"Damn." is all Alex can say.
"Yeah. Damn is right," says Lanetli.
"So wait, why didn't you use that one power on me?" asks Alex.
"I did. You didn't notice?" asks Lanetli. Alex is brought up short by this revelation. He had been seeing things as though they were happening to him, now that he thought about it. It had been subtle, so subtle that Alex hadn't even realized he was being shown history as it happened. Alex had been picturing the power as a memory download, but now he sees that no, that power is not instantaneous.
"Huh," Alex responds, lost in thought and staring into the frozen waves. "Wait, how are we moving?"
"I can unfreeze things in my eternal moment, and this is the same. I basically created a tiny bubble around the boat that lets it move," he says offhandedly.
"I have questions about how that works, but I'll drop it. What is this curse, exactly?" asks Alex, not sure how to fit that bit of magic into his knowledge of physics. Alex believes that magic is simply a lost area of physics that fills in the gaps in knowledge of our natural world. Really he views magic as being a way to work with higher realities rather than the exception to every rule.
"I see the rabbit hole you're jumping down. Don't do it. Magic is magic, and science is science. They can work together, but they are not the same." lectures Lanetli.
Alex silently disagrees but defers to the experience of the man that looked in his late twenties, regardless of the centuries contained within those bloodstained robes. Alex looks back at Lanetli, waiting for the answer to the question he actually asked rather than the one that got answered.
"The curse is one of balance. I have to pay off every bad deed I did. Every lie I ever told, every life I ended. Every single mistake I have made settles on me with a physical weight. I have to pay this off, or it hurts. It is physically painful to not actively help people. And whenever I accidentally make things worse? It grows. It doesn't matter my intentions, only my actions. It doesn't matter what I did to fix things before the curse, only after."
"Has that ever happened?" Alex asks.
"Once or twice. I could finish my story, and catch up to you. Hit the highlights of history until now." Lanetli offers.
"I'd like that," Alex responds. Lanetli starts talking, and as he does, Alex notices when the world bleeds away to show the past as it happened.
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The curse settled on me. I stared down at Cain, but he ignored me, running to the corpse of his brother. Two people came running through the wood, the adult forms of Adam and Eve breaking through the tree line. Eve saw the situation first, falling to her knees in tears, seeing her younger son lying in a pool of his own blood, unmoving. A wail escaped her lips, cutting deep into the soul of every person nearby, though that was a limited number due to the current population size.
Her sorrow reached out to nature, splitting the ground under Able and pulling his blood-soaked body under, and a great tree of blood red growing from his corpse in moments. The ground went hostile, ready to kill anyone nearby, and the atmosphere started getting thin in the area, Adam's face twisted in rage. Cain was affected more than I, with my powers suited to survival leaving me capable, even with adjusting to the weight of my actions.
The trembling stopped, and the atmosphere refilled with oxygen shortly, Cain left shaking on the ground while I pulled in lungfuls of air in preparation for another atmospheric attack.
"Explanations. Now," growled Adam, shaking with rage.
"Father, I-" started Cain, but Adam cut him off.
"Not you. Lanetli, what happened? Cain wouldn't kill his brother, and I doubt you would." Adam said, still trying to contain his rage as Eve cried at the roots of the tree grown from her son.
"I believe they misunderstood what happened at the end of the world. They believed I needed to pay, and so they attempted to lay a curse on me. I never once attacked them, simply dodged whenever possible. Able used all of his life force keeping me in place in this ritual. As I tried to escape, he killed himself and exploded with magic, Cain then using that to finish his ritual. I could tell Able wasn't as confident in how moral it was, but when I tried to escape, it must have solidified in his mind. They didn't know how terrible this curse is, because it doesn't balance. It enslaves." I told him.
"Is this true?" Adam asked Cain, turning to his only son.
"Yes. I did it, I made him pay for his actions father-" Cain was cut off as Adam slapped him firmly across the face, sending the kid back to the ground after he had clawed his way back up.
"You fool! This man is the only reason you are alive! The only reason humanity is left at all! That man is a broken hero and you forced him into slavery for humanity! How long with this take him to pay off? HOW LONG?!" shouted Adam as he pulled Cain to his feet, spit flying into the young man's eyes. I didn't know he cared for me that much, though I was sure I was getting off easily because he was channeling his anger for the death of his son.
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"I'm sorry fa-" Cain tried to start, but he was slapped soundly again.
"I don't want your excuses! I want answers!" Adam shouted again.
"He'll be paying it off for the next ten billion years at this rate! Please forgive me!" cried Cain, blood streaming from his nose. He almost looked petulant in the face of Adam. This is a scene I had witnessed far too much of.
"Adam! Calm yourself. He is young, he made a mistake. We all know I made worse mistakes as a child." I said as I pulled Adam back. He was ready to hit his son again, and though he would have been fine, Adam needed to stay far away from this kind of murderous rage, for the sake of his own mind, as well as that of Cain.
After a moment of breathing through flared nostrils, he turned back to his son. "You will take his burden. I know it's possible, the curse has been covered fully in my early studies of illegal magic," said Adam.
"I can't. I put the curse on him, I can't take it off. Balance told me." Cain sobbed into the dirt, creating a small puddle of mud with his blood and tears.
"Then I will-" started Adam, before I cut him off.
"No. Neither of you will. I will take this burden and I will pay it off. You have other things to live for, I only have one purpose, one that can still be accomplished while paying off a curse." I told them.
"Fine. Cain, you are still being punished. Think about your actions somewhere you won't hurt any of your future siblings." said Adam.
"Wait-" was all Cain could get out before Adam waved a hand and a portal opened to a distant planet that had few plant life, but did seem capable of supporting life, and Cain was sucked in to live in his exile.
Eve had recovered, finishing her grieving process quickly with the help of what was left of her sons' memories living inside the red tree.
Adam and Eve had more children over the years, as I watched over them. I left my cloak in the tower most of the time, choosing instead to blend in with the growing population. Magic had died out quickly, many of the children not having the capability to learn having children, while those that could learn magic would lock themselves away in study, leading to a world without the blessings of icons.
I took place as a magician, using my magic, which often led to people assuming I was a god in disguise. I never corrected them. Over Time more and more religions emerged, revering both many and one gods. The polytheistic tended to oppress the Jewish, or monotheistic religions. A child was born that had the chance to free his people using magic, with a strong connection to Curse.
Moses was a good kid, and the ambient magic radiated around him, which is why instead of being thrown into the Nile River (from which I saved most of the children) he was taken in, and seen as special because he was. Growing up he was odd, and played with the magic around him often, making nothing happen to the eyes of anyone else, though patterns wove through the air with his touch. He learned that the woman he called mother was not, in fact, his mother. His true mother had thrown him into the river at the command of the pharaoh, and another woman had picked him up. He found that he was the child of a slave woman that had died many years prior, and after finding this out, he started to notice how his people were being treated. I approached him then, offering to teach him his magic.
He was good, and it only took a few years of secret training after dark. He reached his icon shortly after and set out to free his people. With the number of curses he got he was able to free them and bring them across the Nile with my help. They were ungrateful, but Moses didn't care, he cared for them and explained his magic as prayer, so they wouldn't want to go back and fight. He helped them through the desert, with my help as well, and slowly brought them to a land they could call their own.
As with all civilizations they ended up splitting, and very few were born with magical prowess until Jesus of Nazareth. He learned fast and did well. He was a genius in how he taught others of his icon, healing and preaching of a god as his father, which is bullshit because his father was a respectable carpenter, but the kid was always smart. He slowly grew in power until he decided to die, speaking out against rulers. He asked me not to intervene, like I was ever going to, and got himself a death sentence. When he was reborn he had such a following that I never actually got to speak with him again. He supposedly ascended to heaven, but in reality, he was murdered by a thug in a dark alley. His body was burned and never identified, his rebirth power was used up.
At that point, I decided that people didn't need other people to have magic to flourish. Genghis Kahn had figured out how to suffuse himself with magic, and later how to suffuse his allies with magic to enhance their physical abilities, but he never achieved an icon, and I never formally taught him, though I did watch closely with interest.
I saved many lives, and when I decided that people had to die at some point, I let some die. Those deaths were not on my hands, as those that I let die were people that the curse deemed needed to die. Of course, I was not omnipotent, and I missed a lot of opportunities to save lives. I also eventually had a reason to come out and help people one night a year, which would allow me to train for the rest of the year. I reached a point where I could incarnate only a few thousand years ago, but I couldn't incarnate, not with this curse holding me here.
Over the course of these many years, I told several kids my stories. You weren't the first to move through my eternal ritual, not by a long shot. They couldn't bare the sight of me after I got partway through my story. They looked at me with fear. Hatred. They couldn't understand the choices I had to make to get where I am now, and they couldn't understand why I had to make those choices.
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"Alex, you stuck around until the end. You gazed at insanity and you didn't bat an eye. You looked me in the eye and you said you want more. I can see why Madness likes you, I really can." says Lanetli.
"Damn, I don't know what I was expecting, but I thought I was a bit more special, you know? Like, if you had told this to a bunch of veterans that believed in magic, they would be right with you, so I'm not all that special. And I wasn't the only one moving? Pft, I barely count as unusual." says Alex, a blush creeping up his face at the compliment followed by the unwavering stare of Lanetli.
"Do you still want to learn from me?" asks Lanetli, the story finally coming to a close.
The thing was, Alex wasn't sure he wanted to know. It sounded cool in concept, but what if he destroyed the world too? What if he couldn't handle the burden that came with all this power? He wouldn't have the advantage of young magi to bail him out of trouble in the last instant.
All this and the magic around him vibrated, heavy in his senses now that he knew how to look. It hung around Lanetli, but it got excited around Alex. It pleaded for him to grow so they could have fun together. So they could cause madness together.
"Let's do this, I'm learning magic!" says Alex, the magic seeming to rise in a cheer around him, praising the decision.