“When was the last time you used your powers?” I queried as I teleported back into the examination chamber.
“They took away my powers,” Karl responded immediately.
“Answer the question,” I ordered.
“Since before I was taken.”
“Try now. Form a telekinesis thread.”
“A what?” Karl inquired.
Of course he probably hadn’t used that term to describe it. He was, after all, from a time where such terms wouldn’t have been commonplace. He had probably been born in the nineteen twenties.
“Lift something,” I commanded, gesturing to a scalpel I had left on the gurney on the other side of the room.
Karl’s unblinking eyes turned his expressionless face towards me. His lack of expression didn’t mean much though as his face wasn’t capable of forming expressions anymore. The muscles had atrophied through lack of use.
“Do it now,” I urged.
Karl let out a grunt as he reached his hand out to reach the scalpel. I watched with grim satisfaction as the Mana quivered within his body and ever so slowly formed into a thread running down his arm. It moved so very slowly, far slower than even I had managed when I had first learned to use my powers.
I couldn’t see any visible evidence of the effort within Karl’s body until I looked at his eyes. His irises had always been expanded due to extended and constant Mana use, but now they almost glowed. The Mana reached his palm and slowly began to form a thread. A gasp escaped Karl’s lips. This was surprising for two reasons: one, I didn’t know Karl was still capable of expelling air - he didn’t need it and I had assumed his lungs had shut down - and two, while not very powerful, the thread was complete. If Karl had wanted it to, it would have lifted the scalpel.
“How is this possible?” Karl whispered.
“Your Mana is growing more powerful through use. With practice you can regain and even exceed your previous powers.” I smiled.
“This changes nothing,” Karl whispered softly. “I still seek death.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“Can I use this power to be as I was before?”
I pondered that for a second. “No, the damage to your body is too great.” I shook my head. “But once I complete my studies, I may be able to regenerate you.”
“To what end? Everyone I know is dead,” Karl murmured. “Except for the one who did this to me, and I do not wish to be reunited with him.”
“You don’t want revenge?”
“No, and even if I did, I doubt I would be able to achieve it,” Karl said firmly. “No, end this. It is better this way.”
“No,” I whispered. “I don’t understand.”
How could he want this? After everything he had endured, everything he had done. To end it like this seemed like such a waste. He had just rediscovered his powers. In prompting him to use his powers, I had encouraged his strength to exceed what was required to maintain himself. I vaguely wondered how powerful he could be now he was not using the entirety of his powers to keep himself alive.
“End this,” he repeated.
I gritted my teeth. I didn’t have to do this - I didn’t even really want to. I looked at his dead face and pondered. What would I have wanted if our situation was reversed? I didn’t know. I couldn’t know. It’s almost impossible to place oneself into that mindset. The debate raged back and forth in my mind.
“You know how to,” Karl accused as he leaned forward in the bed. “I can see it in your face.”
“I do,” I confirmed softly.
“Then do it.”
I nodded briefly. In the end it didn’t much matter what I wanted. The fact that his powers had returned meant nothing. I had promised and I keep my promises. I was going to deliver.
“I will try,” I whispered. “I may not succeed.”
Karl nodded and sat back down on the bed.
I breathed out quickly as I summoned my powers.
“This may hurt,” I warned as I realised it probably wasn’t going to. He no longer had nerves with which to feel pain.
I reached out and placed my hand over his centre, several inches from his chest, and let my powers grow. The Disrupt technique required a pulse of Mana to be sent from my fist to the target, but I suspected this would be insufficient for my needs. I would need to experiment with different delivery methods, using a constant flow of power rather than staggered bursts. I’d never tried a Disrupt delivered by thread before;, and thought it would be best to see what happened with the standard pulse first.
I built the power to a crescendo within my fist before I released it. The Disrupt thread tore from my fingers and hit Karl centre mass. His body shuddered as it took hold, tremors echoed across his flesh from the impact and the Mana reacting with his body. Just as quickly as it had begun, the effect stopped and his Mana returned to normal. I hit him again, with much the same effect. It was infuriating: the strength of my pulse didn’t seem to make any difference. It was overcome with much the same ease.
I staggered as I released a string of Disrupt pulses at the Mana. I was expending almost my full strength at disrupting the Mana. No other mage I had ever met had been able to simply shrug off a Disrupt like this. True, under such an effect his ability to draw upon his Mana would be seriously dampened, but he wasn’t actively drawing upon his powers – it was happening at a subconscious level. He would have been unable to use the Mana to fight back, but it wasn’t stopping his regeneration.
As the pulses continued, and the Mana fought between my Disrupt pulses and Karl’s Mana fought against them, I finally began to make a break through. I was winning, but the power I was using was mind blowing. I wouldn’t be able to keep this up for much longer, let alone use my powers to incinerate the body once the regenerative process had been broken.
As the Mana processing the regeneration finally shutdown, I saw his body shudder and convulse. I immediately looped his hands into the secure leather straps on the gurney as great wracking gasps overcame him - without the Mana as his life source, his body was attempting to breathe. Unfortunately he no longer had that capacity. Karl’s mouth gaped as he sought to bring air into his withered lungs. His fingers reached into claws and dug into the bench as primal instincts for survival overtook him. He fought ineffectually against his bonds as his body convulsed into violent spasms.
I poured more Mana into him and noticed with a small degree of satisfaction that I appeared to have stopped all Mana activity within him. I continued with my assault until I was sure he had expired. I had to be sure; I wasn’t going to put him through this again if I could help it.
I wasn’t sure if Karl felt pain, but I could tell from his eyes staring at me that he was experiencing distress. His body was dying, and he was unable to convince it that this was what he wanted. His iron will was fighting with his instinctive urge to survive. His pleading eyes sought mine as I attempted to bring his life to an end.
The shuddering wracking his frame eventually stilled and his mouth twisted into a small smile, the first I had seen on his face. His eyes softened and closed. A small exhalation of breath was all the evidence I was going to get that I had succeeded. I gripped the sides of the gurney as weariness overtook me. It had almost cost me all my powers. It would be sometime before I would be strong enough to teleport out of here. I leaned back to survey the corpse on the table. A dull aching began to take hold in the back of my head. I knew this signified I had used too much power too quickly. I hadn’t felt that in a long time.
I had once torn a building into pieces and thrown it at an enemy without feeling anywhere near the same level of exhaustion. I could tell that I was weakened almost immediately as the frame of Mana keeping me standing upright began to give out.
It almost wasn’t enough, but I had done it. Karl was dead.
No, I hadn’t done it. My breath caught in my throat as I noticed it. It began so simply, a small spark of Mana in Karl’s core. It burned like a sun in my vision, painful to look at.
The spark was inevitably joined by others as the pattern of Mana flowed across his body. I could see it burning across his cold flesh as it consumed and regenerated the damage I had just wrought.
I had failed.
* * * * * *
It took Karl six hours to return to his twisted life. When consciousness returned to him, he turned to me questioningly. He didn’t say any words, but it was obvious what he was asking.
“I failed,” I replied briefly. “I can’t do it.”
Karl took this with measured grace. He simply nodded and got up from the table.
“You were dead for about six hours,” I commented quickly.
“Didn’t seem like it,” he murmured softly.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“Pain,” he whispered tersely. “I hadn’t felt it in so long. It was excruciating. It seemed to last forever, and when I thought I could endure no more, then came the darkness.”
“No pearly gates? No white light?” I prompted, partially curious. “No Jesus welcoming you into heaven?”
“I am Jewish,” Karl reminded me briskly.
Of course he was Jewish. Religion hadn’t exactly been my strong suit, and while I didn’t know enough about the Jewish religion to know who was supposed to greet them into heaven, I knew it wasn’t going to be Jesus.
“I felt nothing, after the darkness. I simply woke up and found you staring at me,” Karl continued. “I wonder what possible sin I could have committed to have been denied salvation.”
“We will find a way,” I promised softly. I was very aware that I had already made such a promise and had been unable to fulfil it. This promise could prove to be no different.
“I have no wish to go through that again, unless you are certain …” Karl trailed off.
“I know, I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“You should go rest. You seem depleted.”
I often forgot that Karl could see Mana. He would have known how much energy I had just expended in this effort. That Karl thought I still looked depleted six hours after the Mana expenditure was a curious note of just how much Mana I had used. It would be some time before I would be able to teleport back to my command in the States.
The more troubling revelation was, though, if I had expended this much energy trying to disrupt the Mana in a dead man, how much Mana would I need to expend to disrupt a similar pattern in Victor? Even once I recovered my strength from this experiment, it would be unlikely that I would be able to summon enough power to overcome Victor. No, while I was using Mana to keep myself mobile, I would continually be underpowered. Which led me back to my original problem: how had Victor achieved complete cellular regeneration? Once I had learned that, I could then unlock the rest of my power and maybe achieve the necessary output to overcome my former master.
Maybe.
That was the gamble though, wasn’t it? My entire efforts up to until now had been a risk. I could only hope that it would pay off. I ran my hand across my face as I made my way back into my former master’s offices. If I had the strength, I would have scoured the local villages for a bottle of port or spirits to consume while I waited for my strength to return. It would have been nice to dull my thoughts with alcohol. But tonight that was a luxury I couldn’t afford. In my current condition, the furthest I would be able to scry would only be a few kilometres, and I knew the closest towns from this location were most likely outside my range. It would probably be for nothing though; the war had all but decimated most of the villages and towns in central Europe.
It seemed wasteful to use my slowly regained energy for such a pitiful use too, no matter how much relief it would bring me. I glanced around the room that had been Victor’s office and pulled up a chair. My gaze quickly passed over the small cot set up in an adjoining room, but it didn’t linger. No, sleep would bring the dreams, and I was too tired to deal with them right now. I was too tired to sleep. It seemed this had been the status quo for some time now. My sleeping patterns were well and truly garbled. At least while I was awake I could control my consciousness and keep focused on the current task.
I reached for the latest of Victor’s spell books and continued reading where I had left off. Normally I would have used my powers to provide the light for my reading, but tonight I didn’t want to waste my strength. Reading spell books by candlelight seemed suitably proper, particularly given the subject matter was on Necromancy. Victor’s scrawl in ink across the page reflected in the candle light and shined with an eldritch light. When I had first begun my forays into Mana studies, I had done so via an old floppy disk drive. It hadn’t seemed right; the harsh glare of a computer screen made the whole thing seem artificial and fake. No, this was the way that Mana should be studied.
Once again the urge to retrieve a bottle of something rose within me, but I again dismissed the idea as an extravagance. There would be alcohol waiting for me once I returned to my command. There was something about soldiers and alcohol – there was never one without the other, but for now I should focus on my reading lest I fall asleep.
The dull headache that always came after extreme Mana use slowly receded in the back of my mind as I continued my studies. I gently massaged the bridge of my nose as I focused on the page before me. Victor had once told me that true power didn’t come from raw strength, but from greater understanding. I hadn’t believed him at the time, but I had been young and strong. I hadn’t discovered the limits of my strength yet. He had been right, but it was only now that I was broken and weak that I had come to understand this fundamental truth. Power is not about sheer strength, it’s about applying pressure to a point. The more pressure you can apply won’t necessarily work, but find the right place to apply the pressure and your barrier will break every time.
And so I sought the necessary pressure point in my studies to break through my chains and achieve my goals. I had been lazy in my power before; now I had to be disciplined if I hoped to achieve my goals. Before I could overcome my foes with sheer strength, now I had to outsmart them. While I was more powerful than most mages I had encountered, this was because of one simple fact: I had been trained by Victor Whittlesea and they had not. I had access to his spell books and therefore access to knowledge that they either didn’t know about or weren’t powerful enough to command. I maintained my advantage, but every day I encountered mages who could match my power and sheer strength. It was only a matter of time until I fell to one. I needed to restore myself back to my full strength. I would need every particle of Mana I could summon when I finally confronted my old master again.
I had heard it said that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. This is a lie. My last encounter with my former master had left me a broken shell. I would need to be prepared for my next encounter to ensure it would not be he who walked away. I continued reading until I felt sufficiently renewed to be able to return to my command. I couldn’t say how long I spent in the dark using only candle light to measure my time. I went through at least a dozen candles before I felt strong enough to cross the Atlantic. I didn’t bother saying goodbye when I left. Randall wouldn’t understand and Karl wouldn’t care.
* * * * * *
I teleported directly back to my quarters when I returned. My soldiers wouldn’t be surprised by my absence and subsequent return. They were used to it. I’d often disappear for days on end and then return with new orders. This would appear to be no different.
I gently rubbed the bridge of my nose as I gazed at myself within my bathroom mirror. I was looking old. I felt old. The only problem was, I wasn’t. I was in my late 20s. A set of fresh clothes and a shower changed my outlook. My clothes had begun to develop a lived-in quality that I’d come to associate with lack of commodities. As secure as Victor’s hidden research station had been, it certainly was lacking in some of the fundamental facilities. I hadn’t intended on staying there as long as I had and been caught out.
It was staggering now that I thought about it. The amount of Mana I had used
attempting to end Karl could have torn this bunker down around my ears and send earthquakes rampaging out for kilometres in each direction. All that sheer energy and still my goal was unfulfilled.
Victor had once told me that there was more to power than just raw strength. He was right. The same amount of energy would allow me to rend Karl down to an elemental level. Tear him into pieces until only a bloody mess remained, if he still had any blood in him. This act would avail me nothing. He would return in time. The Mana would bind his broken flesh and make him whole anew. All this power and I was unable to figure out how to finish a frail old man who had suffered for far too long. Although he had my sympathies, my true goal was defeating Victor. Unless I could nullify this magic, eventually Victor was going to kill me. While this sorcery was renewing him, he was unstoppable.
I was unable to kill Karl, and Karl had been the subject of a failed experiment. Victor had presumably perfected the technique before performing the sorcery on himself. How much more difficult would it be to end Victor?
I needed to find a way to end this sorcery before Victor finished me off. Marcus had claimed that a disrupt spell was sufficient, but I knew this to be false. Marcus hadn’t had time to study Necromancy to the same degree I had. Nothing so simple as a disrupt thread would resolve this sorcery. I was getting closer, I could almost taste it, but something was missing. I was forgetting something - something important.
I made my way from my quarters to the command centre. It was almost empty when I arrived. I had forgotten to take into account the time. It was one of those annoying things about being able to teleport across time zones. You tended to lose track of daylight. I had hoped that Marcellus would be present, but he was obviously off duty.
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