Maker

Chapter: 11

Chapter: 11

I woke up—that was a surprise. Pro tip: if ever you’re captured and you wake up, the best thing to do is keep your eyes closed.

The fact that I was alive meant that whoever was standing over me while I was unconscious didn’t want me dead. If they didn’t want me dead—at least, not right away—then odds are good I could learn something useful while they thought I was still passed out.

The room was warm and the air smelled stale. I could feel the straps that held me down, and the bed I was on felt more like a recliner since my head and knees were elevated.

I tested the straps and found they were quite secure. I decided it would be best to sneak out before anyone noticed I was awake. Just as I was ready to burn through my bonds, a screaming pain ripped through my head.

I stole a glance down and saw that the bonds on my right wrist were large grey, heavy manacles. They appeared translucent. It was like having shackles made of smoke and the weight of lead. Wraith shackles—specifically designed to capture wizards. Tema had a pair that I was locked in almost nightly. Any photons I attempted to gather would be absorbed by the shackles and used to trigger every pain receptor I had. Well, this was unfortunate.

Unfortunate there were wraith shackles on my wrist, and even more unfortunate that Blackstar was powerful enough to have somehow procured a pair.

The other end of the shackles was attached to the chair. My left hand and feet were done up in plain duct tape. With even more pressed tightly across my body. They weren’t being lax with the restraints, at least.

I could eventually pick or chew my way through it, but it wouldn’t matter in the slightest unless I wanted to carry the chair out of here.

The air was beyond gross. It was humid and smelled of mildew and rot. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was outside in a swamp somewhere.

I didn’t hear any movement or breathing, so I cracked open my right eye again to have a look around. I was in a stone room, alone; the only other furniture, besides me, was a table with some rather nasty looking implements on it.

The fact that they were covered in my blood should’ve registered somehow, but it didn’t. There were several candles burning in sconces around the room, giving it a dull light.

I also noticed they’d placed my pack on the table. That would be useful… if I could reach it. My wand was inside, as well as potions galore. I’d never tried using a wand while wearing wraith shackles of course, but the wand was a gnarled root from the first tree. It had its own power—lots of it. More than enough to get me out of here, but I had to get to it first.

A door opened behind me. I snapped my eyes closed. Whoever walked in was heavy-footed. I heard them cross the room to the table. I stayed still, suddenly realizing I was scared out of my mind.

I managed to keep my breathing under control, but my heart was racing and that’s probably what gave me away.

“Come on then; I know you’re awake.” I heard the voice say. It wasn’t Blackstar, or anyone else I’d overheard back at the garage. The voice was familiar. The accent was… French? It was becoming clear that none of these Constellation goons were from around here.

I didn’t open my eyes. In fact, I squeezed them shut even tighter because the pain in my head this time was like nothing I’d ever felt before. Every nerve ending in my body fired at once. I could’ve screamed. If I had air, I would have.

You hear stories about people who last through torture, who refuse to talk or capitulate. Like everything, there’s a trick to it.

One of the differences between human consciousness and instinct is that you can think about what you’re thinking. I started thinking about the pain. Analyzing it. Wasn’t easy, but I reached for it. Focused on it, embraced it.

It was a spectacular amount. It was already starting to hurt less, but maybe that was my imagination. I heard myself scream. Heard it die as my lungs emptied, and start again almost immediately. It was high pitched; animal-like. I didn’t know I could make a noise like that.

Like a drop off a cliff, the pain stopped and was replaced with a pleasure I have never known. I felt old aches lessen and muscles release, but it was only for an instant and then there was more screaming. The pleasing sensations caught me off guard and destroyed my focus. I wasn’t prepared until the third time it came. Was it a hair longer this time? Maybe I was imagining things.

“Pleasure is harder to fight than pain,” I thought, dispassionately. Objectively, I noticed that pleasure destroyed my objectivity. That brought a laugh. Whoever was behind me took it as an insult.

My throat burned on the next scream, every muscle contracted and my back arched up from the bed ripping a few strands of duct tape.

I blacked out again.

* * *

When I woke up I was standing in a room made of light. The restraints were gone, along with everything else. Beyond the thirty-foot circle of illumination, there was nothing but black. I looked up, but couldn’t see a light source. The floor was transparent, with nothing but darkness stretching out below. About thirty feet up the blackness started, down too.

There was a woman standing across the circle from me. She was skeletal, her back hunched and her skin pulled tight across her face and body, but she didn’t look old. Somehow I knew that she was my age or even younger. Wisps of brown hair dotted her scalp in patches and her skin was decorated with bruises and other discolorations.

I had every nasty spell I knew ready to launch, but she spoke before I did. “Good to see you Maker.” Her voice was strong and hard. There was nothing in it that reflected the weak, emaciated creature I saw before me.

“Yeah…” I responded slowly. “And you are?” Some distant part of my mind noticed my voice was calm and held none of the fear I was feeling at the moment.

“You may call me Arta.” I got the feeling the woman was lying, so I did what I always did in that situation.

I told her so.

She laughed; deep, and throaty. It was totally at odds with her appearance. “No, not a lie. I simply have many names. While I wouldn’t mind telling my true name to a mortal, it would take five of your minutes to speak it properly, and hearing it would kill you. That would be more than a little inconvenient for me.”

“I can understand that,” I responded. “It would be a shame to kill your boss’ prize right after you’d captured me.”

Her eyes flashed with anger and she sneered, “You think I’d work for some petty mortal sorcerer?”

“Prove to me that you don’t!” I challenged her. She smiled, and I regretted it right after the words left my mouth.

“Years ago, you were tied up in a basement, inside a summoning circle covered in arcane symbols that you didn’t understand. That is where this… complicated relationship of ours began.” Despite myself, I took a step back. It felt good, so I took another. Before I knew it, I was running.

I only made it a few yards before the blackness outside the circle came to life. Ghostly, shadowy arms reached for me. I couldn’t say for certain, but it looked like they were aiming for my throat. I stopped just in time and spun around to come face-to-face with Arta standing just inches away from me.

The laughter and amusement were gone. She was hovering a foot or so off the ground to look me in the eye. If she were standing, the tiny woman would barely reach my lowest chest hair, but I’d never felt smaller than I did at that moment.

“I don’t work for mortals. Not then, not now. You and I are going to have a talk, boy.”

I was breathing hard, and it had nothing to do with the short run or the torture. I simply nodded, not trusting myself to make words at the moment.

“Good.” She said with a smile that appeared genuine. She returned to her position across the circle, but she didn’t cross the intervening space. One moment she was an inch from my face, and the next, she stood seven feet away. The center of the circle of light followed her. Turned out she was the source.

“Okay, this is bad,” I muttered. A table and two chairs appeared. She sat down, moving as an old woman should. I took a hesitant step towards the table and she motioned to the seat across from her. By the time I was seated there was… tea? And some old bread-looking biscuit things.

She gestured for me to pour—which I did. I’ve never actually sat and had a “proper tea” with anyone before, but I’d seen it on Mary Poppins as a kid and knew to ask, “One lump or two?” The sugar bowl had honey in it. I poured some tea for myself, even though I wasn’t drinking.

I was in a state of shock. I know that because before I could think of something polite or diplomatic, what flew out of my mouth was, “Get out of my head!”

She waved a dismissive hand and snorted, “Boy, if it were that simple don’t you think I’d have done it already?” I managed to put some thought into the next question, though not much.

“Why can’t you just leave?”

“The same circle that kept you in that basement for a week keeps me in your head. Like I said, our relationship is complicated.”

“But that was years ago,” I replied, “I was twelve!”

She nodded, “And that same circle is etched into your brain, your heart, your liver… all those lumps of meat you mortals are so fond of. Mmmm Sideritis. No other tea can compare.” She didn’t look at me while she sipped. Somehow the action seemed menacing. Or maybe I was just scared enough to piss myself for the second time today.

“What do you want?” I said. She snapped a glare at me, and I rephrased, “Uhh… I mean, what can I do for you?” That didn’t come out any better. I was attempting to rephrase again when she held up a hand for silence.

“You and I are going to be together for quite a while,” she said. “Probably until the day you die. Until that day, I think we should do whatever we can to get along.” I thought about that. It didn’t sound quite right. Suddenly my brain was working again.

“Why now?” I asked.

“Finally!” She responded, “I thought we’d be on our second pot of tea before you got to it. Bringing you here, creating this place. It all takes energy, even though it’s only taking place in your head. I certainly can’t use yours; you’re weak as a kitten, even by mortal standards. Thankfully this Blackstar person was good enough to provide what I needed. Those spells of his aimed at taking over your mind… well, I kind of ate them.”

“Wait, what? You ate them?” I sputtered.

She sighed, “Try not to be so three-dimensional. Ate, absorbed, used-to-power-this-construct. I’m dumbing this down as much as I can.”

“I know a bit about magical theory. You don’t need to dumb anything down.”

“I can assure you I do,” she smiled. She was thirty pounds soaking wet, looked older than dirt, missing most of her teeth and still made me feel like the small, weak one. “We move through time at different rates,” she continued. “With you barely conscious, full of adrenaline, and me thinking at the speed of a garden slug, we can actually have a conversation.”

“Uhm, okay…” I said. “So now that we’re talking…” I trailed off and left the unasked question hanging in the air.

“I’m going to need you to start being a better host,” she said.

“What do you mean, host? You’re not my guest!” Supernatural beings had all kinds of not-quite-laws regarding the etiquette of guest and host. I didn’t know all of them, but they essentially boiled down to, “don’t be an asshole.”

“An unwilling guest is still a guest. And being a good guest, I didn’t just kill you immediately and leave.”

“I suppose,” I responded. “Why didn’t you?”

“Oh, you’ll be dead in a hundred years anyway,” she waved her hand as if the time were nothing, “and I’m not going to sacrifice everything that I am for a minor inconvenience.”

“So, what can I do for you?” I repeated. Turns out it was the right question after all.

“You can start by getting me more to eat. You barely produce enough in magical resources to keep me conscious.”

“You mean get attacked?”

She shrugged, “You don’t have to be attacked, but it does have to be some spell that is aimed at affecting your mind. If I had my way, I’d have you stay in this Blackstar’s torture room for a while. I think you’ll be staying for a bit anyway.”

Until she smiled, I didn’t notice that she had more teeth than she did when we sat down. She was a little lighter in the bruises department, too.

“Am I still being tortured?” I asked, amazed at my comfort with the issue.

“Oh yes,” she said. Her face brightened and perked up when she spoke. “You’re also screaming like a little girl. They are trying everything they know to break your mind. I’m letting them think they are succeeding. Once they believe you a thrall, they remove the manacles and you walk out of here.”

“Wow… uhh, thanks,” I said.

“Starting to think it’s useful having a spirit in your head, eh?”

I laughed. Things weren’t as bad as I thought at least. I even sipped some tea. It was cinnamon flavored. I didn’t like tea, but I love cinnamon in all its forms. I realized the opportunity here and suddenly had the radical idea that I might live through the week. “What do you know about Blackstar?” I asked.

“Everything,” she responded.

“Great.” I said grinning “Tell me everything.”

“No,” she said taking another sip.

“Why not? Isn’t it part of being a good guest if…”

“Maybe, but I don’t work for mortals or interfere in the lives of mortals. I won’t tell you anything you don’t already know.”

“Aren’t you already interfering?” I asked.

“No.”

“I don’t know the laws of guest and host, so forgive me if this is rude, but if you’re keeping Blackstar from stirring up my brain with a spoon, that strikes me as interfering.” Wasn’t just having her in my head interfering? I could point that out, but thought better of it.

“It isn’t rude, and thank you for asking. I can understand how it seems to you to be interfering. You will simply have to take my word that it isn’t.”

“What good is that?” I said. “You just said it would be inconvenient if I died.”

“No. I said it would be inconvenient if I killed you. I don’t care one bit if you die on your own.” She smiled.

“And here I thought I was confused before. What good is it to tell me things I know already?”

“Trust me, Maker. What you know would terrify you. I know, I live in your head,” she laughed. “I’ve even stopped you from remembering things that would destroy you. Tell me, did you ever ask why Den’Tema Rion wanted to imprison me inside you?”

“There was no one to ask.” I said. “I just assumed she wanted power. Tema wasn’t complicated, even as a kid I knew that.”

“Her intention was to kill you, or rather wipe your mind away—which is the same as killing you—and use me as a repository for power and knowledge. She didn’t know about your artificer abilities at the time.”

“How would she have done that?” I asked. “It doesn’t make sense to imprison something inside me. Well, it does, but it’s ridiculously inefficient. Better to make a homunculus and put a spirit in that.”

“In certain circumstances,” Arta said, taking another sip of tea. “But maybe she didn’t know how to make one. Maybe she planned on me being so weakened by your lack of magical talent that she could walk into your mind and subdue me easily.”

“That makes no sense,” I said. “First off, when did I ever learn that? Secondly, homunculi are easy, and Tema was a beast. She could’ve made a construct the size of the Empire State Building if she wanted. Third, why wouldn’t a spirit have its own power? Just the fact that you need to summon it means that it’s plenty strong. Putting it in me would add to that power, not subtract. Tema wasn’t that stupid.”

“Your respect for your old master is quite endearing, especially after all she’s done to you. Consider this, if you spend your adolescent years being smarter than your peers, then isn’t it likely you will find intelligence the solution to everything? It’s the same with beauty or fighting prowess, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yeah,” I shrugged. “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Makes sense.” She nodded as someone would to a fencer who’d just scored a point, but she made no move to speak. “Tema’s hammer was her strength,” I said, sipping the liquid cinnamon again and earning another nod. “No matter what she got herself into, she could just power her way out of it.” Another nod. “So she didn’t bother to study up on magical theory like I do because she believed that whatever it was she could power right through. Tema was many things, but short-sighted? Naive? Overconfident?! No. That would be stupid.”

“It would only be stupid if she were wrong.”

“Was she that strong?” I asked. I had seen my master work spells a million times, but I had never seen her go all out. I had no idea just how strong she was. It was the difference between looking at a bodybuilder and actually going to the gym with them.

“Yes, she was,” Arta said.

“So, she wanted you to tell her things, use your powers whenever she had something really nasty planned, and store information but that would be impossible because you would refuse to tell her anything or lend her your mojo. Only now you’re telling me she was smart enough to find you, savvy enough to catch you, ballsy enough to try and hold you captive in the first place, and strong enough to force you to behave?! So why is she dead?”

She smiled large and nodded as if she were talking to a student who just said something right. I started thinking. I didn’t know much about Blackstar, but I knew plenty about Tema. What could they have in common?

Tema and Blackstar both wanted power. That had to be why Blackstar had taken the kids. What was he trying to summon, another minor god? Why take two if Tema only needed one? Is that one of the things that would destroy me to know?

“What went wrong with Tema’s ritual to capture you?” I flashed back to that time but it seemed muted somehow. There wasn’t the same visceral emotion attached. Her last scream seemed distant, like it was miles away.

“That is a good question,” Arta said, “but there is a better one.”

“What do I know about Blackstar?” I asked, uncertain. Didn’t get a nod for that. She just scoffed.

“Certainly not. Now you’re not even trying.” I sat and thought for a moment. I realized I’d been trapped in my head figuratively and not just literally. Thinking about Tema always did that. The promise of answers and an outlet for my anger. I shook my head to clear it and started paying attention.

She sipped her tea again, and I realized the cups weren’t getting any emptier. She was sitting up straight and most of her bruises were gone now. I shuddered to think of what would be happening to me if she were not here, but she was here—that had to be interfering.

Gods couldn’t technically interfere in this universe, or any universe from what I gathered. However, since they existed outside any form of causality, any move they could make had already been made. It was always confusing thinking about systems that didn’t include time.

I was sure I knew only a fraction of the rules, but I knew mortals were the wildcard. They could increase or decrease the power of a god through worship, prayer, and focus. Just like giving their energy to an object.

In order to affect things, gods sent their proxies to this universe. Angels, demons, ghosts, fairies and the like. Having the ability to die made them technically mortal, and that meant they could affect anything in the universe they pleased.

That brought up the question as to whether Arta was an actual god stuck in my head or some attendant that Tema had overpowered. If Arta was some form of proxy, then she could interfere at her whim—but then what did she have to gain by lying and saying she wasn’t interfering?

Blackstar, or whoever, is pelting me with spells that she’s eating and she admitted to not telling me some things that I “knew.” She had to be one of the few supernatural creatures able to lie. The only other way this made sense is if the spells wouldn’t affect me or if the things she was keeping from me were things I would never know.

Suddenly I got a sinking feeling. The words tumbled out of my mouth, but I didn’t register speaking. I was watching a train speeding towards me at a million miles per hour, and I was too numb to move.

“How did Tema’s spells affect me?”

She laughed and clapped her hands. The tea cup was back on the plate on the table. It was disconcerting to have everything teleporting everywhere, but that was the least of my worries.

Arta steepled her strong fingers just below a handsome, ageless face, with flawless skin framed by a full head of chin length chestnut hair.

“Excellent.”