“That requires a complicated answer.”
“Yes or no?”
He shook his head. “It isn’t like that. Yes, it is part of me. No, it is not me.” Sighing, he shook his head. “This was not the way I wanted you to find out.”
“Did you want me to find out ever?”
“I suppose not. But it was only a matter of time before you would. I should have known better.”
“You should’ve.” I paused. “What is it?”
Sitting upright, wincing from the pain in his side, he ran his hands through his hair. “Do you know much about my kind?”
“Mages? Not much. Your people don’t really like talking to mine.”
The Horseman nodded. “I will give you context, then.” He licked his lips. “Mages were once humans born with only half a soul. We live charmed, difficult lives until the moment we hear the call of magic from a place called the Tempest.”
“The Tempest?”
“A realm of… chaos and possibility. The Tempest is magic in its purest, rawest form, but it is not without its inhabitants. Among those inhabitants are beings called Guardians. They are said to hold the other half of our souls, and if we choose to answer them when they call, we begin a journey into the Tempest to try and find them. But the Tempest is a dangerous place. Many of us don’t survive. Those that do, eventually merge with their Guardians and become more powerful than ever.”
“And you did this?”
“I, like many others, did. For a while I was complete—no longer a creature with only half a soul. With my Guardian’s help and guidance, I became an influential member of our community, but…”
“But?”
He shook his head, then stared directly at me—into me. “I have never volunteered any of this to anyone.”
“There’s always a first time for everything, and it’s too late to back down now.”
The Horseman took a deep breath. “I first noticed something was wrong with my Guardian years ago. It would not come when summoned, it would abandon me at inopportune moments; it would even force me into a strange dreamscape where it would relentlessly chase and attack me. It was not supposed to do that.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“Why would I?”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course, because telling someone would be a show of weakness, and we can’t have that.”
“It’s more than that.”
“Then what is it?”
“You might think mage society is utopian. You may think mages have each other’s backs, but we don’t. If news of my affliction had escaped, my own people would have turned on me and put me down like a rabid dog.”
I watched him as he spoke, trying to keep hold of the humanity in his eyes. It was fading, I could tell. He wasn’t comfortable talking about any of this, and if I kept pressing, if I pushed him too hard, he would close up and I would get nothing more from him. I needed to be careful, so I changed my tone.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“My Guardian was going mad,” he said, “It was rotting from the inside out, and it was going to take me with it… so I ripped it out of me.”
“You… what?”
“It was the only thing I could think to do.”
“But doesn’t it have the other half of your soul?”
“It did…” he paused. “It does. I only partly succeeded. Guardians aren’t meant to be removed—a mage parts ways with their Guardian when they die. It then returns to the Tempest and waits to be called by a new mage. I interfered with the natural order of things to save my own life, and I was cursed for my hubris and selfishness.”
“Cursed…”
“I couldn’t send it back to the Tempest where it could infect another mage in the future. I tried to contain it once I’d pried its fingers away from my soul, to lock it away inside of myself where it couldn’t do me or anyone else any harm. Slowly, though—over time—it seeped out like slime under a door.”
“I’m having trouble understanding what you mean.”
“I don’t expect you to understand the metaphysics of it. What you need to understand is, the process changed me. With my Guardian no longer part of my soul, I was free from its attacks. What I hadn’t anticipated was that it would be able to gain greater control of my body and mind and use me to attack others; to feed on others.”
“Feed?”
“Guardians cannot survive in this realm without being attached to a soul. This one needed to find more creative means with which to sustain itself. At first it would attempt to take hold of my body, to warp it and change it into a monster and use it to attack people. When I figured out how to suppress that, it changed its tactics and began drawing its victims into a psychic dreamspace where it could hurt them in order to sustain itself.”
I frowned at him. “So, that’s why it’s hunting that way, because it can’t use your body… how do we stop it?”
He shook his head. “I wish I knew. I have been trying to find an answer to this ever since the attacks started happening with more frequency, but I don’t have one.”
“There has to be something you can do. Can’t you destroy it?”
“Guardians are eternal. They are… little Gods. Destroying them is out of the reach of any mage.”
I folded my arms in front of my chest. “Does that mean you’ve given up?”
The Horseman scowled. “Is that what you believe?”
“All I know is people are dying far faster now than they ever have, and I that I just had a tussle with your alter ego.”
“I cannot control who it attacks.”
“But you tried to show me, didn’t you?” I stood from the chair I had been sitting on and walked closer to him, kneeling by his bedside. “In my dream I saw your eyes—those eyes. It was only for a moment.”
The Horseman stared at me. “I remember…”
“You do… so you can’t control it, but you are aware.”
“I am. It drags me into the dreamscape with it. I become a passenger when it is hunting just like it is a passenger right now.”
I couldn’t even imagine what that must be like. To have to watch as some creature butchers and eats people, and uses your body, your power, to do it. My eyes moved to the injury in his side. His did too. “I hurt you.”
“You did. I felt the impact, the pain. It wasn’t expecting that.”
“The mark on your body is the same one I’ve seen on other inmates. The same mark I have on my arm.”
“Psychic feedback. It attacks in a dreamscape, not with real claws. But the damage translates through magic into something physical.”
I shook my head. Not because any of this was terribly difficult to understand. I had knew magic of my own. But because I had never known magic itself could be so insidious, so vicious. My people used magic as a tool, a means to an end—and the Serakon used it far less than our Aevian cousins did.
The Horseman was talking about like magic as if it was a living, breathing thing capable not only of thought, but also intent. Dangerous, lethal intent.
“I knew it had picked you,” the Horseman said, “There was nothing I could do to turn it away, even though I tried. I managed to wrest control for a moment, just long enough for you to see me… I’m sorry, Six. I should have told you sooner.”