The First Date

Friday night was the big night and this time there was no abduction by a secret agency to stop me from going out with Cromvik. He picked me up very punctually and took me to Torjino’s – very good, very upscale. Nice. We sat down and ordered our food interspersed with friendly small talk. So far so good, but then Cromvik said, “There’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while now. How did you come so close to becoming Ishta? – You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, though.”
I shook my head. “It isn’t something, I usually tell anyone. It’s not a nice story but I trust you enough now that I’m sure you won’t go around telling everyone.”
“I won’t, I promise,” he jumped in.
I smiled. He looked at me with such hope in his eyes, that it was crystal clear to me that this was important to him. I guess he knew that if I told him such a personal thing, we would go way beyond professional friendship. “Well then. I was in my first semester at the university. Twenty years young and incredibly naïve, to be honest. My Magic Wielding 101 professor was Kaljarik.”
“That famous profassur Kaljarik who won the Nobari-prize?”
I nodded. “That’s the one. I was very impressed that my profassur was such a famous man. What I didn’t know then was that he hadn’t made any more interesting discoveries since winning that prize a few years before. I was just totally thrilled when he chose me to be his personal assistant. He said I had great potential and that he wanted to tutor me to achieve the most that I could.”
“I definitely would have jumped at the opportunity to work with a Nobari-prize-winner,” Cromvik agreed.
“Oh it was a great offer and he taught me many things. That’s the reason why I didn’t notice what he was doing, until it was too late. He brought me memory stone after memory stone to unlock, whilst explaining what I could do with all the additional power and wisdom. He carefully chose the stones from a variety of fields, but always one’s that would increase my magical power. The more I felt my power increase, the more I craved it. Little by little I got addicted to it. By the time the first tiny silver shadow appeared in my eyes, I was already too far gone. I didn’t care what that silver shadow implied. I bought colored contact lenses from the human dimension to hide the silver and kept on going.”
I broke off while the waitress served our main course. Actually I was glad for the interruption, I needed a moment to gather myself before I told the next part of the story.
Once the waitress was gone, Cromvik shook his head, “I don’t understand. If no one else then at least profassur Kaljarik should have noticed what was happening. Don’t tell me he was deliberately pushing you into addiction.”
I gave him a wry smile. “That’s exactly what he was doing. I didn’t find out until after everything was over that he was using me. See, the university was cutting him off because his research hadn’t produced any new outcome in two years. He must have been mentally unstable before that already, but apparently that pushed him into complete madness. That’s the only explanation I can give for his plan of revenge. It was pure madness and he would even have succeeded if it hadn’t been for Iljana.”
“Iljana was my room mate. She noticed that I was behaving strangely and eventually found out, what was happening. So, she followed me when I received a summons from Kaljarik late one night. He called me to the Charilan-grove right in the center of Knobblyville. His plan was to blow up the whole city by setting free all the magical power that I had accumulated. He had put the trigger into a memory stone that he gave me to unlock. At that point I would have done anything he asked of me and I would have opened the stone, too, if Iljana hadn’t arrived just then. She screamed at me to drop the stone and while I didn’t comply because it was so powerful that it called to my Ishta self, I did hesitate long enough for her to reach me. I didn’t understand why she was yelling at me. I just wanted to open that pretty stone that contained so much wonderful power.”
I drew in a long breath to steady myself. This was the first time I talked about this to anyone other than my parents. It was hard. “Kaljarik had put some distance between me and him to have a chance at surviving the power explosion, but he hadn’t moved out of sight. When he saw Iljana approach me, he acted quickly and brutally. He send an energy wave that hit her in the back. She had no chance of survival. She was dead before she hit the ground in front of me. It took me long moments to process what had happened. When I finally registered that my best friend had just died because she had tried to help me, I broke down. The Ishta urges were pushed to the back of my mind by the numbing shock of witnessing Iljana’s death. I threw away the stone and knelt beside her, hoping to find a sign that she might still live. Of course, there was none.”
“Kaljarik came towards me, yelling at me to take up the stone and open it. He promised me enormous power and some other things I didn’t even register. I looked up and finally saw him as the madman he had become. He was gathering energy, I could feel it. He probably wanted to force me to open the stone or maybe open it himself. I don’t know. I reacted without conscious thought. I lifted my hand and fried him with an energy bolt. I knew I had killed him, but I didn’t care. All I felt was shock at my best friends death and disgust at what I had become.”
“I was in therapy for two years until I had learned to suppress my Ishta urges enough to function without immediate danger of relapsing. The dacturs didn’t have much hopes that I would come back from the brink sane, but the memory of Iljana dying because of me kept me working until I beat the Ishta urges.”
“Dear Gods,” Cromvik uttered. “How can it be that I never heard of this if it happened right here in Knobblyville?”
I shrugged awkwardly, “The university didn’t want the bad publicity. They were very successful at covering the whole thing up. Only few people know what happened that night.”
It took a while until Cromvik got over my story and he had a few more questions about it and my time in rehab, which I answered openly. But soon enough we mutually decided to switch to lighter topics.
Overall, it was a good date. We talked, even laughed later on and I arrived back home with the feeling that we had gotten a lot closer in the course of that one evening.

Lying yet telling the truth

As you know I came back from my ultra secret side-job one and a half weeks ago and had planned to visit Cromvik in his office the very next day. Little did I know that he had left for a conference. He didn’t arrive back until late last night and I didn’t want to have this conversation over long distance. So, I waited until today and went to his office first thing this morning.
I took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves before I knocked on his office door. I wasn’t at all sure what kind of welcome I would get. After all, I left without a word and the only explanation that had been given by the superiors, was that I’d had Ishta urges that forced me to go into seclusion. While that was a good, believable excuse in general, I wasn’t at all sure that it convinced Cromvik.
He called me in and I entered with my back straight and calm confidence all over my face. If there’s one thing I am good at then it’s not showing my feelings. Unfortunately, so is he. I couldn’t tell at all what he was thinking from his calm composure and his noncommittal greeting.
He invited me to sit and I did before I started, “I heard this is your first day back after your trip, so I thought I’d come by and apologize for ditching you the other night. I’m sorry you had to hear from someone else what happened, but you know how it is with Ishta urges. They can come so suddenly. And while fighting them, contact to the outside worlds just isn’t wise.”
For an endless moment he just stared into my eyes. It took all my self-control not to squirm under his perusal. Finally he spoke, “You know, when they told me that you had to leave because of Ishta urges, I wondered whether it was just a lie and you had gone off on another alibi trip to cover up some devious plan. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time.” I cringed inside at his hint at the whole new dean thing. Couldn’t he just let that one go?
He leaned forward over his desk and I resisted the urge to move backwards. “Now that I see you...” he continued. “I think it is actually the truth this time. There is a new silver shadow in your right eye.”
“You noticed?” I was surprised and quite flattered that he would notice such a little detail about my appearance. At the same time my conscience winced. He was right, there was a new silver fleck in my right eye since the accident in the secret lab. How ironic that this accident was now providing me with the “proof” for my cover story.
He pulled up one shoulder in a casual shrug. “Yes well... it’s not that hard to see. Anyway, are you free on Friday? If you’re still interested in a date, that is.”
“I am free and interested,” I answered and I meant it.
I have to say I am very glad that my whole disappearing act didn’t wreak my chances with Cromvik. I really am looking forward to Friday night.

back home

Today I arrived back home after strenuous weeks of creating memory stones. As I expected, the youngster they gave me to teach turned out to be a real pain in the butt. There’s nothing worse than trying to teach someone who believes himself infallible and already prepared for all eventualities. The guy actually thought that knowing something in theory was the same as doing it. Well, it is a far cry from theoretically knowing how to create a memory stone, to actually creating one. There are a great many subtleties that one only learns with experience.
Unfortunately Eetan had only rudimentary experience in creating stones and none at all with the higher levels. That’s why they had given him into my care, to teach him to create the ultra complicated level 5 stones. Unfortunately, though, he didn’t take well to constructive criticism, thinking himself pretty much perfect. More than once I had the strong urge to shake the guy until he saw reason or just plain kill him with the nearest heavy object. I held myself back time and again, trying to tell myself that the superiors must have seen something in this obnoxious twerp that was special enough to qualify him for the strenuous job they gave him.
This went on until last Wednesday when it all went south. All morning I had explained time and again that the techniques he had learned from his rulebooks were all nice and well but not applicable to the kind of stone we were working on. Eetan as always didn’t believe me. Oh, he would do as I said but complained all the time. I was fast reaching my limits of restraint.
Shortly before lunch time I reached a spot where I had to step out of the workroom or kill the insolent pup. I opted for the first option and went outside to get some air. In hindsight I know it had been stupid to leave him alone even if it was only for the few minutes I was gone.
When I came back into the room I immediately felt the wrongness in the air. While the door fell closed behind me I took in the situation presented to me. Eetan was crouching on the floor, his whole body stiff with tension. He didn’t react to my entrance, eyes fixed on the memory stone he held cradled in his trembling fingers. The stone was seconds away from exploding and Eetan was clearly unable to stabilize it.
I did the only thing I could do. I ripped the stone out of his hands and threw it into a corner while shoving Eetan to the floor and erecting a protective bubble around us. The explosion energy whipped through the room and over my shield with such excruciating force, that it ripped wholes into my shield. Pure magical power forced itself right into me, filling me up, trying to rip me apart. I blacked out for a moment and when I came to again it was over. Eetan lay still beneath me, trembling all over and staring in terror into my eyes. That’s when I realized they must have turned completely silver. As if on cue Ishta urges rampaged through me body, screaming of magic and power and hunger. Hunger for more. To take anything, everything. A lovely source conveniently trapped beneath me.
With a pained scream I jumped away from Eetan and backed into a corner. “Get out, you fool,” I spat at Eetan who was still lying where I’d left him.
At my scream he flinched, then drew himself up and hastened out of the room. I sat down right where I was and started meditating, fighting against the Ishta urges with all I had.
Hours later I had re-established a semblance of control over myself, though I still felt stretched thin. My body was trembling from exhaustion and my head felt as if it was filled with cotton wool. Everything was a blur and my hearing didn’t seem to work right.
I stumbled out of the work room and straight to my quarters. Everyone was intelligent enough to keep out of my way. I slumped into bed and slept till Thursday afternoon.
It was a knock on my door that woke me. Still half asleep, I got myself into an upright position and croaked, “Come in.”
In came Eetan carrying a tray loaded with food. My stomach rumbled at the sight, a sure sign that I was getting better. With a quiet “good morning” he placed the food on a table and turned back to me. Gone was the overconfident rooky I had seen so much of, replaced by a youngster who couldn’t meet my gaze and shuffled his feet. “The boss said that you’d be hungry by now. So, I thought I’d bring you something to eat.” A huge breath. “And I wanted to apologize. I shouldn’t have tried to create that stone without supervision.” Finally he raised his head and I could see the pain and sincerity in his eyes. “I was a fool. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have died.”
I sighed. “I forgive you. When I was your age I did a few foolish things too. The silver flecks in my eyes can attest to that.”
Eetan gave me a wobbly smile. “Thanks. I promise from now on I will listen better.”
And to my not little astonishment, he did. Nothing like a near death experience to open one’s eyes, I guess. The last few days went a lot better and I actually grew to like the boy.
Anyway, now that I am back home, real life hit me right in the gut. I found out what the agency had given as an explanation for my being gone and tomorrow I will have to go and talk to Chromvik. He is bound to be a bit miffed because I stood him up and then just left without so much as a bye-bye.