Ideworld Chronicles: The Art Mage

Act 3, Chapter 11: When the blood cools down

Day in the story: 1st January (Thursday), around 4 a.m.“I am getting tired,” Peaches said with a raspy voice, exhausted from shouting over the loud music. We were dancing and having fun for a few hours straight already, and the non-magical people were getting weary. I was just eating a burger and some fries I had bought at the nearby food stand when she approached and dropped onto one of the plastic chairs.

“You danced like you were possessed by something, girl. There is no reason for you not to be completely done for tonight.”

“Mhm. You look like you just started. Where do you find the energy for that?” she asked, and I raised the hamburger I was eating like a trophy.

“Calories. Many calories.”

“I hoped for some different answer. I am trying to be conscious about my eating habits. It’s pretty unfair that you can eat that and look like that.” That would be true if I wasn’t constantly moving like a madman. But I wasn’t going to tell her that.

“Life is unfair, Peaches. You have a big brain and a body to match. I have a small brain, and the rest followed.”

“Very funny, Lex,” she said and sighed. “Are you planning to do anything else tonight, or are you hitting the mansion of that old lady?”

“I wanted to take a walk by the river, just to see the city some more.”

“That sounds exhausting, but at the same time more fun than more dancing or dropping into bed. May I join?”

“Sure,” I replied as I brought myself into a standing position. It felt nice to sit for a while, but exchanging one pleasant experience for another was a good trade. “A fry?” I asked, extending it toward her.

“I just told you I am trying to be conscious. Why are you tempting me?”

“You still have to eat something, and you burned a lot of calories tonight.”

“You are a bad influence,” she said as she joined me in my walk toward the bridge out of the plaza.

“Yes. Unfortunately, that is very true.” She didn’t take the fry and instead focused her gaze on the city, which was slowly coming to terms with the celebrations coming to an end. People were wandering the streets, like us—some of them clearly drunk, others still in full control of their bodies, singing something happily. We just passed a pair that was kissing in a way that would put everyone I know to shame.

“I can’t figure you out,” she said after a few minutes, soon after a speeding police car with its lights on passed us. “You have this very strange personality.”

“Oh, do I?” I asked, laughing.

“Yes. You can be thoughtful and vulgar, focused and daydreaming, standing in the back and watching, just to marvel in the center of attention if you wish it so. That’s… not normal.”

“Aren’t we all an amalgam of contradictions? It all boils down to proper time and place.”

“No, we definitely aren’t all that. I began to think about it more when I heard that fortune teller tell you that you have no future set.”

“You believe in that kind of stuff?”

“No, I don’t. Usually.”

“Isn’t that a contradiction in you as well, then?”

“Eh.” She exhaled. “It could be. But I am not saying that I believe in the supernatural now. It just got me thinking that you are the only person I know with so many opposing traits, so if—and I will repeat it, if—this woman’s power were true, then maybe that’s why she could not see clearly what is in store for you.”

“It’s a façade, Peaches. I am not that complicated as you are portraying me to be. I just learned how to appear so over the years. I choose to be someone when I am in a certain situation, but deep down I am a selfish person. That’s the only thing really true about me.” I said, and my voice began a descent into sadness as I spoke and realized that it was indeed a distilled me that I was presenting to her.

“Can you explain this to me?” Peaches asked. “It’s hard to understand what you mean.”

“I am vulgar because in most situations it allows me to get my point across quicker and more boldly. I am thoughtful only about the people that mean something to me. Normally, I don’t really care much about other people—only my needs are important to me. I am always focused. The daydreaming part is me being focused on some concept I find interesting, so my attention shifts from the physical to something not so easily seen, but it’s still there. It has to be. I was taught early that if I am not focused, it will end badly for me. And what did you say at the end?” I asked as I recollected my thoughts. My additional brain rushed in to help me out. “Oh yes. Standing in the back and attention-seeking. They are one and the same, and those boil down to control. When I don’t need to be seen, I much prefer to stay far away from the spotlight—it makes observing, so staying focused, easier. But if someone notices me, I take the center of the stage, because it shifts the balance from the one that noticed me to me—I am back at it, dictating how it will all play out. I am choosing to pull the strings instead of being pulled.”

I told her and looked her in the eyes. They were open and gleamed in the yellow light of the street. Her skin was looking marvelously warm as she returned the gaze. “So as you can see, it’s all about me. Me being focused and in control. Me being selfish. Those are not contradictions that you see, but different expressions of the same underlying cause.”

“I find it interesting that you are choosing to be something. I am the same way—I have it very difficult to understand what makes people tick. That’s why I was just asking you about the traits I find opposing, as it didn’t make sense to me. I have to learn what’s proper and what’s not and choose to behave a certain way. I wish it came to me more naturally, so it wasn’t so tiring all the time.”

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“Emotions are tricky things. But I don’t think that you are worse off relying more on thought and patterns than on them.”

“I know no other way,” she replied as we moved closer to the wall that separated us from the Seine.

We stopped and looked back onto the Eiffel Tower in the distance, admiring how well that monument looked on the Paris skyline. It was so much different from New York, where everything was tall; here, that one thing really stood out and appeared breathtaking.

It was then that a man approached us, coming from a shadowed back alley straight toward us. He wore a long black coat and a scarf. His shoes were perfectly shined, and his trousers were immaculately tailored. Not a typical thug, but his gait suggested predation. We were his target.

I turned to see him with my own biological eyes for a change. His black, slicked-back, shiny hair contrasted with his rather pale skin. He was surprised to see me take notice of him, and only then did I realize that he had made no sound in his approach. I wouldn’t have known if not for my fingernails.

“Mesdames, la nuit parisienne n’est pas toujours clémente envers celles qui s’y aventurent seules. Accordez-moi l’honneur de vous soulager de ce qui vous pèse ; tout en sera plus léger. Je vous le promets,” he said in a melodious voice as he smiled openly toward me. It made Peaches turn around and step back a bit.

“We don’t speak French,” I said, waiting for his reaction.

His smile widened, which wasn’t a good sign. If he wanted something from us—something that we would normally never give away willingly—then us being non-native made it easier for him to cover his tracks.

“No shame in that. French is not the language of the world; that it certainly is not. It could have been, but the Englishmen proved to be more resourceful in their subjugation of a common mind.”

“Excuse me, but we don’t know you, and we are certainly not in the mood for linguistic topics at four in the morning.”

“Such is life. A very feeble thing it is. It is I who should extend apologies. I didn’t introduce myself, which is improper. My name is—”

“I might not have been clear enough. We. Don’t. Care,” I replied, watching his reaction as I grabbed Peaches’ hand, just in case we needed to disappear.

“Manners, manners. Is it too much to ask for?”

“Let’s get going,” I said to Peaches and tried to drag her away.

But the moment I said that, the man moved in a strangely jagged and broken way, closing the distance as if he were being puppeted by invisible strings. He stopped right in front of my face and spoke, looking directly into my eyes, as his pupils enlarged to cover his entire eyes in blackness.

“You will stay.” I felt the intrusion of an Authority grounding me in place. I instinctively activated the connection between me and my Domain through my tattoo, but his Authority won out for now, disallowing me from leaving. Peaches thrashed her arm, trying to unlatch my hand from hers. It was then that I realized I couldn’t move in a literal sense as well.

“What did you do to her!?” Peaches shouted when he moved to appear in front of her and used his gaze to mesmerize her as well.

“Both of you will comply with my wishes now, madames. Follow me gently into that good night. This cold air is no good for such warm beings as yourselves,” he said, and my body began moving after him as if I were on the strings myself. I could not speak, nor teleport away. I let my brains do the thinking as we moved in a calm manner toward a possible slaughter.

Horror rose slowly in my own brain, but the two connected to me were still working properly.

He asked me to stay, so his Authority was grounding me—it did not say anything about bringing my stuff in here, though.

I reached into my Domain for help, and the world obeyed.

Get him, Lio!

I sent a thought through Anansi, and as soon as my Lóng materialized in front of me, he corkscrewed through the air and through the man that was leading us.

The man looked down at his chest in surprise as the fox-like draconic snout and two clawed limbs burst out of his body, semi-materializing just long enough to slash his face with the fury of a wild animal. His cheeks were lacerated in an instant, while one of his eyes was torn loose in the attack and thrown to the ground not far from where we stood. And we stood, because he also stopped moving, recoiling after the attack and jumping backward from Lio.

“Malédiction… quelle est cette abomination damnée ?”

Liora didn’t understand him, neither did I, but my little guardian was keen on rearranging his face even further. He jumped higher into the air, and the man followed him with his head while clutching his empty eye socket.

It was then that I noticed there was no blood on him, or on the eye that lay on the cold street. He unbuttoned his coat and reached for a sword that he somehow kept there. And this wasn’t a short wakizashi like the Guild carried. This thing was as long as his arm.

Tracking Lio, who made a wide and quick turn in the air, he pointed the sword at him and turned to always keep him in his vision. I asked Lio to move over the river and he obeyed, and as soon as our assailant turned there, I caught Lio within my aura and resummoned him in front of me.

He jumped onto the pavement and springboarded himself toward the man, planting his horns at the base of his neck while entangling his arm around the shoulder area with his tail. The man flailed helplessly, trying to get Lio away, while my small dragon clawed mercilessly at his back.

It was just a second, but trapped within an unmoving body, it felt like an eternity. The man finally made a move, his body bursting out of his clothes as he turned into what looked like a black cloud or fog, with big red eye inside it. The eye, that had been removed from him, rejoined the main mass, as it too turned into a smoke.

The clothes folded onto the pavement, and the sword hit the ground with a heavy sound.

I caught a glimpse of an invisible shadowlight keeping him together in this form through one of my painted fingers. It was very similar to what happened when the Shattered turned into the swarm of glass, and it too was impossible to notice by a normal eye.

He reestablished his form soon after, free of the damage Liora had done to him, but naked. He rushed for the sword, rolling on his shoulder as he picked it up to slash at Liora. My lóng turned into shadowlight as soon as it happened, but I wasn’t going to risk it and brought him back toward me with the power of connection.

“It’s yours!” the man shouted at me, pointing the sword in my direction. “Tell it to fly away!”

“Fly away.” I responded before my mind even registered what happened. Fortunately for me, my other brains, with the help of Anansi, kept Liora here. This man was controlling me through this geas and his voice, and he turned into black smoke to regenerate.

And he also didn’t have any blood.

A vampire, perhaps?

“It doesn’t listen to you? Answer your lord!” he shouted, as Liora made a quick circle around him, forcing him to follow with his gaze.

“He does.” I answered, while my other brains sent Liora another command to follow. He responded by shining briefly, his scales changing hue into shades of brown, simulating the structure of a tree. Even his arms looked like small branches, ending in pointed tips instead of claws.

And looking like a piece of wood, Liora made another dive at the man who attacked me and Pam.

The vampire slashed his sword horizontally, trying to cut him in half, but Lio was faster—recoiling off an invisible platform he imagined for himself right above the blade and lunging for a piercing attack. He thrust both his arms into the man’s chest. And as Lio was stuck in the white flesh of the man, I sent a simple thought to him:

Become a wooden stake.