The rat.

I immediately recalled the fateful day when I had decided to touch that book. Ink formations. Even just thinking of it was enough to feel repulsion, to make my body shiver from the experience.

I had tried to capture a rat. I actually succeeded at capture a rat, if you pragmatically look at it. Just that the rat was not content with it, and it had decided to fight back. I had been moments away from turning the rat itself. Minutes, perhaps seconds, from losing all control over my own body.

What would have happened with my own mind, then? Would I still be Tarar? Would I be sitting in the passengers’ seat as the rat drove the carriage? I had thought about it at great lengths, and I absolutely always reached the same conclusion.

I don’t want to know.

Because the best outcome would have been that I ceased to exist. That I died and didn’t get to experience any of that. But I knew that, most likely, that would have not been the case.

"Ink-" Spare coughed some blood, red splashing the rubble right below him. "-I-Ink Formations," he barely managed to say.

He didn’t need to say it. I knew what he was trying to say. I knew what was being implied. The rat. Ink Formations. Spare dying in front of me.

I don’t want any of this. No. It’s my fault.

My thoughts were far from coherent. Far from the coolness and efficiency that the situation demanded. I was acting as a brat. A child that refused to acknowledge the consequences of his own acts.

He is dying. I was reminded, one cough at a time.

He muttered something, but blood filled his mouth, and I couldn't get a single word out of it. I placed a hand over his shoulder, unsure what I should do to help him. He was still trying to speak, repeating some words I could not hear. I got closer to him, placing my ear so close to his mouth that I could smell the metallic odour of iron leaving his body.

“I know what you mean! But I don’t know how! I-There must be another way!”

He wanted me to draw him. I knew that much. I knew that’s exactly what he meant when he was pointing out the rat. But he was not a rat. He was not as simple. Somehow, I intuitively knew that much. The ink was telling me that it wouldn’t work.

But then it happened. I saw as it appeared right in front of me. Ink Formations. Spare had invoked it.

I held to that thin thread, a glimmer of hope, while I ignored my the deepest part of me—one that was yelling, shouting, and screaming. It didn’t want me to come even close to that book. But I had to. If there was anything I could do, it was in there.

"Four. Two." The words struggled to come off his mouth, constantly interrupted by sputum and gasps. "Seven."

I immediately stopped my random shuffling and opened the book by the middle; quickly turning the pages until I saw the number on its bottom right corner, 427. I didn't wait a single second to touch it; my finger slid through the Ink glyphs like that very first time. And, like that time, I felt a torrent of information invading my mind, wilder than anything I had ever been subjected to. I involuntarily tried to pull apart the finger, almost betraying the last resort I had to save Spare, but the formation was sucking me in like a black hole.

I heard voices coming from somewhere far, not recognizing who they belonged to. Mind, thoughts, soul, personality, all sorts of glyphs revolved around my vision. It was like constructing a single puzzle out of unrelated pieces, you had to order them, fill in the holes with previous knowledge, and recover the final image. Just that you didn't know what you were piecing together nor what the result would be.

"Tarar!" I finally realized what the shouts were; something was calling my name. It was neutral, incorporeal, coming from afar. It echoed through the empty space I was in. What am I doing here? Wasn't there something urgent waiting for me? I… Those glyphs once again requested all my attention; I got lost in a labyrinth of words.

They were an ever-moving constellation of lines, seemingly not following any set pattern. Some eluded me, others burnt bright in the distance, others seemed to beg for my attention. It was hard to discern what was real and what not, or maybe everything was happening inside my imagination. I studied them, thought about what I could do, tried to find a hidden meaning. But then, just as I was about to drift away, I stopped everything I was doing; I am thinking, trying to make sense of powers beyond my comprehension.

Don't think, I ordered myself while closing my eyes. I stretched one arm, letting it be guided by the Ink's will. It touched mind, firmly grasping it, and then kept moving until it found capture. Everything turned white while a sudden realization flooded my consciousness, the whole formation made sense; I knew what it was for. The voice faded as my eyes opened, and my finger finally separated from the book.

I stood there for a second, until finally, without moving the eyes from that page, I managed to say, "no… I-I can't!" I wanted it to be a shout; I wanted my desperation and anxiety to go away with those words, but I only managed to mutter, and they stuck with me inside my chest.

"I…" with hardships, Spare managed to utter some words, but most were lost in the air, "dying." His arm gave in, and his whole body crashed to the ground.

The rat was one thing. I didn’t know I was doing it. And, even if I knew, I wouldn’t have understood what I was doing to the rat. Now… now I knew. It was clearly conveyed to me.

Spare would be a slave. Slave to my body. To my mind. To my will. He would see what I chose. He would go where I were. He would hear what I wanted. He would no longer be human.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I suppose he could also revel, like the rat. And if he was stronger than me—which he was—he would gain control over my body. And, to be honest, that seemed fair to me. Okay even. The punishment for letting him die.

"Hurr…" His head slowly turned to face me, just in time for me to see how light exited his eyes, to witness his fleeting consciousness and the last straws of life abandoning his body. He was fading off so fast that he couldn't even finish that word.

I panicked, scrambling one more time for ideas. My mother's teaching came to mind, but Alba wouldn't heal those kinds of wounds; nothing would. There is no other way… I remember thinking at that time. And, indeed, there wasn't. If I had hesitated any more, maybe even as little as a second, perhaps it would have been too late.

My hand, possessed by an impending urgency, travelled through my shirt and pants until it found my shoulder bag. I had been crying, my clothes, the ground, me, everything was wet; I am crying, I realized, suddenly noticing my sobs and tears. I took the Drak'gath, partly because Spare had told me but also because it just felt right. I tore the burlap sack apart at my chest's height and invoked my blood-red Ink with my other hand.

Yes, that was a job worthy of the best Ink in existence. I couldn't think of it in any other way; if what remained of Spare had to spend the rest of his life trapped, jailed even, I would make sure he did so in proper conditions. What that formation was supposed to do should have been impossible; it was knowledge I had been told nobody could achieve. Yet, there I was, about to imprison Spare's mind inside my own. If I succeeded, if I didn't go mad, if I didn't lose him in the process, I would have to ask him how it was possible.

I dipped the metal, waited for some precious drops to fall back to the Inkpot, and closing my eyes, I touched Spare's body. I abandoned myself to the Ink, to extremes I had never gone before. I was a canvas waiting to be drawn, and the Ink was a manic artist itching to create. I felt the sharp metal touching my skin and began the familiar process of being guided by the Ink.

My hand erratically moved, sometimes circling around my chest, others winding around my pectoral, at times drawing straight lines, suddenly bending and arching. It was more complex than everything I had done until then; even my complete La'er, formations, glyphs and sigils included, fell far from it. It was charming and terrifying; each stroke was infused with power and determination.

A distant coldness began to invade me. I wouldn't have cared at all if it wasn't for a part of my brain telling me it was Spare, who had finally run out of steam. A stream of memories swamped me: those calloused hands rescuing me, his beard and baldness, his never-ending questions, our long sessions of reading and drawing, our first beer. It seemed like they would never end.

I did my best to cut out that unnecessary distraction away from me, submerging myself in the same state I entered while fighting. It was dangerous to make the Ink do all the work, but certainly better than involuntary fixating on an image and transmitting it to the Ink. It had to be a perfect formation; there was no margin for error.

I don't know how much time it passed until I recovered control of my own body. I opened my eyes, adjusting to the new feeling on my chest, examining if anything had changed in me. I was barely lowering my hand, returning the Inkpot to my ankle, when an uneasiness assaulted me.

It was an itching sensation on my fingertips, quite similar to the same produced by Ink when you let it invade your mind. Unlike that, though, it developed a more vicious nature, quickly tingling my whole body. I felt as if someone tackled me head-on, making me collapse on my back. My body shook in waves, starting at my feet and going all the way to my head. I was conscious of it all, but I could do nothing; I was an observer of my own condition.

I sensed my body deteriorating, about to enter an irreversible downfall, when something pinched my mind; it was painful yet relieving at the same time. I felt like something had alleviated the pressure on my cranium, opened a metaphorical hole to let all the exceeding energy out of me. It worked; my body came to a stop. I was tired, exhausted, lying there without any intention to move, but then I heard it.

"Tarar!"

I rotated to the right, startled by Spare's voice, and met his lifeless face. His eyes were blank, staring at the horizon, utterly devoid of life. Does this mean… I started, but the response came naturally to me.

"Yes, it worked!" He was elated; I could feel the ecstasy in his voice. I could actually tell he was proud of me. It was intimate, close to listening to your inner voice. His words carried meaning, not in a traditional way, rather they were full of intention, feelings, nuances, elements you could never hope to appreciate in someone's voice.

But-but how? I still didn't understand how I could bind his mind to my body so effortlessly. I had failed to capture a rat, a rat! Yet, somehow, I succeeded on my first try with a human, a Ga'ar no less? It doesn't make any sense; my mind should be broken into pieces, I should be a vegetable, too gone to even swallow my own saliva.

"Get your La'er and get going," his voice once again carried a weight that transcended words, "we will come looking for us here, sooner rather than later."

Reverting La'er to Ink, I walked away without any set direction other than the sewers, aiming to get far from there. I was burning to know the secrets behind what I had done as much as I was felling into a bottomless pit of pain and self-loathing.

I sensed something close to a sigh followed Spare's voice. "Naturally, capturing someone's mind should be impossible, you know as much." I evoked my failed experiment and all the lectures from several books and mentally nodded. "But you did it. And you should also know that I saved you from that rat."

I definitely knew.

“Are you like the rat? Fighting over my mind?” I let it all at once, unable to contain myself as I dropped to the floor and broke into an ugly cry.

“I…” It was obvious he was hesitating. I knew he would have loved to hug me and comfort me. And it only made it worse. “I could, but I won’t.”

It was a drop of cold water, a shock of reality. One that I needed.

“For once,” he continued, “I am intelligent, way more than a rat I would like to think. But that is not the important part here. Do you think the rat agreed to being captured?”

“No?” It was a reflex question, said in a tone that I should have never used. But I was hurt. Tired. Lost.

“You used a formation to force it. You rob the rat of its free will. With me, what you used, was not force. It was consensual. It is bigger than anything you have ever done.”

"I just let you die. And then I slaved you."

“You came for me, and then you gave me a second life.”

“That… I lost myself in the fight, and I forgot what I went there for.”

“You went there to die.” Spare said, matter of fact, as if he had been there when I told Yasir I intended to do exactly that. “And, somehow, you managed to live. Now, listen to me.”

I involuntary looked back up, as if somehow I would find him staring at me—I did not.

“You are now part of a something; I am your inheritance, and you are my successor. We are no longer teacher and student, and we will never be that anymore. ”

Successor? The thought, and its implications, echoed in my mind.

“Yes, as I was someone else’s successor, and as many were before me.”

He paused, dramatically. I am sure, now, that he did so absolutely on purpose.

“You are now a Drak’ga.”