I have a bit of an attitude problem.

The man stiffens. “None of us here can fight ten men, much less a hundred! To survive we need to—”

The crowd shushes him as he raises his voice.

“Why our village?” someone blurts out. Their hands are wringing. “Why us? We’re barely a village at all.”

The floodgates of anxiety open.

“The Emperor is mad.”

“They know about the mines!”

“I think it’s because of a prophecy, that’s what I heard about the last one—”

“If they trample my fields, we won’t have enough for winter—”

“Ach! Winter. Let’s focus on now--

The chief holds his hand up for silence. Reluctantly the room fills with it until the only sound is the distant whinny of a horse.

“They’re very bad at night assaults,” the mage observes. She’s leaning against the wall, her nightgown covered by her latest crochet project. The blanket is nearly finished, but she’s a bit embarrassed that the entire town is seeing her loose ends. She frowns back at the glares she receives. “What? They brought a horse. And the path they’re on has all those low hanging branches so they probably aren’t even riding the—"

The chief pinches the bridge of his nose. “Mage. Please.”

The mage raises her hands as if to say mea culpa and falls silent.

“We will evacuate,” the chief repeats. “It doesn’t matter why the Emperor is here. Our only focus tonight is survival. The army draws close. We must leave before they breach the first gate. Gather only what you can carry.”

There’s a moment when the villagers seem like they’re going to follow his instructions. They like the chief – he works alongside them in the field, shares his kills on hunts, and always mediates fairly. However, he isn’t his mother. He’s young.

There’s a beat of silence. Then—

“Chief, the North passage isn’t safe—”

“We need to get the donkeys from pasture—”

“—ridiculous, they’ll be louder than the horses—”

“Or,” the mage says loudly, no longer whispering, “I can finally do my job.”

They stare. The mage stares back.

“It’s night time,” the woman closest to her says.

“Yes,” the mage says.

“Magic doesn’t work at night,” another villager says.

“Solar magic doesn’t work at night,” the mage says in the town of someone who has explained something many times before. “I’m not a solar mage, I’m a star mage.”

“Wait,” the man who suggested the caves says, “you weren’t joking about that?”

She props her fists on her hips. “Do I seem like the joking type to you?”

“We just thought you weren’t that funny.”

“Hey—”

“You can’t call the sun,” the chief says. He ticks off each of her faults on his fingers one by one. “You can’t warm the earth. You can’t bless our crops.”

“You’re just listing solar magic,” the mage says. She huffs and heads for the door. “I don’t have time to re-explain what I can do. You all should start evacuating. I’ll do what I can. If I win, I get to say I told you so. If I lose…” She pauses in the doorway to adjust her blanket. “Well. Maybe the Mage Tower will finally send you the solar mage you all hoped you’d get.”

The village shifts guiltily. Tellingly, no one denies her words.

“You are part of the village,” the chief offers. He clears his throat. “This has become your home.” Even if you’re not useful, goes unsaid.

“Which is why I’m going to do my job,” she says. She strides out. Because she’s feeling a little mean, she takes her blue magelight with her, calling it from the chief’s hand to her own with a thought. “You can use torches. They’re close enough now they must know we can hear them.”

The townsfolk flutter behind her. They’ll evacuate quickly. They have no faith in her abilities. Sure, she graduated top of her class, but why would they care about that? They’ve always just seen what she can’t do.

You are part of the village.

Unfortunately for her pride, she is. The moment the Archmage assigned her so far away, away from the light pollution in the capital, it became her village. And her village may think her incapable, but she knows the truth.

And soon so will the Imperial Army.

The stars hum above her. The moon is a warm presence against her shoulders. She can feel the moonlight sliding down her back, pooling and filling the gaps in her aura. She invites it in, breathes in the night, cajoles the stars to spark at her fingertips. She ran out of her home without shoes and she digs her toes into the chilled earth. Her magic cycles from above to below and then above again, growing more powerful with each repetition.

The army clanks and groans and shuffles. She can’t see them, but knows the path the chief mentioned. Even if she didn’t know it, she’d be able to guess. She pulls starlight under her feet and lets it propel her a little faster. Her magelight winks out, unneeded as her magic sharpens her vision and senses. The chief said they needed to evacuate before they breached the first gate. She intends to get to them sooner than that.

The magic she intends to use will definitely trample the fields if deployed too close.

She makes it to the treeline just as the first man emerges. His eyes have adjusted to the dark, she can tell. He stares right at her, hand on the hilt of his sword. A red cape falls across his shoulders just as the moon falls across hers.

He says, “I am—”

“Leave,” she interrupts. She doesn’t want to hear who he is. Some general or other who has his orders. She has hers. “This will be your only warning.”

“How dare you interrupt the Emperor?!” a soldier snarls. He does draw his sword. “You’ll pay for this slight!”

“You’d be killing an unarmed mage,” the Emperor says. He examines her, eyes lingering on the choker that marks her for what she is.  “You have no power without the sun. Pledge your loyalty to me and we will let you live, mage.”

Well. She did warn them.

The first star hits the rearguard. The man screams as the silver orb strikes with the weight of a cannonball, tearing and searing his shoulder through the armor. His horse cries and breaks loose, running into the forest. She’ll need to let the villagers know to send a search party for it after.

The Emperor is frozen at the sight. He can’t see the injured man in the dark – his vision isn’t as good as hers – but he saw the star. He saw the magic. “Star mage,” he breathes.

“At least someone knows,” she says.

The second star hits. Then the third. The fourth. Men scream. People die. At some point, the Emperor lunges at her. Her cloak of moonlight burns him and the next star that falls puts him out of his misery while he’s screaming on the ground.

She does her job.

 When it’s over, she surveys the battlefield. Not a single soldier made it past her. Her magic curls in satisfaction. Her village is safe. However, the fields aren’t. This mess will spoil them. She checks her reserves and finds just enough left.

Ice and frost creep out from under her feet. It spins in fractals across the dirt path, running up the blades of grass and spiraling up the trunks of the trees it touches. The ice slips over the bodies like a pall. The moonlight gleams.

She raises her arms to the sky, her blanket fluttering in an ephemeral breeze. The word she speaks isn’t in a language she’s ever been taught. It’s one she’s known since she first entered the Mage Tower at seven years old, excited and giddy with the chance to play with magic.

Return.

The bodies disintegrate. Flurries of snow spin up towards the sky. Some of it is red. Most of it is white. When the snow clears, the path is clean. There are craters from her barrage, but the fields are untouched. She is alone in the night and as much as she wants to revel in such a beautiful evening, she can’t. If she doesn’t go back now, she’ll have to track the villagers across the North passage to coax them back home.

With a sigh, she goes back. At least she gets to say I told you so.

----

Thanks for reading! It's been a hot minute, but excited to share a flurry of stories with y'all! If you'd like to read them a week ahead of everyone else, please consider supporting me on Patreon (X)

Next week's story is already up!

Summary: You are a therapist who believes even villains deserve better mental health. This, of course, means all your clients are villains. (recurring therapist-to-villains here (X))

With a bonus extra two-part story as well!

Summary: Your fiance is a villain. Your family is composed of superheroes. You only knew about one of these facts before sitting down to Thanksgiving.

It's a two-parter about finding new family when the one you have no longer fits...and there's superheroes too.