Cain was raised. Women shrieked, and there were shouts like: “That’s the old queen!” and, “Damon Barklonie, that’s that horrid fellow!” and, “THE MTGYA, AHHHHHHHHHH!” Damon strode through the crowd (no one dared stop him), and spoke low but clear words that cut through the room, as does a heated blade through ice.
“Aigneis, I know you have The Key, I can feel it.” I could feel it, too. It was burning like crazy. I always carried it with me, afraid to set it down. “If you give me that Key now, you can have anything you want. I can give you the entire world’s gold, and as many slaves and men as you please. Just hand over the pretty stone you possess.”
“No,” said I.
“Aigneis, I’m your father, and you’ll do as I say, now give me my Key!”
“You’re no father of mine; you left my mother while I was still in her womb!”
Collective gasp.
“If I’m no father of yours, why do you seek what I seek? Why else would you carry what you know to be the key to the most powerful machine known to man, day in and day out? You want the power, too.” Murmurs of surprise swept the room.
“I don’t need power! I keep the stupid thing with me to keep it from you!”
“What a folly young child! Keeping it with you is only a step short from handing it to me on a silver platter! Your mum had a magician place a spell on The Great Key to make the stone invisible to any who seek it. But with the MTGYA so near, I need not see The Stone, I can feel its need to return to its master and purpose. Now hand it over The Key!”
“I WON’T!!!”
Damon had been marching through the crowd, and none had dared stop him. Now he grabbed me by the cuff of my neck, his thick, blocky arms lifting me from the ground. I tried to keep my eyes downcast, but he jerked me forward, and our eyes met. The blacks of his pupils seemed to engulf me, and then I felt myself falling and drowning, being consumed by the nothingness. The darkness saturated me.
I was drenched in the blackness of the Sting’s mind. I tried to gasp, tried to run, but I couldn’t, I was suffocating. I couldn’t bare it; I would die here.
Then a red-silver light flicked on, and Damon was in front of me, his whole body like a burning, red ember; hard, metallic silver pulsed through where his visible veins held his poisoned blood. His tattoos were like black holes, and his now-dark-silver, thick hair was oily.
His eyes I ignored; I wouldn’t meet them for my life. But even as I resolved to this, an invisible force seemed to take over, and I looked up. His eyes, red, black, and silver, their light so liquid-hot and revolting, almost burned a hole right through me.
Then a ripping sensation began in my head; I found my memories being stripped from me. As each one was stolen in a wild current of pain, I got one last glimpse as they left.
There was Joy, her eyes unkind, though it seemed just a mask. There was Mother, scolding me for running away from home when I was young. But there’s Mum, crying with a pillow held in her arms as she stares out her window, and there’s me at the door, wondering why.
There were the kids of our town, terrorizing me. There were all the countless spitballs and rubber bands. I wasn’t too sad about losing those memories. Damon snickered.
There was me, lying sprawled on my bedroom floor, sobbing wretchedly, cursing everyone. There were the women Stings, grasping my hair, kidnapping me.
I could see the glee in Damon’s eyes as he cackled over my downtrodden thoughts. He told me the only way to get him to stop was to become a Sting, too.
This must be the core of a Sting; it’s who they really are. They do this for fun. But I couldn’t keep living in this kind of agony; he was taking all the memories that I had.
Then Damon started to take the memories I had of Absalom; when I told him about my dreams of the bird, when I kissed him, when he showed me the ancient ruins . . .
“What you’ve experienced,
Is who you are.
With what you’ve done,
You shall go far . . .”
“Aigneis, I think that saying was just made for you.”
How can I let him down? I asked myself. How can I give in to this Sting so easily???
“ABSALOM!” I cried. Damon looked stunned. I took that solitaire, precious moment to take back my thoughts, dreams, hopes, and remembered. My memories were a part of me; they made me who I am. It was like a soothing wave washing over me, they were mine to keep, not Damon’s! But then, something else started to occur. Damon’s memories flooded in and invaded. Each one that came to me seemed to weaken him, and I recognized that now he was loosing his thoughts.
There was Damon, getting his memories removed from another Sting, and then him getting the news that the other Sting had died; his memories were lost forever! There was Damon, stealing his prized stone back from the king. There he was, losing it in our home, and not being able to find it. Then there he was, making plans for Absalom’s and my capture.
“We’ll blackmail both the king and my Joy’s mother. We’ll get the key from one or the other . . .”
Of course he didn’t say Aigneis’ mother, he probably just learned my name today. I wanted to stop this; I didn’t need his memories. I cuffed him in the face, interrupting our gaze, and I felt my mind reel back into my own head, and I watched as the real Damon fell under my real fist, and crumpled on the floor, dead. I was left in a world of mist, and I faded from my own conciousness.
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