01 - The Price of Talent

by Peter Whittlesey

  The more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that there was no good reason to resist their training. Just because I had seen the dark side of the power they offered did not mean I should simply ignore what was being offered to me. Also, my previous reasoning still sounded correct to me. The only way I would get out of this cell without supervision, the only way I would be given a good enough chance to escape, was to go along with them for now. Act like I was completely seduced by their promises of power, and bide my time. With my plans reaffirmed, I settled into a corner and had a long sleep.

  You would be surprised how much using magic takes out of you. Especially when you are first learning to use your powers. Mostly, we naturally tap our own latent energies to fuel our spells when we are novices. It is not the same kind of tired as working all day in a field, where your muscles are sore and your body doesn’t want to move. It is the tired of pure mental exertion, like reading a complicated book late into the night. Headaches are common. Still, it does help you sleep well, even on a concrete floor.

  I’m not sure when I woke the next day; it was hard to tell the passing of time in my dark cell beneath the castle. Still, it felt like I had slept a long time without moving. I was not sure what woke me until I heard footsteps above my head. I composed myself and waited for the ceiling to open up and the steps to descend. I did not have to wait long. Once everything was in place, Meredith descended again, bringing me my breakfast.

  “Well, good morning sunshine,” she said. “How’s your head feeling?”

  “Not bad, honestly,” I replied. “Though it would be doing a lot better if I got to sleep in a bed with something other than a stone wall as a pillow.”

  “Well, just keep cooperating with Claudius and they may well decide to upgrade you living arrangements,” she said. Then, as she leaned close to me to put my food down, she whispered: “I’m not joking with you. You’re doing well, keep being cooperative and they likely will give you a better place to live.”

  “Thanks,” I whispered back.

  Then she stood up, turned and left me to my meal, mentioning something about other duties to attend to. With nothing better to do, I tucked in to my meal. It was nothing special, just some oatmeal, bread and a bit of cheese, but it was enough to keep me going and that was all that mattered at the moment. Just as I finished, Claudius came down the stairs. This was not a surprise to me as they had not pulled the stairs or closed the ceiling. Likely this was also a test, to see if I would try and make a run for it, but I did not take that bait.

  “How are you this morning, Tyr?” Asked Claudius. “Meredith said you were doing well. No headaches from your exertions yesterday?”

  “No sir, nothing like that,” I said. “Maybe a little stiff from sleeping on the stone floor.”

  “Yes, I imagine you would be,” said Claudius. “Today we will continue your testing. If you wouldn’t mind following me, we will be conducting our tests in the room we were in yesterday.”

  With nothing else to do, I followed him up the stairs. We passed many guards, walked up a myriad of other stairs and down hallways till I again found myself inside the room with the chair with leather straps. And again, I found myself seated in the chair, strapped down. Once I was secure, Claudius turned to me.

  “Tyr, today we are going to conduct a test of your magical perceptions,” he said. “We are going to test this first by seeing if you can tell what power sources are available for you to channel. Then we are going to see if you can tell what kind of power I’m channeling. Do well at these and we will see if you have any form of telepathy.”

  “Wait, is it possible to read minds?” I asked.

  “Yes actually,” he said. “It can be accomplished with a variety of techniques, but the most basic comes when you understand that all thought, all mental activity, requires your brain to send signals to your body. These signals take the form of electrical impulses. These, in people who are sensitive to them, can give people an impression of what others nearby are thinking.”

  “That doesn’t sound like reading minds…” I said.

  “Well, it is and it isn’t,” he replied. “As I said, you can get an impression about what people are thinking, whether they are hostile or not, whether they are friendly, even get a basic idea of what the person is paying attention to. Even the most perceptive of people can’t fully read your mind or delve through your memories though. Mostly it’s just a vague feeling, though it becomes clearer as you get to know the person and can recognize their thought patterns.”

  “Ok… But how do you test that?” I asked.

  “With this,” Claudius responded by holding up a flip book. “I will be looking at a series of pictures and thinking about the image on it, and you will try and read the energy signals from my mind and tell me what I am seeing. But not right now. For now, we are going to test your perceptions of nearby energy sources. But for this we will need some help. Meredith, you may enter now…”

  Meredith entered the room and nodded to Claudius. She was carrying a parcel and a fire brazier.

  “Tyr, Meredith is going to be putting a variety of things into the brazier behind you. This is so they remain out of sight,” he said. “Each of these things will represent a different power source for you to potentially tap. All I want from you is to tell me, without looking, what that power source is.”

  “Sounds simple enough,” I said. “But why am I strapped down for this?”

  “Two reasons,” he responded. “First being it helps to prevent you from cheating, the other is because every time you answer incorrectly, I’m going to administer a shock to you.”

  “A what?!” I said, getting a little nervous.

  “Don’t worry, I’m sure you remember this,” Claudius said as he pulled the electric wand from yesterday out of his pocket. “The shocks act as a form of incentive for you to guess correctly. Now, these shocks are going to hurt, but I promise, it won’t be enough to do any lasting damage to you.”

  “Are you sure these shocks are necessary?” I asked, still a little nervous.

  “Yes, I’m sure. The reason being that true perception is hard,” he said looking a little sad. “We found that when people failed, they would just start guessing and stop trying to perceive things. Over the years we realized that we got a much better impression of a person’s perceptions when you gave them an incentive to try. The pain of the shocks acts as such an incentive.”

  “I see…” I said, not pleased with the idea.

  Meredith then walked behind me with her things and set up. I could hear her putting down the brazier and making rustling noises while searching within her parcel. Meanwhile, Claudius sat down in the chair in front of me, same one that he used yesterday after I blew up the old chair. He then rolled up the sleeve on one of my arms and held the want over it. Once Meredith stopped rummaging Claudius began asking me questions.

  “Now Tyr, I want you to tell me what power source is directly behind you,” he said. “Take your time. Since this is your first time trying this, you will not be timed. I just want you to concentrate on the power behind you and tell me what it is. It may help you to close your eyes at first.”

  So, following his instructions, I closed my eyes and tried to perceive the room. After a minute I could feel the mild warmth of the room, Claudius’s body heat, and even the faint feeling of Meredith’s. There was something else though, something I was less familiar with. At first I couldn’t tell. The energy felt prickly almost, even a bit erratic. It wasn’t like a flickering fire, there wasn’t enough heat coming from it…

  “Is it lightning?” I asked.

  “Very good Tyr!” Said Claudius. “After only learning how to channel it yesterday too. I’m impressed. Now, let’s try another one.”

  There was the sound of rummaging and things shifting behind me. When the test was ready, I knew almost immediately. I felt the light flickering warmth of a small fire behind me between myself and Meredith.

  “It’s a small fire i
sn’t it?” I asked.

  “Very good again,” said Claudius. “You seem to have an affinity with fire… Well, let’s try something a bit out of your experience…”

  This time, after Meredith had set up the next test, when I shut my eyes I felt nothing. Nothing at all. I started to get nervous, I could feel myself start to sweat as the seconds became minutes. It was then that I heard something. Like a light slap, regularly happening. When I concentrated on it, I got the odd impression of movement…

  “Is Meredith dropping something from one hand into the other behind me?” I asked.

  “Excellent Tyr!” Said Claudius. “It’s called kinetic energy. An object in motion has its own force or energy that can be tapped if you are perceptive enough.”

  “Are you saying I can steal an objects movement and use it to power spells?” I asked.

  “Don’t sound so surprised, we already went over telekinesis,” he said. “If you can move something with your mind, you can also stop it from moving. You can do that with an opposing force, or you can steal the object’s momentum and use that energy for other purposes.”

  “Interesting…” I said, thinking of all the possibilities.

  Over the next hour, Claudius proceeded to go through more of these tests. Trying different combinations and patterns to make sure I has actually sensing the energy. I was almost thrown for a loop when he had Meredith do the dropping trick but with ice and then immediately with an extremely hot stone she had to wear gloves to handle. But in the end, I was able to sense all of them. I was fairly impressed, I had no idea I was so perceptive. Just as I was getting confident though, Claudius decided to move on.

  “Well, I see you have the ability to perceive power sources, now let’s see how you do with reading minds,” he said. “Meredith, you are no longer needed here. Thank you for your time.”

  And with some mild commotion behind me, Meredith packed up her supplies and went to leave. When she got to the door, she turned to me, gave me a wink and a smile, and then left. This left me alone with Claudius, who was just now pulling out the flip book he showed me earlier.

  “Now Tyr,” he said. “As I said earlier, I’m going to be staring at a picture and concentrating on it intently. I want you to try and read my mind and tell me what the picture is.”

  Then he turned over the cover, and started looking at the first picture. Not knowing what else to do, I stared at Claudius, and tried to read his mind. It was then I realized I had no idea how to do this. He had said something about mental energy, so I tried to see if I could feel the energy in his mind. After a time, I even closed my eyes. All I got was his body heat, and possibly the feeling of extra heat coming from his head. But I had no idea what he was looking at.

  “I… I have no idea,” I said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that Tyr,” said Claudius.

  As soon as he said that I felt a painful shock travel up my arm. It took me a minute to stop twitching.

  “Ouch, god damn… You weren’t kidding about that shock!” I said, not wanting to say what really popped into my head.

  “In order for you to properly be incentivized, it has to hurt,” he said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t try hard. The next shock will be worse. In fact, for each wrong answer, the shocks will get worse. And, Tyr, remember, this castle is a house of god, try not to profane him here…”

  “I’m sorry, it just really hurt…” I said. “Maybe it would help if you could tell me what I should be doing. All I felt was your body heat.”

  “You need to concentrate on my mind,” he responded. “You need to see how the energy flows through it, read it, and tell me what it says. That’s the best I can tell you as, I must admit, mental magic is not my specialty. But it doesn’t have to be for me to test your abilities. We just want to see if you have the aptitude.”

  “I think this is going to be a long afternoon then…” I said. “Because I got nothing on that last attempt.”

  “Well, not everyone gets it on their first try,” he said. “Those that do, often get a few shocks before the figure it out.”

  “Those that don’t?” I asked with some trepidation.

  “Well, they have long afternoons I’m afraid,” he said.

  And we were right. It was a long afternoon. I have no natural talent for mental magic, reading minds, or whatever you want to call it. I could sense the energy, knew it was there, could even tap it a little, but I could not use it to read his mind. I got shocked a lot. It started as merely painful. By the end of a half hour it was almost debilitating. On the last one I think I passed out for a short time. I tried not to yell. I tried not to blaspheme. I was only partially successful on that point.

  “Well, I think we can conclude from this that telepathy is not where your talents lie,” said Claudius.

  “Fuck…” I said through chattering teeth, twitchy eyes and spasming limbs. “You’re not kidding…”

  “We will stop testing you for now,” he said. “I think you need some time to recover, and probably a little lunch. I will have lunch and a warm bath drawn for you in a private room so that you can regain your composure. We will talk again tomorrow.”

  And with that he undid my arm straps and left the room. I could not have run out and tried to escape then, even if I wanted to. I was still twitching quite a bit from the last round of shocks. After a few minutes I got control of my limbs. This was good because a guard came in to see me.

  “Come with me,” he said. “I’ll show you to your private room.”

  Not having the energy to do much else, I staggered out of the chair and followed him. The route we took seemed familiar, but I was in no condition to recognize it. I was mostly concentrating on making my legs and arms work properly. It was only after I entered the room that I recognized it. It was the room I had taken a bath in a few days ago, where Meredith had brought me the monk’s robes I was wearing now.

  Just like last time, I found that there was a tub full of warm water for me to bathe in behind a screen towards the back of the room. I headed back there, stripped down, and got into the bath. The warm water felt good on my strained and twitchy muscles. When I heard the door open I didn’t even turn my head.

  “So, not so good with mental telepathy I hear,” said a voice I recognized right away.

  “Hello Meredith,” I said. “I’m afraid Claudius decided to fry me with that wand of his.”

  “So I hear,” she said. “You will be happy to know that I bring both food and a change of clothes.”

  “Right about now, the effort to get out of this bath and enjoy either of those things is too much for me,” I said.

  “That’s ok,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to feel all embarrassed being naked around me anyway. If I remember, last time I was here you were trying to hide yourself behind the soap bubbles.”

  “Last time I had not been shocked repeatedly by lightning,” I replied. “Right now my modesty plays second fiddle to my exhaustion.”

  “Are you still twitching from the shocks?” She asked.

  “More or less,” I replied. “At first I was so twitchy I couldn’t stand. But now, aside from a few tremors, I seem to be ok.”

  “Well, that’s a good sign,” she said.

  “And yet, somehow I don’t feel all that lucky,” I replied.

  “You should feel lucky,” she said. “Getting shocked like that can have serious neurological effects. Those spasms could have been permanent.”

  “Wait what!?” I exclaimed. “Claudius said I wouldn’t suffer any lasting harm.”

  “I’m just teasing! Claudius is very good at testing people. Though, I don’t think he realized you would be quite so inept with telepathy,” she replied. “You’re such a natural with elemental magic.”

  “We can’t all be perfect…” I said.

  “Yeah, it also explains why Claudius was able to knock you out so quickly when you were apprehended,” she said. “Your inability to shield your mind from even a basic knock out spell wasn’t just i
gnorance apparently.”

  “You mean what Claudius used to disable me was not advanced magic?” I asked. “And how do you know about all this?”

  “I guess you have no reason to know since you’ve been locked away in that cell, but you’re kind of the talk of the castle,” she said. “It’s rare for the Inquisitors to fail as spectacularly as they did trying to apprehend you. Even rarer that someone who killed so many of them is kept alive. And that you have been kept in a cold room in solitary confinement for so long too… well, it all marks you as exceptional. That makes people talk.”

  “Not so exceptional that I was able to do even the most simple of telepathic readings,” I said.

  “We all have limitations, Tyr,” she said. “I’m best at healing people and good at mental magic. But, I can barely summon enough external power to test people like I did you. My skills are more… subtle I guess. Mental magic doesn’t take much energy, but it does take a deft hand. You are… I guess… not that subtle.”