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"You have to stop this now, before it's too late," Enin pleaded.
"Tell Jure to stop it!"
"I can't. You don't understand. He is trying to save people. That's what I came here to tell you."
"How can he possibly need this much magic?!" Heteera screamed. "Even a war wouldn't require this much!"
"It's more than a war. He is stopping a massacre, the obliteration of humans across the Great Valleys… misery all the way to the Colad Mountains."
"That's not possible! What could be so powerful?"
It was an important question, one that Enin saw in its entirety, and one that pointed back to Heteera.
"You are," the wizard offered.
"I am nothing. I just want to be left alone."
Enin finally began to understand far more. He saw everything come together. He realized Heteera's place in the course of events. She was not some tortured fluke given great power and no control. She was never meant to control the magic. She was only meant to store it for when it was needed. That need had come and it was being met. If not for Heteera, the suffering would be beyond belief. The wizard only had to make the sorceress understand what he saw as an indisputable truth.
"Is that all you've wanted… to be left alone? That's not what you told me. You talked about the insanity of having power and no control. You viewed it as torture, a twisted trick of fate. It wasn't a trick. It was meant to be."
"I was meant to be tortured?"
"No, you were meant to hold great power. It was to be used when the need arose. That need is here. That's why Jure is taking the magic."
"He's stealing what isn't his!"
"Stealing? Is that how you see it? I don't believe that. I won't believe it. Jure himself said you never meant harm. That is what I believe. You wanted to control the magic so you wouldn't be a danger. And you wouldn't stand by and allow others to suffer just so you could hide in the shadows."
The sorceress did not answer. She did not wish to think of others suffering, suffering like she had faced. She didn't wish to be part of a world with that kind of torment. She had found calm in the darkness of her isolation, a serenity that made her forget about suffering.
"You're starting to understand now, aren't you?" Enin pressed.
"All I see is that I'm being pulled back to a place I don't want to go."
"No! It's more than that. You couldn't understand how you could hold so much magic and yet not have control. You thought it was some colossal trick, some torture, but look at it now. Because of everything that's happened, you allowed for a solution to stop something horrible. Don't you see? You were meant to do this."
"I'm doing nothing! It's being taken from me."
"That's the whole point. You had to collect it first. You had to become this immense reservoir of energy. You had to seal it inside you, but deep down, you knew. You wanted to give the magic purpose, you wanted to have purpose. You wanted to believe there was a point to your existence, an existence that made no sense to you, but it makes perfect sense to me. You are as much responsible for stopping a massacre as Jure. Don't you understand? The very conditions of your being-factors you considered torture-are the components necessary for saving Uton. That is your purpose!"
She almost did understand, but at that same moment, Jure took hold of even more magic to seize the goblins with his spell of binding light. The amount of energy pulled from her essence doubled and the mound in her mind retreated significantly. More of her consciousness was exposed to the outside world.
The light in her mind took shape. She saw the figures of Ryson Acumen and Holli Brances. She saw Jure standing before a gaping hole in a room she did not recognize. Magic was pouring out of him and into the skies.
Placing herself in the current of energy, she could see the bright ball of fire high over their heads, and she could follow the energy of his spells across the valleys. She saw the goblins scattered across the lands near the systematic damage they had caused, but that destruction had ceased. The dark creatures had been seized by strands of light and the lives of a multitude had been spared.
Hopefulness filled her spirit. She could not deny the vast numbers of goblins bent on annihilating the human race. Even Enin with his vast power would not have been able to stop them in one effort. Only the massive outpouring of magic trapped within her could have altered the outcome of the goblin assault. She realized that, though it was Jure who cast the spell, he needed to use her magic. She had a part to play in the events unfolding around her.
Purpose.
Unfortunately, the suffering did not end with the binding of the goblins. She felt the rage of the humans that struck back at the helpless creatures. She saw them turn and attack the monsters that chased them from their homes. She felt their anger. Their thirst for vengeance swelled back upon her. Just as it sickened the elder wizard, the sensation of violence chewed at the sorceress' optimism.
Though she could not cut off the magic to Jure, she found the strength to pull her awareness back into her own body. She viewed the broken walls of the strange room once more and she tried to identify her surroundings.
In doing so, she noticed another figure… a man-or what was left of one-riddled with disease and barely able to move. It was more than a spell that left him debilitated. She sensed the remnants of an agreement born of evil. His selfish desires opened his soul to the plague that consumed him. Worse, he allowed others to suffer for his own benefit. She held no sympathy for the diseased wreck of a man, but it left her cold and empty inside. Any pride in stemming the goblin assault evaporated, and her optimism died.
In a fit of sorrow, she drew in even more magic, tried to erase what she had lost. She wished to wipe the memory of destruction from her memory, she wanted to erase the knowledge of a man so despicable he would thrust others into misery for his own pitiful gain. Her desire was so great that the influx of magic began to match what Jure was taking from her.
Enin didn't know what to say. The situation was obvious to him. The flood of magic going both in and out of Heteera was beyond staggering. He knew there would be no way for her to control it.
He pressed his awareness into the current of the magic, and he saw Jure's success. He knew the goblins had been neutralized. It was a brilliant tactic, using the light to bind the goblins. All that was left was to open several portals to the dark realm and sweep the goblins through.
Unfortunately, he also knew it would not end there. Despite Jure's control over the magic, he would not be able to simply disconnect himself from the flow of energy. The current had become too vast, too strong. It would be like trying to plug a crumbling dam with a pebble. It wouldn't hold and the magic would continue to wash through him.
He knew what would ultimately happen. Once the goblins had been removed from the land and the portals closed, Jure would have no further spells to cast. The elder wizard would try to break his link from Heteera, but the magic itself would rebuff all attempts. Without an outlet, the energy would swell up in both of them until it swept them both away.
Enin did not worry about an explosion of power, as the reservoir within Heteera was already greatly depleted. It was the unbreakable current that was now the problem, not the total mass of energy.
With every goblin in the Great Valleys completely subdued, Jure turned his focus on eliminating them as a threat. It was not sufficient to simply bind them. They had to be removed from the land and placed where they could cause no further harm.
Across the countryside, Jure began to open one portal after another. The gateways led into the dark realm, the breeding grounds and homeland of the goblins. The dimensional doorways sprung up in cornfields, on dusty dirt roads, in empty town squares, and on lonely hilltops. He constructed them tall and wide, for he knew that once he began to push the goblins through, he would need considerable space for the masses that he would heave across dimensions.