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."
"That doesn't answer the question," I said, although I couldn't be more thankful that she revealed that the diamonds carried by the Diamond Suits were enchanted. At least she told me that before I did anything stupid.
"Right, right," Ace of Hearts said absent-mindedly. "It's not cursed. One of the Diamonds put several of their diamonds over the cage. Some diamonds could prevent magic from being cast." She ducked to whisper next to me. "That includes outside influence. You can't remove it with magic, magus. There's no help coming from that way. Fair warning."
I raised both eyebrows. My head was beginning to spin. "Thanks, I guess. Where did you learn modern English? You're speaking modern English, and didn't you say you haven't been around since 1480s?"
For her turn, she raised both her eyebrows - or, rather, what should've been her eyebrows. "Modern English? What is that? A language? Child, I'm speaking with my own native tongue."
Wait. "What?"
"You heard me correctly," she continued, this time there was some confusion etched on her face. "I'm speaking with my native tongue. Some magi had learned to speak it as well, so I thought you were one of them."
"I have only been in the magic world for a few hours," I said. "I was only beginning to accept that magic was real when you showed up..." But then I realized that she was telling the truth. She didn't know what English was. "Well, this is strange."
"You were only beginning to accept magic when we came?" she asked. This time it wasn't confusion - it was surprise. "But...but you called us here and changed this place so we can thrive here. How did you do that?"
"I was attacked by a vampire - uh," I remembered what Barney told me, "a killer ghoul. Maybe I did this all by instinct, like changing the environment around me so that the killer ghoul can prey on anyone else and not only me, just so he'd go for another meal. Kind of like the win-win solution."
Her expression shifted again to keen interest. "Is it so? You did this all without any previous experience with magic?" she wolf-whistled. "Wow. That's some really potent magic you have there, magus. I wouldn't wander around among us if I were you."
"You couldn't feel my magic?" I asked. Ace of Hearts shook her head.
"Some of us can, but not my kind," she said. "The only reason we chose you for draining was because terraformation requires a really big amount of innate magic, and since you did the terraformation, you should be very tired after that. Then we hang you upside down - aside from crucifixion and stake-impaling, it's the best way to weaken a magus' control over his magic without killing him; and is definitely the method that's the least destructive. The more intact a magus' body is, the less magic that will be wasted. The other ones in the cage are only for subsidiary supplies, and the nonmagi will be for consumption.
"However," she said, her tone suddenly becoming sharp. "Some others of us can sense magic. And some of them are nearby." She glanced around. "Maybe that's why there are so many prying eyes around here. They know how strong you naturally are."
I wasn't feeling well about it, and in the meantime, I was getting even dizzier. I'd been hung upside-down long enough, and with this kind of effect, no wonder Ace of Hearts said that this method was the best in weakening a magus. I couldn't even think straight. My expectations for escape had flown out the window.
"And I'm supposed to just be here still and waiting?" I asked. I'd shut my eyes. My head hurts - my face must've been really red. My fingers were getting numb from the bonds, and I just realized that my toe had been cold and numb for pretty long already.
"Sadly, yes," she said. "Honestly, magus, it is such a pity. You're more than just an intelligent company to me now. You've really piqued my interest. But if I free you for my own pleasure, I'd be betraying my kind. Besides, I have told you that it's personal revenge, and it's so for all of us. We still need your magic."
"So you do want to release me," I poked. She scoffed.
"Only to chain you back in my lair," she said. "So I can talk whenever I feel like it. So there's someone around me I can talk to freely. So there's...so there's someone around me who understands."
Oh, wow.
I didn't see that coming. That actually sounded pretty sad. Her tone might be pretty cold, but it was almost like her loneliness radiated in her words. I couldn't help but soften. "What about the other Aces? You're this clever, you're this intelligent; shouldn't the others be like that, too?"
"They are," she said, but then shifted uncomfortably. "But...well, they're like me. They're selfish and absorbed in their own businesses. We have almost nothing to do with each other. If this takeover succeeds, maybe I'd go look for more like you. There are more like you, right? That'd be pretty fun." That was when I realized that the hint of sadness earlier when she said that she enjoyed being around me was genuine. She really was feeling lonely.
"Is your kind supposed to be living alone?" I asked. "I mean...it's pretty clear now that some of those out there are social creatures. But is your kind solo or social?"
She shifted again. "That depends on the Suit. My Suit encompasses compassion. We kill the least, but we are the most selfish. However, being selfish doesn't mean we're not social. Sometimes, our compassionate side surfaces and we simply need company. And the painful part is...my Suit isn't exactly the cleverest. We tend to push others away. So we're always a tad bit lonely. We are loners in need of friends, of a company, but condemned to never have any."
Whoa. She was beginning to grow on me. "You're shifting."
I could feel that she turned. "Shifting?"
"Yeah," I said. "You don't sound that evil anymore."
She let out a soft chuckle. "There's no evil, you know," she said gently. "It's just about how you look at things. And yes, I may have sounded quite diabolical to you. I think it is normal for you to think in that manner of me, considering that I delivered the news that you'd be dead in the hands of my own kin and do nothing about it."
"But you can do something about it."
Her tone dropped. "You know well I can't."
"You can if you choose to." My dizziness was definitely not helping. I felt the then-familiar signs of passing out soon.
"I don't want to die yet," she said. "I'm sorry, magus. Really, I am."
"'Tis okay," I said, feeling weaker by the second. "But wake me up when you guys are going to drain me?"
"Definitely," Ace of Hearts said. There was tenderness there. She knew that my consciousness was going to slip.
And slip, it did.