. Her fleeting pity had been a wasted emotion, for he had none left to return. Just like Duncan, Erin had thought too highly of her own powers of persuasion.

His eyes travelled down her, a sneer hinting at the corner of his mouth as if he were studying an opponent completely unworthy of him.

"Just because you are a seer, Red Hair, does not mean you are still not a liar." His tone was very calm and monotone and then he gave her a one hundred yard stare, seeing into her and somehow through her, his gaze saying how very little she really mattered to him, making her shiver. "Magua sees what you are."

Erin could believe it in that moment, that he knew all her clandestine inner workings, that he could see her soul, her heart and her mind, and with one simple movement he could crush them all like fragile petals in his hand.

Her thoughts raced, he was winning and that meant the potential end of two of her friends. "Then I am sorry for you." Erin blurted out the first things that came to mind, knowing it would at the very least rile him, and at the best buy more time, she had to keep him distracted. "You have this great chance to change your life and you would throw it away for pride. It is a waste."

His whole body seemed to ripple and become rigid, he paused his steps and the convoy behind them halted, waiting for their leader's command.

"Way to go Erin. He loved that!" Her mind slow clapped and her whole body suddenly felt very cold. She knew she'd messed up.

It all seemed to flow in slow motion, the way he turned towards her, a muscle twitching in his cheek, his lips a stern line, eyes dark and full of ill intent. Then he was reaching for her. A rapid callous motion that she could not cringe away from, his hand twisting into her hair in a burning coiled grip, yanking her forwards and nearly off her feet as he dragged her after him like chattel for the slaughter.

She clutched at his arm with both her hands, instantaneously terrified. She felt her heart constrict in pure fear and then it began to beat so fast that Erin had the morbid imagining that it would burst from her chest at any moment. She gasped out a few desperate moans of resistance but had no time for more.

Her shoes slipped uselessly against the rock as she tried in vain to push back against him, but he was strong, all muscle and rage and no clemency. Magua brought her to the precipice of the cliff as if she went willingly. He thrust her out before him to the very edge of what looked like the whole world. The beauty of the landscape lay out dizzyingly before her, misted in a slight haze of low cloud.

'Don't look down!' her mind screamed, and this made Erin do just that, while harshly rebuking herself.

Below her, countless feet down to the bottom, she could see the sinister jagged, bare, cold rocks that patiently waited for her own broken body and blood to cover them. They seemed suddenly to reach up to meet her, filling her head with grotesque images. For once she did not see the gruesome horrifying sight of Alice and Uncas dead and shattered, but her own form in their place.

'Oh God'!' her thoughts lamented, as hot panic pulsed somewhere behind her eyes. 'Perhaps this is how you save them, maybe you are meant to die right here. Maybe your death is their salvation!' The thought chilled her and all the strength of bravado left her in one shivering emotion as her own mortal humanity came to greet her with the grinning eager face of death.

Erin let out a pitiful mewling cry and closed her eyes tightly, fear jumping through her like electricity, setting all the fine hairs on her body prickling unpleasantly. Tears cascaded down her face, feeling hot against her now chilled skin, the salty liquid ran across her lips, taunting her with her own corporeal senses.

"Magua will throw you down if you don't hold your tongue!"

In that second, Erin's mind struggled for any kind of reason, but the only sense it could push forward was how the one thing keeping her anchored to the earth in that moment was the anger vibrating through his hand, which was curled into her hair with a cruel grip. Her mind flashed back to the river, the waterfall, Uncas' body connecting canoe to land, before he let go and it flew over the edge like a little toy boat. If Magua let go now, her fate would be the same.

"Do you understand, Red Hair?"

Erin could feel her sweat slick hands slipping against his skin, losing grip. "I understand!" Her feet had been pushed up onto tip toes, her shoes scrabbling to gain any true foot hold under grit and loose stone, but he held her in place at the very bink with a terrible force. She knew if she could not keep her balance, he'd let her fall.

He shook her firmly once, as if determined to shake out any fight left in her, and Erin felt her foot slip with the aggressive action, coming for a moment to the edge, into nothing but air, and her shoe dislodged, loosened and fell away into empty plummeting space. Her bare toes groped frantically backward and found land, tiny sharp rocks burrowing into the flesh of her footpad.

She finally opened her eyes and looked back, hoping he would see just how much she did know the magnitude of the situation. The chill wind whistled by, whipping hair against her face, stinging her already watering eyes, the cold seeming to freeze the stream of tears on her cheeks in place. She was at an angled position now, that beyond Magua's shoulder she could see Alice being held by a warrior. All dreamy, vacant expression had vanished from her pretty features as she looked upon the scene before her with true horror. Erin's body made to move towards her in distressed primal instinctive need to go to the only friendly face she knew for comfort, but she was roughly pulled back into place.

"You will speak when Magua wants! You are Magua's dog!"

"Yes!" Erin squeaked out the word, her eyes tightly closing again as the world far below threatened to loom up, beckoning her down and making her feel suddenly dizzy.

She had been foolish to think she could ever reason with this man, that he had any reason left at all. Nathaniel was right, he was a twisted remnant of what had been, and he would twist the world about him until it broke under the pressure. He would break her, through submission or death, he didn't really care which.

"When Magua wants the truth he will beat it from you until you have no more futures to see. Do you understand, Red Hair?" It was all a cold demand and Erin knew if she fought back now, if she defied him, he would push her thoughtlessly to her doom.

"I understand!" The words were flung from her in a loud piercing cry.

With a certain stiff nod he pulled her roughly back to safety, the callous treatment nearly sending Erin sprawling to the rocky ground, but a nearby warrior caught her, helping her keep her feet, not out of kindness, but because that was where Magua wanted her to be, the responsibility of another.

He then turned and began to lead them onwards. Erin took a few desperate seconds for herself, relief rippling through her, and she sobbed for a brief moment with the release. She was given no further time for self pity or to regain her senses as she was urged forward, the warmth of the warrior's hand upon her arm tethering her back to reality and the fact she had to move. She managed a quick look back to Alice, who looked petrified, her bottom lip quivering at the near death she had just witnessed. Erin tried to smile reassuringly but knew the expression never reached her lips.

Up, and ever up they walked, the pace fast, and the atmosphere heavy.

Erin didn't know if that little outburst had bought anyone more time. She could only pray up to the hazy, cloud-laden sky that Uncas had heeded her words in the village. She suddenly felt she had lost all track and knowledge of time, how long had they been walking? Ten minutes? Thirty? It felt like forever. Her bare foot felt warm, it tingled and throbbed, and she knew if she looked down she would see blood, so she kept her gaze focused on where they were going.

There was a harsh noise up ahead, a shout of pain, and Erin felt her heart drop, despair clasping around her like a freezing hand, squeezing her chest and all the breath from her in cold panic. A musket was fired and another cry pierced the air, making everyone around them suddenly nervous and on guard. She could just about make out figures up ahead, a scuffle, and then a man was falling over the edge, his figure plummeting just as her shoe had, into nothingness, a sight that suddenly made Erin feel sick.

There was a flash of colours, dark forest green and long black hair flying in breeze and motion, and then Uncas was there, his face a determined mask of control and resolve, coming towards them, driving forwards and ramming into any that got in his way, his musket brought jarringly into faces, men falling, shots firing, barely missing his head as the returned musket shot rebounded off the rock walls.

Another warrior engaged him, catching Uncas' elbow off guard, making him drop the heavy weapon. He reached to his waistband, his tomahawk now held confidently, the weapon brought down with purpose on any man between him and his destination, red splattering into the landscape's colour palette as life blood was spilled.

It felt like a nightmare, a waking nightmare, as Uncas travelled ever closer to his fated destiny and all Erin could do was stand and watch.

/

A/N

This is indeed, a very cruel cliff hanger to leave any reader on. I am sorry :)))

I have to admit, I enjoyed writing Magua the more I wrote this story. Thinking about his way of thinking was a fun thought process. The way he only held Erin in place at the edge allowing her to struggle for her own survival felt like a very Magua thing to do. If you can't save yourself, he's not going to help you at all, it's up to you, but if you disobey him, he'll toss you over anyway without any remorse.

Tiny tangent ahead, skip if you don't want to read my thoughts on the movie.

I agree with Elian21, in that Magua does have a flicker of compassion for Alice in the movie when he beckons her back from the edge, but whether that is because his heart has softened or he has a little ripple of fear at losing his chance at 'justified' revenge, I truly don't know. I personally think if Alice had gone to him, he still would take her to The Huron of the Lakes for judgement. I know Wes Studi said in an interview that in that moment Magua sees Alice as a child, a baby, maybe even remembering his own child. But... I don't think that compassion would have lasted beyond that intense moment on the cliffs. I think by this point in his life, Magua has lost almost all his empathy. It just shows how powerful Alice's look is that it breaks through to him.

So, back to Spark.

So, it appears things are going the way that Erin dreaded. Is she going to be able to save Uncas? Can Uncas save himself or is he truly fated to die on those cliffs? No, I'm not going to tell you, you'll have find out next Friday ;)