Marg's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Marg had flown north for two days when the ground below told her the truth. She circled low over a broken village. Roofs lay flat. A well had caved in. People moved through the wreckage, and when they saw her dragon, they pointed and shouted. She landed at the edge of a burned field. A second ruined village sat beyond it, just as flat. She had done this. Both storms had come from her hands. A crowd gathered fast. Men carried pitchforks and stones. A woman held a broken door like a shield. "That's her," someone yelled. "The witch who wrecked us." They pressed forward. Marg raised her hands to calm them, and that was the mistake. Her palms itched. The sky darkened. Wind rose and knocked a man off his feet. She felt the storm build and could not stop it. The crowd screamed and scattered. Marg dropped to her knees in the dirt. "Help me," she said, to no one and to the whole sky. "I can't hold it. Stop this before it kills them." The wind cut off. A man stepped out of the dust. He was broad, olive-skinned, and dark tattoos wrapped his arms. He wore battered armor and moved like the ground belonged to him. The villagers froze. The frightened woman dropped her door and backed away. "You beg the sky," the man said. "Wrong god." He was Ares, the god of war, and he studied Marg the way a soldier studies a raw recruit. "Your storms are not weather. They are a fight you keep losing." "I don't want to fight anyone," Marg said. "I want it to stop." "Then stop swinging." Ares crouched to her level. "You reach for the storm to crush it. It reaches back. Don't grip. Let it fall through your hands like water." The wind was climbing again. A cart tipped over behind them. Marg wanted to seize the storm and throw it down. Instead she remembered his words. She opened her hands flat. She stopped pulling. She let the power slide loose and pass through her. The clouds thinned. The wind slowed to a breeze. The rain never came. For the first time, Marg had steered a storm and set it down gentle. The villagers watched the sky clear and lowered their weapons, unsure. Marg turned to thank Ares, but he was already walking away. "The god you seek gave you a weapon and no training," he called back. "Ask him why when you find him." Then he was gone into the dust. Marg stood. Her hands were still. She looked north, then at the wrecked village around her. She could keep the storms leashed now, but only barely, and only when she stayed calm. The pull behind her ribs tugged north, sharp as ever. She whistled for her dragon. She had her answer about her hands. She still needed her answer from the god.