BTIV - Chapter Eleven

Micah opened his eyes.  His bed creaked slightly under his back as he shifted slightly, bringing back a brief twinge of nostalgia that he couldn’t quite place.  Light streamed in through an open window as the smell of sizzling bacon wafted into his room from where his mother was cooking breakfast in the kitchen.

His stomach growled, churning angrily as it demanded food.  Micah sat up in his bed, forehead scrunching as he looked around his bedroom.  For some reason, everything seemed… big.

“Miiiiicaaaaaah!” Esther screamed, slamming open the door and running to the edge of his bed.  “Momma said to wake you up.  Breakfast is ready and she didn’t want you to be late for your apprenticeship with Keeper Ansom again.”

He blinked at her.  Micah had least seen Esther maybe four hours ago.  He knew that the person in front of him was his younger sister but at the same time, he wasn’t sure exactly how she had turned into a child since he had last talked to her.

Micah threw off his blankets, exposing his knobby knees and bony ankles.  His eyes widened as he looked his body up and down before holding a hand up to the light.  It was pink and soft, fingers tender and uncalloused, as if years of hard training with this spear simply hadn’t happened.

A finger poked into his side.  Esther was barely a half pace from him, stubby finger extended and her face fixed into a frown.

“Are you just gonna go back to sleep Micah?” She asked, a hint of a childish lisp slurring the ends of her words.  “Momma is gonna get mad at you if you just go back to sleep.  She said that you’re gonna be in trouble if you miss another lesson with Keeper Ansom.”

The smell of bacon triggered another growl from Micah’s stomach.  He slipped his feet off of the bed and stood up, wobbling for a second as he adjusted to his shorter stature and ungainly teenage limbs.  Maybe Micah would have spent more time in his bedroom trying to figure out what was going on, but he was ravenous.  It was like he hadn’t eaten in a week.

Esther ran ahead of him, losing her balance and bouncing off of a wall en route to the kitchen.  By the time Micah walked in, she was already sitting in a chair at the table, her bare feet dangling as she kicked them back and forth.

He frowned.  The room was much bigger than he remembered, the table stretching almost twenty paces.  For some reason, child versions of Trevor, Drekt, Leeka and Eris sat there as well, staring at Micah as he walked in.  Even more bizarre, both Telivern and Ravi stood in the corner of the room, near Jo and Sarah, his former teammates that hadn’t followed him to Sandrovok.

For a second, Micah had entertained the idea that he had traveled back in time again.  He remembered trying to activate one of his time spells during a fight with… something.  Maybe the spell had gone wrong, sending him further back than even his blessing.

But this wasn’t right.  Leeka and Eris had never been to Pereston, and Sarah had never been in his home.  This wasn’t a memory.  It wasn’t him reliving something that had already happened.  It was something new.  Something different.

“Are you ready for breakfast Micah?” His mother asked, her back to him as she labored over the stove.  “I bet you’re really hungry so I made sure to cook plenty for you to eat.”

His stomach growled again as she turned, a smile on her face that seemed to stretch from ear to ear.  For a moment, he frowned, at her too white and too sharp teeth, but then he saw the food.  A giant plate of it heaping with sausage links, toast and eggs.

The plate clattered on the table, and almost before his mother could remove her hand, Micah stabbed his fork into a piece of sausage, popping the red hot tube of meat into his mouth.  He chewed once, breaking through its skin and releasing a spray of borderline boiling juices before immediately swallowing.

It was delicious.  The food sent a warm thrill through Micah’s body, like a shot of endorphins from a morning run.

His throat burned, but that didn’t stop Micah from cutting a square of egg, his fork scraping against his plate as he moved it onto a slice of toast.  The fire beneath the stove crackled, sending a spray of sparks out into the kitchen along with a wave of smoke.

He paused, toast brushing his lips as the smell from the eggs filled his mouth with saliva.  The table was silent.  All of his friends were staring at him wordlessly, simply watching Micah eat without any move or sound of their own.

“Go on Micah,” his mother’s voice broke the silence.  “Eat.  I know you’re hungry.  It’s been so long since you’ve had a chance to really gorge yourself.”

She smiled again, lips stretching until they practically touched her ears.  Her yellow eyes glowed like lanterns through the smoke that was spewing out of the fire.

His mother licked her lips.  She was holding another pan full of food, her bare hands sizzling and smoking as she held the cast iron handle without any sort of protection or covering.

Micah set his fork down.  Emptiness and pain blossomed in his stomach.  It was like needles were ravaging his flesh, but Micah did his best to ignore the sensation, instead pushing the plate full of temptation away from him.

He tried to pull up his status only for nothing to happen.  For the first time, a thrill of fear ran down Micah’s spine.

“A shame,” his mother said, clicking her tongue.  “I had hoped that you wouldn’t notice that I was in here.  It would have made things so much easier.”

She set down the pan, taking a seat directly across from Micah.  Frantically he began mumbling the words to Wind Blade only to find that they were foreign and alien.  He was pronouncing them right, but they weren’t interacting with his mana to create a spellform.  They were just words.

“That won’t work,” she continued, taking a seat across from him.  “None of the gods' little tricks will work here.  We aren’t in their precious world.  We’re someplace else.  A place that runs on different rules.”

“Elsewhere?” Micah croaked, his eyes locked on the sharp teeth, each the size of his index finger as her grin expanded, growing until it covered most of her face.

“Elsewhere doesn’t have rules,” his mother replied.  “Elsewhere is the spot where fools try to carve havens of stability and normalcy like this one.  It's where you go to make rules, not follow them.  No, this is someplace new.  Someplace special.”

Micah glanced around his table.  The rest of his friends and family were there, but there was something off about them.  All of their expressions were blank.  It was like they were dolls or wax carvings, physically present but vacant.

His stomach cramped, the sudden spike of pain doubling him over.  Micah’s face hit the table, barely a hand’s span from the plate of food.

The aroma wafted over him, causing Micah’s mouth to water.  Almost of its own accord, his right arm reached toward his breakfast.  He didn’t even notice as the oily sausage burned his fingertips.  Once again, the meat was touching his lips when Micah paused.

He dropped the food, wincing at the pain in his hand as he levered himself up into a sitting position with his left arm.  His mother shook her head at him before her face went slack, adopting the same vacant expression as all his friends.

“Come on Micah,” Trevor’s voice startled him.  “Aren’t you hungry?  We’ve spent so long fighting monsters and preparing for some apocalyptic final conflict.  You haven’t really stopped to eat.  You deserve a break.”

He turned his attention to his brother.  Trevor was only sixteen or seventeen, but Micah had seen him at that age in Pereston so many times that he would recognize him in a second.  What he didn’t recognize was the sharp smile creeping across his face.

“You’re not Trevor,” he whispered, wiping the last remnants of the boiling grease from the sausage on his pajamas as he glared at the thing that wore his brother’s shape.  “Who are you?”

Trevor’s eyes went vacant just as Esther spoke up from the other side of the table.

“If you think hard enough, you know the answer to that Micah.  It doesn’t matter though.  You’re hungry.  There is food in front of you.  You don’t need to worry about these memories and fragments.  Just eat.”

“Not until I have an answer,” he replied, shaking his head to try and focus himself.  Esther, Trevor and his mother had all been right.  He was hungry.  It was like his stomach was devouring itself.

“This doesn’t need to hurt,” Drekt said.  A quick glance confirmed that Esther had reverted to her former doll-like state.  “I mean, I don’t really care if it does hurt, but it will be quicker and easier for both of us if you stop resisting.  It’s inevitable in the end.  You don’t have any way to touch me in this space, and the hunger will only build until you’re nothing more than a ravening beast.”

“That might be interesting actually,” the being continued, still in Drekt’s body, “to see what depths you would sink to in your hunger.  After you consume your emotions and rationality, I would love to see the look on your face when you turn on your friends.  Devouring your feelings and memories for them until you are nothing more than a mass of uncontrolled hunger.”

Micah bit his lower lip, fingers digging into the familiar wood of the table as another cramp rocked his body.

His eyes returned to the plate of food in front of him.  Every instinct inside of him screamed a warning.  That whatever it was, it would cripple him.  If that wasn’t enough, the entity taunting him had doubled his resolve.  Micah wasn’t sure what the food would do, but if the creature wearing the skins of his family wanted him to eat it, there was no way he would willingly.

Still.  He swallowed.  Hunger was gnawing at him, leaving him hollow as it robbed him of his rationality.

The food looked so good.  He could stay firm after just a taste.  One more-

“Stop.”

Micah froze, a piece of toast crunching under his teeth.  He hadn’t even remembered reaching for it.  Frantically, he spit the bread out, pushing it away from him.

“I can help.”

This time he hadn’t imagined it.  There was a woman somewhere around here.  He couldn’t see her, and her voice was distant, like she was whispering in another room, but despite all of that, Micah could make out each and every word.

A wet muzzle pushed itself against Micah’s cheek.  Almost immediately a rush of thoughts and images overwhelmed him

Hunger. Devour. Pain. Forget. Hunger. HUNGER. FORGET.

He reached up pushing Telivern away.  The stag opened its mouth, revealing the sharp teeth of a predator as it stepped away from him.

“Micah, you’re inside your own soul.  The daemon is trying to trick you into consuming yourself, but you’re the one in control here.  Let me help you.”

Memories flashed quickly.  The battle with the daemon.  His attempt to revert time.  The two of them merging together and shattering the spell.

“Who are you?” He asked.  “How do I know I can trust you?”

“What a silly question,” his mother replied.  “I thought I told you.  You already know who I am if you think hard enough.  It just won’t change anything.  Eventually the hunger will consume you and you will eat.”

Micah felt a ghostly hand on top of his own.  He looked up, taking in the translucent and barely visible form of a thin woman, her hair pulled back and tied into a tight braid.

“After all of these years I have more power than I could ever imagine,” she said quietly.  “Unfortunately, I couldn’t imagine that the passing time would make me so stupid.”

The grin on his mother’s body disappeared in a second, replaced by a deep frown.

“Who is that?” Veronica’s voice asked, her glowing yellow eyes flashing.  “It should only be the two of us here, Micah.  What sort of abomination have you made of yourself that there would be another?  What did you do to yourself?”

The ghostly figure looked down at Micah.  A pulse of energy seemed to run down her arm and into his hand.  The strange hunger abated, but he yanked his hand back, looking at the floating woman with shock and distrust.

“You’ll have to trust me Micah,” she said soothingly.  “I’m not sure I could hurt you if I wanted to, but we will need to act soon.  Even if the hunger doesn’t consume you, things are bad in the outside world, you need to wake up.”

The world rumbled, as if Basil’s Cove were suffering an earthquake.  The creature in his mother’s body didn’t notice.  She leapt to her feet and lunged across the table, the nails on the fingers of her right hand growing until it resembled a claw as she tried to rip the spirit’s throat out.

Her hand passed through the insubstantial figure, leaving the monster snarling and as bewildered as Micah himself.

“What nonsense is this!” His mother’s body shrieked.  “We’re in your soul!  How can you have two souls?  That’s impossible.”

The ghostly woman removed her hand from Micah’s, floating around behind him and placing each of her index fingers on a temple and both of her thumbs on the back of his head.  She leaned forward slightly, whispering to him while the daemon raged.

“You’ll have to trust me for just a second and let me in.  Can you do that Micah?”

He nodded, the movement imperceptible but all that the ghost needed.

Energy and memories surged inside him.  Years of research, laboring in her tower as she sought the pinnacle only to be betrayed and cast down so deep that it took Mursa years to find her spirit in the mist and recover it.  Faces flashed through his mind, people he didn’t recognize clad in clothing that had gone out of style hundreds of years ago.

Then it was over.  The ghost was nowhere to be found but there was a weight on Micah’s head.

He reached up, touching a familiar circlet of metal.

As soon as his fingers made contact with it, the entire world sprang into focus.  He was lying somewhere, unconscious while titanic forces of magic raged back and forth.  Meanwhile he was trapped inside his own soul, living out some grotesque dream at the behest of-

He focused on his mother.  A parasite.  A hunger that sought to strip Micah of his identity and turn him into something that resembled it.  A mass of instinct, anger and HUNGER.

Micah reached out an arm.  The table and room disappeared.  He was in an empty space.  Nothing existed but him, his mother and mist in the distance.

His mother took a step backward, but for some reason she moved nearer rather than further from him.  Micah’s hand closed around her shoulder.

“What are you doing?” She asked, glowing yellow eyes wide as she struggled ineffectually in Micah’s grasp.  “How are you doing it?  Neither of us are supposed to be able to-”

“You were right about one thing,” Micah cut her off, reaching up with his right hand and touching his index figure to the side of her head.  “I am hungry.”

His mother collapsed, a crab with twelve legs that was about the size of his fist scurrying from the side of her head as she fell.  It tried to run away, but Micah’s will froze it in place.

The struggling monster flew through the air, landing in the palm of Micah’s hand.  It brought both of its pincers down, snapping at his palm.  He couldn’t feel the attacks.  It was like it couldn’t even touch him.

He popped the creature into his mouth and bit down.

This time there was contact, his teeth crushing through its shell.  Chaotic memories flowed into Micah, alien thoughts of shapes in the mist and flashing lights all suffused with power.  Power that flowed into him in a heady rush.

Micah’s body was changing.  The energy was mixing with every cell of his form, upgrading him.  Making him into something more than he was before.  It wasn’t changing his class.  That part of his soul felt the same.  It was everything else that was evolving, pushing past the limits set upon Micah by his very humanity.

The power built to a crescendo, all semblance of order or control gone as it rampaged through his body.  For the first time since the dream had started, Micah felt truly full.

His eyes opened.  There was sand under his back, and In the distance he could hear screaming and the crash of spells.