The weeks pass, and your army of wickedness sweeps through the countryside, taking crops out of harsh sunlight and moving to panicked and frenzied outskirt villages.
When your generals return, it’s with pitiful news of half-dead farmers, ample bones that could have been used as a force for war or for farming instead, and farming equipment that doubled as ineffective and brittle weapons.
“Not one of them had a sword?” you ask, and Jerry reviews his evil notes with diligence. After a moment, he looks up with a shake of his head.
A wave of disgust hits you. You have been taking weeks, far more than enough time to at least equip the fringe cities for defense. Instead, your armies have invaded far too easily. While the peasants are now resting in their homes while the bones of their friends and family help to cultivate the fields and feed them, it should not have happened that easily.
That will change when the princess and her chosen one are on the throne.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!”
You turn to the hall, curious. “Jerry, I didn’t implement anything that should fill the hall with screams of abject terror, right?”
“No, your evilness,” Jerry responds. “Just the two o'clock screams of releasing stress and pent up energy to further fuel the aggressive magic of your armies.”
“I thought not,” you mutter, sweeping out of the war room to check on your minions. The screaming turns into gasps, and you break into a run.
Demon magic keeps you alive, sure, but it also comes with incredible physical benefits. Like being able to run from one side of the castle to the other in less than a moment.
“Gregory? Gregory! Ethan, can you turn it off?”
“It hurts it hurts I can’t I’m sorry oh my hell let me die don’t do that to me oh hell—”
The room is chaos. The room is painful. The room is too bright.
There is a spell that covers an area in the inkiest night, washing all in pitch black and taking away sight and smell. You use it, and everything turns black.
“Maximus!” The three voices ring in relief, in sobs, in panic. You hear Gregory scramble to you first, and at this point he must be driven only by instinct.
It’s the same instinct that saved his life. The instinct to return home, to the holder of his contract. You accept him when he crashes into you.
“My lord,” he shudders, and you can feel him shake violently. “The light! The light!”
“I know,” you assure him, certain of what you saw with your own eyes. You look at Gregory’s eyes, wide and fearful, and cast a spell on them. Very quickly, his pupils, iris, and sclarea are covered in inky dark, and you can feel Gregory go boneless. “I will not let the light touch you again. Stay here.”
Sufficiently blinded to his fears—a temporary measure to provide some calm until he is truly out of the light’s reach—you adjust the darkness of the room.
The princess stands in the center of the room, her arms having dropped from where she was holding Gregory. She’s turned to you, and her face is both grim and determined.
You wonder if your manipulation is coming to fruition sooner than intended. If so, then at least the throne will be secured by an ally. That leaves…
Your eyes catch onto Ethan, and he’s standing on the other side of the room, his skin glowing with pure, unadulterated energy. You know from when you walked in that the darkness is dampening what would otherwise be a blinding light.
Even now, it makes you uncomfortable.
“I…” Ethan’s voice shakes, and past the glow, you can see him trembling just as much as Gregory.
Something more uncomfortable than Ethan having a natural inclination for light magic settles in your sternum. Or what’s left of it.
“I didn’t mean to…” he confesses, and the watery tone in his voice finally cracks. Now that Gregory is away from him, enshrouded in a safety of darkness, he seems to be realizing what, exactly, has happened. Ethan gasps for breath. “I didn’t mean to hurt him! What did I— What—”
The light pulses with Ethan’s panic, and you quickly disregard the notion that you’d have to darken his senses as well. It might hurt him, and you’re not in the business of needless torture.
You take a breath. Knowledge. Knowledge is what he needs right now.
“It’s a defensive spell,” you say, remembering what you learned all of those 200 years ago. Ethan, thankfully, seems to snap out of his downward spiral, looking at you.
Well, if he can look at you with such raw hope, then your manipulation must still be working. Thank the darkness.
“It’s also the first spell that demonstrates a person’s inclination towards light magic. The light wells up inside until it can no longer be contained, and it typically results in a soft glow. The longer a person holds their magic inside, the stronger the glow when it finally escapes.” You remember just how bright the room had been when you came in, and your stomach drops. “You must have been holding it inside for, perhaps months.”
You watch as Ethan gulps, and tears run down his face. He buries that face, that expression of loss and despair and regret, in his hands.
“I didn’t wanna hurt anyone,” he sobs, his shoulders shaking. “Light magic hurts people! It hid her majesty’s scars! It hurt you! I hurt Gregory!”
This image before you looks too familiar.
“I didn’t wanna hurt anyone!” Two hundred and eighteen years ago. A young magic user. Alone. “Dark magic hurts people! It tripped grandfather! It hurt you! I hurt—”
The similarities pain you more than the light itself could ever. You leaned into being evil. It was what you could do. You no longer care for the affirmation you never got.
But Ethan does. Ethan cares so, so much. It makes him malleable.
It makes him human. As you all are, at some point.
“Ethan,” you call, your voice commanding and velvet-soft. Enshrouded in darkness, used typically for sweetening deals, this is a call of comfort and a beckon to trust. Ethan falls into it with ease, weeks of having heard it preparing him to trust you. “I will not turn away from you for this. You cannot change what you are, as I cannot change what I am. Our magics will interfere with each other at times, and there are those uncomfortable with light magic, but it does not make you a different person.”
“Yes it does,” says Ethan, a mournful note in his first act of resistance. You might be proud if you weren’t so heartbroken by it. “I hurt Gregory.”
“Other light magic users hurt Gregory,” you correct, gently but firmly. “The memory of it pains him, and he can no longer be around light magic, but you have never lifted a hand against him, and you would never cause us harm because of our dark magic.”
“I’d never!” Ethan cries out, passionate as a burst of light tries to emphasize his words. It fluctuates with his emotions, and you know that he must be taught.
Like he should have been.
Those fools didn’t train him with a sword.
It figures they’d never teach him how to use his own magic either.
“I know,” you say, “but now there is the matter of teaching you how to use light magic. I remember some lessons, but they are very old. I can teach you basic control, and after that…”
You know what it’s like to only be taught to control your gift instead of how to use it. However, for all of your power in darkness, light magic… it isn’t your specialty. Perhaps you could abduct a tutor for him, but how to ensure that this tutor wouldn’t undo all of your successful manipulation—
“I can take over from there.” The princess speaks up, and both you and Ethan turn to her. You raise an invisible eyebrow.
“The kingdom I ran from was filled with light magic users,” she points out, and you nod. It is most certainly true. “If I was going to lead them one day, I had to understand how the magic could be wielded and used. Since I don’t have light magic, they never taught me the foundations, only the flashy things that could be done by those who had the gift. If you can teach him control, I can teach him how to make it his own.”
“But…” Ethan pipes up, “what if I hurt someone else? What if I can’t do it? What if I don’t want to?”
And here is the crux of the matter. Self-rejection. The cruelest of enemies. More sinister than whatever lay in the dark. More cruel than whatever machinations the light may come up with.
However, you cannot force Ethan to love every aspect of his being, just as no one could do so for you.
“Then you will simply learn to control the light magic and no more,” you say. “The magic you have is a magic that is inherent to you. It is part of you, and you are now part of it. However, it does not own you. It is yours to choose what to do with. And if you choose to simply control it, then that is a choice you will be supported in.”
“And if you choose to use it, you’ll be supported there, too,” says the princess, and you nod. “There’s no bad magic, Ethan. There are only bad people, and you aren’t bad.”
Ah, the lesson you taught. It comforts your heart to see it used when it’s needed most.
It takes more convincing, and it takes much talking, but you believe, by the end of it, Ethan is reassured and ready. You rise to take Gregory away, ready to spend as long as you need to reassure him and provide what he needs to heal from the shock of seeing light magic in his own home, when another thought occurs to you.
This definitely explains why Ethan puked when he saw your face. Inherent light magic. Huh.
With a chuckle, you guide Gregory out of the room. It looks like your two allies are more powerful than you thought.
It’s good that you’ve manipulated them so well. Good job, Maximus.
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