Raccciman’s World

Finally the rope tumbled down and landed across my shoulders. “Can't... grab...”

“No need,” he said. There was a magical flash from the rope. “Let go now.”

I didn't notice nothing happening but for that little flash, but the rope was looped around me somehow.

“You can let go now,” he repeated.

I never got no chance to let go, because I somehow couldn't make me do it and then my fingers finished slipping the rest of the way, nohow. I fell into the rope and it pulled and rubbed as I swung about. Below me the ground lurched closer and closer until I landed with a jarring thud, lost my balance, and rolled down onto the damp grass.

I don't know how long I lay around wheezing, but I would have done even more if the wizard hadn't asked me all anxious-like, if I could move. I could move, it just hurt a lot, and the tightness of the rope made breathing mostly impossible. I pushed myself up of the grass which was sort of slick and sort of sticky at the same time, and my hands came away with dark stains. I stared at them for a good while before I could figure that I was looking at some of Werin's blood.

I guess I just stood there listening to my breath whine in and and out, and figuring that the dark lady hated me, and there wasn't no good going anywhere and doing anything. I didn't think none of the rope, or the wizard or anything much, until there was another little magical flash and the rope fell away from me.

“Run!” the wizard urged me.

And I looked up, and while I was gawking at how the dark lady's cage was whipping about, I wiped off my hands without even hardly thinking about it. The cage seemed to have shrunk some, and the wizard was forced down on top of Werin, and the two of them sloshed from one side to another as more dark and bright magic slammed into the bars.

“Can you get out?”

I thought he shook his head, but it wasn't so easy to tell.

“Use your magic,” I urged him.

“I can't use magic on stuff I can't see or feel!”

The two goddesses still stood quietly in the middle of the storm as their magics pushed and pulled and sweeped about. The dark lady's snakes of shadow magic would wrap about the light lady, and then her magic would push through as little, and then the dark lady would wrap some more. As even a match as I ever saw.