First post - Darren's introduction
Mar. 8th, 2003 11:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparkindarknessIntroducing Darren, beware angst people - and see the warning in the profile - you have been warned.
I'm in my cheap apartment - tacky, in a poor part of town, with very little furniture. Yes I can afford better, but why bother? It does everything I need it to. And it's not like I'm going to be here long.
I stare into the mirror. Even now, I cannot look into my own eyes, I do not want to see my fear and darkness reflected back from those blue depths. I look at my hands instead, clad, as ever, in thin black gloves. There is a knife held in them, shining silver among the darkness. A knife. An ending. Death. Peace.
Melodramatic? Allow me at least that luxury before the end. It's something that should have been done long before - like 21 years ago. At very least 15 years ago, back home.
Back in England, before I changed my name, then was when it should have ended. My family are all wizards, all mages, witches, enchanters - choose a name, they can all use magic. Not dabbling, not magician sleight of hand, the real thing. And we're extremely good. Even now, when the magical talent seems to be dying out of our line, we're still some of the most powerful spell-casters in the world. They should have known. No, they did know. They should have acted.
You see, we all have a specialty, some kind of magic that we're amazingly good at, magic we don't have to really study (though it helps) or learn, or even try particularly hard. Magic that is in the blood and bone and soul. My sister is an illusionist. My father a terrifyingly powerful elementalist. My mother a wonderfully pure white mage. We learn our specialty on our 6th name day, it is the holiest and most powerful rite we ever undergo. From the signs in the sky and on the land, and the insight of the family's most powerful psychics we can tell the path the child will walk.
I remember my 6th name day, my Pathlighting. The sky, cleared by the strongest weather-workers we had, went black. No clouds, no eclipse, just darkness. The ground rumbled and groaned, tress withering, plants dying. My great-aunt Prisa, a wonderfully sensitive psychic, fell to her knees screaming in pain, blood flowing from her eyes, mouth an ears.
The signs were read. Black Magic. Death Magic. Evil Magic. Necromancy, sorcery and daemonology. Most of my celebrating kin ran screaming from the sight as soon as the words were said. They'd cower under the stairs at the very idea of Sorcerer nearby. Traditionally, the few sorcerers we produced were killed as soon as the signs were clear. Slaughtering children just isn't done in the modern world though. They were foolish and naive. They should have killed me.
Not that they accepted me with open arms or anything. My mother - my poor, pure holy mother, held a funeral for me. Mourned over my grave and never spoke my name or acknowledged my existence again. I was a stranger to her and always will be. My father went into denial, he always did have more pride than sense. He was sure he could train the darkness out of me. Force it out. Beat it out, burn it out. He failed, but he tried desperately for 8 years. Blood, pain, and fear, the darkness remained, growing stronger. It's part of my soul, part of me.
When I reached 14 my father had given up. I was damned and would always be damned. One day the darkness would claim me. Then I would unleash atrocity after atrocity and cause excruciating suffering to thousands. I know the history, I know what the future holds for sorcerers. I remember the grief in his eyes, and the determination, as he called the flames and moved to save the world from the darkness his only son would unleash.
Yet I live. My uncle Alexei intervened. The old herbalist was ever pragmatic, and said he could find some uses for me, that it would be a shame to waste my power. My father assumed he was going to harvest me for magical components - grizzly but practical. I wish he had. I wished for death many times under Alexei's usage, and not just to save the world from the destruction I would unleash.
I ran. Too cowardly to take my own life, I left at the age of 18. Using the few magical arts I dared use I managed to reach America. A new name, a new start in a new place, where I promised I would forget about magic, forget about the darkness. A new place with new delusions.
I moved a lot. Wherever I settled down I couldn't forget the magic. From city to city I moved as I felt my powers grow. Not just my powers, as I felt my mind grow darker, began to see friends as victims, people as toys and pain as sweet symphony. I moved to a new place and the cycle started again, but always faster, always more advanced. I bound myself with wards and talismans, called all my power and delved deeply in the darkness to forge chains to bind me. I failed.
And now, I stand in front of a mirror in a cheap apartment in New York. Bound by the strongest wards; but the darkness, the pain, the power and the evil are still there. A knife in my hands, I can finish the task my family should have performed 15 years ago.
Yet again my courage fails. My resolve wavers. The knife drops from my gloved fingers.
And a growing part of my soul throws back its head and laughs.
I'm in my cheap apartment - tacky, in a poor part of town, with very little furniture. Yes I can afford better, but why bother? It does everything I need it to. And it's not like I'm going to be here long.
I stare into the mirror. Even now, I cannot look into my own eyes, I do not want to see my fear and darkness reflected back from those blue depths. I look at my hands instead, clad, as ever, in thin black gloves. There is a knife held in them, shining silver among the darkness. A knife. An ending. Death. Peace.
Melodramatic? Allow me at least that luxury before the end. It's something that should have been done long before - like 21 years ago. At very least 15 years ago, back home.
Back in England, before I changed my name, then was when it should have ended. My family are all wizards, all mages, witches, enchanters - choose a name, they can all use magic. Not dabbling, not magician sleight of hand, the real thing. And we're extremely good. Even now, when the magical talent seems to be dying out of our line, we're still some of the most powerful spell-casters in the world. They should have known. No, they did know. They should have acted.
You see, we all have a specialty, some kind of magic that we're amazingly good at, magic we don't have to really study (though it helps) or learn, or even try particularly hard. Magic that is in the blood and bone and soul. My sister is an illusionist. My father a terrifyingly powerful elementalist. My mother a wonderfully pure white mage. We learn our specialty on our 6th name day, it is the holiest and most powerful rite we ever undergo. From the signs in the sky and on the land, and the insight of the family's most powerful psychics we can tell the path the child will walk.
I remember my 6th name day, my Pathlighting. The sky, cleared by the strongest weather-workers we had, went black. No clouds, no eclipse, just darkness. The ground rumbled and groaned, tress withering, plants dying. My great-aunt Prisa, a wonderfully sensitive psychic, fell to her knees screaming in pain, blood flowing from her eyes, mouth an ears.
The signs were read. Black Magic. Death Magic. Evil Magic. Necromancy, sorcery and daemonology. Most of my celebrating kin ran screaming from the sight as soon as the words were said. They'd cower under the stairs at the very idea of Sorcerer nearby. Traditionally, the few sorcerers we produced were killed as soon as the signs were clear. Slaughtering children just isn't done in the modern world though. They were foolish and naive. They should have killed me.
Not that they accepted me with open arms or anything. My mother - my poor, pure holy mother, held a funeral for me. Mourned over my grave and never spoke my name or acknowledged my existence again. I was a stranger to her and always will be. My father went into denial, he always did have more pride than sense. He was sure he could train the darkness out of me. Force it out. Beat it out, burn it out. He failed, but he tried desperately for 8 years. Blood, pain, and fear, the darkness remained, growing stronger. It's part of my soul, part of me.
When I reached 14 my father had given up. I was damned and would always be damned. One day the darkness would claim me. Then I would unleash atrocity after atrocity and cause excruciating suffering to thousands. I know the history, I know what the future holds for sorcerers. I remember the grief in his eyes, and the determination, as he called the flames and moved to save the world from the darkness his only son would unleash.
Yet I live. My uncle Alexei intervened. The old herbalist was ever pragmatic, and said he could find some uses for me, that it would be a shame to waste my power. My father assumed he was going to harvest me for magical components - grizzly but practical. I wish he had. I wished for death many times under Alexei's usage, and not just to save the world from the destruction I would unleash.
I ran. Too cowardly to take my own life, I left at the age of 18. Using the few magical arts I dared use I managed to reach America. A new name, a new start in a new place, where I promised I would forget about magic, forget about the darkness. A new place with new delusions.
I moved a lot. Wherever I settled down I couldn't forget the magic. From city to city I moved as I felt my powers grow. Not just my powers, as I felt my mind grow darker, began to see friends as victims, people as toys and pain as sweet symphony. I moved to a new place and the cycle started again, but always faster, always more advanced. I bound myself with wards and talismans, called all my power and delved deeply in the darkness to forge chains to bind me. I failed.
And now, I stand in front of a mirror in a cheap apartment in New York. Bound by the strongest wards; but the darkness, the pain, the power and the evil are still there. A knife in my hands, I can finish the task my family should have performed 15 years ago.
Yet again my courage fails. My resolve wavers. The knife drops from my gloved fingers.
And a growing part of my soul throws back its head and laughs.
