Death After Death PLUS 270-272

Ch. 270 - Coming to Fruition

It felt strange to cast his first spell in months, but it was even stranger to watch what happened next. As the taste of sulfur filled his mouth and the faint tingle of power spread through his body, the slender lightning bolt he summoned came down from the clouds above. It made contact with the tree’s tallest branch in a shower of sparks as the light peal of thunder passed through Simon. 

What happened next happened faster than the eye could see as the lightning raced along the branches to where he’d carved his runes. Still, he could see the energy arc from sky to earth and earth to sky several times as it connected with the runes he’d left. They were burning with energy now, and even after the lightning stopped, they glowed a dim red color like the embers they were. 

Simon expected that to be it. He’d used one spell to trigger another, and when it was done, hopefully, he’d get what it was he was trying to create. Even now, the spell was draining the life from everything it could within reach and condensing it in a singular form. 

The results of that were more visual than he’d expected, and he could only wonder at how terrible such a working would have looked if he’d used it during the spring when the grove would have been full of leaves and grasses. As he watched and his runes burned, the entire area began to wither. Half-frozen trees sagged visibly. Then, as the last of their yellowed leaves fell in unison, some of the branches started to fall off as the strength of the wood was no longer able to bear the weight. 

Simon watched the snow and branches rain down like the aftermath of an ice storm, and as it did so, a grayish ripple spread through the grass, moving outward in all directions from the grove. It slowed as it went, but all the scraggly yellow grass in its wake faded and sagged as well. He’d just ripped all the life out of a huge area, and he felt terrible about it. He was still near enough to the river that some spring flooding might well mitigate it. He tried to make himself believe it, but deep down, he knew this spot would be despoiled for a long time. 

Simon vowed not to make a habit of it, as he noticed that all that stolen life made the tree at the center blossom unnaturally and out of season. Even while everything else died, that life force was drawn in like a vortex, which made the largest remaining branches burst to life in buds that instantly flowered into leaves and blossoms. 

He started walking toward it then, and before he was halfway, the leaves were already starting to turn yellow and brown. A small forest had died to create a single tiny spring that would bear only one fruit, but that was all Simon needed.

Greater greater life force transfer wasn’t a spell he’d ever thought he’d have to cast. He certainly didn’t think that he’d have to use it to power a second set of runes to focus that life with plants, but he’d been inspired. If he was using his enemies to power fire and lightning from arrowheads and blades to activate and mitigate spells, then he shouldn’t be trying to do everything with life and healing by hand. That wasn’t the way that alchemy and magic were supposed to work. 

While he’d never given any thought to making potions, he knew that he could embed a spell like this in something that was living like a fruit for at least a few minutes. The thought of how fleeting such a creation was likely to be spurred his steps and made Simon run toward the tree even before he could see the fruit he’d done all this to create.  

It hadn’t just been like some goddess had granted him a vision. It was half a dozen moments from his life all lined up in a way that made it obvious in retrospect.  The giant tracks that were and were not just lakes had made him question his own perspective for days, now his mind was on fire as it combined the disparate ideas of half a dozen lives. However, once he’d figured out what he needed to do, it was the other experiences across his lives that showed him the way. The frost orb that had slain a village, the flawed flaming sword that he’d slain both himself and the basilisk with, and even the circle he’d used to simultaneously save and damn Freya all said the same thing; real power needed a form to be channeled properly. 

Simon needed to grow young, but he needed to filter that magic through something, and that something had to be alive. Those constraints had forced him to consider the demon seed. Part of him wished he had it to study today, dangerous as it was. Back then, it had been nothing but a nuisance, but now he could see it for the miracle it was. Those thoughts, combined with the memory of growing his first tree from an apple seed so long ago and a thousand little healing magics performed in cities and battlefields around the world, had come together. They’d spoken to him. 

You might not have had the knowledge to heal a brain injury in Freya, his spirit reminded him. But you now have the magic that does, if only you let it manifest completely. 

The creation of such a thing was beyond his ability to plan, even as an artist, but using magic and nature, he could create the palest of shadows, and that was what he did now. As he reached the tree, he could see that his forbidden fruit had already grown. In fact, it was very nearly ripe, and as Simon watched, the dull green fruit swelled and then softened slightly. He picked that moment to pluck it, and even though it was, in theory, a perfectly normal fruit, he would have sworn he felt his hand tingle at the contact. 

Simon was conflicted then. Part of him was sure that he should return to his camp before he started to eat this because of the profound changes it was likely to have on his body. The other part of his was sure that if he did, the short-lived miracle would lose significant amounts of its potency. It might even rot entirely. Even as he stood there, the tree that had given him this fruit was dying a final death, like everything else around him. As he watched, he could see that rot was spreading up the side even as the trunk cracked open to reveal a growing hollow. 

That decided it. Simon began to eat immediately. It was a fruit he’d had before. They were common enough on the plains north of Crowvar, and though they tasted like tough bananas to him or mangos that were only half as sweet as normal, he still enjoyed them. Ironically, the biggest downside to them was that they were only ripe and edible for a very short window in the best of times. That was even more true of the one he was devouring. 

Though it might have been the sweetest, most delicious paw paw he’d ever tasted when he first bit into it, by the time he was halfway through, it was already starting to go mushy and overripe. That wouldn’t stop him; he would have kept going, even if it rotted before he reached the end. 

He had to. He could feel his mouth tingling as the energy it contained spread down his throat and into his stomach. Bite by bite, it felt like his entire body was vibrating. The tingling wasn’t a taste. It was closer to the feeling of a slow spicy burn and the tingle of a nine-volt battery on the tongue. In reality, it was the greater life transfer from dozens of trees, powered by more than a decade of life and distilled into a single small fruit, and even after the strange feeling made his mouth go numb, he kept going. 

We stuffed himself full, and after a couple of minutes, the only things left were the pips in the center. He pocketed those, unsure of what to do with them, but even as he turned toward camp, he could feel his stomach begin to churn. 

Simon didn’t make it more than half a dozen steps before he felt those muscle cramps spread to his limbs. I’m not going to make it, he told himself. His first instinct was to cast a lesser healing spell to try to give him the ability to walk a little longer, but he suppressed that urge. The last thing he should be doing was using one spell to affect another. He had no idea what would happen at that point. 

Really, I have no idea what’s going to happen now. He reminded himself. He was deep in uncharted territory, and though he’d used the correct runes and channeled his intentions as clearly as he could, he was under no illusions that this still might end in his death. Just because the tree grove had died, the tree had blossomed, and the fruit had been created wasn’t enough to guarantee that this would have a happy ending. 

It was enough to give him faith, though, and as he collapsed, he grunted at the sudden discomfort and then barked out a word of fire. Unlike the masterwork of magic he’d just created, the burst of flame was one of the weakest spells he’d created, but he didn’t need it to be pretty. He just needed it to light the trunk of the tree he’d collapsed next to as he curled up into a ball and tried not to scream.

Reversing his aging a year at a time by stealing someone else’s soul with a greater word of transfer would have been a gentle, pleasurable experience. He would have grown addicted to it. It would have become his life. 

This was the opposite. He hadn’t drained a year of life energy from the world or even a decade. He’d done that, and then he’d used it to fuel a complicated work of flesh magic to de-age him directly. In the space of an hour or perhaps a day, he was going to try to reverse time and make his body decades younger. 

It was hard to be precise with such things, but he was looking to cut his age in half, which would make him perhaps sixteen, given where his body currently was, and it was going to hurt. He might be able to imagine all the things that would have to change to make that happen, but the details he was going to have to leave to his own biology to solve. 

The tingling had turned to pain almost everywhere now. In some places, it was the sharp feeling of muscle cramps, and in other places, it was a bone-deep ache that was dull and throbbing. Everything about who he was unraveled a moment at a time as powerful forces surged through him. 

Those sensations only escalated. The feeling that his stomach was cramping was replaced with a burning like he’d lit himself on fire, deep inside, and perhaps, he had. That was bad, but when a migraine started to thunder through his head, too, it was all he could do to curl up into a ball and try to block out these sensations. 

Within minutes, Simon was screaming. He’d died a lot of painful ways, and his recovery after falling from the volcano had been awful, but this was violent and unbearable. At least when he’d been bricked into a wall and impaled, it was the same terrible sensations that he could slowly get used to, but here and now, everything was constantly changing. 

This wasn’t just a sword through the chest; it was also a knife to his kidneys and a knee to his groin. It was everything hurting in every way imaginable, and something about the nature of the life force that was surging through him wouldn’t even let the darkness take him. All he could do was lay there and writhe in agony for a long, long time as his whole world became suffering. 

Ch. 271 - Born Again

Simon writhed in pain until the sun set hours later. He was as hoarse from his cries as he’d ever been from casting a spell, and there were several moments he would have killed himself during the ordeal if only he’d been capable of uttering the word of force necessary to sever his own head and give him a clean death. 

Sadly, that was impossible. All he could do was lay there, feeling each bone dislocate and each organ shrink as he inadvisably forced nature to reverse herself at his unnatural command. It wasn’t until evening that the world started making sense again. That was when he could see that the burned-out silhouette of a tree still flickered above him. It was an ugly sight, but it was one he rejoiced in as he found his tide of agony receding. 

He found that sitting was harder than laying there and looking at the night sky. So, instead, he lay there, appreciating that the fire that was the sole reason that he probably wasn’t deep into hypothermia. 

He looked out in the direction of his camp and his horse, but he couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t rise either. His body was entirely spent. The most he could do was raise one hand in front of his face and verify that his hand did seem smaller and less hairy than it had before all of this. His clothes fit much more poorly, too, which were all the signs he was likely to see without a mirror. 

So, smiling at that, he just rolled over and drifted to sleep at the edge of what felt like his own funeral pyre. He was too stiff and sore to sleep well but too tired to stay awake. So, instead, he drifted in and out of a dreamless sleep for hours before he finally forced himself back to his feet long enough to stagger back to his camp. 

Stagger was the right word, too. His limbs were too short, and his center of gravity was too high; even his reflexes felt wrong. 

It felt like his body no longer fit him. His clothes certainly didn’t. That was something he’d thought of before he did this, he realized. The fact that he hadn’t prepared adequately for that outcome was obviously because, deep down, he didn’t think it would work. Still, when he got to his snow-dusted tent and pulled his mirror from his pack, he was surprised to see a much younger face looking back at him. 

“Wow, what am I, fourteen?” he asked himself as he touched his unfamiliar features experimentally. Simon immediately jumped at the sound of his now much higher-pitched voice. It was unnerving. “What in the hell did I do to myself?”

He’d gotten exactly what he’d hoped for, and sometimes, that was the greatest punishment of all. Simon relit his fire and ate a little, but otherwise, he spent the rest of the day in his bedroll doing what he could do to make the clothes he had fit better with alterations that could be affected by dagger and rawhide thong. In the end, there was nothing he could do about his boots, except to stuff them with extra socks so they wouldn’t fall off his feet when he walked. 

Fortunately, with his horse, he didn’t have to do a lot of walking. Less fortunate was the fact that riding a horse was much more challenging when he was almost two feet shorter. He found that out two days later when he started heading south again and found he had to practically redo his whole saddle set up, and compared to packing everything up and reloading his saddlebags with tired, suddenly weakened limbs, that was the easy part. 

“Maybe I didn’t think this through,” he said to himself as he rode south. 

He’d been so sure of the right way to take down this city in a way that would help the future timeline that he hadn’t thought of any of the practical issues with suddenly becoming a child again. Those turned out to be legion, and each time he camped, he discovered some new problem.

His armor was useless. His weapons didn’t fit much better than his clothing had. Simon was still okay with his dagger, but he was completely useless with his scimitar. Okay was being generous, really, because he wasn’t good at much of anything for those first few days. Still, he got better, and after a week, with the soreness gone, his body started to feel like it belonged to him. 

After a lifetime of being old, he’d once marveled at how young he felt when he returned to the body of a thirty-year-old. This was like that, but even more extreme, and while he didn’t quite revel in it, Simon certainly found it fascinating. Not only that but suddenly, he had more energy than he’d had in a long time. 

What he didn’t have was any credibility. Each time he stopped in an inn after that, the proprietor wanted to know where his parents or his master were. “Are you lost?” one kindly older woman asked.

“What happened to your parents?” another inquired. “Are you really traveling alone so far?”

Simon kept the same name he’d used as a merchant, and married that old name and new face to an even newer background, but it did little good. Nijam tried several lies, but no one seemed to buy them. Soon, he gave up on those, and after he found a cobbler that he could buy shoes from, he eschewed civilization as much as possible on the way to the city because being treated like a child was just too surreal. 

No one had tried to talk down to him in a long time. He had the aura of a man who knew what he was doing, no matter his age. Now, though, it was all upside down. Some people tried to baby him, but others immediately sought to take advantage of him, and both were intolerable. 

Simon was sure that the latter group would only intensify after he reached Zurari. The city might have been one of the safest he’d been to, but it was rife with scammers and schemers, and he’d encountered more than a few pickpockets in the market.

Still, it wasn’t as if he could avoid it on that basis. He was going to have to find a place to lie low, and then he was going to have to search the city until he could find a Selection and figure out a way to get himself picked. 

Of course, they might not pick you, he told himself as he saw the silhouette of the walls and the ziggurats on the horizon for the first time. They don’t choose all the children, and they’re almost certainly looking for the sight that you don’t have. How are you going to work your way around that?

Simon didn’t know. He certainly lacked the clarity to make any sort of attempt at seeing other people’s auras right now. Transforming himself into a child had muddied the waters of his soul for a long time, and he was quite sure that any glimpses of that sort of thing were well beyond him. 

Still, even if he couldn’t perform that minor miracle, his aura was in pretty good shape these days. He was approaching negative a hundred thousand. He would just have to hope that was good enough to be considered a child that had led a hard life. Truthfully, Simon had no idea what he’d have to have done as a teenager to rack up such a pile of karmic debt, but he was sure he could figure something out. If anything, he’d just tell these guys the same sob story he told the Whisperers when they’d interrogated him so long ago. 

Before he worried about any of that, though, he had to secure lodgings and learn to do a better job of being a kid because, right now, he was failing at that miserably. He could tell by the way people regarded him. Even if he didn’t speak with them directly, he could tell that after a few minutes, they began eyeing him strangely. 

The first problem was easily solved with a small coin purse and a forged letter from a nonexistent master claiming that he was the apprentice of some far-off trader looking to establish an office here. He had to let the owner of the building he was renting think that he was taking advantage of Simon, but he didn’t really care. A couple gold coins bought him a small building in a nondescript neighborhood for a year, and it was privacy he really needed now, not coins. That space bought him enough room to hide his valuables and time enough to blend into his role. 

After that, it was all about getting proper clothes. He chose nothing fancy and traded coppers with the rag pickers so that he could better get into his role as an orphan. He even bought a smaller knife. Though he still prized his vampiric dagger, it was large enough on his new, smaller body to draw the eye, and though he could fight with it, he couldn’t hide it. 

Throughout the week, Simon accomplished those things so that he would blend in, but the whole time he tried to figure out why it was that he still stuck out so plainly. That took some time, and even after examining himself in the mirror, he could find no real problems. It was only after he studied other kids that he figured it out. He was much too serious. 

When he studied children near his current age across the bazaar or in the streets, Simon noted that they were always moving. They were always chatting or playing, even if it got them cuffed by their parent or some other adult who had grown annoyed with their antics. 

That was all well and good. He certainly didn’t hate the behavior, but he also didn’t mimic it. Compared to his new peers, he was like a statue. He moved less, he spoke less, and he certainly played less, even after he tried to join in their games. 

The cause for that was obvious. He’d spent several lifetimes, and in particular, this lifetime, cultivating patience. Now, suddenly, it felt like he was going to have to unlearn that. More than that, though, he was going to have to unlearn the small nagging voice in his head that told him he could be working on something more productive when he spent an afternoon playing tag in the streets with strangers or tossing the hard leather ball around with a couple of the boys he spent the most time with. 

For the latter category of activity, that was easier. Practicing hand-eye coordination was an activity he could defend to himself. It wasn’t play. It was practice. The same went for wooden swords. He enjoyed that, and even pretending to be worse than he really was able to beat even slightly older boys handily. That wasn’t a surprise. His new friends didn’t have decades fighting with a sword in hand like young Nijam did. Unfortunately, other tasks were harder. 

Simon played tag and hide and seek without too much complaint, but other word games, like the trading of riddles, he had an especially hard time with. He was far too clever to be a child, and he didn’t really know how to play dumb properly for any length of time.  

You’re going to have to learn, though, he told himself. Even if you get in with the Magi, you’ll end up in a cage like Freya instead of accomplishing what you want.

That thought gave him pause, and for the first time, he began to doubt his goal. His doppelgänger had tipped him off once before, only for Simon to fall into the trap that had been laid for him. Was he about to do so again? 

“That’s not possible, is it?” he asked himself. “There’s no way that he could know enough to do that unless, of course, he really is me.”

Ch. 272 - Glimpses of Revelry

The realization that Simon might be being manipulated was enough to make him steer well clear of the first Selection he came across since his return to the city, but not enough to make him give up on the plan entirely. Even if the sight of those bright robes and conical hoods weaving through the streets was enough to make Simon steer clear, he’d come too far just to let this go. 

That didn’t mean that he had to rush blindly into danger, though. Even as some of the other children ran toward them, he was content to stay very far away. Even if my evil twin is trying to get me into trouble, he can’t control all the details, Simon assured himself. 

Even though he skipped that first strange procession entirely, it was only a few weeks later before he saw another. The weather was colder then but not cold enough to keep everyone off the streets by any means. 

He considered skipping this one as well, simply out of spite. He’d seen the strange occurrences and their almost carnival-like atmosphere enough times on his last visit to know that he was hardly missing his only chance by doing so. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was that he couldn’t guarantee he wasn’t about to get himself dissected again for decades, which seemed to be a distinct possibility when his doppelgänger was involved. 

Until now, Simon had just assumed the man had been toying with him by poking holes in his worldview. Now, suddenly, he worried there might be more to it than that. Instead of joining in the festivities like a normal child would, he lingered at the fringes, and even when candies in brightly wrapped paper were tossed in his direction, he made no move to retrieve one. 

Simon had spent the last few weeks doing his best to learn to have fun, but as much pageantry as he could see in this event it left him cold. He could practically feel the malevolent gaze of these men brush over him behind their colorful masks of painted leather and paper mache. 

The boys he’d been playing monster slayers with a moment before the bright entourage and its eerie music did not share his concerns and immediately darted forward to get bits of sugary sweets from where they’d landed on the cobbles. 

This time, Simon followed the procession even as it passed him by, but he never got close to it. Instead, he just observed from the edge of the square, where the whole thing came to an end with a few equally brightly colored tents. 

The whole thing sort of gave Simon Pied Piper vibes. A few dozen men performing minor magic tricks between songs and occasional pyrotechnics led a growing throng of children through the streets with candy. Then, when they had them all in one place, they chose perhaps half a dozen and led them into various tents for the Selection. 

Simon knew from his previous conversations on the subject that less than one in ten children were chosen to be tested, and less than one in ten of those passed whatever those secretive tests. The idea that magic was rare didn’t line up with his own experiences at all. He’d only tried to teach someone else to use magic on one occasion, and while that experience made him conclude that ability certainly wasn’t equal, it didn’t seem to be very hard. 

In fact, teaching the population of Zurari a few spells in the form of random graffiti had been one of his thoughts to destabilize the regime and prevent war from breaking out any time soon. The only reason Simon didn’t was because the idea of putting more fire and lightning wielders into the world seemed like a terrible idea. He didn’t like the White Cloaks, but he agreed that it would probably be for the best if magic wasn’t put into everyone’s hands.

Still, it raised the question of what these men were looking for. Was it ability or obedience they were after? Was there any way he could find out before the time came to try his luck?

Simon eventually climbed the facades of one of the closest buildings. It loomed three stories over the tents, but not even that viewpoint gave him any insight. Though he sometimes heard music or even shouts from the largest of the three tents, there was nothing that provided him any insight. 

He was tempted to try to use magic to help him learn more, but he was pretty sure that it was his own divinatory efforts that had given him away last time, and he had no wish to flee the city again for weeks or months. Not with winter so close now. It was mild here, but the north was nothing but snow and ice. 

Unfortunately, a mild winter did not mean warm, and the Selection still hadn’t finished by sunset, leaving Simon shivering on the rooftop as he looked for any sort of clue that might help him. Unfortunately, he didn’t glimpse anything like that until it was fully dark. It was only after the moon started to rise that the magi emerged from the last tent without any children. They walked back toward the heart of the center of the city with their guards. 

After they were gone, the children who hadn’t been selected emerged from the center tent. Simon thought he recognized a couple of the boys, and some of them rubbed their eyes sleepily, and once they got their bearings, they fled. Whether that was from fear or from urgency that it had grown so late, he couldn’t say, but they didn’t seem to be in any danger. Once they were gone, servants emerged from the shadows and began disassembling the whole thing like a different sort of magic. 

Simon watched closely then, but he didn’t use magic to heighten his vision. He didn’t know what they could detect, so he didn’t want to risk it. Still, he got some glimpses. One of the tents had several finely dressed women escorted from it, along with foods and sweets like they’d been at a party. Another had paintings, art supplies, and other decorations. 

Both of those were strange, and he couldn’t quite understand the meanings behind either test if that’s indeed what they were. “Maybe I’m overthinking this,” he whispered to himself as he watched everything. “Maybe these are just temptations or distractions, and they gather children based on auras or something else I don’t know about.”

When they broke the third tent down, it made slightly more sense to him. That one, at least, he saw a large glass orb being carried out of and a number of arcane-looking diagrams. When they packed those up in a wagon, he was tempted to go down there and steal what he could, but he held back. 

Instead of doing anything too risky, he resolved to keep on as he had up until now. In the days that followed, he managed to track down two different boys who had been tested but selected. Neither of them could remember a thing, though. That, more than anything, turned out to be the real reason everyone had run off like they’d been spooked. 

“One moment I was about to walk in the tent, and the next I was outside it, and… Well, the sun was just gone. It was like no time had passed, but they’d plucked it from the sky.” Ajala explained. 

“That's very strange,” Simon nodded, feigning concern. “Because you definitely went in.”

“I… I believe that. I just think that maybe it was too horrific, and I blocked it out, you know?” the other boy said. “Why, were you there at the selection too?”

“Me? No way,” Simon lied. “They’d never pick me.” Simon had been working on his streetwise orphan routine for weeks, and by this point, no one thought he was anything special, which was exactly the way he liked it.

The other conversation went slightly worse, but it didn’t tell him anything new. Neither did lurking around several other selections. Each time, they had the same strange parade with the same pipers and animal masks. Each time, they disassembled the colorful tents late at night when he couldn’t see exactly what it was they were packing up. Once, he took a chance and used a word of lesser light focusing to give himself night vision, but all that told him was that his guesses had been pretty close to right. 

Sometimes, the selections had three tents, and sometimes, they had four. Sometimes, they had a whole band instead of just an eerie piper, but those differences were fairly marginal. Other details were always the same. They always chose a handful of children no matter how many of them gathered, but there were very few patterns he could see for which children they actually chose. 

There seemed to be no preference for boys or girls, even though Simon had never seen a female Magi. Sometimes they chose a noble if they were present, but not enough for Simon to take the time to buy finery. That was strange, too, since Simon had initially believed that the Magi were a type of nobility. In this case, though, there seemed to be some separation between material and spiritual wealth. That made sense if the whole thing really was a cult to the God-King, of course. 

“Doesn’t actual talent or power come into the equation, though?” Simon asked himself. 

After thinking about that for days, he decided the only way he’d really be able to see that was with the help of a mirror. Given that his eyes couldn’t see everything there was to see in this world. Once he decided that, he actively sought out the next Selection. Still, it took a week to find one, and he had to race to the opposite side of the inner ring fast enough to attract the approbation of the guards. 

By the time he arrived at that one, the parade was done, but the choosing of the lucky children hadn’t happened yet. “Mirror, show me their auras,” he whispered as he turned away from the group and used the shiny silver disk to look over his shoulder, careful to mind its reflection. 

It took the magic mirror a few seconds to comply, but then the air around everyone shimmer to life. Except for the Magi, the effects were subtle, and Simon could only look for a few seconds not to draw too much attention, but he didn't see anything unexpected. The Magi had dark or very dark auras, and most of the children either didn’t have one or had a little light swirling around them. Few of them showed any signs of darkness, and as Simon put away the mirror again, he noted with some disappointment that not one of them had as much gray surrounding them as he did. 

I guess I still stand out too much, he thought to himself as he stood in a ray of sunlight between two columns and watched the Selection occur. 

As the Magi with a red dragon mask picked out a few of the children, Simon raised an eyebrow. Though most of them looked quite poor, he was pretty sure he saw a pattern develop. He wasn’t willing to say for sure until they released the children they didn’t pick later that evening, but when he saw those results, he wasn’t surprised. Every one of the boys and girls that the Magi had selected were those that had been touched by darkness. 

“Well, isn’t that interesting,” Simon said to himself as he made the long trek back to the little office he slept in. “They aren’t interested in bloodlines or talent… they want bad people.”

He noticed one other thing too. The four women that were escorted out of the tent that always contained the food, weren’t nearly as dark as the Magi. One of them even had a bit of a glow about her, indicating that she was a far better person than her peers, but they were still much darker than the children or the other servants. 

Are they female Magi, Simon wondered. Or is something else going on here?

All of these revelations made a twisted sort of sense, he supposed. Good people weren’t likely to show much interest in human sacrifice, and they would run screaming when they found out what miracles really cost. 

It was also good news in a way. That development made it much more likely that he’d be picked. For a moment, that excited him, but that excitement made him hesitate again as he tried to second-guess himself. 

No, he decided. The only way I’m ever going to find out is if I go for it. 

There was no certainty that he’d be picked, of course, but he lingered closer and closer to the parades as time had gone on, and no one had ever given him a second look, but part of him knew that if he clambered at the front with the rest of the children they would test him, and despite the danger, he needed to do that much, at least.