MAGUS INFINITE

I sat on that ground cross-legged for two days. It was easy. I did not even move. After I spent months in darkness, I could sit under this weird sky for years and enjoy every moment of it.

Usually I should be able to tell my age from my status screen, but with this seal I could not. Still, I was a few days away from eighteen. Ah, how the years go by when you are being brutally killed over and over again.

Weirdly, I was at peace at that moment, staring at the sky as the weight of the compass ground against my soul.

Of course it hurt the entire time, but pain was becoming more of a suggestion to me, and I could focus on other things and bury it. My soul made me more sensitive to pain, but it also gave me the capacity to endure.

It also helped that I could feel the walls of the pocket give, one finger’s width at a time.

[Space Resonance: 69 → 71 (Adept)]

[Space Resonance: 71 → 73 (Adept)]

[Space Resonance: 73 → 75 (Adept)]

I have spent my whole life growing through violence. It was a novel experience to grow through sheer stubbornness instead, and I found I preferred it, although I would not want to make a career of it.

The weight of the compass slowly lessened with every growth of my Resonance, freeing much of my mind so I could focus on other things, and obviously what I would pick up was the crystal.

∞

I knew that whoever created that cavern underneath Serrath would come for this crystal. I had been too distracted all this while to truly study what I was carrying, but I now had the time to learn what a god would kill for.

I called it a crystal, but that was only because it resembled a diamond. It was spherical, like an orb. Much of my perceptive ability had been locked behind the seal, but I had Eldritch Perception, and that would have to do.

I pushed through the pressure around it and brought it up to my face, and consciously called up Eldritch Perception, and the crystal began to ripple in my hand, almost as if it could perceive my sight… hmm, was it alive?

Frowning, I pushed into the crystal with my sight and gasped.

∞

The cloth is wet in my hand and Semeth is in the yard playing, and evening is coming and he should come home.

Boom.

My heart almost flies out of my chest as the door comes off its hinges and there are three strange men inside my home. I can see armour, and that means one thing.

I am about to call out for Semeth when the first one hits me across the face with the flat of his shield and my teeth go. I black out for a moment and then I am on the floor and one of them is on my back with his knee between my shoulders, and I am trying to say the boy is only four, he is only four, but my mouth is not making the sounds because of the teeth.

The only thing in my mind is Semeth, and then the knife goes in under my arm and comes out and goes in again, and it is like being punched by something very cold, four times, five, and I can hear it happening, going in and out of me.

The one at the door is already calling to the others about the boy in the yard, and I am pulling myself towards the step with one arm and I cannot get up and I cannot get up and Semeth is in the…

∞

My spear is buried in the chest of the biggest man I have ever seen, and I cannot stop myself laughing out loud. I cannot believe I have won this fight and am coming out of it alive.

This is crazy. I do not believe that fellow was stupid enough to come onto a battlefield without any armour. Did he think his oversized abs would stop the point of a spear?

I am about to laugh again when somebody’s axe takes my jaw off. I put my hand up to where my face was and there are teeth in my palm and my tongue is lying on my chest, but I am not dead. Sweet mother, why am I not dead?

My jaw is hanging on the side of my neck by a strap of skin and I hear myself making a noise I have never heard a man make, like the sound of a drowning animal.

The bastards walk past me, not even bothering to finish me and leave me out of my torment, but I am not the only one in trouble. We are all being pushed backwards over the men who are already down and I am walking on somebody, I can feel his ribs breaking under my boot one after another, and then I lose my footing and fall.

I want to scream and I cannot. Someone stands on my chest and stays there too long, and at first I hate him, and when he steps off, another stands on my chest, and this one is heavier, and my ribs go. When they have gone past I try to turn over, and another one steps on my neck and tears off what is left of my jaw, and I hear him curse, and why am I still…

∞

Six hundred and forty…

Six hundred and forty-one…

Mama said count and do not come out until I come for you.

Six hundred and forty-two…

There are boots, big boots, but they are not papa’s boots. The table I am under suddenly flies away, and there is a big man with a big beard looking down at me.

He shouts at me, but I cannot understand him. Grown-ups speak too quickly sometimes, and I try to tell him that I am not supposed to come out, I am supposed to count, and he laughs and takes my arm.

My arm is very small in his hand, and he pulls me, but I do not want to move, mama says I should not move, and then he takes a big knife and sticks it in my back. It hurts so much, and he begins to drag me across the room, and I see mama.

She is on the floor of the doorway and she is not moving, and the man is dragging me over her.

I try to smile at mama.

Mama… six hundred and forty-two, I am six hundred and forty-

∞

I pulled myself out of the crystal, went down on my hands and knees, and began to shiver.

I have died a great many times. I have been burned, drowned, dissolved, unmade, and not long ago I was cut in half. I know what dying is. I know it better than almost anyone alive has any business knowing it.

And still, it is different when it is not yours.

Death for me is never final. What struck me, being inside those three, was that none of them seemed to know the end had come.