Translation

I have been neglected for too long; respected by those who worship my antiquity without understanding my true nature. I am warehoused in a building filled with artifacts, locked in a pretty cage of glass and set among statues and displays of broken pottery.

A gentle glow surrounds me. Muted, it highlights my pages in a show of empty reverence. Why treasure age and ignore power?

I was not meant merely to be observed. I was created to be employed.

Educated people come to gaze at me, then leave without knowing what they have seen. I find their ignorance strange as well as ironic, for I was infamous in my time.

Every day he comes into the place where I lay trapped. Dust gathers above me, suspended in the air by the glass above my face. He is my jailer and my caretaker. His eyes are cloudy, his movements stiff. I could meet all his needs, and he could set me free.

I've tried calling him as he walks slowly about the room cleaning, his teeth clenched and his face strained and sweating. His ka is closed to me. He cannot hear me. Even if he were not deaf to my voice, it would be useless. The only mortal language I speak is long dead. My author and his people vanished from this world long ago.

He is nothing like my other caretakers. They used me well, and freed us both. My ink is laced with precious metals and powdered jewels. I sat on a silken cushion, anointed with the blood of innocents, a rich and magical liquid permeating the mystic runes on my pages to give me sentience and life.

I can tell he is unspoiled. The slow-witted are often chaste. I want his blood. I can smell it, deep and strong in his veins. Yet the innocence I crave will keep him safe from me. The old magic, nestled within my pages, decrees it.

I must first breach his shield of purity without despoiling him. What can I offer this old man that will not stain his ka, corrupting him?

As he leans over me, cleaning the glass under which I lie, I can feel his suffering. His body is riddled with death. A disease eats away at his flesh like acid, corrupting it.

Ahh... here is a gift I can give this man. Surcease from this creeping death. Once he has accepted my gift, he must repay it in blood. Thus the old magic works in my favor.

His body trembles and he groans, reaching to polish the wooden frame of my display case. His balance is unsteady.

The shining glass he leans over could so easily break...

I know how to kill him, but how do I reach his deadened mind? As the statues around us slumber I try again and touch something incomplete, something wrong inside his brain.

He jerks and pulls away. He looks around, and folds his thin arms across his chest. His breath is ragged. He staggers and falls against the marble statue of a woman. She watches impassively as he goes into a seizure.

Alone in the museum, far from human aid, he is stricken. I can smell his fear. His eyes roll back into his head and he falls to the carpeted floor, jerking, arching, his arms and legs flailing helplessly. Almost, he knocks over my glass prison.

Almost.

Deep within the pages are the golden runes I need. A host of images slipped out of my caretaker's mind as he lie there, writhing.

A soft blue sky,

a glittering ribbon of water,

a child touching the surface of the brook as it flows past him.

Tiny fish nibble at his toes as he sits on the bank dangling his feet in the waters�

I find the runes and energize them. They have the magic of illusion. I cannot speak his language but I can still reach him.

I've worked for many days in this shadowy room, waiting for him to return. I have begun to cast the lure that will draw him to me. As the ink slowly rises from the depths of my pages, the caretaker comes near.

I force the ink up through the leather that binds my pages onto the surface of my cover. I have managed an outline of soft green. It looks like a hill, and there is an azure brook, but the illusion is difficult. It is slow work.

He is through with the statues. Their marble eyes are dead, yet they seem to watch him as he approaches my display case. His face tight, he leans over the glass, wiping it clean. He sees my sketch.

His eyes widen as he stands there. The rag stops moving across the surface of the glass. Slowly the golden ink rises to the surface of the dark brown leather, to float there like sunshine on dark waters. A touch of shimmering light reflects off his thick glasses, and he takes them off with a trembling hand to polish them. Putting them back on, he blinks. My runes flow into a rainbow of soft colors, painting a picture of his childhood sanctuary.

Memories flood his slow mind:

a lonely child, ridiculed by others, shunned, his traitorous body convulsing on a schoolroom floor.

I learn a new word. It is steeped in torment and drenched in shame. Epilepsy.

It depresses his ka. He is vulnerable to one such as I. There is another word, as well. Cancer. It is the disease that eats at his flesh. Soon, I hope to feed on the rest of him.

Again, he comes to clean my prison. He rushes to me now, past the dead marble statues and other display cases, seeking me. Anticipation dulls his pain. For the past few days his steps have quickened when he approaches.

My drawing is almost complete. I have filled out the hill, and the creek sparkles invitingly.

He scrubs the glass, carefully removing any fingerprints or dust that might mar his view. He stands over me, hands clenched, his rheumy eyes watching as fresh leaves sprout from the faded leather of my cover to grace the roughly drawn tree. Pleasant springtime reminiscences capture his thoughts and the torture in his body recedes. I wait, pulling him into my illusion.

Deep within the painted brook I have hidden a glyph of power. It flashes, striking his eyes, driving deep into his injured brain.

Crying out, he grasps the glass case that imprisons me. He falls over, carrying me with him. His body hits the floor in a seizure, and the glass breaks.

A jagged knife of glass slashes his throat. Hot liquid jets from his torn throat and spatters against the cold marble statues. I fall to land on his chest. My cover opens and I am soaked in his innocent blood. Ahh...it is so sweet.

He thrashes and I fall onto the tile floor. It is slick with his blood. I am knocked aside, but the power is strong in me now. I draw his life into my linen pages. His fear is intoxicating.

As I lay beside him on the floor, his jerking stops. The pool of blood beneath me shrinks until I have sucked up every last drop of it, drawing it into the ancient linen that holds my ka.

There, in the dim light of the museum I lay, resting after my labors. The blood-soaked statues care not. They watch with lifeless eyes as the brook on my cover flushes crimson. The hill is dusted with fallen leaves of deepest red and gold,e a seemingly mundane painting of autumn emblazoned on the brown leather that covers me.

He is quit of his miserable life and I am out of my prison. Once again I have served my caretaker, and we are both free.

As I convert the blood into magical energy, my thoughts wander. While this human�s language is unknown to me, the true mystery is his mind. I cannot fathom how his needs could be so simple, so direct. As he perished, he felt raw, pure terror. I bit into his ka and feasted on his horror of mortality. It energized me as effectively as the blood, yet such fear of demise is foreign to me.

Amazing. My creator believed that death was an inevitable process, life�s logical conclusion. Although he delayed its onset he welcomed it when finally release came. His interest was that of a connoisseur. He tasted, explored, experienced every facet of existence he could. I am his record of these experiments.

Of course, I have my own opinions and appetites. I love to use my power to manipulate the living and violate the dead. These tastes I acquired from my creator�s goddess.

The blood-soaked linen pages between my bindings were once used to wrap the corpses of my master�s wife and infant son. He embalmed them, as the Egyptians did, hoping to spare them the perilous journey through death's lands to the ecstacies of heaven. It was a curiosity to me that he should use his knowledge to clothe them in their tomb.

As the runes within me feed I think of the tomb. Silk cushions supported the mummies of the wife and son my master had buried there. For years he came, sprinkling powdered gems and whispering arcane formulas, pleading with the snake goddess, Evas, to grant his beloved dead safe passage into the afterlife. Slowly I absorbed these stimuli and became alive. I began to see and hear, to taste and smell and feel, as he did.

He called on his goddess and poured blood on my linen, empowering me daily. When he died, his goddess visited me in the tomb. His devotion had earned Evas's favor.

I remember twin heads, black as night, and white moonlit eyes. Her snake-like tail wrapped around the mummies, each in turn, pulping them. Their physical bodies flowed into me, through me, and then soaked into the cushions below. I was permeated in death magic.

It was Evas's intention to carry them through the dangers of death�s passage into the afterlife. There she would release his wife and child into the loving arms of my creator. He would make the painful journey alone, fleeing demons and suffering for his family. She lowered her dark heads and drank in their kas.

As I lay there, a bundle of loose cloth drenched in the essence of power and inscribed with his runes of magic, she noticed me. I had at that point only a rudimentary sentience, like that of a trained animal. It amused Evas to awaken my mind. She graced me with intellect. Her ka touched me. I could think. I could want.

Evas left me in the dark. I lay there in a pool of liquid steeped in magic. I had seen her mind and the thoughts of the man who had written me. I took what I wanted of his knowledge and magic, but her partiality for toying with the souls of others was more to my liking. I formed a ka of my own.

I used magic to lure men and women into my sanctuary. I entered the dreams of priests and wise women, telling them I was the voice of their goddess. They used the runes inscribed on my linen to cast spells and gain power. They built a shrine and carried me to it. For years they worshiped me as a relic of their goddess. The sweet blood of innocents was my portion.

Memories fade and I become aware of my environment. The taste of blood lingers as I lie on the floor next to his corpse. He no longer fights for his life. I miss that struggle. His open eyes are blood-spattered, his flesh pale and cold. He reminds me of the statues that watch over us.

I need movement, yet lack the power to animate his body. It is such a costly thing to do, raising the dead without the proper tools, not worth the expenditure of my newfound energies. I can wait until the morning, when others come, as they always do, to open this building.

How much time passed while I lay in the Nazi vault waiting? I will not be treated like a shameful secret again. I must have proper caretakers, or be quit of this body of linen and leather, a ka disembodied and free to soar. I pull on the ink that permeates my linen pages and use it to begin writing a spell.

Ah, this will work. Beguilement. Importance: the illusion that I am precious and needed thing. It served once to gain me a shrine. Perhaps it will keep me from being locked away. I use a bit of the energy I siphoned from the blood of my victim to empower the words.

Next I must know these people. Each day they come to gaze at me, yet I cannot enter their thoughts. I search the depths of the knowledge locked within my pages until I find a dream-link spell. It might be modified to allow me access to their deeper thoughts. This might teach me their language.

The spell needs physical components. I can urge the humans around me to feed me some of these things, but it will be difficult. Pictures are needed to show them what ingredients to bring me.

I select certain empowered runes. Energizing them, I pull them together and thin out the ink into a line, then begin tracing pictures onto the first of my pages. This will compel any human who sees them to procure the objects for me.

The incantation is simplicity itself. The ingredients are common enough in my time. I can only hope that whichever human tool I use will find them.

At last my work is finished. I must conserve my strength. I rest, alone in the museum, and allow my thoughts to drift.

I was complacent, sure of my place in the hearts of my people, when an earthquake struck, burying me. The world changed so drastically while I lay imprisoned in the crushed ruins of my shrine.

The Nazis found me. They saw the runes and craved their power. I remember the exquisite pain I endured when they bound my linen into a book. The occultists used sharp blades, cutting the runes from the rest of my winding sheet. They wasted it, ancient linen thick with the spices and oils of burial, burning it to fill their underground laboratory with smoke that, had they but known it, carried magic of its own. It is lost forever, the fools.

They used only lengths of cloth which recorded the old runes. These the Nazis cut into sections and bound together. They called in their finest craftsmen to make me into a book, using rituals as meaningless to me as they were inaccurate. The Nazis fancied themselves versed in the occult, but I had already been empowered by a goddess of death. Their magic could not effect me.

All they did with their leather was to make me impotent. I had not the time to meld with the cover and make it my own. It confined me. When the cover was closed, I was shut off from the world. It was only when I lay open, my linen pages breathing the stale air of their death camps, that I could sense my environment.

I learned a little of their mindset, their language, of their lives and their sciences. I began to help them explore the mysteries my creator had recorded in me. They showed promise as caretakers, and I had time to plan an adequate revenge for the pain they had inflicted on me. But the Nazis were defeated in war. Their world collapsed. They betrayed me and locked me in a vault deep underground, promising to come for me when they were safe.

It never happened. I lay there waiting, impregnating the leather cover with my essence until it no longer confined me. As the leather became part of my being I began to see once again, to smell and hear and taste. But the vault was as dark and still as a grave. Although I struggled to regain them, my senses were useless to me.

Then strangers opened the Nazi vault. They were ignorant of my purpose and powers. To these scientists I was a curiosity, an antiquity, and nothing more. They brought me to this museum and locked me behind the glass case.

I hated it in the museum. I was locked away in a glass coffin with only a few hours out of each day to experience life, and that as a spectator. I wished to escape, but my energies were spent. I could not touch their foreign minds.

Now that I have eaten, I am strong. I will begin anew, with the proper caretakers. If that fails, I will find a way to live outside this book.

I will not be forgotten again.

It is morning now. I hear voices around me, and bring my thoughts to the present. Humans mill around me, restless, chaotic movements I cannot quite understand. I reach out and feel anger within their minds, anxiety and sadness. Why so many emotions over one lost life? I have steeped my pages in the blood of hundreds such as this man. He has no family, no friends. No one will miss him. Yet the humans fret. They stalk around his body muttering curses and protesting his loss.

Flashes of light illuminate the subdued room, throwing the statues into garish relief. I see a woman using a devise that emits these flashes, stripping the room of the hushed atmosphere the designers of this building sought to create. She steps aside as two men in baggy white coveralls approach the body.

They perform an odd ritual, tracing the body of my victim with chalk. A bright, flat ribbon of yellow and black stripes is hung around us and I am treated to more flashes of light. Someone stoops to look me over carefully and I reach out, but his mind is dulled with boredom and alcohol. As people approach with a small, rolling cot, I wait. Will they confine me? Use me? Free me of this troublesome body?

A stocky man approaches. His hair is short and dark, sparse at the crown of his head and dusted with gray at the temples. He is dressed in pants and a long white coat. A strange tube hangs around his neck, perhaps a symbol of his power, for the others pay him deference. I reach out to him and find knowledge of death. More: this man has pried into the bodies of the dead to reveal their secrets. A necromancer after my creator�s mold, he is filled with cynicism and ennui. I can reach this one.

I flush the lines of my beguiling rune with power. I hear the sound as he sharply draws breath into his lungs. Cursing, he reaches out to touch me. His hands are gloved in an alien substance, opaque yellow in color, cold and thin. I infuse my surface with warmth to startle him again. As his finger strokes the rough leather of my cover, the warmth seeps through the thin substance covering his hand. His lips draw into a tight line. His eyes narrow. I reach deeper into his mind, planting the seeds of hunger. He withdraws, his forehead wrinkled and his eyes wide.

Perhaps I have gone too far.

I wait, and another approaches. A younger male, he stands listening as the necromancer instructs him in their foreign tongue. Swiftly I am lifted and placed into a strange bag of clear, cold material. Hands press the top of the bag together, sealing it. A paper tag is pasted onto its surface and I am set aside.

I increase the magic in my beguiling runes. The older man glances back. I can feel energy from the rune soak into his ka. He will seek me out when he can.

I am lifted and carried outside of the building into the daylight. I am carried outside of the museum I can see that the sky is not as clean as it once was. Perhaps there is another war.

The sun is not my friend. My leather cover smokes, filling the strange pouch I am sealed into with a yellow fog that obscures my sight. It takes a portion of my magic to mitigate the damage my cover endures. I am in pain. It is as though acid coats my skin.

I am set into a strange compartment, and the cooling shade begins to heal me. As I soak it in, I am grateful for the darkness. There is light still, but it is filtered through windows made of gray glass. A man sits on a bench beside me. As he closes a door I see him fit an odd metal device into a slot, then turn it. Ah, it is a lock. He has started a machine like the Nazis used to transport me from the tomb in Etruria to their laboratories. I wait as the box we rest in carries us away from the museum. I cannot see much through the dark windows.

The fog is growing thick and expanding. The pouch that surrounds me bursts open and the yellow fog seeps out, filling the box. As the air thickens, the man next to me curses and stops the rolling box. Coughing, he opens the door and bright sunlight threatens me. Angered at his carelessness I reach into the pages and find a rune of pain and infuse it with power. Before I can use it on him, the man closes his door and we resume our journey.No matter. The sunlight cannot reach me now. I have a rune prepared for use if I am threatened again.

We go up an incline and stop. As the door opens I see that we are in a room with tall ceilings made of stone, surrounded by many of the rolling boxes. He lifts me and carries me into a small cupboard, which rises magically. Fascinating.

He sees the gap in the pouch�s seal. Cursing, he holds it up to the weak light that shines from the ceiling of our little magic cupboard. I energize the rune on my cover, but it has been corrupted.

Cursing, the man seals the bag and carries me out of the cupboard. We travel down the hall into a room filled with long tables and odd devises. I know of places like this. When the scientists first freed me from the Nazi�s vault, I was brought to a laboratory such as this. The harsh lighting is artificial and will not injure me. I am placed on one of the tables. The young man carefully removes me, talking to himself in a deep, angry voice. His eyes are narrowed and his lips are pressed together in a frown that concerns me, but he is gentle with my body. He traces my damaged cover with one finger and mutters, his brow furrowed and his voice deep.

I am cleansed with soft cotton and a liquid that smells and tastes odd. I do not know what it is. There is energy in it. I sip carefully and absorb a bit of it, pulling it into my back pages for storage. Perhaps I can use it later.

As the traces of dried blood are removed, he seems intent on saving samples of everything. He dabs me with different fluids. He swabs me carefully then places the cotton balls in sacks and sets them aside. Most of my victim�s blood is within my pages, converted into magical energy and stored in runes or glyphs. Now I sample the different cleansing liquids and find them useful. I drink in small amounts of them and he does not seem to notice.

My surface cools as the air pulls at the liquids and they become vapor, to escape into the atmosphere of his laboratory. This hides my theft.

Next he places me inside a chamber and irradiates me with some foreign energy. I have been subjected to this before at the hands of the scientists who rescued me from the Nazi vault. I drink in the waves of energy, spoiling the examination, and he repeats the process.

After that, there is more testing. Energies and substances flow into my pages as his examination continues, and I store them.

As he works the man touches my pictographs. I energize them and he stares, eyes widened. The spell ingredients I need to dream-walk enter his susceptible mind. He steps away from the table as though in a trance, and returns laden with offerings. Carefully he dusts my pages with powdered minerals and anoints my runes with liquids. I gather the ingredients and digest them, then carefully plant sounds in this man�s mind. I embed certain runes and actions in his mind, with an imperative to fulfill my needs.

Obediently he intones the words to the spell. He seeks the proper runes and traces them with his finger, reciting these as well. His voice is shrill, distressed. His fingers tremble as he slits the flesh of his hand with a shining blade and spills the required blood onto my pages. I steal part of his ka and digest it to complete the spell.

At last he is through. He places me in a small cabinet and wanders away, vaguely distressed yet unaware of the reason for his actions. His ka shines in my mind. A tasty bite, it whets my appetite for the rest of him, but I will bide my time.

I rest, my thoughts vague. It is possible for a creature such as I to dream, and I enter into a sleep-like state. My mind reaches out for the older man, calling him.

I can see him as though from above. He is sitting in a small room filled with others who laugh and talk, yet he does not join them.

He is drinking alcohol. I wait as he quenches his thirst and loosens his hold on self. I watch as the other humans in the room ignore him. I can feel his resentment. In a drunken state he walks unsteadily across the room and approaches a female human. His need is raw, but she turns away with cutting words. The laughter of her friends ridicules him. His ka is stained with shame and anger. �Leave them,� I urge him, and he staggers out of the musty, smelly room into the sweet darkness.

He is alone now. I reawaken the hunger in his mind, and he cannot resist me. His body sags and his footsteps drag. He curses fate, dreams of power. Tiredness washes over him at my prompting. He staggers, putting one hand on a nearby wall to steady himself, then straightens and relieves himself into the mouth of an alley.

He sees a bench sitting in a pool of soft, white moonlight. Ignoring the wind as it picks up, he staggers over and drops heavily onto the wooden seat. The street behind him gleams under the gentle glow of the moonlight. He drifts into slumber and I invade his mind and absorb as much of his language, knowledge and culture as I can.

I let him sleep dreamlessly while I incorporate this new learning into my understanding of the world. So much has happened since my days in Etruria. The Nazis were considered monsters, I see.

How amusing. I thought them connoisseurs of human mysteries such as pain and death. I found their obsession with superiority a trifling eccentricity and their need for power a useful tool. Now I see that they moved too openly. I will not be so careless.

I realize that the man�s values are not like my creators. Death is a force of nature to be studied and exploited; yet he thinks of it as a medical condition to be avoided or mystery to be solved. He has not yet accepted his own mortality.

Armed with this new knowledge I reach out to find him. He has awakened from his stupor and wanders the moonlit streets, restless. His steps are quick and forceful. He jams his hands into the pockets of his white lab coat. So many new words I now have.

The whiskey lingers in his blood, fogging his brain. I whisper to him. He pauses then turns and heads back to the police station. He rides the elevator to the place where I rest, in the forensics lab. He steps into the room, his glance furtive, and sees himself alone. There is no one to stop him from taking me.

He finds me locked in a cabinet. Pulling out a knife, he applies pressure. He grunts in satisfaction as the lock snaps and the cabinet swings open. His thin smile and narrow eyes greet me as he slips he into his pocket. I can smell the chemicals that have soaked into his clothing. His steps are quick as we leave this place.

I hear his footsteps sound as he walks away from the forensics lab. Gently I urge him to carry me to his office. We move swiftly down the empty stretch of corridor and I hear a door open. The ride down the elevator is a smooth descent accompanied by a humming noise. It opens into a place that reeks of disinfectant.

We begin moving again, then I hear another door. He brings me out of his pocket into the pale flickering lights of the city morgue. I smell traces of death in this room, and soap. Someone has cleansed this place with a strong chemicals. In this culture they fear death and hate it.

His hands are rough as he carries me over to a long, cold steel table. He drops me on the metal surface with a smacking sound and I fall open. In a deep voice he speaks, but his words are slurred and I cannot understand him.

The room is chilled. There are three tables in the center and a bank of small doors along one wall. The dead are stored here. I can feel their energy.

He pulls a chair up to the table and I hear the loud scraping of metal on tile. He leans over me and his forehead wrinkles. His eyes are narrowed as he stares intently at the writing on my linen pages. �Wha...?� his voice is higher, his breath laced with strong alcohol. �German. And what are these chicken scratches?� I wait while he looks me over. �English. I�ll be damned.�

He begins to read the words out loud.

�The wine of the bones�and indeed,

death�s master:

Orcus' to the faithful the powers�

What does it mean?� Impatient, he pulls glasses out of his breast pocket, as though they can help him decipher the mysteries of a people long dead.

��being bound into the corpse

till it be destroyed�

your ka will be free.

we deny death

Orcus; you perish.

You come back

From death� its master�

a ka free to feed�"

He has spoken the formula that will free me of this body. Yet he does not understand what it means. I whisper, �Let me feel the dead.�

His eyes widen and he cries out. Shaking, he rises and sweeps the table with his hand. I fall to the tile floor. Angry at his callous treatment, I reach within my pages and tweak a rune of power.

He cries out in pain. He grasps his temple with one hand and, kneeling, scoops me up with the other. Jamming me into his pocket, he stands. I increase the stabbing energy as it lances through his skull.

�Stop it!� he shouts, and curses.

�Open the doors and let me see the dead,� I respond in his language. �Give me their energies and I will stop the pain.�

He staggers forward and I hear a loud, rolling sound. He jerks me free of his pocket. �Here, Dammit,� he snarls and shoves me onto the chest of a sheet-covered corpse.

Ah. I am in my element. I absorb the death magic from this body. The man paces, cursing, while I feed. After a moment he stalks over to the drawer and grips the sides, peering down at me.

The cadaver is graying and shriveled now, but there is more to consume. I have not finished the best part of it. �What are you doing?� He demands.

The ka is still within this corpse. I have been chewing on it, enjoying its pain. I hurry my meal; the ka slips into mine, wriggling, screaming as I devour it.

The dead body shudders and the man steps back. I can hear his heart quicken. I can smell the blood as it courses through his veins, the sweat as it beads his upper lip. His pupils shrink. I know these signs in a human body. He is afraid, ready to run.

�What are you doing to it?� His course whisper echoes through the sterile room.

�I�m feeding.� My response is calm enough. I have almost everything I need to complete the final spell. Will this man help or hinder me? I reach into his ka and find conflicting emotions.

His mind is no clearer. As I probe his thoughts, I see that he fears his own appetites. He wishes to have power over women, yet will not take it. He craves the respect of colleagues whom he loathes. He hates himself, his life. He is shamed by his needs, yet will neither relinquish them nor surrender himself to them.

I plant images in his mind, of the shrine in Etruria, of women mindlessly worshipping him; sexual pleasures his for the asking, if he will join me. His response is confusing. His breath quickens. I can see his thin chest expanding in shallow breaths. His pupils dilate and he shifts uncomfortably as an erection forms. But his mind rejects the notion of female servitude. He wants their bodies, yet craves their acceptance. They must desire and respect him. Fists clenched, he hisses, �No thanks,� and turns from me.

I reach out, seeking his religious convictions. Although his belief in any one system is weak, he has accepted a philosophy of light and life. His morals spoil him for my needs.

Ah, well, I will do without this man. It is time to complete my spell and be free.

He watches me with wary eyes. His knees tremble. If I had a mouth and throat I would laugh. Instead I summon up images of devastation and plague, monsters unimaginable feeding without restraint, and present them to him. �I will destroy your world.�

�Why?� He stumbles over the words, breathless.

�Because it pleases me to do so.� My response is flippant, teasing him.

He gasps at my cruelty and snatches me out of the morgue drawer. �Not if I can help it,� he shouts and dashes out into the hall, carrying me toward the building furnace.

I increase the visions of disaster, threatening him. �Join me, and I will make you powerful,� I plead. I promise him riches if he spares me. Cursing he throws open the furnace door.

As he thrusts me inside my leather binder cracks. The torture is exquisite. My stored chemicals boil and vaporize as the runes on my linen pages flare.

My mind expands. My ka, trapped within the linen, shrieks. The metal furnace shudders as my cries rock the foundations of this building. I am consumed.

Death! My body dissolves into flame and my ka is liberated. I rise above the burning ashes, a dark angel freed upon the world. As the man flees down the corridor I flow through the ceiling into the night.

I hover above the building, drinking in the shadows, reveling in my autonomy. I hear a door slam and footsteps sound. Tracking the noise I see him tearing down the street, his long, thin legs pumping, his white lab coat flapping behind him. He reminds me of a scarecrow covered in ashes. I follow him as he scuttles away from the building. He can hear my voice now, whispering, taunting him. I persecute him until his terror has become a fever in his brain.

Ah. Now. Diving down into his body I grip him in possession. I violate his brain, compelling him to leave the lighted streets, driving him out into the darkness. As he stumbles down a deserted road I knock his long legs out from under him, forcing him to his knees. He begins to slam his head into the paved road, again and again. Blood pours from his broken mouth and nose. I stop to lap it up, then make him smash himself into the road again� of course it kills him.

His ka is at peace now. Like all humans, he assumes it is over.

Fool. I am still with him. I slit his chest and tear into him, going deep into his corpse. I find his ka. It is aware of my actions. As his terror mounts I nibble at the edges of his ka, tasting him. He is so sweet, and I am so hungry. Far too hungry to be saited by this thin spirit. He has shown me how to flavor his kind with terror. I shred his Ka, savoring the taste while I contemplate the many feasts in store for me. I laugh at how rich a feeding ground this new world is. So many vulnerable spirits to season and devour...

end