Chapter 5: The incident with the rat

My studies progressed at a snail's pace. For the past few weeks, I had barely read twice Advanced Inkery, and I was still having severe trouble with my imagination. You would think removing a dent from a ring shouldn't be much of a challenge, but it proved impossibly tricky. One time, I was removing a single scratch, and everything seemed to be working. Yet, once I finished the drawing, I realized the ring's surface was rough, arid to the touch.

Don't focus too much on the details you are trying to fix; they should come naturally with the object. Let your imagination shape your mental image. I knew the book passage by heart; I had read it multiple times, hoping it would trigger something inside me and solve all my issues at once. It didn't.

Spare strongly disagreed; he would usually say, "You devour knowledge!", or "You are still young, don't rush it!" He might have been right, I knew he actually was, but I still felt a crippling frustration.

Attempting to appease my growing moodiness, he let me draw other objects. For example, I practiced drawing my drawing tools. I drew food, stones, the walls of my room, everything I had within reach, really. I used both the fountain pen and the Drak'gath, but never in the same drawing. I tried it, of course, but the result was even worse than my first attempt at the ring, and it had been almost two months since that. Maybe longer, it was hard to keep track of time down here.

"Spare, can I draw a fountain pen on my skin, invoke it, and then use it to draw something else on my skin?"

"Why wouldn't you?"

He wasn't at home as much as at the start. On the contrary, most of the day, I was by myself. It was a new experience, one I was not used to. Since I was little, I had always been with my mother, and even when she died, I met Spare the following day. Overall, the situation was bearable. He still came back every night, and I could count with the fingers of one hand the number of times I was overwhelmed by my mother's memories.

We still found time for short interchanges. Most of my questions were met with even more open questions, but sometimes I struck gold.

"Spare, why is it that when I draw with the fountain pen, I feel calmed and focused, yet the Drak'gath feels chaotic and rushed? I'm using the same Ink, and according to The way of the Ink, all magic properties are on the Ink, not the Inker or their tools."

"Certainly…" he caressed his beard. It was a gesture I rarely saw in him, only when I asked something worth considering. It was also usually followed by a well-thought answer, "as much as it's true that all magic resides in the Ink, it also holds true that it must draw its power from somewhere."

"That's right, from the Inker," I said, evoking the memories of the day I draw the ring on my elbow and refraining from touching it.

"Uhum, and what purpose would the pen serve?" I was about to make a scathing remark, but he was faster and added, "aside from the obvious."

I feigned a modest laugh, acted as a good student, and quickly formed the only possible explanation inside my head. "It channels the energy from the Inker to the Ink."

"You are a river, young, rushing with rapid waters. Tools are like tributaries, you'll find those that descend abruptly, gaining more speed than its main stem. Others make abrupt turns, spilling some water and threatening to overflow. And then, there are those slow streams that follow a set course, without deviating nor flooding." He paused for a second to let me process his words. "A shallow course, barely below the terrain level, is not suitable for a fast river."

"And I'm a shallow river, a learner… then the Drak'gath?" I wanted to say is it unsuitable for me? But I didn't dare to. What if it wasn't? Would I have had to abandon it?

His answer didn't make anything clear; it consisted of a shrug and some encouraging words. "It will be hard; you just have to keep practicing."

Keep practicing; the mantra accompanied me during the following hours, days, and weeks. My progress was painfully slow. I eventually managed to produce an undamaged version of the ring, but adding details that weren't there was still out of my scope. That's as long as I used the fountain pen, of course. The Drak'gath was like a wild horse, untamed and unpredictable. I could draw a masterpiece one day just to forget everything by the next one.

One seemingly insignificant and normal day, right after I ate my breakfast, I set a catastrophic chain of events in motion. My duties were the same as always, a long session of theoretical Inking followed by a restorative practice. I had left behind Advanced Inkery, convinced that I had already learned everything it had to offer, and moved to Ink and Mind. It delved into much more detail on the matter I was stuck on. Although Spare described it as superfluously poetic, its frequent analogies and hyperboles did a great deal to help me find the way.

That day, however, there was a particularly insistent squeak that seemed to have the goal of not letting me concentrate. If it at least had been constant, maybe I would have grown used to it. But no, the screech came and went at the worst possible timings. It is not enough to picture its new shape. Does the addition alter any other physical aspect? Is it much more subtle and introduces a change to th- Scree!

"ENOUGH!" I slammed my open palms against the rough surface of the table. "Come here, you little rat!" I had been wandering around sewers long enough to know with certain confidence the origin of those sounds. I covered the area where I last heard them, looking for a tiny blur, but my eyes were only met with dust and a few spiderwebs. Of course, how dumb can I be? My loud shout must have scared it; it has probably ru- Scree!

Motherf- I deeply inhaled and armed myself with patience. It had fleed to the opposite side of the room, to the darkest corner it could find. I could have taken the candle and started a search party, but I was tired and not in the good humor to do it.

Assuming it wouldn't let me read in peace, I closed the book and took my Drak'gath. An experienced Inker would separate his emotions from work. I tried with all my being to ignore the rat, and for some time, I succeeded. All my attention was focused on the drawing; my hands were carefully guiding the mischievous pen while my eyes supervised the work. The rat had been relegated to background noise, next to the monotone and ignorable sound of water drops constantly falling from a leaking pipe by the kitchen. That's why when it decided to draw near me and bite my ankle, I didn't hear it coming.

"Aah!" I reflexively kicked the air, startled by the stinging sensation on my ankle. I felt as if I dragged a weight and then heard the sound of something crashing against stone. Have I killed it? I couldn't refrain from laughing, finally!

Rushingly standing up, I scrutinized in the direction of my foot. Unmistakably, the rat was lying right next to the wall, resting on its side, and much to my disappointment, faintly breathing. It's just stunned, I said to myself. I stopped for a moment, thinking what my next steps would be. I didn't feel like killing it in cold blood, so my options reduced to either freeing it, or trapping it inside a pot.

I didn't know how Spare would feel about using a pot like this, but it was better than opening the hidden door and risking being discovered, so I set my mind up. In a hurry to find the rat, I forgot to leave the pen, so I used my free hand to get a firm grasp of the beast. It was out of combat, but I wouldn't risk it awaking and biting me again.

I took the rat, and immediately after, my vision blurred. My head was flying; it was submerged in a dense liquid, swaying from one side to the other. Was the rat venomous? I had time enough to think just that, but then, I fell to the ground like a rigid chunk of metal. I felt nothing; I was the spirit of my former body, watching it from outside. My head should be hurting; I should be in extreme pain, judging by the massive hemorrhage.

As if my thoughts came true, my body started convulsing. Intense and violent shakes that defied all the joints on my body. I felt a tingling sensation while I watched, scared to death, what was happening with my body. I wanted to do something, but it was useless. I couldn't move nor talk. Everything gradually faded away; I lost track of my body and lost all capacity to think. What happened next… I only know through Spare's hypothesis and speculations.

The next thing I remembered is darkness. I wanted to open my eyes, but there was a heavy load over my eyelids. It took me more than a minute to fetch enough strength to convince my body. They slowly opened, revealing the familiar room I had been sleeping in every single day. I am on my bed? I wanted to get up and confirm it, but there's no way I could have done that. I didn't feel my legs; my arms were a faint memory on a corner of my brain, my whole body was screaming of pain.

However, none of that, even if summed up into a single source of pain, would have reached the levels of my chest. It burned; it felt like someone was rubbing a piece of hot metal, dragging it along my exposed torso. The pain was so intense that for a moment, I wanted to pull apart my skin, to tear it up. "Nghmnhhg" I emitted some throaty noises while trying to lower my chin in a futile attempt to see what was going on.

The door opened with a bang, crashing to the wall when it fully opened. I had never seen his face like that. His blood-red eyes were hidden behind a collection of deep dark bags. I could have sworn his face had more wrinkles than before. His beard was a mess, whiter than before. I could see his whole anatomy screaming worry.

Moving forward by leaps and bounds, he stood a few centimeters from me. I wanted to say something, but I just couldn't. I had to make do with blinking both eyes, trying to tell him I was awake and fine.

He crouched. His eyes were burning with pain and panic. "STUPID!" A hand moving dangerously fast followed the words and impacted my cheek. What hurt was not the slap; no, it was those words. I had done something reckless; I had distressed and upset him to the point he looked ill. I just didn't know what it was. He left the room.

I don't know how many more hours or days I slept. At times I would wake up, scared from nightmares I can't remember. I had the foreign sensation of turning and moving on my bed, but I can't recall any of it. My memories are blurred until the day I finally managed to stand on my own.

I felt weak; although I could feel my legs and arms, they were shaky and unreliable. I had to lean against the wall to avoid falling. My chest still burned, like the ashes and charcoal of an old fire that still emanated heat. And it wasn't without reason. It never is.

I couldn't believe my eyes. Red! I had to look twice to confirm it wasn't blood, although it might have been better that way. I couldn't recognize the drawing; could it even be called drawing? All I saw were concentric circles joined by triangles and waves, lines and arcs creating alien patterns, and… glyphs. Did I...? But how?

I was closely examining the Ink on my torso when I found an oddity right above my breastbone's end. It was charcoal black, a much smaller sigil, clearly not part of its red counterpart. And, even though they were not part of the same drawing, they interacted with one other. Red tentacles wrapped the strange inscription and held it in place, intentionally tying it to that exact spot on my body.

I was met with Spare as I walked outside. He wasn't smiling, but I suspected he was happy to see me. His face looked much more like the one I remembered, profound, full of knowledge, a sigh that penetrated my soul. "Spare…" I adventured, not sure how I should approach the elephant in the room.

"Do you know what you did?" His eyes didn't move an inch; he was staring at me, judging if my answer was honest or if I was hiding something. I shook my head; I honestly didn't know what happened.

"The rat… It bit me, so I grabbed it…" I gesticulated, imitating the actions I did. "Then, I-I don't know. I passed out? I remember falling, it should have hurt, but I was outs-"

"Did you feel like you do when drawing?" He interrupted me, but I didn't mind because that's exactly the piece that was missing. His words clicked something inside me, completed a puzzle I didn't know I was doing.

"Yes! That's it! I-" I knew what I was about to say, I drew the rat, but why was I so sure of it? "I-" I hesitated but eventually continued, "-I drew the rat…"

He nodded. "And that was a stupid thing to do." His voice was neutral, calm, too deliberate and calm. "Why do you think we have never drawn any living being? Is it because they are harder to portray?"

They were, of course, but something told me it was not that. "They are, they've got all their internal organs, veins…" Another realization, one more stroke of genius. "Thoughts. They've got a mind, they've got a soul! I- I would have to capture them all, just as I did with the coldness of the ring!"

His eye blinked, not the kind of blink that leads to a wink, rather a nervous reaction. "Yes. And, no." I thought he wouldn't say anything else. Still, the gravity of the situation was such that it wasn't followed by one of his usual questions. "You trapped its body with your Ink but failed to capture his metaphysical nature. Instead, you let it mind free; you let it fight for your body. What do you think a wild rat trapped in a cage would do!?" His voice was raising, something I had never witnessed before in him. "Fight, bite, scream, DESTROY!"

I was shaking. I had set a bomb inside my own body, sentenced myself to death. "The rat had a body; it just needed the brain controlling it. It fought you for its control, and if it had succeeded, if I hadn't been in time…" He left the phrase unfinished; there was no need to end it, we both knew what would have happened.

"These drawings," I pointed the red Ink on my chest, "you drew them? Did you trap its mind?"

He bitterly laughed, as if I had just told the funniest of the jokes. "Do you know how many people in our continent, no, on this earth we walk, have ever managed to capture the mind of a living being?" He paused for a brief moment and then answered his own question. "NONE!"

"Then, why am I alive?" My question was sincere. According to all he said until now, it didn't make any sense.

"I had to use Ink of the highest grade to interfere with your formation. As you can appreciate, it wasn't easy, but the final result is one of my best works. My formation fights yours and prevents it from eating you up. Don't misunderstand, I was able to do it only because that charcoal Ink is one of the worst."

"Fo-formation?" I felt all my blood rushing to my face and tried to hid it.

"You knew?"

"I-I just, I'm not sure." I was suspicious of what had happened, but I didn't know for sure, and once again, I was too afraid to say it.

"Explain yourself." His voice didn't have any hint of doubt; either I convinced him with my explanation, or I was out of here and I could forget about him teaching me anymore.

I told him everything. I forced myself to relive the events, describing with agonizing detail how that Ink and weird glyphs pushed themselves to my mind, and finally, how I fearfully left the book alone. It was brutal; I felt the formation containing that rat burning on my chest. Every time I thought of one of those glyphs, a different part of my torso itched or lighted up.

"You draw a formation that you didn't even understand…" He muttered, so low that it confirmed it was more of a spoken thought than something directed at me. His eyes were lost somewhere on the pile of books. "Maybe… no no, that won't do," he continued whispering.

His eyes focused even if so briefly to stare back at me. "You can't draw anything until you read this book Glyphs, Formations, and Sigils, a formal introduction." His finger pointed to a book's spine. "And, even then, I forbid you from drawing living beings."

He stood up and walked towards the exit. He was actioning the mechanism when, without turning back, he added some more words. "We'll talk once you finish it. Learn it by heart. I will decide what to do with you based on your answers."

I sunk in my chair, lost in deep and dark thoughts.