Greatness is Never Promised

Stray spells and missiles swerve and scream through the sky overhead as who was then known as Ruby the King's Servant, runs through the forest alone, injured.

She has blood running down her body, multiple gashes along her right arm. She had a close encounter with her very own King's Guard. It seemed as though everyone in this world was turning against her, ever since she took her new identity.

But was it something that was new???

She remembered she had been known throughout the King's Court—wearing dresses and makeup, someone people would often call extravagant and expressive. She didn't quite understand why just wanting a new name, maybe some nice new pronouns, and I guess a new societal view upon her very own self would cause such chaos but here she was, knee deep in a Kingdom-wide quest to gut her and put her head on a pike.

But in the midst of all of this chaos there was something that couldn't quite shake her attention. While she knew that she should be focusing on the constant threats of death. There was some type of magical resonance that was happening constantly throughout her magical field It was like someone or something was just finally messing with it, just a strand. A small little drop in her river, just constantly out of tune. Once Ruby the Red Mage got a brief moment of quiet, she would immediately check this out. But for now, she hears crunches of boots marching behind her. The magical infantry of the kingdom was hot on her tail and she had left them quite a few clues as to where she was heading with her constant spell casting.

“Ouch“, Ruby winces.

She feels something stab directly through her left forearm. There goes the my useful arm. Motherfucker I can't let this keep happening.

Ruby stops hard turning on her heels. She's at once able to make out three spells being cast. With a snap of her left finger, those spells remain unfinished. Their casters having holes drilled in their heads. Bodies fall stiffly smashing into the foliage.

It doesn't mean that her worries are over. If anything, this was the easy part of turning and facing her problems. Ruby the Red Mage can feel herself slowly be surrounded. The remaining troops are cautious, deliberately swooping out of view, using the thick forest to hide their presence. Ruby simply smiles, wipes the blood stream from her nose, and readies herself.

With the flick of a finger an earthen wall erects itself, barely stopping the molten ball of fire in its tracks. The earth melting and dripping magma as the fireball is blocked just short of her face.

Out from behind a tree about 20 feet away an all too familiar face emerges.

"I thought I recognized that sinister way of throwing molten rock inside the depths of a fireball. I'm glad that I put iron sand in the middle of my earth wall or else my ass would be toast right now, wouldn't it Delilah?“

A cat-eyed woman with a growing sneer on her face, a crop of beautiful, perfectly straightened shoulder-length blonde hair responds, “You just know me too well, Ruby.“

"I thought you wouldn't respect my new name. After all, you're hunting me down for it. Just stop this. We can have this kingdom together. I know you know that."

"If you're truly foolish enough to die for something as meager as this, then the least that I can do is respect your wishes until your death. But the history books won't remember your name. I'm not going to be the ones to write them. They'll use your dead name to describe your treachery."

"Then I take it that we're enemies now?"

“We could have been wed, you know? You didn't just throw away your life by doing all this. You threw away mine too. Do you think that it would be me out here in charge of these fucking peasants? My parents are nobles, Ruby. You don't know what my allegiance to you has lost me."

“But that's exactly what I'm saying, Delilah. Don't you get it? Two women being unable to be married, this whole kingdom, it's a fucking joke. We can change that!"

Electricity begins to run down Delilah's arm crackling around her fingers forming into a lance resting in her palm, "I can see now that you're too blind to listen to reason, they warned me you would be like this.“ But Delilah's eyes well as she looks at her unarmed target. She clasps a palm to her face, tears rolling through her fingers. Finally she looks up, “Please, just come back with me, I promise you'll be out of a cell in a week's time, you just, you have to throw this all away, it can never be spoken of again to these people. But after all that, we can go to my family's summer villa, we'll never have to talk to any of these fucking people again. You can... you can just be you, whatever that means."

Ruby looks upwards into the sky. She can see the faintest of stars glittering through the canopy. Tears openly stream and roll down her face, dripping on to the ground. “For me to just be me, Delilah, it would mean standing up to all of this, not just frolicking about, while people just like me suffer all across the country. What? Because I was lucky? Because my love was rich?" Her face now turned directly towards Delilah, her eyes filled with malice and rage.

But Ruby the Red Mage would not allow herself to be distracted by the fact that the love of her life was standing a few dozen feet away from her. No, she knew that right now she was surrounded by the highest trained magicians the kingdom could offer save for those unlucky souls drafted by the war in the East. She understood that emotions had no place here, lest she would forfeit her life in an instant.

She let her river calm itself. She let her river become perfectly under her control. As she waded out into its depths, she could feel the fury rushing at its depths. Using all of her might, she channeled a maelstrom of magical power.

The team surrounding her immediately begun a coordinated defense. Yes. 16 trained magicians immediately began a defense against Ruby. She knew that she was feared, but she hadn't quite understood to the degree of how badly she was feared until now.

But Ruby the Red Mage was adept and quick on her feet. If they'll be on the defense, then I'll use that to my advantage.

Rather than throwing out miscellaneous magical attacks, Ruby would generate something that would keep all of these fuckers distracted. Heaving rocks jutted from the ground; skulls, arms, legs, massive boulders to form the torsos. Seven thirty foot tall stone golems formed in the time it took Ruby to breath inwards.

Chaos immediately broke out as the wizards working under Delilah desperately attempted to fend off the stone golems. But on Ruby's breath outwards she begun her attack on Delilah herself. They launched into the air throwing streaming screaming arcs of lightning at each other. The streaks ricocheting off one another bouncing around and threatening violence as each caster tried to bend them to their own advantage.

Below them, screams of pain were bellowed as bones snapped and smashed under the golems violent attacks. One of them had already been taken out, but that resulted in five of the wizards having been slaughtered.

“I'm sorry.“

Ruby finally has grasps on all of the wild bolts of lightning. She can calculate their exact projections and allows one of them to graze her right foot sending her leg into a numbness that she would have regretted if not for the trade off of two bolts striking Delilah directly in her stomach. A brief noise emits from her throat as the wind is pushed out from her lungs, her organs all seizing up and her body stiffening before she falls like a rock down into the ground. It's there that she meets the remainder of her allies before they meet their fates with the golems.

But Ruby will never know her lover's fate as she was off again, now in a direction where she would hope to find safety.

Ruby's magic is sputtering at this point. The maintenance of having to battle so many foes as well as such an elite magician has taken its toll. She's been on the run now for hours, as she wonders where her night will stop, where she will find peace, that's when she remembers that little trickle—the small amount of her river which she's lost complete control over.

Ruby looks around herself wildly, her eyes darting at the shadows that dance before her weary eyes. She sees figures in them, hunting her, wanting to kill her. She forces eyes shut closing off the faulty sense and focusing in on the one that she trusts, on the one that she's honed. She wades into the little that's left of her river, trying to feel out, anyone around her trying to do her harm. She feels a still, calm presence lurking over her, akin to a spiritual guardian. She opens her eyes wildly and there's nothing there. In her next moment, she's forgotten reality. She simply doesn't need it anymore, her fear abandoned. Her hands, her fingertips, press into the unknown part of her river, letting its mystery take her away.