Reprisal by Gregory Harvey

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The rune of standstill. Positive accomplishment is unlikely, the stone warned. Do not stubbornly insist on working your will. Angela looked at the rune again, and interpreted its message to be warning her against casting the spell. Whatever. The runes were wrong. They had to be. Surely anyone could see that she was just trying to serve justice? Angela slipped the rune back into the pouch, and flung it into the box, before securing the lid once more.

Angela the witch...

Now, the spell.

She had devised it herself the day before from ingredients she already had lying around the house (not that her mother knew about any of them). It would be difficult to cast, and Angela wasn�t entirely sure it would work, but if it did than Ellen, that preppy BITCH Ellen, would finally get what was coming. Oh, yes. You better believe it.

Angela picked up her spellbook and flicked straight past the segment she had headed �Elemental Spells�, and straight past the segment entitled �Spiritual Spells�. She had taken some care to align every spell she devised into one of those categories, but this one... it defied categorization. Instead, she had pencilled in a new part of her spellbook, the �Spells of Unknown Origin�. The danger inherent to the casting came from the fact that she wasn�t precisely sure what energy source she would be tapping into. And what kind of temperament it had... but what needed to be done, needed to be done. She turned to the next page, entitled �Spell of Reprisal�.

Using her fingertips, Angela carved a small circle into the ground in front of her, no bigger than thrity centermetres in diameter. Next, she took her lighter out of her pocket and used it to light a large, yellow candle, which she placed at the centre. She looked at the spellbook for reassurance, before spreading the sanctified dust around the candle, forming a sort of mound. Next, she mixed in the rest of the ingredients with the dust, before taking the crow feathers and standing them up in it. Their ends were buried in the dust.
Although the sun was now lighting the area with some force, the candle still emitted a peculiar glow into early light. Angela wasn�t worried, she was fully aware that sometimes candles such as these burned brighter than the actual sunlight.

She flicked the page, to where the actual incantation was written. This too she had devised herself, piecing it together from twenty or so other spells she knew. Angela paused one last time to reconsider her motives. Could she really so blatantly move against the advice of the runes? They�d never been wrong before. Perhaps there was just something clouded from them. Yeah. That must�ve been it.
Clearing her mind (as best she could), Angela placed her hands over the implements in front of her. Together they should combine to create the most powerful spell she had ever cast. She glanced back down at her spellbook, and solemnly began the incantation.

�All the life of earth and sea, wind and fire, come to me! All the spirits of the after-glow, high and low, join their flow!� Angela chanted.

The flame burning at the centre of her construction flickered a bit, grew bigger, before returning to its normal size.