Mage Wall – The split between worlds (Breast/butt expansion story)

"So... You can cast." The question came from behind, wrapped in that awkward kind of interest.

Abigail did her best to ignore it. Focusing instead on the boulders in front of her and the act of tossing them.

But Baric didn't quit. "Why didn't you during our fight? Were you afraid you might hurt me?" He asked. His needling questions burrowing into the back of her skull. 

"Because I didn't want to." She answered. Cold and final.

Which must have gone over Baric's head.

"Why not? I would have killed you if you lost."

"Yes. But I didn't lose, now did I?" She asked back. Hoping the sass would send him away.

It didn't, and he only drilled with further insistence. His questions finally becoming too much to ignore or brush aside.

So, she told him a part of the truth.

"I don't like the memories it brings up."

Still it wasn't enough.

"What kind of memories?"

"Why do you need to know? It's my business, ok, and I'd prefer it stay that way." She said. Meaning it, certain that he felt the bite in her tone. The avalanche of emotion behind it, and that he would respect her boundaries.

He did not.

"I want to know because we could die if you keep holding back. Every fight, whether you want it to be or not, is life or death down here. A moments hesitation is all it takes to die. And you... You hesitated back there. You could have gotten both of us killed.

"So I wanna know why."

It was a question, Abigail knew. One she did not want to answer. Not because it might change his perception of her - she didn't care about that - but it would open up a wound. One carefully closed that she never wanted to experience again.

Yet...

"I... I lost my mom in a fire." She started. Old memories playing out before her eyes. "She studied magic, and was experimenting with... Something. I don't remember what. But..."

And the image of the fire flashed in her mind. The suddenness of it. How it roared to life in the middle of her desk and spread across all their books. Her mother's voice...

"And she told me... She told me to run. To leave her behind. Said it would be all right. But..."

She was a kid, then. Not even old enough to know how dangerous fire was. And she...

"I thought I could put it out with magic of my own. Summon some water and douse the flames. Simple."

But it was anything but simple. The fire, bright red, wasn't a normal fire. It absorbed her magic, used it to grow bigger. Amplify itself till there was no hope of putting it out. And she...

"... I had to abandon her. Leave her to burn. All because I..."

Again, Baric placed a hand on her. Gentle, comforting. Yet, it was firm. Strong.

"But you were a kid." He said. And it almost comforted her.

"Yeah, and I should have known better. I shouldn't have... I should've..." 

He interrupted her again. Grip tightening on her shoulder. Breaking her out of her fit of tears. 

"Maybe you're right." He said, and she listened. "Maybe it was your fault. I wasn't there, I can't say it wasn't. But how is swearing off magic gonna change that? How does it make anything better?"

"It doesn't." She started, took a shuttering breath, then continued. "It just. It helps me forget."

"Forget what?" He asks, and the question stings. It slams against her like a hammer into stone. Not breaking the wall she built, but cracking it, and that is enough to make her question.

What is she trying to forget?

For a moment she has an answer. It is her mother's pain. The crying, the horrid sobs, the heaving of her chest. But it fades. She remembers it all too well, the details seared in her mind, impossible to ever forget.

She has another answer. It is her failure. Her disobedience that led to her mother's death. Her childish arrogance that made it all so much worse. But that too is sealed into memory, never to be forgotten.

So what was she trying to forget?

For once, the answer eludes her. When she calls on it, pulling on that string of grief, grief itself is the only answer that comes. It is not good enough. There is no substance to it beyond suffering for suffering's sake. It is hollow and empty. 

But it is her's. A burden wrapped around her neck, reminding her of that night. Marking the flames that took her mother permanently in her eyes.

It is a part of her.

Yet.

Baric speaks again, and it is with a loud voice. "Do you even know?" He asks. Words cutting deep. "And even if you do forget, what does it accomplish?"

Nothing, is her answer. But she doesn't say it. Instead she speaks with action. Standing to her feet and summoning the smallest flame. As she peers into it, she sees her mother screaming for her to run. An image she hates. But this time she does not run from it.

She hates the way it makes her remember. But it is not her enemy. And when she closes her hand, putting the fire out, her magic is hers once again. Not pure like it could have been, but a tool, hers to use.

Behind her, she heard Baric get back to work moving stone and she hastily joined him. Settling back into the same rhythm, temporarily putting her new feelings on magic out of her mind. 

Or she tried to. But, as she moved one boulder then another, her thoughts kept drifting back, pondering what Baric said. Only to have that line of thought broken when the man in question started digging with an intensity that could only have been born from finding something.

Which, at first, she thought was another survivor. A bandit somehow still alive despite being buried for so long and the combat that followed. But she was wrong. What Baric found was no man, but a spear.

Red and bloodied, rose their target, looking untouched. As if it had just been freshly forged, the dust clouding the air unable to cling to it. A detail that impressed upon her the sort of weapon they were actually dealing with. Or as Sarill had called it the night he sent her to retrieve it, an artifact.

And it had to be one. The power that it radiated, it spoke of a great enchantment. Inspiring in the right hands, terrifying in the wrong. She just hoped, As Baric summoned a wind to carry them out of there, that she wasn't about to put it in the wrong.

That thought stuck to her as they rose. As did the way their search for survivors came to an abrupt end.