9 - 3 [Fool] A Hunger Fit For Demons Kills the Cat The Tunnel Rat Mageling - 4th of Mead’s Tap, Year 1125 A.E.

Eiden awoke blearily, his awareness coming in waves and fits.

His burgeoning cognizance of the waking world was like the breaching of the surface of the sea. He swam from the deep, dark fathoms. Into the light.

He took in breath like a twice-drowned sailor. A castaway, given his unfamiliar surroundings.

The room wrought of marmon was bright as a cliffside at noon. Though, not due to any ocular prowess of a beast, but because it truly was—the window shutters, wooden panels atop one another like the feathers of some fowl, were open as wide as could be, letting in the cold-yet-refreshing breeze from without.

The sunlight, the harsh flame that made Eiden squint his eyes once upon a time, was not blinding to him any longer; the Visage of Solaria upon Terra held no sway over his sight.

He felt whatever musculature that beheld the orbs responsible for his vision tighten like a fist ironclad, sharp slits looking out without need to hide beneath the shade of the hand.

If the eyes were the windows into the soul, what did they say about him? Did those beastly serpent’s slits tell tale of a monster deep within or were they simply a product of his acquisition of magick?

Fin had not touched upon the topic, yet Eiden had a smidgen of suspicion from having heard “awakened, blessed from a curse” when he came to in the tunnels.

His magicking had to do with the vampyre. The revenant arisen from the Pale River had somehow given Eiden access to the power of spirit. The brush with Mortus had a single silver-lining—at least—flash of steel in the night that it was.

With a breath neighed out of his lips like some beast of burden, Eiden let go of the ruminations. He did not want to touch upon that wound after just having awoken from a stretch of restful sleep not steeped in the foul waters of Morrigain.

It was far too much. Far too raw.

And so, he indulged in some mundane yet precious luxuries—for a lad that had gone by with bare ashen stone and rotten hide, the bed he lay atop was practically the Seventh Heaven.

The tunnel rat pulled the woolen blankets up to his chin, relishing in the warmth. It was far too long since he had felt such comfort.

His stomach growled a threat, his insides shriveling with a pang of longing.

Seems I’ve been far too long without food either.

Hunger was such a strange thing. When one was used to it, the feeling was middling and easily dispelled until it became an unbearable and incessant prodding at the mind.

Before hunger had festered, it was hardly worth an ounce of effort to resist. Conversely, after such had been satiated, the callus of the soul melted away to bare soft and naive flesh unhardened by suffering.

A sweet sunchild unknowing of the harshness that was Man and Beast.

To fulfill need and want was to pour oil atop flame; an accelerant and catalyst to that which usually slept.

When the soul knew there was more to be had, it was not quiet.

The soul cried out, babe that it were.

Eiden had gone weeks without either crumb or complaint, but now he could think of nothing more than the whetting of his appetite.

A roaring pyre ignited in the mageling’s body and spirit both, his mouth salivating and the hairs of his nape standing on end and prickling into gooseflesh. His Center—the very base of his spiritual self—ached a hollow ache in conjunction with his growling belly, an emptiness begging for reprieve from itself.

Therein lay a hunger fit for demons; gluttony and greed in equal measure.

Dull yet throbbing, an insistent devil on his shoulder that beckoned attention and dolled out pains should it not be heard.

The fiery famine burned as caustic bile in the back of his throat, his nose twitching and eyes beginning to water. It brought an itch deep inside his teeth as woodworms making their way upon a tree felled.

With teeth itching and nostrils flaring, he let the hunger guide him. It was easy to give into this instinct, this primal feeling so intrinsic; so well-woven into his being.

It felt ancient. It felt right.

He beheld the trantalizing trace of would-be food in the air, his sense of smell almost blinding to all his other perceptions. His sight fell away as his waking mind was inundated with but a single input: scent.

With a swivel of the head, he found a tray to the right of his bed, atop a small table-plinth carved from a darker stone. Eiden was not even sure of the details of the platter or even the food itself as he devoured the various breads, meats, fruits and cheeses with abandon.

They were gone far too fast for his appetite’s liking.

His belly had not even grown any bigger from the small feast he had indulged in. Strange, that. Stranger still that the tunneler did not feel any sort of indigestion or need of rest afterwards.

When the sheer need to fill the empty of his guts—physically and spiritually both—had gone to sleep, Eiden finally took a good look around the room.

Fin was nowhere to be found, the Exorcist having gone out for something or another.

The tunnel rat sat atop his cot, looking out into the far-distance beyond the open window. To the Visage of Solaria at Her Height.

Such a pretty, yet useless, way of saying the noonday sun was nine-damned burnin’ to the sight. The rat was not too fond of flowery talk given such was the domain of sunchildren, of those that dwelt above.

Then again, Eiden was now one of them, was he not?

The Pinning Gates held him back no longer. The shadows and dust and ashen stone lost their greedy claw-grip clutch upon him, and it would stay that way for as long as he drew breath.

He would return only as a dead man or arisen from the Pale River without his soul.

Time slipped by, slow yet inexorable as water cupped in one’s hands.

Eiden found himself without much to do in the absence of his mentor. The man had yet to give him any sort of chore or menial labor as most masters were wont to give to their apprentices. Perhaps a bit of magicking practice would help the rat get into the Exorcist’s good graces.

It was not that the brown-haired guttersnipe simply wanted to conjure lightning from his fingertips, not at all.

A gutter-wizard, that’s what I’ll be, he thought with no small amount of loathing mirth.

Eiden did as he was told the last time, clearing a spot near the hearth without anything vulnerable to the wayward eye of fire.

A steadying breath and closed sight set the mageling rat into the proper humor to conjure mana. Mood, he realized readily, was important for the proper flow and summoning of essence through his spirit.

A Dyeus canal to channel waters of mana, the spirit was. A medium to the paint and hue of magicking that was fickle and dependent on disposition.

A flick of his will and a fleeting memory of vengeance yet to be sworn, called forth a spark of anger to his left hand. It burned like flame yet bled the red of humor sanguine, twisting and licking at the air with the same sort of hungry inquisition that any fire possessed.

It ached no different than his Center when he awoke, its weight heavy upon his palm.

Yet this tiny seedling of mana was not truly wielded by his hands of flesh. Eiden felt so, with a prime sort of implicit knowing, that it was in fact his aura that was responsible for holding the essence aloft.

It came from his flesh, yes, but it was not his blood and bones and meat that held the scarlet spark. It was moored by the spirit, by that which dwelt within himself.

With an auric flex, the spark was crushed into nothingness, snuffed by fingers of spirit and will alone.

Interesting. It seemed that auric Tempering—the spirit exercises that Fin had taught Eiden the night before—interacted with essence in a peculiar way. No different than a hand being able to mold clay or cup water, the aura manipulated mana.

Eiden doubted he would have been able to snuff out the conjuring of essence so easily had he not practiced the Tempering exercises the night before. His spirit was still quite new to him, the powers too raw and freshly borne to his waking mind.

It was akin to learning a new sleight of hand; practice was paramount.

The mageling did not quite know what he should be striving to accomplish with his magick. Yet he dabbled readily nonetheless, unearthing whatever little intricaties and idiosyncrasies each permutation of mana he could conjure possessed.

With a relaxation of the channels that bound mind to heart and then heart to hands, the mageling brought forth the essence of melancholia. Through the basins of the spirit and then the pathways that link them to and fro, he pulled.

Icy mana spread from his palms, coating them in a slick and wet layer of condensate. And from the hoarfrost came fog, grey as the mists of the Gardens of Asphodel; the Seventh Layer of the Nine Hells.

With an investing of desire together with the soul-deep sorrow that had settled upon him, Eiden evoked more of the emotion. Like a flame fed by bellows, the smog thickened, a miasma of pale winter-sky blue and ashen omen of storm on the horizon.

The panging of loss ached dully yet all-encompassing in the fathoms of the core of his core. And then, like a pup nipping at a bone far too big for itself, bits and pieces and bites of the loss were, so too, lost.

Weirdly, the evocation of emotion was cathartic. The weight upon his soul had lessened as Eiden had, truthfully so, poured his feelings into the world.

Such was not so strange, now that the mageling thought better of it. This was an outlet, a means to decrease the pressure.

It was nice…to let go of all that he held within. To let loose that which built inside and increased the strain on the heart of his heart.

A balm for the soul that came not from another but from himself.

The tunnel rat let out a sigh as he quashed the essence in his hands with the skin of his spirit, fists clenching in sympathy. Strangled and robbed of its investiture, the mana dissipated much like smoke from a smothered flame into the fluxen tide of the Spiritual Realm.

He would not dwell on the festering unease in the back of his mind, he told himself. Not now, for it was still too raw; a wound yet to scab over and far too long from scarring proper.

Focus on the magicking, he told himself, wishing those words were enough to banish the grief that bubbled to the surface and threatened to overspill.

They were enough, he found out later that night. The muddy-messy froth taken from the cauldron of hurt by spoon hankerous for reprieve.

Focus on the magicking, the phrase echoing through the hollow dark in between his ears all throughout the day.

Eiden methodically went through each of his three emotional emanations—anger, pride, and melancholy—conjuring forth mental qualia to taste them in the Physical.

The process of magickal discovery reminded him of his tinkery, his crafting of torches from rendered rat fat and other knick-knacks he had wrought. Each iteration, each testing, each moment, built upon one another, becoming greater than before.

At first, he could only evoke and maintain a single sparkling of emotion from his mind at a time. And then, when the afternoon burnt a hazy firelight orange, he had been able to keep those magick sparks summoned concurrently.

Three facets of power floated in front of the mageling, his brow knit and sweat beading upon his temples. Fingers clenched and tensed upon his knees, his shoulders slumping heavy with the sympathetic weight that burdened his spirit, and his face flush the red of exertion.

A flame of scarlet with flitting fairies of fulgur.

An orb of congealed air the color of glistening spring leaf and wrought of writhing wind and viridis incarnatus—the stuff of heavenly lights, auroras, in the Far North.

And a fog that crept upon the empty without like hoarfrost, shining with the luster of pale, winter sky; glass made into vapor.

He let out a breath and the mana that constructed the conjurings were left bereft of their support. Like a creature without a spine, the essence fell limp and was washed away in the general sea of the Realm of Spirit.

Will was the scaffolding of magick, the mageling had realized before in his many attempts at holding the sparks concurrently. To remove the will invested into a body of mana was to take away its backbone.

It’s like pullin’ the rug right under it, the guttersnipe mageling thought, a giddy excitement somewhere in his heaving chest and exhausted lungs.

A smile tugged at his lips unbidden, his waking awareness not registering it all. For if it had, the lad would have snuffed it out just as quick; unwanted babe that it were.

Not now. Not so soon, some part of himself mummed in the depths, left unheard.

After having proven to himself he could hold the three different sparks at once, Eiden changed to pure auric exercise.

The aura was the skin of the spirit; it was the hands of his will given life and borne unto the world. At least, as long as he physically manifested his aura or Shroud as Fin had called the state where his spirit could interact tangibly with solid substance.

The words of his mentor came to the mouth of his thoughts, the lecture he had heard the night before an easy thing to recall, slick as greased turn-wheels of some machine.

“Ye just gotta pull yer aura to the fore. The spirit does the rest, supplying the auric membrane with the needed mana.

“When ye try and flex and contract the aura, it manifests physically as a partial Shroud. Yet, such is not enough for proper magicking.

“Ye need to bring forth the whole thing lest it just be a piecemeal bit o’ spiritry. Like a half-hand man without his fingers, ye won’t be able to properly wield the blade that is the aura when it is still half in its sheath.”

The old and itinerant man had given Eiden a conspiratorial smile then, his greyen whiskers parting like the fox that he was.

“Or, if it please thee, prithee hear. Like a buck with a limp willy, that won’t do for a lass. Now go on, git—lest the lasses think ye’s got the poor pecker drowned in hard liquor and lazy as an arse; fleeing from hard work.”

The tunnel rat had shed a few tears laughing at the crude and tasteless ribald. It was not even the jest proper—awkward as a newborn calf that it was and without feet to stand upon—that had brought him to cackle but instead the sheer absurdity of it all.

A magicker, a godsdamned exorcist, making lowbrow jestery like some common mop on the corner’s tavern.

Were I to tell anyone o’ this, they’d never believe the tale!

Eiden wiped the smirk off his mug before he tried again and again to evoke his aura entirely. Most often, only a part of his body was ensconced with a Shroud, like his hands or arms or chest.

Attempt by attempt, he had increased that to half his body, either the legs or everything above the chest. The mageling strained the muscles of his spirit each time.

And then, finally, he conjured a full Shroud.

Light, neveian white yet liquid and vaporous both, enshrouded his body, lining the edges of his form like some Sevenfold godling’s holy halo.

A full Shroud definitely helped with magicking in general, the mageling found. Instead of simply pulling strength from a single part of his bodies, be they of flesh or spirit, Eiden took from the entirety of his being as he practiced magick.

His hand glowed stronger than the rest of his form, all but burning as he moved a crumbled rug with will alone. The object was limned in an auric halo—Shroud—just as Eiden himself was.

His arm trembled in sympathy to the strain put upon his spirit. The tremors grew until his limb fell limp, willborne body no longer able to contend with the magicking and so too did the flesh follow in its wake.

Telekinesis was the name of the act—of moving an object with one’s Shroud—Fin lectured the night before. Not advanced enough to be a spell proper as the Exorcist had said; it was instead a cantrip, a minor or zeroth-order magick with no great nor grand effect.

Mostly.

Eiden reckoned that with great and grand effort, this simple little magicking could do great and grand deeds as well. To be able to move things with one’s mind? The possibilities were nigh endless!

And so, the mageling rested his waking will and Awoken spirit until he could practice once more.

And then again and again, until the Evening Eye of Solaria wept red.

A man possessed with a hunger fit for demons, he was.

To fill the void within, that which could not be satiated from without. For lasting fulfillment came not from the teeth neverending but from unseen and unquarried stone.