by Ryan Attard
Both Gil and the demon frowned at me. What the hell was he on about? I like to think I’m powerful but, truth be told, ever since I woke up from that hospital bed I couldn’t feel any magic. It was like someone had switched off the tap.
I just chalked it up to a side effect of coming back to life after being clinically dead for a few minutes.
“What do you mean, ‘powerful and desperate’?”
“It’s very simple. The fact that you managed to heal your dead body implies that you have unleashed your greater potential,” said Mephisto. “But I firmly believe, Master Erik, that you have lost your ability to use magic.”
19
“I’m gonna need a better explanation than that,” I said.
“And you shall get it,” replied Mephisto. “Follow me outside for a moment, please.”
He led us to a clearing adjacent to our front door, hidden from view, but not so that you couldn’t fully see the house from where we were.
“Cast any spell you wish, Master Erik.” Mephisto leaned against a tree, a smile plastered on his face.
I looked around, taking in my surroundings. If this creepy bastard wanted me to shoot something, I might as well blast him. Probably not the best of ideas. Instead, I settled for a small bush, perhaps ten meters away from me. I dug inside my pockets and produced a matchbox. I struck a match against the side and watched as the small flame began consuming the small length of wood.
Mephisto had allowed me to pick out anything I wanted on the way out of the mansion. I snatched the matchbox as quickly as I could. Fire magic was flashy and generally fun to play with. I mean, come on, who doesn’t like shooting fireballs? Give me some fantasy armor and they could make a video game character out of me.
Matchsticks were great tools for magic. Wood is a natural material and the amount of energy you can pass through it is almost unlimited.
Fire is one of the purest elements in any form you can get it. Fire is fire – it hasn’t changed since cavemen first rubbed two flints together.
I focused on the flame and channeled magic through the lit match. Pain flared through me, jarring every bone in my body. I dropped the match — my entire body shook and convulsed with the sheer surprise of agony.
“Erik! Are you alright?” Gil had her arms around me. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked Mephisto. The demon remained against the tree, his attitude relaxed and bored.
“It’s just as I suspected. Erik’s magic has become internal rather than external. His magic is locked inside him, constantly looping inside his body. That was why he could practically resurrect himself from death. That amount of healing required his entire magical potential and it is now solely focused on Erik and his body.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I spat through clenched teeth. My lungs burned, and I bent over into a fit of coughs. I tried breathing slowly and riding out the pain, but it had no effect. It was like someone had crushed my very core, shaking me from the inside. Like I was a rag doll being ripped apart and sewn back together.
“It means that you cannot use magic outside the confines of your body,” replied Mephisto as he eyed me. He focused on me with predatory gaze, as if he were a scientist and I was Frankenstein’s creation. He looked at me as if he were waiting for me to spontaneously combust. “In terms that you can understand, your entire body has become something akin to a channel.”
“Didn’t you say that was impossible?” asked Gil.
“I said it was harmful to use magic through a human body. This,” Mephisto pointed at me, “is a mutation. The question is not what, but rather, how. And why.”
He bent over and grabbed my shoulder in a vice-like grip. His fingers dug inside my shoulder and lifted me up. “Why did this happen? What are you hiding inside of you, young Master?”
I closed my eyes, trying to block out the new version of hurt he was inflicting on me. A new arc of pain stabbed me and a cold wave washed over me. I looked at my shoulder and realized I was bleeding. Mephisto had literally dug his fingers into my shoulder.
“What are you doing?” Gil’s voice had a tremor of horror and disgust. She latched onto Mephisto’s arm, still holding me on my feet, and wrestled against it. “You’re hurting him. Let him go.”
The demon complied and released his grip.
“What is wrong with you?” screamed Gil.
“Look.” Mephisto calmly pointed at my shoulder.
I looked at the wound he inflicted on me, expecting to see four holes in my shoulder. Instead, all I saw was my injury rapidly shrinking as flesh filled the wounds, once again sealing my shoulder. In a matter of seconds, it was as good as new, without so much as a scratch.
“As I said, Erik’s magic is solely focused on his body now,” came Mephisto’s voice. He bent over and picked up a branch. He handed it to me and pointed at a boulder. “Break that.”
I waved the branch pathetically. “With this? I doubt I could kill a fly with this.”
“Channel magic through it, then.”
I scowled at him and tried to concentrate. Already, the convulsions began, and in between muscle spasms I dropped the branch. My arms were on fire, as if someone pumped acid inside my veins.
“It hurts,” I rasped once I could speak. Mephisto remained where he stood.
“Imagine that the branch is a part of your body. Convince your mind that you and the branch are one and the same.”
I picked up the branch again and tried, once more, to channel magic. Again, I doubled over in pain, like a train had just passed through me. I saw Mephisto crack a smile. That bastard must be getting off on watching me suffer. Gil started running over towards me but I held my hand out, stopping her. I grabbed the branch again and closed my eyes.
This was basic training. Think of the weapon as part of the body and divide the internal energy equally. I felt pressure on every bone on my body, but beneath all that, the familiar sensation of tingling ran through my hand. I felt the branch heat up, and as I squeezed my hand against it. It was as if it had been connected to my hand my entire life. I raised it high up in the air and brought it crashing down on the rock.
Usually it was no big deal to crack a rock or two. It was just a matter of altering the density of the weapon to be higher than that of the rock. Fairly easy magic.
But now, the best I could do was make a crack that snaked from the top of the rock to a third of the way down. The branch shattered into a million pieces and I winced as my curled index finger scraped against the rock. A slight tingle a bit later, and the injury disappeared as quickly as it came.
“Damn rock,” I yelled in frustration.
Without thinking, I took one step and kicked the rock with all my might. Two things happened.
One — I re-enacted the most iconic Warner Brothers gag where a cartoon character clutches his foot and hops on the other while howling and cursing in pain.
Two — the rock broke into sizable chunks. Once I saw the broken stone, I stopped my cartoonish antics and looked at Mephisto.
“Is that a good or bad thing?”
“That is an interesting thing, Master Erik. This means that you must retrain yourself to better understand your power. This is, indeed, fascinating.” He began pacing around. “Very interesting, indeed.”
“I must ask you to head back home now, children,” he said abruptly. “I have something to report to your father.” And just like that, we began walking back to the mansion as Mephisto disappeared. We heard the sound of canine nails clicking against the granite as the demon dog ran back to its master.
20
To this day, I still have no idea what Mephisto reported to my father, and to be honest, I’m not sure I really want to know. What I do know is that after that day, Dad began showing up during our training session, observing from afar like a hawk.
Months had gone by since I lost my magic.
Well, I hadn’t technically lost it, but I failed to see the difference. I couldn’t cast a single spell. Sure, after a few
weeks I realized that pretty much nothing could harm me. Mephisto had made sure of that.
I was like a pincushion to that guy, and he soon began getting creative with his torture routines. It all helped me realize that pain was all in the mind, and that the moment you accept it and stop trying to fight it off, it’ll stop. Most of the stress is just from the anticipation. I’ve tasted so many variations of pain that I think the demon took it upon himself to create new heights of pain just for the sake of variation.
As I said before, complete psycho.
I slowly adjusted to my power. Through trial and error, and a crap-load of pain created from my trying to use magic when I couldn’t, I discovered that I could reinforce my body with supernatural durability and strength. If I concentrated enough, my senses would heighten to the point of reading a newspaper from a good distance. But that always caused me a headache and a little nausea.
I also discovered I could channel magic through weapons, just like I did before. This time, however, I had no control over the power output. Generally, the weapon became much more powerful than before but crumbled into dust after a couple of uses. Swords rusted, staffs shattered, and guns melted from the inside. Heck, I even shattered a crossbow once. That was just disturbing.
Mephisto began training us in what he called ‘The Zoo’.
Letting us into the family secret, he would drag us down to a sub-basement every other day. The Zoo was a large space, perhaps the size of a large aircraft hangar. There were walls lined with squares, like high school lockers. Each one was painted with a symbol in a circle, each different than the other. At the far end, the one farthest from the entrance, away from the clutter of canisters and hunting gear, was a bench like those you would find in a science lab. You know the type – bulky and thick, set with an array of vats and test tubes full of chemicals. Trays were usually stuffed with gore since the scientists working under my father had the same ethical code as butchers.
It was finally crystal-clear what we were raised to do. Warlocks — Oath-Breakers. We learned that the magical community had rules, usually set by heads of families and extraordinary wizards. We learned that, in today’s age, there existed a council of ten wizards, each as powerful as their collective clans put together. Their job was to observe the natural course of events and keep the really bad eggs at bay. They were responsible for categorizing magic users as we know them today: practitioners or adepts, wizards and specialists. They took the latter category a step further and created subdivisions for magic specialization, which is why you hear words like pyromancer, necromancer, enchanter and entropist.
The Ashendales have always been warlocks. A warlock’s specialty is to delve into the darkest of arts, study the creatures and worlds of other dimensions, and explore other planes of existence, for the sake of the search for knowledge that is quite literally out of this world.
This is what my family did – jump into other worlds, go all Crocodile Hunter on them, and then see what knowledge we could extract from that. Less advanced warlocks usually stuck to this plane, seeing as how dangerous planes-walking could be. There were plenty of monsters around here if I went by the sheer number of circles and symbols painted on the walls of the Zoo.
Our demonic teacher had decided to show us the ropes in properly capturing and binding monsters and magic in general. It was during one of these sessions that the proverbial plot thickened.
We had just entered the Zoo when we saw them. Dad was speaking to a tall, lanky man in a pinstriped suit. Dad’s mannerisms suggested urgency and frustration.
“The time is approaching, Crowley. We need to get the Syphoning Ritual done before they could–” we heard Dad say when we got close enough.
He stopped abruptly and straightened up. “Erik, Gil,” he said, finally acknowledging us. “Mephisto.”
The demon bowed deeply. “We are progressing with the instruction as per your request, Master Ashendale,” he curtly replied.
“Well, see to it that they are an asset to me,” replied our father.
I turned and looked at the stranger. Aside from the dark pinstriped suit, he held a fedora. White satin encased his hands. His hair was slicked back, exposing a pasty, white face with sunken eyes and wide lips. The man looked like the Joker from the Batman comics. He licked his lips and stared back at me with wide, wild eyes. His gray orbs held a predatory gaze, and I recoiled as I saw them scan my entire body, from head to toe. He smiled and his lips stretched impossibly wide. My stomach churned a little as the tip of his tongue rubbed against his teeth. I’ve never met a child molester before, but this dude seemed to fit the profile perfectly. Still locking eyes with him, I took a step backwards and shouldered my father by accident.
His eyes alternated between me and the stranger. “This is my associate.”
The stranger extended one gloved hand toward me. From between his glove and his sleeve, I saw a patch of dark, blue-gray skin. Revolted, I quickly averted my gaze back to his eyes. Not that this helped at all.
“Alastair Crowley,” he said. His voice had a rasp to it, like nails scraping a blackboard. It reminded me a lot of a bug infestation, that incessant shrill of antennae, gossamer wings and clicking of pincers.
I smiled and shook his hand. I knew it was rude to remain silent, but was afraid that if I opened my mouth I would throw up on his expensive Italian shoes. Crowley latched onto my arms and his neck craned slowly, as if to get a closer look. I struggled a little, but it felt as if the energy was being sapped out of me. I got weaker and weaker by the second, and all I could do was stand there as Crowley edged closer and closer.
Just when I thought our noses were going to touch, the man pulled back and abruptly let me go. I jerked backwards, glaring at Crowley with all my might. His smile pulled back into a tight set of thin lips, and he looked at my father.
“Yes, I understand now. I shall begin the final stages. Do you have all the necessary components?” asked Crowley in a serious tone.
“Yes. All is ready,” replied my father.
“Good. We shall speak again soon,” said Crowley. He put on his fedora and walked past us. My father shuffled after him. Just when they were within earshot, I saw Crowley turn sideways and glance at me with one creepy eye.
“They have their mother’s eyes.”
It was like someone had thrown a bucket of ice down my spine. When I heard Crowley mutter those words I instinctively took a step forward.
My mother? How the hell did he know my mother? She died back when our dear father was still a humble wizard with grandiose plans and a pregnant wife. Soon, after we were born, our father took over and he changed.
What were they planning? Final stage of what? And how did my mother get into all of this? The way Crowley spoke of her, it was as if he knew her personally and intimately. And when such a creepy person knows someone personally, that’s code for ‘did something evil to them’.
A thought permeated my mind. What if, what if, what if…
What if he had something to do with her death? What if he could drain life-force like some sort of vampire? What if he had weakened her the same way he tried with me, and then let the strain of childbirth do the rest?
My expression twisted into a feral snarl and I took a stride toward the pinstriped bastard. But I stopped at one step. A vice grip dug into my shoulder and I was rooted to the spot. I felt thin hands grab my free arm, and saw Gil’s white-blond hair in my peripheral vision.
I turned to Mephisto, who held my shoulder. “What is he?” I snarled. I couldn’t even feel the pain. Rage and hate consumed me, permeating every corner of my mind. I wanted nothing more than to rip that guy’s head off and bathe in his blood.
“Whatever he is, you are not ready to face him yet,” said Mephisto. He leaned in close. “Do not ruin everything now. Please, Master Erik,” he whispered.
I looked at him and saw his golden orbs gazing back at me. Did he just beg me not to throw my life away?
Mephisto straightened up and let
go of me, although he did move in front of me, covering my field of vision with his body.
“I suggest you vent your feelings on today’s practice dummy,” he said with his usual glee. Gil scowled at him. “I’m sorry. I mean ‘guest’,” he quickly corrected. He didn’t fool Gil — not that anyone could have been fooled by his insincere tones.
He escorted us to a large round platform that he dubbed ‘the Arena’. A circular elevator led to a separate room in the floor above. It was a room where ‘live’ experiments and simulations were conducted. In other words, a giant titanium and lead room reinforced with a century’s worth of enchantments, where monsters were allowed to rampage freely before the staff subdued them. It was designed to contain anything from ghouls to demons. Nothing was getting out of this room.
Gil and I walked over to a small workbench where weapons and magical components were scattered, and Mephisto disappeared behind a booth outside of the Arena.
“Today’s monster du jour,” boomed Mephisto’s voice over the PA system, “is a Baku. Enjoy.”
I’m not sure if the demon knew whether the PA system was still active or not when he let out a sadistic laugh – although, knowing Mephisto, it was probably on purpose.
Gil nodded as she palmed a medium-sized crystal. I gave the table a quick glance. Magical components were less than useless to me. Instead, I went to the weapons rack and wrapped my fingers around a melée weapon from the Middle Ages. It was a morning star, a ball of steel with three-inch spikes jutting out of it like quills covering a hedgehog - the mace’s deadlier cousin. Usually I prefer something with a sharp edge, but not today. After hearing Crowley’s comment about my mother, all I wanted to do was bash something in.
Today was a day of mauling and smashing.
“Bring it on,” I said as my magic seeped into the heavy weapon, enabling me to swing it with frightening ease. “I’m in the mood to kill something right about now.”
