Four days later, waiting for the advance of the enemy. Twenty people stood waiting on the hillside. Chara had found the nearby river powerful enough for her purposes. It would flood the valley below them quite nicely. Perhaps some men would escape. She rather hoped some would. But the standard- bearers would not; nor would their leaders. Those that survived would wend their way home to their own crops and fields and herds and trades.
Chara, sorceress. Funny, she no longer felt like a sorceress. In her moment of attainment, her illusions had been stripped. The stories she used to tell were fading and fluttering from her mind like old leaves blowing into another season. Like the pages of ancient books. It was another who had frozen the basilisk. It was another who had crystallized quartz with Aline. It was another who had -- no, she could not remember. She no longer cared if she remembered. She no longer cared if she cared.
Cold and tired, she awaited her moment, overlooking the verdant woodlands that stretched for miles. She almost wished she could turn back; return to Antrahil, return to her cosy home with the smithy (could she even dare look him in the eye?), and live out in quiet peacefulness the five or six more years she expected out of life. Almost. She was certain Iren would not let her, anyway. And sighed. She mourned that severed friendship.
She remembered her spell, though. Almost as much as she remembered Iren's last words to her. No, best not to dwell on those angry, desolate words, deserve them though she might.
"They're coming!" A whistle from her left. She strained her eyesight out into that greenness, but saw nothing for a while longer. But then they came. Like the ghouls of years gone past. Ghouls would be extinct, now; magical beings dead with the death of all magic. These men who marched on, though: they had families back whence they came. They had loves and desires and goals and passions, quite apart from the goal their own commander-king had set them. She saw his flag wave loosely. Almost close enough.
Close enough.
Chara chanted the dusty tongue, and made the passes. The air grew thick around her. She felt as though she was going to topple off the hillside. A little bit of panic at the power of sorcery rose through her, but she held it in check. She thought back to Aline -- Aline, who must have known full well what gift she had bequeathed Chara, and why. Sorcerous tension magnified within the confines of her frail body.
All of a sudden, she heard the cracking of rocks and boulders. The waters were freed! Perhaps --
No perhapses, she knew in a flash. No exemptions. The ultimate spell came for her, too, as she had known it must.
All sorcerers must die. All whom use sorcery are sorcerers. From now unto all time.
The last sorceress slumped to the earth with the faint hint of a smile on her face as the river soared and swept clean the valley below.
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