“What about magic?” Alex asked. “I don’t want to talk about it, I want you to show me some magic... you said that he gave you some magical gifts, powers or whatever. Show me.”
“Why not,” I said. “Just let me think a moment, and I’ll see what I can come up with.” I smiled now, too. It was a good idea.
There were things I could show her, small feats of magic that would make Alex smile, and I knew that her smile would cheer me up no end.
After a minute or two of thought, I took a coin from my pocket, showed it to Alex, and said, “Heads or Tails, Alex?”
“Oh come on David. You know full well what I meant; I want to see some magic. You said that one of the gifts he gave allowed you to perform feats of magic.
"I don’t want to see parlour tricks!” Alex replied, her voice sounding a little more than annoyed.
I grinned at her obvious frustration.
“Firstly, I said that he gave me some small abilities with magic. Nothing at all like you’re expecting, and in what he did give to me, I showed very little aptitude for anyway.
"Secondly, this is no parlour trick as you called it, and once you see it and understand what it does and how it works you will be impressed … impressed and somewhat confused, but impressed nonetheless. So humour me for a few moments, and then I’ll be able to explain why he gave me such powers, and the dark uses they were intended for.”
“Heads!” Alex snapped, an I’m not at all happy look on her face.
I flipped the fifty pence piece into the air and let it drop to the table. It clattered around for a second or two and then stopped tails side up. “You loose,” I said with a smirk, as I picked up the coin. “Want to change your call?” I asked before flipping the coin again.
“Heads again,” Alex answered, her not at all happy face degrading by the second.
Again the coin came to rest tails up, but before I could reach for it, Alex snatched away the coin. She turned it over and over in her hand, thoroughly examining both sides and even testing its weight against a fifty pence from her purse.
“Use your own coin if you like,” I said to her. “If you want, you can even flip it yourself. The results will always be the same… you will always guess wrong until I choose otherwise.”
“So it’s not a trick?” she asked, bewilderment beginning to replace the annoyance on her face.
“Nope. It’s what we primitives would call magic,” I answered sarcastically. “Go on, flip the coin a few more times. It doesn’t matter when you call, as long as it’s before the coin comes to rest. You will always be wrong in your guess.”
Three more times Alex tossed her fifty pence piece; she was obviously not in a trusting mood. And three times her call was wrong.
“How on Earth—” she started, but I cut her off.
“You’ll be wrong even if you don’t call it out loud,” I said. “Flip the coin, and decide in your mind what you want it to be… Go on, have a go.“
So she did. Five times she flipped the coin, and each time, as it came to rest, the look she gave me was even more exasperated than the last.
“Flip it this time and you’ll be right,” I said before she could launch into the questions that were plainly written on her face.
As it landed heads up after her call of heads, she could not contain herself any longer. “How?” she asked.
“It would be magic enough if you somehow controlled the coin and made it come up the opposite to my call, but how could you do that without knowing what my call was?” Then, as she paused, her face lit up and she laughed. “Don’t tell me. It’s mind reading isn’t it? You talked about Setia being able to see into your mind, and your master, Dar'cen, could… Bloody hell, you can read minds!”
“Nope,” I said. “Wrong on both counts. I didn’t manipulate the coin, or read your mind.”
“How then?” she blurted, as she fixed me with a look that I swore said Stop pissing me about and explain, or else.
“What he gave me was some small abilities to manipulate fate,” I answered with a grin. “What I can do is severely limited, and in truth, I’m very glad it is… the power is his magic, a dark magic. Its abilities in me are limited because only an infinitesimally small amount of him, his essence, was transferred to me when he gave his so called gifts.”
“You have a part of him inside you?” Alex asked, incredulously.
“In a way,” I answered. “I’ll tell you what I remember of when he forced his gifts upon me later, once this little parlour trick is explained and out of the way. Anyway, I am not very strong in this talent, nor very good at controlling it. Which resulted in some severe punishments until he finally decreed that my entire race was at fault, and that none were worthy of such gifts.
"As I said, the power allows me to manipulate fate. Almost by wishing it so, I can change the path that something or someone might take.
"In your case, I didn’t control the coin at all, I controlled your fate. Your luck, I suppose, is a better word in this case. I controlled the direction your luck would take.
"Firstly, I wanted you to always be wrong in your guess, and so it did not matter that I did not know what that guess would be—”
“That’s ludicrous!” Alex interrupted. “Manipulating the coin, I might accept. But now you’re saying that just by wanting me to be wrong, the coin, of its own free will, just up and obliged you… bloody ludicrous!. And there’s another thing that doesn’t ring true. From what you’ve said about Dar'cen, I can’t see him sitting down and patiently explaining all of this to you, all this theory of his magic and how it works. He’d just tell you how to use it, not how it works.”
She looked smug as hell on finishing her last sentence, an I’ve got you by the short and curlies grin now spread across her face.
“You’re right, of course. Dar'cen never explained his actions. I did all he commanded and accepted all he did to me, no questions asked let alone answered.”
I paused and let her grin widen before continuing.
“Jain explained all I am telling you now, and his explanation was based on his own knowledge of magic, and all that he had learned of Dar'cen in his studies.”
Just the mention of Jain and my mind was filled with anguish, as I yet again saw Carthia’s face as she mouthed those final words that doomed my friends.
And yet as Alex spoke, that very same face and that very same voice dispelled all of my dark thoughts with so few words.
“I’m sorry… I jumped the gun a little,” she said, a red glow beginning on her cheeks. “Please just pretend that my big mouth’s not here and just carry on.”
“You’ve heard of how some people say that we make our own luck, are in control of our own destinies and of how, if we wish hard enough for something, it will make it happen.
"You must have seen all the buzz phrases used in books that are going to make you a more confident person and allow you to take control of your life. Well according to Jain, that is actually true for some… a few people, people we might consider to always be lucky, can somehow manipulate the pattern of fate that surrounds them, so that they can eventually achieve their goal.
"It is real, Alex… you yourself must have have had something that you considered lucky happen to you, where you wanted something badly and it just happened to turn up at just the exact right time it was needed.”
I wasn’t sure if she was convinced, but I could see that she was thinking about it now, the That’s ludicrous now gone from her mind.
“The magic you just saw is based upon that same control wielded by such naturally lucky people, as we might call them. I can only cause small changes to my fate. For instance, an arrow, true to its target, will somehow miss me, and a knife blow will somehow be deflected and cause no injury.
"But that was not the purpose of his gift, its purpose was far more sinister. He gave this gift to me so that I could change the fate of others; so that I might influence the choices made by an intended victim to ensure that he unwittingly did as I wished. Such an intended victim, faced with a crossroads, would always unknowingly turn toward me, and thus ride forward to his own death. A gift to ensure that I was efficient, and could more quickly complete each task I was assigned.
”That’s awful!” Alex said, with a look of true horror on her face.
“That is just one of many uses my master expected me to make of this particular gift. But as I said, seldom could I control what he had given, and never over any great distance, and so I needed to rely upon more conventional methods of trapping my victims.”
“Let’s get back to the coin, shall we?” Alex said, still obviously upset at the turn the conversation had taken.
“What you’ve said still does not explain the coin, and how, by you simply wishing me to lose, it landed a different way.”
“It doesn’t, does it,” I said. “I can’t say that I truly understand this part of it myself. Jain said that the magic pulls on the fabric, the threads that guide the destiny of all things. He would say, that because I wished you to loose, so the thread that tied you to the coin was changed, and so the coin landed at odds to your wishes.
"I believe, that in this case, it might be something far more simple… You physically have some control over the coin and how it lands based on how you flip it, and with a great deal of practice and honing of your technique I’m sure you could begin to make the coin fall how you wanted it to much of the time. I think that in the case of one of these so called lucky people, they have an inherent ability to unconsciously do such thinks, to physically control all the small things around them, which gradually built to make larger changes to how their lives would have been.
"In the case of the coin, I believe that my magic used and enhanced your own subconscious abilities with the coin against you. Far fetched, I know, but no more so than Jain’s explanation. Either way, you saw the results. But please don’t ask anymore, because that is truly all I know.”
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But it wasn’t all, I realised, as I remembered what else Jain had said, what he had believed. “Except that this power, his gift, is the basis for Dar'cen’s own control, his compulsion. At least that’s what Jain believed. Dar'cen’s voice, his so soothing, loving voice, is only to give a semblance of willingness to his compulsion, to make it seem that his commands are followed willingly, to make those he commands content as they do his bidding. Without the voice, his victims would do as he commanded anyway – when he forced his victims to slowly take their own lives, they were never allowed to do so willingly because he took such great pleasure from the their pleas for mercy and their screams.
"But had he wished it, had he used the voice, they would have taken their own lives gladly, and with a smile on their faces because they pleased him… But again, all this is theory, not fact, just something that Jain believed.”
“This is all a little too deep for me, David. Far too esoteric; too much like the meaning of life and other questions that can never be answered.
"I just wanted to see some magic. You know, like the wizards do in good fantasy books,” Alex said, a wicked smirk on her face.
“Bloody Hell, you’re difficult to please, Alex,” I said, and after a brief moment of thought, asked, “Okay, let's try this shall we… Which hand?” and I balled my obviously empty hands into fists and held them out to her.
She looked at me, distrust written plain on her face. “What’s this?” she asked.
“Magic,” I answered flippantly. “You wanted magic, so go on, pick a hand.”
She reached out hesitantly and touched my tightly clenched right fist. “Hope this is not another bloody coin trick,” she said mockingly.
I turned my hand over, fist still clenched, until it was palm side up. Then, ever so slowly, I opened my hand just as Alex leaned forward to get a closer look.
“Shit!” she screamed jumping back, as a single foot high brilliant white flame leapt from the centre of my palm.
I laughed. Couldn’t help myself, Alex’s face was a picture – shock, fright and a little girl’s amazement all mixed together. I was pleased as punch at her reaction, and there was no way in hell I was going to tell her that my little party trick was almost my limit where magic was concerned… at least what Alex considered magic.
As I closed my fist and snuffed out the flame, I remembered the downside of this feeble feat of magic – if I held the flame long enough, a few moments only, it would slowly dim, becoming cloudy and grey and eventually would turn black, completely black… and worse, the blackness would seem to draw the light from the room into itself, and somehow, with the light, went all laughter and happiness from any who watched.
"After the first time, I rarely gave life to the flame again, let alone held it long enough for the transformation to take place. Jain said that it was dark magic, a magic that fed off the part of me that was tainted by Dar'cen’s essence. He didn’t know really, it was an educated guess, he said.
"But I believed that he was right in his guess. Inside me lurked a darkness still, an evil that belonged to him, an evil that I knew would never die until he was truly destroyed forever.
“Christ, that frightened the shit out of me! How did you do it? What else can you do?” Alex blurted.
“Calm down,” I said, grinning much as Alex herself did when she had the upper hand.
“Calm down? You want me to calm down when you’ve just done something so amazing, so incredible that unless they saw it for themselves, no one would ever believe me me,” Alex replied, her voice that of a child at Christmas seeing the tree surrounded by presents.
“The coin was amazing, Alex,” I said. “That, and what could be done with such power is truly incredible.
"The flame was trivial, a minor magic whose true purpose was for battle and war, to destroy and consume his enemies. Fortunately my strength in such magic is barely enough to light my way in the dark.” Shit I thought. I wasn’t going to tell her that. I wasn’t going to let on how weak I truly was in such magics.
Alex didn’t seem to care, she just shrugged and said, “So your strength in magic is weak, so what? You’re the only person I know that can do real magic. Christ I’m the only person in the whole world that knows someone who can do what you just did… what else can you do?”
“Nothing more that I want to show you today.” Perhaps not ever I thought. Hopefully I will never ever need to show you.
“Oh come on you spoilsport,” Alex pleaded.
But the look on my face must have given her some indication of my seriousness and that I was not going to budge on the matter, because she said, “Okay then, what about when he gave you his gifts. You did say earlier that you’d tell me of that.”
And I had, I remembered. Bloody hell I had a big mouth, a mouth that ran away from me far too often when in Alex’s company.
So I began my short, but horrific tale of how he changed me, of how he so benevolently bestowed upon me such great and wonderful gifts.
***
“Hold him, fools!” The terrible voice hissed.
I struggled uncontrollably, writhing, twisting, straining and screaming. I did not try to free myself from the straps that I knew held me, or from the huge hands pressing down on me as the restraints strained to breaking. All that I did was in answer to the pain. The pain he inflicted upon me that he might bestow gifts beyond mortal dreams, he said.
My mind screamed with my voice, screamed, raged and begged as the pain seared through every part of my being.
A momentary ebb, not gone only diminished. The lessening in concert with a guttural scream and the release of pressure at my head and shoulders; the hands that held me fast against the granite altar gone. Yet before my mind could formulate the command to smash and crush my own skull against the hard stone to end my torment, the pain returned, seemingly tenfold for the brief respite, and new hands take their place holding my head firm.
Five Nargu, five Nargu lives he has wasted in a bid to hold me, I somehow thought through the agony.
“Good! Accept the pain, see past it. Learn to think and function despite the pain. Learn to love it, my pet, for it is to be your life from this day,” his voice cackled.
“Count more,” he commanded as another guttural scream of pain and death reached my consciousness.
“Let me hear your mind as it accepts my gifts, let me hear its gratitude. I draw from my own essence that you might be fit to serve. I make you my child, raised above all my other playthings.”
Then came the laughter, the terrible hope flaying laughter that turned bones to dust and bowels to water.
“Thank me! Give me your undying gratitude for the gifts I give,” he calmly uttered as the pain doubled, trebled and my convulsing body threatened to break free of the straps and shatter the hard granite it lay upon.
Six! my mind screamed in answer.
“Good, not long now my pet. Soon, very soon, your suffering this day will be remembered as a day of rapturous pleasure alongside that which follows.”
No more please! My mind begged, knowing such thoughts to be futile, but uttering them nonetheless.
“But there is so much more that I have for you, so very much more. Never will it be over, pain is your life now that you are mine. And this is but my first gift, a small trifle, really, but one your fellow mortals ever strive to achieve. And I give it to you freely. I give you a part of my being, and you beg me to stop!
"Where is your gratitude? Where is your thanks?”
Pain. More pain. Endless pain.
I awoke later, much later, in my cold dark cell; the pain gone, but its memory still searing my mind.
Even as my eyes cracked open, I prayed, prayed for it to be over, for it to have been a dream. But my mind knew the truth of it as it whispered his words Never will it be over. Pain is your life.
Mere moments later as I lay on the cold stone floor sobbing, I heard them coming for me. “No!” I screamed. “Too soon. Let me be!”
As the key turned in the lock, the one snorted with laughter at my terror. Always when they came, the small one laughed and mocked; his huge companion always mute, save for the chewing and slobbering noises he made as he ate whatever horror he had to hand that day.
I fought, screamed, begged and prayed as they dragged me through the myriad of dark, damp hallways. Yet they only tightened their grip, and laughed all the more.
At the door, the door that hid the pain, they dropped me to the floor, knocked once and walked away. Their footfalls and the small one’s giggles echoed down the hallway after them as the door before me slowly opened and I was dragged inside to receive yet another of his gifts, his so very precious gifts.
Days later, it might have even been weeks, I again stood before my so very benevolent master.
“You are almost ready now my pet, ready to bring terror into the night, terror to the world and those who would think to oppose me.”
His words were a boon to my heart, a balm for my soul. Yet my mind cared not, cared not for anything. It was blank, an empty thing, hearing his words, heeding his commands, but devoid of all individual thought or reasoning. His training, his programming, had reduced me to this – an unthinking shell.
Devoid of all thought save that which would please him, devoid of all emotion save when he gave to me fear or delight.
He laid his hand upon my head as I knelt at his feet, stroked my hair as if I truly were a pet. Yet I took no offence, I only yearned that he would not stop, that his fingers, so long and delicate, would run through my hair for all time.
“A name is now required, a name befitting my second, a name to bring fear to the snivelling masses of this world. A name to herald my rebirth!”
He paused, and as his fingers left my head the feeling of loss and rejection was overwhelming – I could no longer hear his voice, and his too touch had been taken from me, what had I done? How had I failed him? Then as his voice returned, my heart rejoiced and my fears abated.
“Kanteth… Yes, that is perfect. A name that all will soon learn to fear,” he said, triumph and pleasure clear in his tone.
“You will proclaim yourself when you strike, so that all will live in fear of your name, the name that I have chosen for you. They will not know of this name, not on this so very primitive world, but you will tell them of it. You will tell those you allow to survive, so that they might spread the name and the terror that it brings.
"Tell them that it is the name that I have given to you, a name I once took for my own when I first feasted on the fears of mortals.
"Tell them that in their barbaric tongue it would be spoken as Empty Heart.” He laughed, a long and terrible laugh that sent my body cringing and shaking to the floor at his feet. I was afraid, terrified, and yet my mind remained empty; the fear and my reaction that of a programmed machine, a new born babe smacked at the birthing that somehow knows it must cry.
He locked me away then, weeks on end in my cold dark cell. They did not beat me, nor torment in any way; I was left in complete solitude until the day finally came when reasoning returned to my mind, and he deemed me finally complete.
An empty machine would not suit his purposes, he required a reasoning, cognitive mind that could act and react to whatever situation it faced.
A mind that understood fear, terror and pain. A mind that knew what was required to please him. A mind that would always obey.
That first day, the day I was finally unleashed upon the world, he spoke to me.
“Serve me well my pet, my Kanteth, and one day I may give you back what I have taken – allow you to feel the pain and terror you inflict, and allow you to grieve for the pain and suffering you bring.” As he spoke he smiled, a rare thing indeed, and my mind filled with pride that he should grant such a gift.
“Should I bestow this boon, your very presence will be a feast that I will scarce be able to resist … but I speak hastily; first you must prove yourself.
"I will watch closely and follow what you do. It would not be fitting if I have erred and given too much of myself, and allowed you to enjoy the tasks that I set for you.
"No, that would not do at all; the feast of pain and fear is mine alone.
"Go now, seek the prey that I have set you… and remember the name, your name. Ensure all know of it, and tremble at its very mention.”
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