The Necromancer Trilogy - Eachanstone

Chapter Six - 36, Jamaica Close

“Concentrate, Sophie,” Diana chided. “You have limitless power. You just have to find it.”

“I’m trying!” Sophie snapped. “But I’m tired and hungry and distracted and I just want to go home and do nothing!”

“You can,” Diana assured her. “Once you’ve killed this little plastic man.”

Sophie glared at her. “With a knife, it would be the work of a moment.”

“You don’t have a knife,” Diana reminded her. “You’re in a corner. He’s advancing. He isn’t striking yet. You’re feigning injured. What do you do?”

Sophie thrust out her hands and concentrated. Her palms itched and her fingertips prickled but nothing magical happened.

“I can’t do it!” she screamed in frustration, marching over and punching the innocent plastic man in the face. “I just can’t do it!”

Diana sighed in exasperation. Savio, who had been watching quietly in the corner, stood up and walked over.

“You’re not trying hard enough,” he said, coldly.

Savio rarely spoke and Sophie was always startled to hear his voice. Today, though, she was just annoyed.

“I’m trying as hard as I can!”

“That’s not good enough,” Savio growled. “You need to make an effort, Sophie. Stop expecting everyone else to keep saving you. People have better things to do than watch your back.”

Sophie was speechless.

“Besides, you’re meant to be the one to destroy this world. Right now, you’re just a feeble little child. Just a child, Sophie. Perhaps you aren’t the Princess after all. You can’t do anything. You just let other people run around clearing up the mess you’ve made.”

Sophie’s insides curled in a blazing hot furnace of rage. If Savio noticed, he didn’t react.

“You know that the Society will never let you get your parents back, don’t you? You can only get them back if you frighten the Elders and you could never do that. You’re just a little girl running around, trying to be important. You’re nothing. You can’t do anything.”

Sophie screamed in fury and raised her hands. They burned crimson and Savio dived aside so that the wave of black energy didn’t reduce him to dust, as Sophie had intended, but instead incinerated the little plastic man, and the stand he stood on, and a great deal of the wall behind him.

“Well done,” Savio said, picking himself up. “Diana, make a note. I think we’ve successfully determined the trigger to her power. In time, she will learn to harness it.”

Sophie was still seething, but felt curiously released. She looked down at her hands and then at the smoking ashes of the plastic man and the scorched and crumbling wall.

“I did that?”

Savio nodded. “Forgive me if I offended you, but experiments have to take place.”

Sophie stared at him. “You…”

Savio smiled faintly. “Forget it, Sophie. Worse things will happen to you.”

“Anger,” Diana murmured. “Your power is triggered by anger.”

“Yes…” Savio hesitated. “Or, perhaps….”

“What?” Diana frowned. “What are you think, Sav?”

Savio shook his head, retreating to his seat. He said nothing more and Diana didn’t press him. Savio would speak, in his own good time.