Chapter 5 Cornered.
What is a life without freedom?
What is a soul without a choice?
If one can’t choose freely, one’s life is limited.
If your passion is freedom, make sure you respect others’ choices.
Brigit, the Keeper of Life.
“Adir wants to see you!” says one of the goons as they drag me along the blue gem hallway. A bald guy with wide shoulders and a pair of sharp brown eyes.
“I'm sorry, things changed,” the second adds. An athletic young man with brown hair and a twitch under his blue eyes. I think his name is George. The fist tag on their shoulders tells me they are brutes, they also look like a pair of thugs.
My heart pounds loudly in my chest as I go with them, they lead me without another word. At least they let go of my hands when they see I’m coming with them willingly. What changed?
Less than a minute later they show me into Adir’s room. The room’s walls have all sorts of souvenirs nailed to them, things Adir took from neophytes he had killed. A black braid with beads threaded in it, a long fang taken from an orc, and even a white clean human skull.
The madman himself sits in the simple chair as if it’s a royal throne. There’s a pile of glittering white gems on his desk. “Marisha, right?” Recognition flashes in his green eyes, but he doesn’t say anything further or mention that he remembers me from that horrible day.
“Yes?”
“I have some bad news for you.” He pulls a sack from under his table.
“Bad news? Didn’t you have an agreement with Phoe…” The words die on my lips when the madman tugs Phoebe’s bodiless head out of his sack.
He holds it by the hair, a sickening grin forms on his handsome face. “Phoebe died in our ambush tonight, very tragic. You know what that means, don’t you?” He lets the head drop to the ground, and leans forward with a predatory smile.
The head rolls toward me, and the empty expression on Phoebe's face stares at me in a way that sends a chill down my spine. Apathy… I barely knew her… yes she was nice and cared for me… but I have bigger concerns than grieving or getting angry… “We’re no longer protected.” The dire news forms a knot in my stomach.
“Good girl! Now, I know you have at least thirty gems from your whoring, my people are keeping tabs. I want you to hand them over.” His smile disappears, and now a pair of cold green eyes stare at me.
Shit… I’m really lucky that I used them today… or unlucky… ”I bought a book with them today.”
He narrows his green eyes at me. “My people didn’t see you enter the library. You’re a sharp girl, and you know what happens to a liar, am I right?”
“I’m not lying. I bought it from apprentice Beydor during a lesson, you can ask him.” Cold sweat covers me from head to toe. What am I going to do now?!
He smoothes his white robes slowly, then stands up sharply. His chair clutters against the blue gem floor as its owner snaps. “Do you take me for an idiot?! You know what happens to liars. Last chance!”
I’ll not get through this madman with the truth. ”Fine. It’s not on me, let me go get it.” My heart almost bursts out of my chest. I need more time! I need to think!
“Nah ah. You’re not going anywhere! You tell my men where you’ve put it and they’ll retrieve it. Now…”
“It’s in my room, they can’t.”
He waves and his group of thugs leave the room. “Fine. It can wait. I remember that you promised you’d do anything for me, I intend to collect on that. Take off your clothes."
Really?! Apathy… it’s just another slaver… I sigh and take off my robes under his watchful gaze. Once I’m naked, he just rolls his eyes at me. “Ha. I can’t believe I’ve been dreaming about you of all girls. You’re the thinnest flattest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Starvation will do that to anyone. I’ve been a slave for five year…”
“Yeah, I don’t care about your sob story.” He stretches and cracks his neck. “I have a bigger beast to subjugate tonight. Get the fuck out of here. If you’re not back here with the gems within an hour, you’ll burn like all the other idiots who thought they were smarter than me.”
Shaking and hugging my robes to my chest, I leave his room with a hurried step. I watch for a dumbfounded second as the brutes drag the confused Bella into the room. She giggles and tries to seduce one of them, but the pair of orcs ignore her desperate attempts.
I turn and run away toward my room, Adir’s goons following me from afar. I enter my room and slam my door behind me. I lean on my door and pant hysterically, still hugging my white robe to my chest. I am going to die, either when I get out of this room, or from starvation. I’m going to die! He’s going to burn me alive!
Calm down! Focus! Think. I’m going to be in this room for a little while. I can’t bring food here, it’s not allowed. I should go eat something first… I can’t eat anything, his goons will follow me there, or enter my room the moment I leave it… I feel sick.
I should figure out how to use my magic instead. Once I do, Adir won’t threaten me anymore… yes… just figure out how to use my magic without blowing my hand off…
In a hopeless endeavor to calm down, I get dressed, sit down, and go back to meditating. This is a desperate attempt to master my magic fast enough to fight back. My life is on the line, and this is my only hope.
I can’t get much progress. I can’t focus, the fear overwhelms me. My heart beats loudly in my ears as I fight to move my mana but I simply can’t control my rapid hysterical breath.
*Boom! Boom! Boom!* Someone is slamming something heavy on my gem door. “You’re dead Marisha! You hear me?! Dead!” Adir’s muffled voice is sheer rage.
I jolt up from my meditation, losing control of my breaths again. He’s going to burn me alive! I’m going to die! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!
Focus! Think. I still have some time. Don’t just give up. He doesn’t like defiance, especially not on the same day he executed someone. He can afford to execute people, he has the gems for it… I don’t… I should sleep this off… Things look different after a sleep…
I toss and turn in my bed eyeing the dim blue ceiling above me. It’s near impossible to fall asleep with my heart thumping in my chest like a giant drum. Might as well meditate…
I sit up to try again, but this is impossible as well.
I switch between trying to meditate and trying to sleep until I somehow manage to fall asleep.
{26} Lokamesh (May) the 5th
Morning, the bright blue light wakes me up from my nightmarish sleep. I enjoy a confusing moment of bliss in my bed before yesterday’s events hit me.
I know I can’t leave the room. I have to master this movement of mana in my body and the cantrip, just so I’d be able to fight back. The logic overtakes my wild emotions from yesterday, and after this long sleep, everything seems different, calmer.
In an attempt to ignore the fact that I’ll be facing death by burning should I leave my room, I begin meditating. Now that my life depends on it, I truly put all of my efforts into my meditation. Breathe in and out, in and out. The time keeps flowing, the mana keeps moving, and my growling stomach is ignored. In and out, in and out.
By night I am capable of some semblance of control over the energy originating in my forehead. Now I manage to move the energy through my body, to any spot I wish. It no longer feels like grasping at water, or a slippery piece of soap. Now it feels closer to moving the saliva in my mouth.
I focus on the thin book containing instructions for ‘Lumina’s Kinetic Burst’. Half of it contains physics theory with explanations and a warning of how dangerous this spell is. Along with a description of the two words needed to cast it, and their meaning.
The other half of the book - is drawings, circular forms of motions. I have to move my mana out of my body in this pattern as I say these two words. It’s complex. I have to create four different shapes with the mana to create the desired effect.
I place my hand on the table and channel the mana. I desperately try to replicate the effect that already saved my life once, Kinetic Burst. I put extra care to make sure I won’t blow up my hand “Myrsha ritsa!”
*woosh!*
Something hard hits the back of my head. After a confusing moment, I realize I got tossed backward on the floor.
That’s better than nothing! Again! I Place my hand on the table, and keep trying. “myrsha ritsa!”
I have no trouble moving the mana inside my body, moving it out of my body strains my imagination and willpower. I succeed in forming the first two shapes of mana in the sequence, they’re simple. It’s the third one I struggle with. The mana slips out of my control like water, and I don’t even reach the fourth pattern.
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After five failed attempts, I am drained. My head hurts, blood trails out of my nose, and the energy wouldn’t generate in my forehead anymore. The world goes black.
{26} Lokamesh (May) The 6th
I wake up on the floor with an unquenchable thirst and dry lips. I wipe the dried blood from my nose, ignore my rumbling stomach, and the stench of my excrement at the edge of the small room. Instead, I focus on the power pulsing in my forehead. It’s back!
Maybe I should just move the patterns without saying the words…
I practice, trying to control my mana and move it in the right patterns without saying the words. I fail, again and again. The mana keeps draining, and my mind keeps faltering. After four attempts my forehead feels drained again.
I sit and meditate, but there’s no mana in my body to interact with. I simply drift to my fantasies while trying to calm down my fear of death.
Only in the evening do I feel the mana slowly pulse in my forehead again. I wait a little while before practicing the patterns again. This time I manage to form all four patterns in my one and only attempt, yet, they break down after a split second and I’m not sure if I got them right or not.
Mana is invisible, I can’t see it or touch it. It’d help if I had a visual reference, but as it stands, I can only rely on my imagination and the odd sixth sense that let me feel the mana in my body in a form of a weird bodiless liquid under my bones.
{26} Lokamesh (May) The 7th
I wake up feeling more exhausted than before I went to sleep. I’m used to not eating for days, or eating very little. A month of reprieve in the tower didn’t change that. Yet I feel that I’ll only be able to hold on for one more day without water.
If I do not manage to cast this cantrip today, it’s best if I simply commit suicide. I refuse to burn alive! Is this how it ends then? Five years in slavers hell only to die here in a small sapphire room? At least I’m surrounded by sapphires… I’m rich… Yeah... sapphires covered in my shit... Hey I shat on a sapphire, that's something right?
No! I’m not giving up! I’ll try until I blow up my hand or get that spell right! And if I blow up my hand I might as well die to the blood loss… easier than burning… less painful…
By now I figured out that I can’t cast this cantrip more than four times without proper rest, maybe if I wasn’t as tired and hungry I could’ve managed a fifth time, but that is the limit of my current mana.
To my relief, the mana-pool in my forehead is pulsing with renewed energy after each time I sleep, or at least after sufficient time has passed.
I look at the book again, commit the last two shapes to memory, and repeat them in my head over and over until I’m sure I remember them correctly. Now, focus! I place my hand on the table, and – “Myrsha ritsa!”
*Thooomp*
*Crack!*
The desk’s corner simply disappears and wood splinters fly everywhere. A few penetrate my palm causing a burning pain, but looking at the chunk missing from the table I finally did it!
After plucking out the wooden shards from my hand, I repeat the spell, just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke. “Myrsha ritsa!”
Exhausted, but filled with hope I pass out in my bed.
{26} Lokamesh (May) the 8th
Pain. The pain in my palm and stomach wakes me up from my sleep. My head is heavy, my throat is sore and itching, and my lips crack with dryness. The world aches.
I’m used to this feeling, in fact the past few weeks in the tower are the weird ones, I’m not used to having this much food.
By the dim light coming from the walls, I know it’s the middle of the night.
I haven’t eaten for three days, and the foul smell of my excrements hits my bleeding nostrils again. I couldn’t leave the room or use the toilet due to the death threat. I also haven’t bathed or taken care of myself, but it’s all going to change today. Finally!
First I dig out the splinters from my palm with gritted teeth. When the pain subsides I take a deep breath, give my damaged desk a long last look, and step toward the door. It’s do or die!
I open the door. The two goons at my doorstep are in a middle of a conversation that I’m disrupting. The athletic teenager on the right turns toward me. “I’m sorry… but we have no choice in this…”
“Why are you apologizing, George? She’s the reason we’re drying our asses here! Took you long enough. Finally ready to burn, little girl?” The mocking words of the youth on the left make him my target. I step forward, place my hand on the middle of his wide chest, and channel my mana in the right sequence of patterns.
“What is it?” he asks me with a smirk as he holds my wrist, “do you want me to show you some good time before the boss burns you?” His other hand reaches for my breast.
My heart skip a panicked beat, nothing happened. Why?! I went back to my training habit and only formed the patterns without chanting the words! But I’ve done this in the death room without chanting before!
Doesn’t matter! AGAIN!!! I channel all of the needed mana into the spot. I shape it to my will. I follow the four pattern sequence and weave it into the violent repulsive killing ball of force. “Myrsha ritsa!”
With a dull thud, a cavity appears in his chest. He looks at me with a pair of dumbfounded brown eyes, then collapses on the spot. His hands hold onto my wrist. He moves his lips in an attempt to say something, but only blood comes out of his mouth. His eyes lose their life, as his hands lose their hold on my wrist.
With my hand covered in gore, I turn to the other one. “Do you want some of this too?”
He shakes his head and gulps. I should kill him, he will go back and report, if I kill him I can buy myself some time… I move closer to him with my hand raised. He stands up on his toes, pressing himself back against the wall only to avoid my hand. “Please! Please! We don’t have a choice! If I could, I would’ve let you go! Please!!! Have mercy! Don’t be like Adir! Please!”
“You always have a choice!”
“No, I don’t! I even let him have my own sister! Please!”
“If I let you go, you’ll just go back to Adir and tell him what happened here, I can’t let you do that. We both know that the moment I’m no longer threatening your life, you’ll be more afraid of him than me, I’m sorry…”
“Please! You can’t beat him! He killed six evokers already! Will you really sacrifice another finger just to buy yourself some time?! Let me go! Please!”
Another finger?! Only now do I notice that beneath all the gore - my right hand is missing half of its middle finger. It doesn't even hurt, the adrenaline nullify most of the pain. “I have nine more left don’t I? You see I’m very d-desperate at the moment…” I slur, drunk on adrenaline, and sleep deprivation. Or maybe drunk on the fact that I lost a finger and my newly acquired power. Probably all of the above. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to kill you, but I don’t have a choice… isn’t that what you said?”
I place my hand on his chest and channel my mana. This time I am careful not to blow my fingers off.
“But you do have a…” “Myrsha ritsa!”
“Neophyte number M-0820 will report to the temple of Amaret for disciplinary action at nine past midnight. Failure to show up will result in an increased punishment.”
The loud emotionless masculine voice emanates from the blue walls of the hallway.
Right. I forgot about the whipping. I’ve killed two people. Let’s loot them. They’ve got to have some gems to pay off my punishment.
I tear off pieces of the goons’ robes and use them to bandage my wounded finger. My heart still floods my body with adrenaline. I search their pockets for gems and find only thirteen.
Doesn’t make sense, they probably have more in their rooms. The bald guy has a short bronze axe in his belt, I use it to chop their hands off at the elbow joint. Chopping a hand off takes a few strike to get done. It's gory, and not as easy as I expect it to be. I’ve never done this before.
After a few repeated strikes, I have a pair of chopped hands. I head to their rooms and loot them. The total amount is a hundred fifty-seven gems, a hundred and sixty three with my own six gems. It’s not enough. I can’t even pay for these lashes… and what about Adir?!
*~*~*
Interlude 5.1
Isabella
Adir had been rough. It’s been a few days now, and he simply won’t leave Isabella alone.
Isabella is tired of it all. George. That traitor! Her own brother can simply give her away to that monster like some package! She’s going to have a word with him! He should be guarding that red-head’s door right now.
Not like he has much of a choice. She knows that. Isabella just needs to talk to him, she hasn’t seen him in days.
Isabella finds her way across the long silent hall. It’s the middle of the night, how long was she in Adir’s room? She can’t tell. Isabella has no idea how to read those fancy clocks, but she can follow what everyone does to know the time.
“Do you want some of this too?”
Isabella spots the scrawny redhead aiming her hand at George. She can’t even remember her name, Mary-Ann? Marissa? Names and faces don’t matter, everyone keeps dying, there’s no point in remembering them.
Isabella gasps when she notices the bleeding corpse at the scrawny girl’s feet. “Please! Please! We don’t have a choice! If I could I would’ve let you go! Please!!! Have mercy! Don’t be like Adir! Please!”
“You always have a choice!” The redhead preaches.
“No, I don’t! I even let him have my own sister! Please!” George is such a coward! A miserable coward! But at least his cowardness keeps them alive, it’s what helps them stay together.
“If I let you go, you’ll just go back to Adir and tell him what happened here, I can’t let you do that. We both know that the moment I’m no longer threatening your life, you’ll be more afraid of him than me, I’m sorry…”
Isabella holds her breath and hides in a nearby doorway, attempting to make herself as small as possible.
“Please! You can’t beat him! He killed six evokers already! Will you really sacrifice another finger just to buy yourself some time?! Let me go! Please!” Her brother begs for his life, and all Isabella can do is hide. The red-head can preach about a choice. But it’s obvious that she simply doesn’t want to leave any witnesses behind.
“I have nine more left don’t I? You see I’m very d-desperate at the moment…” The scrawny girl staggers, for a moment Isabella thinks the girl will fall on her face, but no such luck. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to kill you, but I don’t have a choice… isn’t that what you said?”
“But you do have a…”
“Myrsha ritsa!”
Isabella gasps at the magical thud. Her hand jumps to her mouth in a desperate attempt not to cry out loud. She hides in the doorway alcove, hugging the door. If that little redhead spots her, Isabella will die for sure.
“Neophyte number M-0820 will report to the temple of Amaret for disciplinary action at nine past midnight. Failure to show up will result in an increased punishment.”
An emotionless masculine voice emanates from the blue walls of the hallway.
She watches as the red-head butcheres her brother’s corpse. What for? His hand! Oh his hand! She’s going to his room to loot it like a common brigand!
Isabella should go to Adir, tell him that… No. She won't be helping that monster. Even to get back at the red-headed monster… they’re both monsters. She should go to Adir… No. Adir. No.
The red-head leaves. Isabella runs to her brother, but he’s already dead. The tears come out as she hugs his head. This place is full of monsters, and little Bella just lost the only family she had left.
*~*~*
A piece of lore: The word Myrsha is the name of the magical language governing gravity.
Myrsha means: gravity, balance, reign, pull, attractive, law, govern, rule.
It’s based on the idea that gravity is what governs the world’s objects. And gravity is what governs a world as it circles the sun.
Lumina’s kinetic burst.
Names: Lumina’s kinetic burst, kinetic burst, force blast, finger masher.
Element: Gravity
Sub element: Repulsion
Level: 0
Words: Myrsha ritsa
Translation: gravity repulse/pull push.
Patterns: 4
Range: touch
Duration: instant
Effect: The spell will cause a strong focused kinetic repulsion effect, strong enough to shatter solid objects at the point of origin. The kinetic force gets weaker the further it is from the point of origin. The size of the explosion may vary by affinity and alteration patterns.
Cost: 8 gravity gems.
Altered cost: 4 gems for each alteration pattern.
*~*~*
Power level: 1st stage apprentice.
Mana pools status:
Gravity: formed.
Cantrip known:
Gravity: Lumina’s kinetic burst.
Focus capability: 4 patterns.
Injuries: Missing two thirds of the right middle finger.
Social status: A neophyte evoker.
Wealth: 163 magical gems.