Zane Elsher woke gasping for air, a spine-crushing weight pressing his body into sweat-soaked sheets. Zane used to joke when sick or after a heavy night of drinking that he felt like a car ran over him, but that was an understatement. Everything hurt.
The brush of his eyelashes against his cheek felt like sharp rocks gouging into the palms of his hands after a fall. Dread pooled in his stomach. A situation he never thought possible was happening.
It was a familiar pain. He'd experienced it often but never got used to it. Did you ever get used to pain? He remembered a stern voice, his father's, telling him that a man of character could learn to live with it.
He heard the sound of a door opening but didn't dare to move. Anyway, there was only one person it could be if he'd returned to his childhood bedroom. He had no reason to fear that man yet.
Zane felt lava flow down his face, tears, he realized.
Make it stop. Please. Make it stop. Zane wanted to beg, but the words remained thoughts.
Zane didn't know if he said it aloud, but the soothing scent of peppermint permeated the air, easing the pain. Morissia Healing Incense, his mind supplied, pulling up a dusty memory. He couldn't live without it at this age, even though it was addictive and did as much damage to the body as it helped.
"It seems like a bad morning, young master." The weight pressing him down lifted, and cool air brushed his skin.
The words buzzed around his mind, not registering but unsettling something in him.
Charles Altman.
The butler his family assigned to him.
A thread of thought tried to connect but slipped away. Zane tried to battle the darkness that wanted to swallow him. An instinct told him he might never wake again if he fell asleep. "Water." The voice sounded gravelly and squeaky at the same time. It felt like someone shoved a flame-hot lance down his throat as he swallowed: the price he paid for speaking.
There was always a price.
"You have to sit up, young master." Charles' voice was soothing, and he spoke in low tones meant to comfort.
Zane shook his head. He wasn't capable of that. Breathing took all the thought and effort he had.
"I didn't want to do this." The voice muttered. Soft clanging sounds echoed, and then the smell in the room changed from peppermint to ash.
Zane tasted the bitterness on his tongue, and his dizziness increased, but faster than he imagined possible; the pain eased, dulling into a niggling ache. As soon as the pain receded, all the ways things were wrong flooded his mind.
Light streamed through the windows, and summer heat permeated the room. When he went to sleep, it was the heart of winter, and his cabin in the north was experiencing Polar Night. Zane hadn't seen the sun in over a month, and they still had a month or two before it was due.
Zane felt the cool press of glass to his lips. His emotions in turmoil, he remembered enough to know where he was, but the last sixty years that Zane lived on earth pain-free made this existence Zane struggled through for twenty years seem like a long dream that he had as a child or a fantasy he made up for the stories he wrote.
Drinking was as refreshing and awful as he expected and remembered, maybe more so. The chilly liquid soothed his parched throat, but the water scratched its way down, rekindling the fire and pain.
"Do you feel better, young master?"
No, he didn't feel better and didn't want to talk. He wished to return to that white wintery landscape where he found peace, solitude, and community. Opening his eyes, they started to water as light stabbed them. A grating sound echoed in the room, a cross between a dog's whine and nails scratching along a chalkboard. It took a moment to realize the sound was coming from him.
"Take a deep breath," the man said, pressing something to his lips.
Zane took a deep breath through his mouth, and the elephant resting on his chest eased up. It did nothing to ease his fears or dispel the ridiculousness of the scenario he found himself in.
Charles Altman. He never knew much about the butler who served at his side. They'd been together for around ten years, but Zane was usually preoccupied with surviving to worry about the man taking care of him. Charles also tried to kill him on several occasions.
Focus, he reminded himself as his mind started to stray.
"What happened?" he asked, unsure if he was talking to himself or the other man. The pain he just experienced left a shadow in his mind.
"It's getting worse the closer you are to maturing."
That was an understatement. Zane's 'disease' didn't have a name, but doctors likened it to what happened to wizards that used prana. His body was slowly eating at itself. It got worse when he turned fifteen, and his body started to fill with mana.
Zane closed his eyes, fighting back dread at that thought. The pain he experienced now paled in comparison to then. Half of it was his fault. He'd listened to bad advice.
"The medicine delayed it as long as possible, but doctors are out of options."
"Try," he said. He reassured himself he was fishing for information instead of being too tired to say more.
The man's brows furrowed. "You mustn't think that way. I should've killed him for even suggesting it. Young master, things exist beyond our control or understanding, and you shouldn't even think about listening to him."
Zane saw a gleam in the man's red eyes that made it clear that he would end Zane's life himself if Zane ever tried the doctor's dubious suggestion. He laughed, a gurgling sound bubbling in his chest. He didn't remember this conversation, but Charles did just that when he found out Zane followed the doctor's crap suggestion and became a pranaficer.
It was terrible advice. Someone must have paid the doctor to suggest that to him. There was no way using prana with my already deteriorating body would have helped. A part of me knew it, but I was desperate.
Zane focused on the man in front of him. Charles had red eyes, slicked-back brown hair, a triangle earring in his right ear, and a butler's uniform. He looked away, swamped with a strange feeling of deja vu and hopelessness. To collect himself, he looked at the room around him. It was large and barren, with traces of opulence time stripped away.
The paint was fading and chipped, and the white color was stained brown, evidenced by the spot on the wall that retained its original color where a large piece of furniture used to be. In fact, all the furniture was gone except for a single dresser, a chair by the window, and the bed he was lying in. Imprints on the floor showed where each piece used to be.
"Have they given up on me?" The boy abandoned by his family troupe seemed at play. He knew how old he was, fifteen, marked by the doctor's visit. As a dumb little boy, Zane never understood that they abandoned him in the past, so caught up in his thoughts as he tried to find ways to escape his pain, he'd gone to Șolomanță believing he had the support of his family and their enclavă.
Charles' jaw clenched. His silence spoke volumes.
"What happens now?" Zane asked. His memories of this time were blurry. Days spent in pain tend to have that effect.
"You still have to attend school, young master."
Zane had never heard anything more ridiculous. He couldn't sit up without assistance. "I'll die if I do."
"You'll die if you don't." The man looked out the window, eyes haunted. "Since you've never met one, you're underestimating the Aldach, young master."
Zane followed his line of sight. Covering the sky was a pale golden light, the barrier for the enclavă.
That was where Charles was wrong. Zane had met an Aldach. He'd met several Al's, each more terrible than the last. The Șolomanță was overrun with them, always waiting to eat kids. Al-blobs were the ones Zane encountered the most. Al-misty were the ones he was most afraid of. The types of Aldach had proper terrifying names that no one used. Adding levity and silliness to a soul-devouring creature seemed strange, more so to Zane, who lived years with the greatest threat to his life being a heart attack or car crash, but it was the only way to stay sane when you lived your entire life under threat of being eaten.
Zane sighed, slumping into bed. When using magic, there was always a price to pay. After waking up in a new world that didn't have a hint of anything supernatural, he thought he'd escaped the balancing principle and equivalent exchange.
Zane already made the deal and had to live with it.