I Wish

"I wish ..."
In a flash of light, Ezir was gone. Millions of people, men, women, and children, gone. Animals, plants, the earth itself, vaporized. She saw it, as the portal snapped shut behind her. She saw the death that she had triggered, cascading along the Ley Lines and along the conduits the Ezirandi had built. In that split second, she heard the cries of a culture vanishing from the world.
She was a bard, a voice of the people, a repository of knowledge of history, of song and verse, and a beacon of every community she passed through. She told epic stories of the wars of old, of cataclysms and tragedy; she wasn't the cause... until now.
Really, it fit. All her life, she had brought kismet's dark kiss. From her father, the priest who tried to burn the devil blood from her, the illithid who dined on her fear and pain, to the demon who still haunted her dreams, she was cursed. Never before had it manifested in so violent, so primal an event, though.
The demon would grow silent in her dreams now, she knew that. Instead, he would be replaced by the multitude lost because of her words. She would see their faces, hear their cries, and feel their torment for the rest of her life.
Life... such a fragile thing. Something she took, never something she gave. She had come close, once, before the hunter had taken that from her too. She had died then, worse than any death her body had suffered. She had died in her soul.
She was not fit to breathe any longer. She saw that now. What made her, the devilspawn, more worthy than any of the millions she had killed? Why should she bring her cursed touch to anyone else? Why should she ruin what Faran and Kayla could have without her?
She would miss them. All of them, even the obnoxious paladin and the arrogant monk. They would be better off, though. They would find luck on their side without her.
She rose to her knees, beginning the only prayer she had ever honestly spoken, the one piece of faith that had stayed with her from those first abuses at her father's hands.
"Lady in white, hear my prayer. I come to you naked, alone, dying. Take my soul into your embrace, keep me to your breast. Let my breath fall still, let my body turn to ash. Keep me, oh Lady, that I can do no harm any more."
Drawing from her knees, she pulled the blade from her hip. Organripper, it was called. Now it would spill its last blood in her hands. She would not cause pain or death again. She would bring a sense of justice to the genocide she could not undo. Never again would she wish...
A wish! That had been the problem, that would be the solution! Frantically, she dug for her pack, for the artifact hiding within. She knew what she had to do.
"I wish..."