Chapter 14: When Ink and mind become one

Spare is dying, my mind finally caught up with my eyes. I stood up and rushed to his side, too worried to make sure no one had followed him. Each step made his figure clearer; it brought his hacked skin into the picture and highlighted the pale color on his face. I was about to reach him when his legs failed; he tumbled down to the ground, barely able to stop his head a few palms above the ground with his free hand.

He muttered something, but blood filled his mouth, and I couldn't get a single word of it. I placed a hand over his shoulder, unsure what I should do to help him. He was still trying to speak, repeating some words I could not hear. I got closer to him, placing my ear so close to his mouth that I could smell the metallic odor of iron leaving his body.

"Ink-" he coughed some blood, red splashing the rubble right below him. "-I-Ink Formations," he barely managed to say. The book? My mind worked overtime, is there something that can heal him on those pages? I had never heard that Ink had remedial applications, but then again, the last year had been full of surprises.

I held to that thin thread, a slim hope, while I went over everything I knew about formations and mentally reviewed if any of them could do something about his state. I invoked the Ink and made the book appear in my hands. Long was the repulsion it provoked on me; it was an oasis in a desert right now. I placed it on the ground, next to his face, betting it didn't matter anymore if it got stained with blood.

"Four. Two." The words struggled to come off his mouth, constantly interrupted by sputum and gasps. "Seven."

I opened the book by the middle and quickly turned the pages until I saw the number on its bottom right corner, 427. I didn't wait a single second to touch it; my finger slid through the Ink glyphs like I had always done until now. I felt a torrent of information invading my mind, wilder than anything I had ever been subjected to. I involuntarily tried to pull apart the finger, almost betraying the last resort I had to save Spare, but the formation was sucking me in like a black hole.

I heard voices coming from somewhere far, not recognizing who they belonged to. Mind, thoughts, soul, personality, all sorts of glyphs revolved around my vision. It was like constructing a single puzzle out of unrelated pieces, you had to order them, fill in the holes with previous knowledge, and recover the final image. Just that you didn't know what you were piecing together nor what the result would be.

"Tarar!" I finally realized what the shouts were; something was calling my name. It was neutral, incorporeal, coming from afar. It echoed through the empty room I was in. What am I doing here? Wasn't there something urgent waiting for me? I… Those glyphs once again requested all my attention; I got lost in a labyrinth of words.

They were an ever-moving constellation of lines, seemingly not following any set pattern. Some eluded me, others burnt bright in the distance, others seemed to beg for my attention. It was hard to discern what was real and what not, or maybe everything was happening inside my imagination. I studied them, thought about what I could do, tried to find a hidden meaning. But then, just as I was about to drift away, I stopped everything I was doing; I am thinking, trying to make sense of powers beyond my comprehension.

Don't think, I ordered myself while closing my eyes. I stretched one arm, letting it be guided by the Ink's will. It touched mind, firmly grasping it, and then kept moving until it found capture. Everything turned white while a sudden realization flooded my consciousness, the whole formation made sense; I knew what it was for. The voice faded as my eyes opened, and my finger finally separated from the book.

I stood there for a second, until finally, without moving the eyes from that page, I managed to say, "no… I-I can't!" I wanted it to be a shout; I wanted my desperation and anxiety to go away with those words, but I only managed to mutter, and they stuck with me inside my chest.

"I…" with hardships, Spare managed to utter some words, but most were lost in the air, "dying." His arm gave in, and his whole body crashed to the ground.

I tried to turn him over, pushing by his side, but I couldn't move him at all. I was desperate, digging the cold ground to get a better hold to pull him. I don't know what I was trying to accomplish; I just knew I couldn't do what that formation suggested. Even though Spare told me to check it, I refused to admit there wasn't any other way. Maybe if we g-

"Hurr…" His head slowly turned to face me, just in time for me to see how light exited his eyes, to witness his fleeting consciousness and the last straws of life abandoning his body. He was fading off so fast that he couldn't even finish that word.

I panicked, scrambling one more time for ideas. My mother's teaching came to mind, but Alba wouldn't heal those kinds of wounds; nothing would. There is no other way… I remember thinking at that time. And, indeed, there wasn't. If I had hesitated any more, maybe even as little as a second, perhaps it would have been too late.

My hand, possessed by an impending urgency, traveled through my shirt and pants until it found my shoulder bag. I had been crying, my clothes, the ground, me, everything was wet; I am crying, I realized, suddenly noticing my sobs and tears. I took the Drak'gath, not sure why that was the best tool, but choosing to trust the intuition the formation instilled in me. I tore the burlap sack apart at my chest's height and invoked my blood-red Ink with my other hand.

Yes, that was a job worthy of the best Ink in existence. I couldn't think of it any other way; if what remained of Spare what to spend the rest of his life trapped, jailed even, I would make sure he did so in proper conditions. What that formation was supposed to do should have been impossible; it was knowledge I had been told nobody could achieve. Yet, there I was, about to imprison Spare's mind inside my own. If I succeeded, if I didn't go mad, if I didn't lose him in the process, I would have to ask him how it was possible.

I dipped the metal, waited for some precious drops to fall back to the Inkpot, and closing my eyes, I touched Spare's body. I abandoned myself to the Ink, to extremes I had never gone before. I was a canvas waiting to be drawn, and the Ink was a manic artist itching to create. I felt the sharp metal touching my skin and began the familiar process of being guided by the Ink.

My hand erratically moved, sometimes circling around my chest, others winding around my pectoral, at times drawing straight lines, suddenly bending and arching. It was more complex than everything I had done until then; even my complete La'er, formations, glyphs and sigils included, fell far from it. It was charming and terrifying; each stroke was infused with power and determination.

A distant coldness began to invade me. I wouldn't have cared at all if it wasn't for a part of my brain telling me it was Spare, who had finally run out of steam. A stream of memories swamped me: those calloused hands rescuing me, his beard and baldness, his never-ending questions, our long sessions of reading and drawing, our first beer. It seemed like they would never end.

I did my best to cut out that unnecessary distraction away from me, submerging myself in the same state I entered while fighting. It was dangerous to make the Ink do all the work, but certainly better than involuntary fixating on an image and transmitting it to the Ink. It had to be a perfect formation; there was no margin for error.

I don't know how much time it passed until I recovered control of my own body. I opened my eyes, adjusting to the new feeling on my chest, examining if anything had changed in me. I was barely lowering my hand, returning the Inkpot to my ankle, when an uneasiness assaulted me.

It was an itching sensation on my fingertips, quite similar to the same produced by Ink when you let it invade your mind. Unlike that, though, it developed a more vicious nature, quickly tingling my whole body. I felt as if someone tackled me head-on, making me collapse on my back. My body shook in waves, starting at my feet and going all the way to my head. I was conscious of it all, but I could do nothing; I was an observer of my own condition.

I sensed my body deteriorating, about to enter an irreversible downfall, when something pinched my mind; it was painful yet relieving at the same time. I felt like something had alleviated the pressure on my cranium, opened a metaphorical hole to let all the exceeding energy out of me. It worked; my body came to a stop. I was tired, exhausted, lying there without any intention to move, but then I heard it.

"Tarar!"

I rotated to the right, startled by Spare's voice, and met his lifeless face. His eyes were blank, staring at the horizon, utterly devoid of life. Does this mean… I started, but the response came naturally to me.

"Yes, it worked!" He was elated; I could feel the ecstasy in his voice. I could actually tell he was proud of me. It was intimate, close to listening to your inner voice. His words carried meaning, not in a traditional way, rather they were full of intention, feelings, nuances, elements you could never hope to appreciate in someone's voice.

But-but how? I still didn't understand how I could bind his mind to my body so effortlessly. I had failed to capture a rat, a rat! Yet, somehow, I succeeded on my first try with a human, a Ga'ar no less? It doesn't make any sense; my mind should be broken into pieces, I should be a vegetable, too gone to even swallow my own saliva.

"Get your La'er and get going," his voice once again carried a weight that transcended words, "they will come looking for us here, sooner rather than later."

I approached his body, somehow intuitively knowing I had to look on his right leg to find it attached to his skin. Part of me felt sorrow when looking at this body, it was flooded with the need to cry, yet another one barely felt some regret. "It had to be done," he said assertively, "if there had been any other way, I wouldn't have come here." Questions were piling up; I could barely keep up with the rate of changes my mind was experiencing.

Reverting La'er to Ink, I walked away without any set direction, aiming to get far from there, burning to know the secrets behind what I had done. I had turned a few times, descended through one pipe, and lost myself inside a collector; I couldn't wait anymore. So, what has happened? It was actually a miracle I had held off until then.

I sensed something close to a sigh followed Spare's voice. "Naturally, capturing someone's mind should be impossible, you know as much." I evoked my failed experiment and all the lectures from several books and mentally nodded. "Should also know what I did to save you from that rat."

I should know? I thought of every book, trying to match the formation on my chest to something I had seen, but nothing seemed even close to it. I was about to review every page of Ink Formations when Spare stopped me.

"Not that. Think of what I did when I was drawing it." His voice, albeit the absurdity of what it implied, transmitted confidence.

Think… I was unconscious, I had drawn the rat, I was lying on the floor, with its corpse by my side. I felt fear, anxiety; I ran to my side and quickly pulled a fountain pen and Ink. I- I? The doubt assaulted me; it couldn't be me, of course, I was passed out on the floor. Those were not my memories; I was revisiting Spare's recollections, his feelings and actions. I-no, you, you gave me a part of your mind to hold off the rat.

"That's why!" I exclaimed, momentarily forgetting there was no need for me to talk out loud. "It has to be consensual! There must be a pre-existing bound! You can't capture something unknown because you don't comprehend it, but if part of it is already living within you…" I paused, astonished I could come up with everything by myself. Until, of course, my mind caught up and guessed it must have been part of Spare's knowledge and memories.

Then, we... share everything? I was afraid of what that would mean. I had nothing to hide, but it still was chilling, unknown; it entailed mysteries I was not ready for. Maybe if you have ever floated right in the middle of the ocean, where water is black, and you can't see what lies below you, you would understand how I felt. It was the uncertainty that scared me.

"Not now, not in weeks nor months, but we will. It takes time to get used to it, and even more to let all the information sink in." It took me an embarrassing amount of time to understand what those words implied, but eventually, I realized.

Wait! You have done it before!?

"Yes, as many others before me have done. But this story can wait until we are out of Lamar." He must have sensed I was about to insist because my mind was instantly met with a reprimand.

Sighting, I once again resumed my aimless wandering, trying to go up whenever I had the opportunity, hoping to stumble with an exit. I had no ties with this city; I had spent most of my life underground, but being forced out of it awoke a sentiment of rebellion inside me.

"I will come back, and when I do, I won't be a helpless kid anymore."