What Goes Around, Comes Around
(Talisman, part XII)
 
by D. Monster
 
The magician hated this room.
 
A dull red glow suffused the air beyond the door.  Incandescent though the glyphs may be, they seemed to do nothing to penetrate the darkness of the vast space they protected.  It disturbed the magician that the powerful magics he had drawn around himself like a armored shell did nothing to make him feel safe, even from something as simple as the dark.
 
He took a deep breath and plunged into the room.  Heart pounding, he felt along the wall.  Every time he did this, it seemed like the switch had moved farther away.  As he groped, he imagined something moving in the blackness beside him.  He gasped…and his harsh breath sounded like an explosion to him.  Now desperate, he reached forward and touched…
 
The switch.
 
With a thrill of relief, he threw the switch and harsh fluorescent light flooded the room, rendering the protective glyphs invisible and banishing all but the most persistent shadows.
 
He looked around him at the props.  Boxes, boxes, and more boxes.  Boxes for sawing.  Boxes for burning.  Boxes for skewering.  Name a torture, and he’d have a box for it.  Feel the desire to see a pretty girl decapitated?  Put her in one of these and she’ll still be winking and wearing a smile when her head plops into the basket.  No atrocity is so large that it can’t be made into wholesome entertainment with the right magic box.
 
He snorted in disgust, his anxiety momentarily forgotten.  This is what he’d fallen to, he though, staring at the gaudy, oversized rings that studded his pudgy fingers.  What wonders he could have done for the world….
 
For the world.
 
The words echoed in his memory.  Not his words.  Not his voice.  He glanced involuntarily to the far corner of the room and his anxiety returned stronger than before.  It was hidden behind numerous boxes and tanks and racks of swords, but his imagination reconstructed it as though he were staring at it this very moment…
 
…a sarcophagus, covered in yellow runes.  He felt the yellow ring on the third finger of his left hand, felt it pulse electrically at his touch.  Shame engulfed him.  It was the truest symbol of his cowardice…the one that he wouldn’t help…the one that he couldn’t control…the one that he loved too much to destroy.   He’d let his fear rule him and everything had come to this.
 
Enough.  He had business to attend to.  The props for tonight’s show must be gathered.  Time was….
 
It was then that the lights went out.
 
Or rather, it was then that the darkness extinguished them.
 
The magician, terror-stricken, froze in his tracks, his next breath forgotten.
 
Around him, the protective glyphs burned bright.  Something was trying to get in.  Suddenly, pain flared in his hand and he howled reflexively.  One of his rings, red and fiery like a small sun, dropped to the floor, searing a line across his vision as it did so.
 
The something had gotten in.
 
Had he been a character in a movie or pulp novel, he might have taken this moment to say “this is bad.  This is really bad,” but no such thought came to him.  His terror ran too deep.  He was perhaps better prepared for this attack than any person on the planet, but he was still terrified.  It ran all the way down to his bones.  Some children never stop being afraid of monsters.
 
Especially when the monsters are very, very real.
 
It was the chill that told him it had manifested behind him.  Slowly, he willed himself to turn to face it.
 
His vision had returned to him, and in the scarlet light of the angry glyphs, he could see the dark form billowing up out the floor, presumably through a portal from god-only-knows-where.  It seemed to be watching him.
 
I CAN TASTE YOU ALREADY.
 
Its voice boomed a basso profundo in the depths of his mind, almost completely obscuring its physical voice, a ragged feminine shriek that buzzed around its telepathic counterpart like an enraged gnat.  The magician’s gut spasmed.
 
YOU FEAR.  ALL THE BETTER.
 
He had to act now.  Now, before it could decide what to do.  An orange ring on his right hand glowed brightly and he threw the hand forward, releasing a rolling ball of flame that covered the distance between them with astonishing speed and engulfed the dark form.
 
It struggled silently for several seconds as the fire consumed it.  Then, as suddenly as they had appeared from the magician’s hand, the flames disappeared.
 
INTERESTING.
 
Not wanting to wait for any further comment, the magician hurled another fireball.  This one traveled only a few feet before vanishing.  In response, his opponent threw up what appeared to be its arms and the orange ring was plucked from his finger.  It flew across the room and disappeared into the dark shape.  A moment later, there was a piercing scream that filled both his ears and his mind, then was cut off suddenly.  The creature’s outline with limned with orange for a second and then returned to normal.
 
A SLAVE?  TELL ME, JAILER…WHERE IS YOUR OWN POWER?
 
It held out an appendage and an orange fireball puffed into existence above it, then winked out.
 
TELL ME SO I MIGHT MAKE IT MY OWN.
 
The magician, panic-stricken, threw out his left hand and a blinding stream of energy shot from a white ring and vanished the middle of the dark creature.  There was wrenching feeling, and the white ring flew across the room to join its orange brother.  Again a sharp, brief scream of pain and anguish echoing in his mind.  His own pain told the astonished magician that departing ring had taken his finger with it.  He could feel the warm blood.
 
ANOTHER SLAVE?   HOW MANY PRISONERS HAVE YOU TAKEN?
 
With that, the entire room seemed to come alive with light.  The protective glyphs on the walls glowed even brighter.  Lines and pictographs appeared on boxes, on tools, on costumes.  The magician looked down to see all his remaining rings glowing brightly.  They all pulsed with the same pattern, a staccato indictment of his sins.
 
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN A SLAVE?  KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE CONTROLLED BY ANOTHER?  TO BE MADE TO SUFFER?
 
At that, the creature through out an appendage and a white-hot stream of energy struck the magician below the knee.  The magician screamed as his shin dissolved into nothingness.  He fell to the ground, watching the hungry white flame begin to slowly, painfully consume his leg, while the flame painlessly devoured his severed foot.
 
Time was slowing.  The flickering of the fire working its way up his leg seem to come almost to a stop.  The pain began to dull.
 
NOW I SEE YOU.
 
The magician glanced toward his hands, taking stock of his remaining arsenal.
 
NO.  YOU GET NO MORE HELP.
 
The rings flew from his fingers, scattering about the room.  One that had flown in the direction of his burning leg hung in mid-air, caught by the bubble of slow time that surrounded the limb and was likely the only thing that protected him from rapid disintegration.
 
Well, not the only thing.  He looked up at the creature, which was advancing on him slowly.  It had already expressed its interest in him.
 
Terror pounded through him even more intensely than before.  He could not let it have him.  He looked at the leg, willing the slow time away.
 
Nothing happened.  The creature laughed.  The sound of its horrific laughter made the magician gag.
 
YOU DO NOT CONTROL YOUR OWN POWER!  YOUR FEAR RULES IT AS IT RULES YOU!  YOU WILL SHOW ME WHAT YOUR FEAR CAN DO!
 
With that, it hove toward him.  The magician gasped, and the creature slowed.   The magician felt himself growing heavy.  His arms slid out from under him and he fell painfully on his back.  Behind him, a rack collapsed under the suddenly increased weight of its load, spilling swords on the concrete floor with a clatter.
 
Still the creature advanced.  But as it did, the distance between them seemed to increase.  The magician’s heart pounded in his chest as the room appeared to elongate.  Reality began to turn up at the edges and ceiling seemed to disappear into infinity.
 
And in the corner of his vision, bright, multicolored shapes began to flit.
 
And the creature laughed.
 
THANK YOU MAGICIAN!   AND NOW, AS I UNMADE MY MOTHER, SO SHALL I UNMAKE YOU….
 
It loomed above him.  He felt its cold presence inside him.
 
…FATHER.
 
His voice found him in that moment, as confusion overtook fear.
 
“What….what do you mean?”
 
And as it enveloped him and he stared into its eyes…its deep green eyes like emeralds in the darkness….he understood.
 
He understood.
 
To be continued…