Flashes of memory. Pieces. Little bits that don’t add up to much. These all flood in.
He remembered.
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
JAMISON
Give me the sense to wonder
To wonder if I’m free
Give me a sense of wonder
To know I can be me
-CAN I PLAY WITH MADNESS, Iron Maiden
Jamison ran through the woods. His breath came in quick, deep rasps. His eyes were wild and his hair stuck to his face. He crashed through the woods. He tripped on a vine and sprawled out onto the dirt. He glanced back and heard them crashing through the woods towards him.
He’d been spending the last three weeks moving from town to town, posing as a lad named Garren. With the hunters not far behind, it was all he could do to assume different names and run when he could. It was no kind of life to live. Now, they had found him again and this time it didn’t look like he was going to make it.
The deep, guttural voice yelled “Find him! Smell him! He can’t have gone far!” They were close behind. He got back up and kept running.
CRACK!
A whip curled around his neck and he jerked short. The wind squeezed from his throat and he clawed at the whip’s end. “I’VE GOT HIM!” One of them yelled. Jamison whirled and blasted the orc with a well-placed lightning bolt. It arced through the filthy plate mail, but the orc held the whip with a devil’s strength and Jamison could not break free.
He pulled out his wand and aimed it, but CRACK! Another whip wound around his arm and yanked it back. The wand tumbled out of his grasp. Another CRACK and he was held at neck and both arms, standing there in the woods.
He was surrounded by well-trained orc hunters mounted on large worgs. The monsters snarled and laughed as blood trickled down his neck into his cloak’s lining. His mouth twitched helplessly. Without his arms and components, he was all but powerless.
From the woods stepped an enormous cowled figure. It was entirely cloaked in expanses of greenish-brown graincloth. The face was hidden in the shadows, but two yellow eyes gleamed out at him. “Crow,” it croaked. “You broke our deal.” He didn’t answer. It continued, “Where is The Orb?”
“I’ll never tell you where I put it. It’s safe from you.” Jamison choked out with a smile.
“Oh, you’ll tell,” the thing chuckled. “You’ll tell as we pull strips of muscle from your arms and legs with hot irons, yes you will.”
“Never. Know why, you stupid slag? Because I’ve forgotten.” The cowled figure glared at him as he smiled his weak little smile. “You know I’d do it, too. Hid it in the best place I could think of and cast a spell on myself that wiped the location from my memory. I could never tell you, though I’m sure you could make me wish I knew.”
One orc said “He’s lying!”
The cowled figure murmured “He’s not.”
The other orcs stirred with hatred. “Let’s torture him anyway, then! He deserves the pains of the Abyss!”
“He deserves that, and more,” the leader said with its crumbling voice. “However, we still may salvage something from this if he’s alive. There is a wizard some distance away that may be able to help us. His name is Myriachus. We will give Crow to him- as a gift. I believe the two were rivals, for a time,” it smiled. “Before Crow lost his mind.”
“Before I regained it,” Jamison hissed.
“What happened, Crow? Why the change of your little black heart? You were as evil and fiendish as any demon I’d come across. A joy to work with.”
“I wasn’t myself. I was under the control of an evil idol, and it stopped working.”
“Nothing stops working,” the thing cackled. “Something happened.”
Jamison’s lip quivered over his clenched teeth. His eyes blazed with pain. “It was hell being what I was. Through it all, nothing was so horrid as what brought me back to myself.” He spat on the cloaked creature.
It barely noticed the insult. “None of it matters. Your master plan will go forward, with others playing your role. You’re perfectly replaceable, now that we know what to do. Plus, you know the best part, Crow?” It leaned forward with a smile in its gravelly voice. “The memory spell is tricky. You can erase certain things, of course, but if performed hastily, it can have dire side effects. Portions of memory become wiped out that you never intended to lose. Your mind becomes hazy. All of this can happen over a long period of time, if you don’t keep your wits about you. How much of your precious goodness will you remember when you’re released from your eons within the mirror?”
Jamison felt fear, but his life didn’t matter anymore. He deserved to die for the horrible things he’d done. If he were to lose himself in a mirror for all time, so be it. At least they’d never find The Orb. Never. That brought him comfort.
The creature pulled out a glistening purple-red gem and held it in her cracked, enormous hand. Blackened nails sprouted four inches from the tips of thick, furred four-knuckled fingers.
Jamison looked into the gem and wondered if he’d ever live again as he had. Before all this happened, he’d been a happy boy growing up in a happy town in a happy world. Would he ever return to consciousness… much less a consciousness worth returning to?
He cried out as the gem gave off its flash of light. He was trapped.
More to come...
