It has been a long time since she’s felt fear like this: as a visceral, living thing, a snake slithering up her legs, a wolf’s breath on her spine. For years, she has beaten it down, defeated it with lightning, with her own power she had learned to wield.
(No longer a nascent magician, undiscovered: simply a magician, a woman clothed in lightning with gun-slick hardness in her eyes.)
Until—
Until the earth shook and roared with thunder, a land defied coming back to take what she is owed. Until the towering mountain, grim-faced, had torn back the magic; left Cordis staring numbly as lightning was peeled from her skin and sunk back into the earth, given back (not given -- taken).
She has not been powerless since the day with the wayfarer, the day she burned him alive and smelled hair burning and fat bubbled. She has not been powerless since His lair, when she was trapped and helpless, made to die again and again.
Her throat feels tight, closed off, and she struggles to breath. Fear has crawled across her skin, writhing like maggots, and now panic arises, too – fresh and awful, a savage hand across her face.
She runs, but cannot run forever, not without her magic; she is mortal and it is awful, it is dangerous, for He will surely come now, now that is she vulnerable and shaking, sides heaving and heart dancing a jitterbug in her chest.
Her brand does not burn – it’s not even warm – but she swears she hears hellhounds baying, all the same.
I’ll touch you all and make damn sure
Cordis
that no one touches me