Gravedancer

7. ...SOME REALLY MEAN MONSTERS.

Oh, better to be dead

With a face turned to the sky...

-The Peaceful Warrior, Henry Van Dyke, 1918.

Cooperate.

That one word rang a few times around my head as it feverishly tried to rummage through my head for ideas. I didn't realize who said that and why, and it was definitely part of a fairly longer sentence, but since no other monster here seemed to even know how to speak, it's likely that it was the Ace of Hearts.

"...so we'd have to do that," a voice said. I managed a short window in my finally idle mind to actually register that as the Ace of Hearts. Then there was a pause that wasn't supposed to be there. "You're not listening, are you?"

"Don't bother giving me the frown," I muttered at her. There was a soft sigh.

"True," she said. "It's a bit pointless. You're dead, anyway. I was just saying, that if you actually cooperate, the process wouldn't hurt that much than if you don't."

"How do you even do that?"

Ace of Hearts crouched, leveling her face with mine. "Let's just say we have our way," she said. "And like your magic, it can get pretty complicated."

"I still don't know how complicated it is," I sneered weakly. "I know practically nothing."

She tilted her head slightly. "Hmm. Good point. If you'd actually known some better magic, you would've tried to break free since before you even awakened." But then she grinned. "Then I guess it's a good thing that you don't, isn't it?"

"Why would cooperation make it less painful?" I said. "A slap is still a slap and it hurts even if I cooperate with whoever slaps me."

Ace of Hearts stood up. "Oh, but it wouldn't hurt us," she said. "The process, I mean. Some of us aren't comfortable with slaps. But the process...it's going to be very good. Pleasurable, even. And it feels even better when the target magus struggles against it. If I were you, I wouldn't let them be pleasured any further. So if you actually cooperate and not struggle, we'd miss out the cherry on top. Besides, imagine it as stitching a scar. Then imagine struggling against it and actually letting it happen. Which one would hurt more?"

In that case, she made sense. "Why would you even need my magic?"

"Magic contains life," she said. "At least, it felt that way. We love it when the magic aura tickles us. We don't know why, we just do. And we really love it when we carry magic. Some of us can do that, and like with you humans, magic can stay with us. It gives us the sense of...power."

"That's all you need it for?" I asked cynically. "Sense of power?"

But she laughed. "Of course not. I've told you, some of us can work with magic. The Magician Arcana, for example. He's got skills. Then some of the skinwalkers retained their human forms' magic, although not their humanity. Then there are the Fifth Suit alias the Star Suit monsters, a deviant kind of my kin. Not to mention the shapeshifters. So no, we don't need the sense of power. The sense of power was only like a decent meal - it's pleasurable for the moment. But the real motive is the use of your magic to our ends, of course. And to strengthen us, maybe even endow us who haven't already had magic."

"So..." I turned to look at my friends in the hexed cage. "Who did that?"

"That what?"

"That cage," I said. "Who cursed it?"

Ace of Hearts laughed. This one wasn't so creepy. "It's not cursed," she mused. "As I've told you, some of us are capable of magic and all of us can carry magic. Well...it just so happens that some of us were designed to live with it." I glanced at her quickly and saw that she was staring at the Diamond Suit monsters around the campfire. "Those ones carry magic around their necks and wrists all the time."