Mage Song: lightning Teaser

All rights reserved. Copyright © 2023 by LA Magill. All distribution rights reserved for the exclusive use of Wicked Women LLC.

The following excerpt is adapted from a working manuscript by LA Magill in the Harmony Ends universe.

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CONTENT WARNING: The following excerpt includes descriptions of infant death. This content will not be suitable for all readers. Please read responsibly.

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None lived the day Tadhana was born to tell her what happened to her family.

But Earth magic remembered all of those it loved. 

Her mother had conceived twins long before the bombs dropped. As Rot infected the mana, shifters ate from it ignorantly, tasting the insidious poison but not knowing its toxin. All shifters could feel it inside, a stain on their dominance, a dark shadow that festered in the spirit. An echo of the pain, injustice, and grudges that generations of mortal lives could not let go.

Earth magic remembered all of it.

The mother ate more mana because she needed more for the babes in her belly, and Rotten mana infused her spirit when her twins were born. The twins were not spared Rot’s evil, but not even Rot could change what Earth magic had already gifted to the babes. The twins had been chosen at the moment of their conception to bear the gifts of lightning. The twins inside the womb already crackled with electric charge, a magnetic field looping through their bodies and their spirits.

One negative, one positive; one north, one south: two halves of a perfect whole.

It was the mother’s first pregnancy, and when labor came, it gripped her for two days before the twins came. Those that bore the Eeya name had roosted in the family tree for all that time, calling on Earth magic to help the mother bring the babes into the world.

The twins were born at midday when the sun was at its highest. One was born with Earth magic inside her spirit, the other with Rot. The first knew the call of the hunt and the allure of flight. The other knew bloodthirsty rage that knew no end.

The parents did not know what to do. One of their babes cried with violence, would not accept comfort, would not cease in her frantic thrashing.

They did not know.

The babe with Earth magic inside her reached out to her twin, but the babe with Rot inside her pushed the other away. Her hands scratched and scrabbled at her twin’s face.

As the sun set on the first day of their birth, the parents placed the twins inside a sealing rune and all who bore the name Eeya gathered around the babes. They hoped that the mana of their lands could be enough to wipe out the strange, horrifying illness that plagued their daughter. Together, they called on impure mana to power the sealing rune, and so sealed their fates.

In the middle of the night, all the Eeya family chanted for peace. For healing. For answers.

The babe with Earth magic inside her spirit opened her eyes, quieted her own voice, and turned deliberately to her screaming twin.

She stretched her tiny, frail hands forward, but evolution gave her a powerful grip. The babe with Rot inside her flailed her fists, but the babe with Earth magic inside her locked her fingers around her twin’s wrists. The babe with Earth magic inside her held on and on and on as her family chanted.

She did not yield.

She did not let go.

The raging twin’s struggles grew weaker. Within an hour, the babe with Rot inside her tugged feebly against her twin’s lasting grip. Her screaming had quieted into panting.

All the Eeya family wavered where they sat, mesmerized by the sight before them, but as the night drew longer, they grew wearier. Earth magic had never taken so much from them when they called on its mana.

By the time the darkness of night gave way to lighter blue in the East, the twins stared at one another, both silent, both still. The babe with Earth magic inside her let go of her twin’s wrists, and both twins lay side by side in harmony. 

When the sun’s first rays peeked over the horizon, the babe with Rot inside her took a shuddering breath. Her eyes fluttered shut, then struggled open again. She took two uneven but deep breaths, her tiny body relaxing for the first and only time in the blink of a life she was given.

The babe with Rot inside her stretched her tiny, frail arms out, the only sound her ragged breath.

The babe with Earth magic inside her reached out, too.

The twins’ hands found one another, and they took hold of each other. Negative and positive; north and south; together and whole.

The twins shared their first and final breath together, finally unified.

The babe born with Rot inside her died knowing peace through the love of her sister… and the babe born with Earth magic inside her was reborn.

Power, magnificent and fierce, claimed the babe who still breathed. Earth magic wrapped around the babe that had been made whole, that had been determined not to fall, that had used the gifts innate to her spirit beyond the scope of her physical body, her infant mind, and her nascent third skin.

Earth magic had never known a mage like her before.

And unlike every mage who had come before, Tadhana was born amongst a sea of raving shifters that had fallen to Rot.

Rot corrupted every shifter who bore the name Eeya outside the sealing rune. Violence filled their minds and spirits. Blood spilled, flesh ripped, and death reigned, but none bore notice to the babe left breathing inside the sealing rune.

The mage had only spent a single day under the sun, but Earth magic denied her childhood from the moment she took hold of her twin’s wrists.

Earth magic lifted the chosen one’s hand up to the waking sun, and lightning jumped from her fingertips. A fire burst of bolts broke the sky in shattered light far and wide, striking down the last of her family who still struggled under Rot’s virulent grip.

The mage did not know that her Alpha screeched at the spectacle. She did not know how her kin raced to the Eyea family tree. She did not know that they screamed and sobbed over the wounded and warped. She did not know they slit burned her family’s bodies, blood, and butchery away.

She did not know that they took her twin’s body and buried her in the roots of the Eeya family tree, where no bats would take roost again, shifter kin or animal.

She did not know that her family’s tree bloomed scarlet flowers ever after.

She did not know, but Earth magic remembered. Always.

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