Every lonely night Hamar woke to check if the giant creature was standing over him, but so far it hadn’t come. Years went by. Mystery ruled. None of his questions had answers.
What the ultimate purpose of his capture was, he still didn’t know. Hamar was reduced to being but the ex-beggar from Al Musar he truly was, all of his majus powers redundant, small in comparison to the creature’s, if in fact any remained at all, – he had no feel of them, felt sick at their memory. He guessed the Fiend meant to enjoy the way it tormented him into finally trying to use some powers, and then flattening him for it when he did.
Hamar, the former Pretender to the throne, – having to live out his life afraid of a hideous end when the creature would do its worst, it all the more wicked for being completely pointless. Evil’s awful existence, after all, was its own reason for being.
As the days continued he walked the halls eventually daring to open unlocked doors, mostly slamming them shut on what was inside. The place became familiar with a life of its own. He got used to darks appearing in the hallways, cold invisible things sliding over him that blessedly didn’t end their tour by strangling him. Knowing what such entities had the power to do to him kept his nerves tight as wire, the entities stopping short of killing him apparently because of orders only they knew.
Most alarming of all, when he looked in a mirror his own eyes stared back from under his tattoos with a dark presence in them. Had it always been there? Was it what he’d become without knowing it, a thing that was perceptible to him now that he was living as an ordinary man again? Had that look come into him from the very first day in the Academy? It meant he couldn’t even trust himself, – or whatever it was that was in him. He soon stopped checking for it, never met his own eyes when he passed that mirror.
Over his balcony on a clear day he could peer down to a tiny white string of a stream-bed thousands of feet below, and he spent many a boring afternoon leaning there on the balcony wall, aiming pebbles at the backs of eagles and buzzards that lazily angled up and down wasting their freedom. His fate mocked him to try something, anything, but always like bait for some further punishment for his impudence if he did.
The maddening isolation was nevertheless broken many months after he got there, when all manner of wise men and doers of majic suddenly began arriving. First one, then two, never more than three at a time. Without any warning they’d suddenly arrive, knocking on his alcove’s trapdoor after locating his whereabouts for themselves, one of the Fiend’s apparent tasks being for him to give them audience.
It was a constant jab at his powerlessness, making him always speak lies about it all like the worst of cowards, while for them the audience was an honouring of their powers and ingenuity in getting to him. He didn’t dare let such ruthless men know he had no powers to use now at all, – could never risk questioning them about the safe route into the place. Or out of it.
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