Shards of the Mind's Eye

by ~Mightyblue

Sometimes, clarity is a problem. Anyone who tells you that they know the ins and outs of any particular person or situation is almost certainly lying to both you and themselves, anything being true from a certain perspective and everything that goes with it. Now, don't get me wrong. Sometimes a fish is a fish, and sometimes some unfriendly little beastie that goes bump in the night just wants to rip your face off.
For most people, that's a very rare occurrence, or at least very rarely noticed, due to old laws and traditions along with the new ones. However, when you're a mage and your job is to 'mediate' between the normal and the not-so-normal, it becomes something more than an academic question and a fervent wish not to get involved. Even for an apprentice, like me.
As I said, sometimes clarity is a problem, or put another way, perception is the problem. It's also particularly troubling when your own talents as a mage run in that direction, and when you can't precisely control them. Such is me and my Dragon's Eye, Glam Sight or any of a dozen other names for my gift and curse of having really good wizardly eyesight.
For a long time I'd ignored my "gifts," much like most of America likes to do, and the American scientific and medical communities in particular. It left me wondering why my master and I were pulling into the parking lot of one, especially considering my hard won assent to help her on a job. I eyed the concrete and glass edifice, which proudly and raggedly proclaimed the building the Herbertson Long-Term Care Facility. The red plastic lettering was faded and starting to crack and break in a few places. I was starting to have as dim a view for this place like I did for the recent onrush of "reality" television, and the biting January cold wasn't enhancing my opinion much.
"Would you like to take a picture? It might last longer," said Phyllia, my master and owner of the fine Jeep we sat in, the salt coating on the frame hiding the numerous dents and dings on it and the oft-repaired upholstery aside.
Our profession wasn't easy on the equipment and I wasn't looking forward to the inevitable nightmare of my car insurance premium as a full-fledged mage.
So I sighed, biting back a predictable riposte and stepped outside into the snowy Minnesota winter with a certain amount of reluctance and applied elbow grease to the Jeep's stubborn door. I was fairly sure the door didn't need that much of my help to open to the winter wonderland outside, but what can I say? I'm a gentleman.
"If you're done abusing my car, perhaps we could get a move on?"
"As you say, oh wise one. May I also suggest that your next ride take the shape of a tank?"
"It's not that bad Auris," she said with a scowl that threatened to topple her cosmetic glasses (long story behind that one) and her image as a strikingly beautiful woman with a kind and generous personality to match.  Which was a complete and utter lie of course, but I won't go into that because I'm a gentleman. Sometimes, anyway.
She was still scowling at me as we walked through the doors to the facility together, and the rush of warm clinic air made me flinch a little, forcing me to sieve some of my own unruly black hair out of my eyes, and to shove my not-so-cosmetic glasses back up my nose. That mere instant of touch coupled with the faint astringent scent of the clinic coming in over the biting scent of old man winter outside threatened to drag out some old, painful, and painfully buried memories of my deceased grandfather. Memories involving a gentle, kind, and loving old man who'd made a gift out of a pair of glasses now riding on my nose and the knowledge that he'd insured my continued sanity until now.
There were other, more recent memories too, of a man just past his early prime carrying a sword made out of black steel and with runes engraved up and down its length. This guy also happened to be my grandfather's killer, at least according to Phyllia and a few other people.
A light touch on my arm dragged me out of my reverie, and I looked over to see Phyllia gazing at me with concern and a few nurses with guarded and fearful looks. A vague thought about their care and professionalism floated through my mind as I fought to unclench my suddenly and painfully clenched fists.
"You okay," Phyllia asked gently and quietly.
"Yeah," I mumbled back as I tried not to notice the red marks on my hands. "Just some old memories. Painful ones."
Whoo yeah, master of the witty and disarming remark am I. I took in the pastel blue and eggshell paint scheme and the very modern and well kept interior of the clinic, studiously ignoring my master and the tender way she grasped my right hand with both of her warm and calloused hands.
Of course, now I needed to tell my lower half to calm down and that little part of our brains that tells us to go be fruitful and multiply whenever we feel that special kind of sadness that comes from the loss of something or someone important. I cursed myself under my breath until I was mostly calm and reasonably sure that I wasn't blushing anymore, and had gathered up the remains of my manly pride.
To be human is to feel, and I can't help but to think that most people who call mages monsters or inhuman choose not to notice that what makes us human or inhuman isn't whether or not we can throw around vast amounts of energy, but rather if we feel or not. Magic is little more than that, but mages are far more than merely magic-users.
With that thought, I'd managed to more or less collect myself, and so I followed my master through the near maze of the facility, she apparently having gotten directions from the desk nurse while I was doing my best impression of going postal.
"So," I asked as we walked down and a blue-and-cream hallway, filled with the quiet bustle of nurses at work and the occasional ambulatory or wheeled patient, "do you mind explaining why we're here? You said something about a girl who won't wake up in the Jeep, but you didn't go into details."
She shrugged as we walked in that irritatingly carefree manner of hers, and I had the sneaking suspicion that she knew as much about this job as I did.
"This one was a referral from an old client of mine. He said he'd give me what details he could when we arrived, but we still need to talk to the girl's mother for the whole story."
I mulled that over for a moment as we passed through a T-intersection, not entirely surprised at my master's rather carefree business practices which formed an odd foil against her methodical and dedicated teaching methods. I mentally shrugged, knowing better than to say anything and that I'd learn fast from the experience, if not easily.
We reached a particular room and accompanying name plate, also accompanied by a man in his early-middle age in a conservatively cut navy suit and with a full head of silver hair. He carried a refined and cool air that made me think of your classical shark in a lawyer's skin, but a nagging feeling and the faintest itch behind my eyes made me wonder if that was all he was.
"Ms. Raine." The older man's greeting was professional and perfunctory, yet there was also an underlying hint of warmth in his voice as well. Okay, so maybe there was something more to him than my earlier assumption.
"As always, it's a pleasure Director Roberts." Phyllia waved a hand in my direction, and I stretched out my hand to Roberts as I piped up with my own introduction.
"Auris Horn. Apprentice magician, musician and general jack of all trades."
"Frederick Roberts, M.D." His more massive claw enveloped my right hand in a firm but not crushing grip.
"So you're the new apprentice? I've heard mostly good things about you."
I quirked an eyebrow at his comment, though I was more surprised that Phyllia was on the good side of anyone in the sciences or medicine.  Nearly two centuries of animosity, bad blood, and diametrically opposed origins didn't exactly disappear overnight. It didn't matter that magic still had to work with physics, or that healing magic was extremely rare and hard to master.
"So, your phone call said that you, or the client I suppose, wanted us to wake up some sleeping girl?"
Roberts nodded with a look at the nameplate on the door. Both Phyllia and I followed his eyes, and I had to wonder at the name.
Natsuki Shindo. A Japanese name if I remembered right. While Japan had a fairly substantial cultural and economic network with the rest of the world, they also tended not to travel around much, especially to cities in the middle of America. So, the question was--
"Why is a Japanese girl comatose in a Midwestern American care facility? That's more than a little unusual, isn't it?"
He answered my question with an imperceptible shrug. "As I understand it, the girl and her mother were traveling to a business convention in New York from Japan, and they had a layover here."
Phyllia looked over at me with the faintest bit of hesitation, and I nodded back knowing what she hadn't asked. Or at least I thought I did. I'd only known for a little over two months, but despite all of the scrapes and close calls we'd been through, she was still largely a mystery.
"Is there anything else that we should know before we go in?"
Roberts' eyes unfocused for a moment before he answered. "Well, she had a Buddhist monk and a Protestant exorcist check on her daughter, but they didn't seem to do anything visible. Her life signs have also been slowly decreasing, and even if we put her on life support I doubt we can keep her alive."
A heavy silence hung in the air for a moment, and the black plastic plaque bearing the Shindo girl's name on it took on a weight of its own. In addition to my gentlemanly nature and my various talents, I'm also a horrible sap for stories like this, and saving families. Memories of a kind old man in a rosewood box were enough justification for that.
"We ready?"
I managed to force a small smile on my face as I nodded, shoving those memories back into their usual spot. Roberts nodded as well and knocked on the door briefly before opening the door.
"Mrs. Shindo? The mages I told you about are here."
"Mages? I thought there was only one?" An unfamiliar woman's voice echoed faintly out into the hallway where Phyllia and I were standing. For all that English had to be her second language at least she still spoke it with a barely noticeable accent and an air of refinement.
"She has brought her apprentice along as well. May we enter?"
A faint sound that I took to be assent echoed from the room, and Roberts gave us a brief look before entering the room, Phyllia a step behind him, and me pulling third. Oh, the joys of being at the bottom of the totem pole. The inside of the room was decorated as the rest of the facility was, although a small cot and a number of clothes and other personal belongings were more or less tidily stacked in the far corner of the room.
The main attraction had to be the two Shindo women. The elder woman, the mother I supposed, had long black hair tied back in an intricate design of braids and ties, and while the fine lines of early middle age had set in on her face it still held an expressive and mature beauty. The daughter looked like she was well on the way to following her mother's path as well, although her pale and withdrawn face robbed her of much her beauty. For a moment I thought I saw a hint of something black hovering closely over her bedridden figure, but an intense itching feeling started behind my eyes, and I had to blink and look away. A yawning hole opened up in my gut, and I could instinctively tell that something was very wrong.
Woo, that wasn't good, not at all. Especially when you wear a pair of glasses designed to suppress your ability to peel back the layers of reality and see the true nature of things. That's how Phyllia described my Dragon's Eye anyway, and considering the things I saw with my glasses off didn’t really fade from my memory I was inclined to believe her explanation.
Still, furiously itching eye sockets and my troubled past or no, I was having trouble motivating myself for this. Chock it up to the strange clients or performance anxiety, but I was nervous about this and my long held distrust of magic hadn't faded entirely either. Damsels in distress only went so far.
The others were starting their introductions, so I sucked it up and went along with it.
"...this is-"
"Magus Phyllia Raine and my apprentice:"
I caught Phyllia's cue perfectly and tried to follow it professionally.
"Auris Horn."
Mrs. Shindo acknowledged the introductions solemnly and precisely with an imperial nod, but I could see the fatigue and the strain eating away at her distant composure. I got the feeling that playing poker against her would be a bad idea, at least for my pocketbook. Despite our age gap she was still a very beautiful woman.
"Now, what can the two of you do that the others I have hired could not?"
Phyllia shrugged ever so minutely, the two women trading icily calm gazes for a long moment.
"I cannot say whether or not we could do anything until we take a look at your daughter Mrs. Shindo. It would be unprofessional of me to suggest otherwise."
The barest hint of a smile cracked the older woman's face and a bit of the tension left the room as the two women exchanged nods.
"If you would, Auris."
"I, uh, what?"
To be fair, I'd been surprised by her sudden referral to me, but it was still a pretty unprofessional response from a guy who desperately wanted to be 'professional.' Sigh.
Phyllia did me the grand favor of inclining her head towards the comatose girl by a fraction of a degree. Thanks boss, and thank you for sticking me with the nasty end of the job. The reasonable half of my brain was reminding me that I'd been brought along to do more than be window-dressing and act like an idiot. Stupid logic.
So I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, steeling myself to take off my glasses and inscribe an undoubtedly horrifying scene eternally into my memory. I very professionally refrained from muttering several choice sayings involving bodily functions and very carefully took off my glasses and placed them on a nearby piece of furniture with a bit of fumbling. I then deliberately pointed myself away from the bed and its occupant and cracked open my eyes, since I had other questions beyond the girl's and I didn't exactly want the first thing I saw with my Dragon's Eye to be a mind-ravening horror. I was rather fond of my lunch and sanity after all.
The room itself didn't look markedly different, except that certain parts were almost blindingly clear, yet other patches had that sort of fuzzy look that TVs get when you overlay two images over each other. I looked at Phyllia first, trying to take refuge in the strength and reassurance that always emanated from her when I looked at her through the Eye. Sometimes clarity is a problem, but it wasn't one yet.
Anyway, she looked as she always did, a figure with long-brown and braided hair and an expressive face, if a bit too angular to be truly called beautiful. It didn't matter though, since her physical beauty barely held a candle to her inner beauty which shone through her pitiful shell with a golden radiance. And that description doesn't even come close to what I 'saw,' words failing to convey the depth and power of what I perceived.
That's true for the bad stuff as well, and there's just as much of that out there as there is good. When those memories are indelibly engraved into your mind it can be very damaging for any mind, especially a child's, to be continuously bombarded like that. So yeah, it generally wasn't the greatest thing ever when most of what you 'see' was the nasty stuff.
Shifting my focus around the room and its occupants, I looked at Roberts next, the older man clad in old medieval armor and a nimbus of silvery light. The image screamed that he was a protector or guardian, probably of the people who lived within these walls. It reaffirmed my earlier suspicions about the man, and that image of the knight clad in his slightly worn and damaged armor instilled a great measure of respect within me.
That image of Roberts as a knight made what I saw of the Shindo ladies all the harder to take. Where Mrs. Shindo had sat there was a now a beautiful woman clad in some sort of robes died in an excruciating array of colors and patterns. I could only guess that she made clothes, and beautiful ones at that. And though there was a silvery glow around her much like Roberts had, the difference was the black mist that hovered around the edges of her aura and the sense of sickness and utter wrongness that accompanied it. It was almost impossible to put exactly the sensations I got from that contamination into words beyond 'sick' and 'wrong' as I put it earlier. I also got the idea that whatever it was, it was but a small fragment of whatever was affecting the girl. I already felt ill from merely looking at the black mist surrounding, but not touching, Mrs. Shindo's aura.
Some thought tickled the back of my brain at that observation, and I knew that there had to be something magical there that separated mother and daughter. It meant that I had to look at the helpless girl lying in her hospital bed, meant that whatever I'd learn about this case would cost me something, something in the form of the image of an ashen-faced and kindly old man lying in a rosewood box. If I looked at her it would take away the last shred of my former life and my last change to throw away my magic and my vengeance, because it would strip away eighteen years of insisting that world of wizards and magic was separate from the 'normal' world and a sense of uninvolvement, tattered as they already were by the things I had gone through and the things I'd already seen.
I looked. What can I say; I'm a sap for damsels in distress, gentleman and idiot that I am. If I concentrated hard enough, and that one was new to me, I could see the younger Shindo, Natsuki, was clutching a long bow in her hands and the part of her body that poked out from the coverlet were clad in some sort o archery uniform. The reason why I had to even try to see Natsuki with the Dragon's Eye was an undulating black mass that sat on her chest and covered the rest of her with fine black tendrils radiating out from the central mass.
It looked alien and utterly not right as the damned thing pulsed and fed on her aura, and it very nearly made physically ill to just look at it. I hesitated for a moment, afraid of the possibility that I might be able to touch that thing, but that image of my grandfather flashed through my mind again, and I stepped over and placed my hand gingerly on Natsuki's chest. My hand sank through that black mass, my hand telling me nothing besides the some warmth of the coverlet and the girl beneath it, even as my Sight screamed that I was putting my hand through the most vile and evil thing I'd ever run into.
I managed not to jerk my hand and my body away from the bed like I'd stuck them into a fire, and by the same token I screwed my eyes shut and tried to melt into the wall. Hooyah, I'm professional alright. Chances were this little gem of an experience was going to be making repeat appearances in my nightmares.
With that joyous thought and a mounting migraine aside, the warmth that spread from Phyllia's hand as she laid it on my shoulder felt like mannah from heaven. Even better was the feeling of cold metal as she placed my glasses onto my face.
"Are you alright?" Gentle concern and more than a bit of compassion filled her voice. No doubt she'd experienced something like this in her own earlier career.
"I'm fine," I lied. I'm cool like that.
Feeling a bit more in control of myself, I opened up my eyes and pushed off the wall. I tried to suppress my knees' fervent desire to start quivering like Jello, which would have been entirely uncool and unprofessional. I succeeded, mostly, but my mental image of myself as a grand mage was already in tatters. Stupid pride.
I looked over at Mrs. Shindo, my gaze sweeping past Roberts as it went, and the slightest tightening of the corners of his eyes betrayed his mask of composure. I couldn't get a read on the older Shindo, as her face was expressionless. Her face would have been the envy of any politician, but there had to be something beneath the mask mirroring the fierce pride and concern I'd seen through the Sight.
"Mrs. Shindo, are there any tales of curses or creatures assaulting your family?"
The slightest hint of a smile played out across her face, and I hoped that whatever she was smiling about would be pleasant for me. Fat chance of that happening, but I could hope anyway. I exchanged a glance with Phyllia, which did little but tell me that I was mostly on my own for this one. Stupid masters and their poker faces.
"And what gives you that idea that is so, sir mage?"
Okay, odd title, but then she was from a country where magic and magic-users were a part of everyday life. Still, she was playing coy, and given what I'd just experienced I wasn't exactly in the mood for it.
"The mind-ravening horror I saw feasting on your daughter for one. Two, the faintest hint of that same horror around you."
Phyllia didn't even bat an eyebrow, which probably meant that she'd looked on her own with her normal wizard's Sight or that she had a much better poker face than me. Roberts merely raised an eyebrow, normal guy that he was. Mrs. Shindo looked shaken and a little pale, but she was still soldiering on, despite me poking her in a vast mental wound. That's me, Mr. Sensitive. I think I need to stop watching all those cop and lawyer shows.
"You two are indeed mages then. I had hoped, but after the traditional exorcists and failed I was skeptical, especially in this country."
I shook my head, mostly at the idea of the exorcists after having seen what was attached to the girl. It wouldn't have ended well if they had been successful. Both Phyllia and Mrs. Shindo caught the gesture, and they gave me a piercing look, if for entirely different reasons. I really need to work on my poker face, or at least stop being so obvious.
"Care to explain apprentice, before the client gets angry?"
The impish smile on her face as she said that was definitely mean, as was her continual hanging me out to dry. Ah well, it wasn't like I had a lot of my pride left at this point anyway. Mrs. Shindo inclined her head ever so slightly and with an expression that made me think she wanted to strangle someone. Probably me.
"Well, even if the exorcists had succeeded, it probably would have destroyed your daughter's mind or driven her insane, probably."
The older woman blinked at me in what I saw as her asking "Why?"
"You see, the demon is actually attached to her mind and soul instead of just riding on top of both like what usually happens. If the latter happened all your daughter would need is some counseling after the exorcists were done, and that would be mostly for the stress associated with having something like that in control of your body."
I took a moment to steady myself and to let the last part sink in. The black writhing thing popped up from its too vivid memory again, and I had to struggle to keep myself from gagging.
"It is possible to save your daughter Mrs. Shindo, but it could be extremely dangerous for anyone who tries to help her and for Natsuki herself. She may not even be the same person once she wakes up again."
The fixed and harsh cast to her face told me all I need to know about what she wanted. What mother wouldn't want to save her child? She looked me carefully in the eyes, and I had to admire the steel in this lady. The fact that she cared much about her daughter was enough by itself to convince me to help, prostrate figure in the bed between us aside. Oh yeah, I'm a sap, alright. Damned if I'd ever admit to it though.
"So you can help Natsuki? You can save her from this creature?"
"Of course he can. We will need to know as much about this situation and anything related to it as possible however."
Phyllia beat me to the punch, which was rather irritating. It was just like her though, she had some odd job ethics which I privately and silently attributed to her being ever so slightly eccentric. Not that I'd ever say so, of course. I rather enjoyed breathing. The two women exchanged nods while the slightest sinking feeling went through me at the "he." That didn't sound good; especially given my past history with mind magic and I shuddered a little from feeling the edges of those memories.
"Well, Natsuki and I were on our way to at trade show in New York, since she had wanted to spend some time with me. She had fallen asleep on the flight overseas to Minneapolis, and would not wake up for anything. And so here we are."
I frowned. Given what I had with the Sight earlier, Mrs. Shindo should have been laid out alongside her daughter. This meant that there was some other magic afoot here, and it had to be fairly major-league to constantly hold off whatever was eating the girl. All in all, it translated into very 'not good.'
"Going back to my earlier question, are there any sorts of family legends that might be relevant?"
She nodded before answering, "Yes, there is a legend about a mage who laid a curse upon our family for defying him. The curse was that a demon would devour the minds and souls of any family member who went outside our ancestral home. In turn, another mage taught the family the secret towards making charms to ward off the demon."
She held out a tiny bag that hung from her wrist, and the sudden flash of pain behind my eyes convinced me of some powerful and nasty magic behind the charm. The protective spell would need to work on the same basis as the curse, and if the curse functioned through blood and kin ties, then...
I swallowed reflexively, trying to force my breakfast back into the hard lump of my stomach. This job was looking worse by the moment, and the skeletons from the Shindo family closet weren't making it prettier either.
"Those charms are made from the blood of family members, or more accurately, their lifeblood, aren't they."
I asked it quietly, but I didn't really phrase it as a question either. Valid application of thaumaturgy and defensive magic theory sure, but it was still a nastily twisted one at that. The grimace on Phyllia's face echoed mine, and the faintest frown on Mrs. Shindo's face said that she wasn't completely comfortable with it either.
"I understand the dilemma Mrs. Shindo, and that most mages would not be willing to take on an extra dimensional being like a demon. You must also understand that the magic behind those charms is particularly abhorrent to us since it goes completely against what we believe magic is."
Phyllia was right of course. My grandfather's initial lessons to a very young boy accompanied by her own lessons had taught me that magic was a balancing force, meant to protect and support the life that created and used it. Using concepts of thaumaturgy, of manipulating energy through material objects with magic like the charms did went very against the grain.
"So," I said, mostly to break the uncomfortable silence than anything else, "Do we do this? Taking on a demon is one thing, but to fight this one we'd need to go into the girl's mind."
"We'd need to completely destroy the demon in order to break the curse, but it is possible." Phyllia responded in a distracted voice as she thought about it, and Roberts took advantage of the momentary silence to ask a question.
"Is there any other way to break the curse? Your method sounds exceedingly dangerous, especially since I don't think the 'demon' is just going to die quietly."
Phyllia and I exchanged glances, since we both disapproved of the other possible solution since we were mages, not butchers.
"The only other way," I said deliberately, "would be to kill every person with blood or kin ties to the family. All blood, adopted, and marriage relations would need to be killed in order to end the curse."
Roberts blinked as his mouth dropped open, but Mrs. Shindo didn't look terribly surprised, nor had she during the last five minutes of the conversation. Phyllia merely had a grim expression which was pretty close to my own.
"The only way to end the curse is to eliminate one of the two parts, the object and the curse's effect itself. The charms are only a stopgap solution, and obviously going on a killing spree isn't an option."
We all stared at each for a moment after that until Mrs. Shindo spoke up. "Do it. Even if you cannot bring back my daughter as she was, you can still spare the rest of the family from this nightmare.
I looked over at Phyllia, who merely smiled at me and placed a hand on my shoulder again. It gripped me solidly but not painfully.
"Uh, Master?"
She smiled again and my stomach sank.
"You do have more experience than I do with mind magic and mental fights with demons, and you're far more talented than I am with the delicate stuff."
All of that was true, sure, but I lacked her general raw magical power and experience using that power. The slightest tightening of her grip on my shoulder brought my eyes back to hers.
"You said you wanted your chance, right?"
Oh fucking hell, that was most definitely not fair. I sucked it up anyway and nodded an assent that I didn't really feel. Whining about it wasn't going to change anything, and I'd already resolved myself to do something anyway. Still though, this was like sending the village idiot into a bear's den armed with a pointy stick. Phyllia's advice wasn't waiting for my fuming, so I paid attention. For once.
"...the demon's most likely attuned to darkness and negative emotions, so you need to stay positive. You'll be fine, and I'll support you as much as I can from out here."
I blinked, realizing that she'd inserted a joke in the middle there, and I managed a weak smile as I prepped myself for the mind-linking spell. Working magic is generally fairly easy, so long as you know what you're doing. Focus is the key, since you need strong and complete concentration to gather together the energy required for the spell and to will it into the form you want. Different mages have different talents and capacities for the different forms of 'magic,' but the one thing everybody had to have was focus. I had it in spades due to my prior musical career, since any good musician needs to be able to buckle down and focus on his music. Most mages begin their careers by sudden and spontaneous uses of magic, and their greatest challenge was learning the focus involved. For me, it was the opposite since I'd ignored my gift for the better part of two decades after my grandfather's murder.
Anyway, I'm not fully in tune with my gifts, so it's hard for me to control my magic well, or to control my Dragon's Eye. It meant I was doing it the hard way, but since I was already acquainted with the spell and the basics of mental combat, it wouldn't take me long to work up to the spell. I had gone inside Phyllia's mind just after she'd taken me on as an apprentice and rooted out a real nightmare that had attached itself to her after the results of a job she'd just finished.
I sighed, closed my eyes and took off my glasses. While they didn't specifically block my magic, it was a symbol of sorts that affected my focus and how I felt about magic in general. I opened my eye and focused my Sight on Natsuki's prone form as I stepped over to her bed. The writhing black mass was still feasting off the girl's aura, and I steeled myself as I placed a hand on the bit of her chest not covered up and began to cast the spell.
It's sort of hard to describe exactly how it works, but essentially I drew power from my emotions along with the ambient energy in the air, and used my will and focus to force the energy into the 'pattern' of the desired effect, all accompanied by the symbolic incantation I gave the spell. In this case, it was my voice barking out "Brücke," a German word for bridge.
The energy I'd gathered together surged through my hand to Natsuki's chest, and an odd sense of suction yanked my consciousness along behind the spell energy. I awoke to find myself standing in a very familiar prairie, one that greatly resembled the one my grandfather's farm had sat on. Having gone through this before, I reached out with my mind for where I instinctively knew Natsuki's mind was. Another yanking sensation later I was standing in some sort of open-air archery range. The hackles on the back of my neck stood up as I watched the two figures in the courtyard. One was a pretty Japanese teenager in an archery uniform who I assumed was Natsuki, and the other was a middle-aged man in a dilapidated tweed suit. Natsuki was holding a bow in an aiming position at the old man whispered in her ear, radiating a by-now very familiar sense of wrong and sickness. A blizzard of pink petals drifted down to the packed earth floor.
...sakura...
A warm and feminine voice spoke that ever so quietly and longingly that it nearly brought a tear to my eye. I marshaled myself and pushed away that calming voice and the swirling petals, not falling for the demon's trick. There wasn't much of a chance that Natsuki was still in charge here in her own mind.
"That it demon? I thought millennia-old devourers of hearts and souls had more bite than that?"
I tried to inject as much bravado and positive thinking into that as possible, keeping my master's brilliant advice in mind.
"Most of our meals aren't stubborn young bucks stupid enough to ignore the offer of a quiet death either."
The demon in his rumpled and dilapidated suit barely even turned to face me as he spoke, and he told me off in a complete deadpan. Damn, out one-linered by a beastie who probably still spoke in mostly thees and thous. I wasn't fulfilling the role of plucky young hero well, but maybe I could hit the stupid brawny guy throwing his weight around role. Weight in the form of magical asskicking, of course.
My glorious plan didn't have a chance to come to fruition as the demon wearing the form of a shopworn teacher flung out tendrils of twisting black energy that I barely managed to block by channeling the force I'd gathered for an attack into a translucent half-sphere of defensive energy with a panicked "Schild!"
I shifted the shield around to block the varying angles of Mr. Thou's tentacle strikes through brute will and desperation, the effort involved in constantly maintaining the spell tiring me out by the second.
"Is that it young buck? I had high hopes that you would provide a bit of sport as I finish up the appetizer and moved on to the main course."
Oh. Gulp. The sinking feeling that I'd played right into Mr. Thou's plans was proving a nice companion to the exhaustion I was already feeling, and even better was the realization that I was next on his plate.
"Well Mr. Thou, I'm not your dinner yet, and I will save her, preferably over whatever charred bits of you are left!"
Mr. Thou smiled with an alien cast to his black eyes and snapped his fingers. A knife of repugnant black energy sliced through tattered defenses and into my mind. The pain simply overwhelmed me, throwing me to the ground without a whimper. I was still conscious through some cruel miracle, but the pain was robbing me of my ability to make pithy remarks. Joy.
"I'm tempted to just eat you now for your tiresome bravado and childish remarks. In any case, how can you hope to save who cannot be saved when you yourself need to be saved?"
Blackness engulfed me, and the petal-strewn yard spiraled away. What happened next was not pretty. Pain is something that we're all used to, to one degree or another. Having your mind torn apart and various important bits of your life made a made a cruel mockery of is something else entirely. The demon liked to keep replaying a recurring nightmare of mind where I stood helplessly at my grandfather's farm and watched as the man who'd purportedly murdered him cut down Phyllia and my grandfather over and over again. They smiled at me with faces full of love even as the murderer's black blade dripped with their blood.
I cried and screamed for an eternity under Mr. Thou's careful attentions, trapped within the ruins of my own mind even after he eventually left me alone. I just "hung" there, for a lack of a better term, in the glittering fragments of my memories and self.
"Are you quite done with the self-pity bit?"
I looked over to see a man with neatly brushed black hair and brown eyes with green streaks running through the irises. I blinked because I was staring at a better kept version of myself, and judging by the cut his green sweater and khakis combo he also had better fashion sense than I did, all of which was more than a bit irritating.
"Of course I'm better looking and dressed than you. I am your subconscious after all. No inhibitions and all base desires and all that jazz."
He smiled sunnily as he said that, which made it more irritating and I thought his attitude wasn't exactly apropos for the situation at hand anyway. The bastard actually waggled a finger at me as we floated there, and I felt the sudden urge to strangle my annoying alter-ego.
"Now now, better to restrain your suicidal impulses chief. Wouldn't do to go and kill your subconscious, right?"
I grumbled and tried to think of calming things like kittens and spending a week in a secluded condo with a Brazilian supermodel just so I wouldn't follow through on my earlier impulse. He grinned as the thought went through my mind, and the visions of kittens running around with beautiful women in bikinis were threatening to fall apart.
"That's the ticket boss, and while we're on the topic of getting your ticket punched, have you thought about Phyllia at all? From what I've seen, she might be interested--"
"Shut. Up. Now." My subconscious trailed off as I glared at him, and I half expected him to start whistling nervously, but he snorted as soon as I thought of that.
"I could do that m'lord, but I think you're ready to listen to me now that you're done moping about getting your ass kicked."
He held his hand up to stop me before I wrung his neck, and a fragment of something Phyllia had said earlier popped into my head, something about staying positive. I stepped back with a grumble, and waited for him to explain himself before I killed him.
"First off, has this little experience settled your doubts about your magic yet?" He snapped his fingers before I could answer, and a plain looking sword forged out of grey metal appeared between us. We exchanged looks, and I grasped the hilt of the blade. A bomb of memories and emotions went off in my head, the entirety of my experiences with magic sweeping through me with all the triumphs and failures, happiness and pain surging into the cracks in my heart and mind. It didn't "fix" things per se, but it truly reclaimed my magic and my full faith in it, lost since I had looked at the cold body of my grandfather, once a mage. It wouldn't really repair the damage, but it'd do until I had time to really sort things out upstairs.
My double grinned at me, and I grinned right back this time as we knocked knuckles. "You got it maestro. Keep positive and remember the bastard is a creature of darkness. Obfuscation, misdirection and all that jazz."
I nodded, confident, really and truly confident this time. "Till next time I guess?"
He winced. "That would mean you went insane again El Capitan. I'm always around though. Maybe next time you'll listen to me! Adios, meus!"
He faded away in a flash of sparkly lights, and I had to snort at his exit. I stared down at the sword I was still clutching more or less unconsciously, its point still buried in the virtual turf of my mind. I ripped the symbol of my magic from the ground, bits of dirt and grass falling to the ground and tossed about by the gentle wind. In an odd way, watching the grass drifting through the air felt like watching those pink sakura petals do the same in Natsuki's mind. The bridge between our minds appeared again invisible as it was, and I had to grin. It was payback time.
A mere push of will was all I needed to find myself in that archery range again, Natsuki still in the same position as before but looking more haggard and withdrawn than before. Mr. Thou retained his dilapidated suit and predatory expression, and he looked a bit healthier than before as well.
I willed my magic and my Dragon's Eye to awaken, and the image of Mr. Thou faded away to reveal a shifting black mass and winding tentacles, most of which were wrapped around Natsuki, their size and color pulsing as they fed off her. I began to gather my will and magic together, hoping that my big mouth would buy me the seconds required.
"He Mr. Thou! Look it's your favorite stubborn young buck, back for round two!"
Okay, I know that was corny, but judging from Mr. Thou's stomach roiling flinch and subsequent slithering around Natsuki to get at me, I'd gotten his attention. The fraction of a second it took to do so was all I needed. I cried out "Schlag" as my will and magic thundered down my sword, erupting from the tip in a mass of green and gold energy, feathered with flames of the same colors. The demon almost instantly wove as shielding wall out of tentacles, but it was like trying to catch a cannonball with a baseball mitt, and the force of my magic made a sound somewhere between a squish and a thud as it slammed into the demon, making an extraordinarily loud boom as it carried the demon along and buried it in the brick and plaster covered wall of the range.
"I just can't get no respect 'round here," I crowed even as I gathered the last remains of my magic and all of the positive feelings and memories into a final magical effort. I was exhausted from everything, and Natsuki had fallen over from the demon's grip on her even as it had gone sailing into the wall. The demon, formerly one Mr. Thou, was already starting to recover, but I had one final card, powered by the last bit at the bottom of the box. In order to produce Light, capital and all, you need positive thinking and emotions, and I had hope in spades and little else.
Time seemed to blur and still as the demon and I rushed together, all of my hope and remaining will gathered together to call forth light, as much Light as I could muster. The gap between us narrowed, our gathered energies disturbing the patterns of the falling petals. I set my sword against my shoulder in a thrusting position, and a fraction of a moment before we collided I called out "Erleuchten," making my will and hope filling the blade transform into pure and blinding light.
The demon cried out as the elemental light seared the very essence of its being, even as I slammed my still painfully blazing sword into the heart of the thing, the pseudo-metal of the blade meeting little resistance as it slid in, the light burning from it tearing apart the demon from the inside. It let out a final and chillingly hollow cry before it crumbled into nothingness, the exposure to the light annihilating it completely. I relaxed my will and as the light died from the sword I felt the demon and the curse fade completely away.
I looked over at Natsuki's fallen form and watched her for a long moment as she started to sleep until I was sure that she would be fine. Eventually, anyway. I felt like I'd died several times and then been run over by a bus for good measure myself. I was so exhausted from the battle that I could barely pull together the will and focus to end the spell, but muttering the phrase for the mind link spell again brought an almost orgasmic sense of relief as the blackness rushed in again.
The first thing that hit me was all of the tension leaving my body, and my body falling to the ground buried under a mountain of cramps.
"Ow." Heroic, I know.
Someone gently lifted me up slightly and placed me up against the wall, although I couldn't tell who since the light hurt my eyes from them being shut since I'd linked minds. My body didn't even complain all that much about being moved either, which was nice.
"Auris, are you okay?" Concern and relief fought each other in Phyllia's voice, and I felt oddly touched that she, well, cared. It was entirely possible that my recent experiences had affected me somewhat, but I was pretty sure the wetness on my eyes was tears of pain, and not something entirely unprofessional and extremely unmanly to boot. I grinned slightly, finally, as my exhaustion crept up on me.
"I'm fine boss, and the girl is too. Need to rest a bit though."
I didn't hear her response, as I was already sinking fast into a far more comforting blackness this time.