disappeared and the tunnel ended.
“If you hadn’t stopped that, nothing would have.” Jack said with a smirk. “You can control more aspects of it than you would expect.”
“What’s the point of this exercise, though?” I asked, amused by the new trick I had learned, but still less than trusting of my new environment and its inhabitants. “I can bore holes in rock. I’m not seeing this as a marketable skill for my future career path.”
“It’s not exactly necessary, per se.” Jack said with a deep laugh, he seemed to be the only one here that understood my humor. “But it’s a lot of fun.”
I just rolled my eyes. I couldn’t always tell if Jack was genuinely amused when he laughed. There was definitely something to his mannerisms that seemed bought and paid for. But perhaps that’s just how one acts after they hit a few century marks.
“Believe me, fun is necessary for the length of our existence.” Jack shrugged his shoulders slightly, as though he wasn’t sure that I’d actually need that bit of information. “Here’s what you can use it for right now…” he moved in front of me. “I want you to think very carefully about what you would want in a room… bed, shelves, chairs…. Whatever you want, it’s going to be your room. Then think about all of those things being made from the rock of these walls.” His claw-like hands swept through the air in front of me, like he was mapping out his own thoughts.
I thought about all of those things and then I mentally placed them in a room where they were made out of the same substance of the walls and floors that surrounded them.
“Alright, now all you need to do is think of the heat and that room at the same time.”
I looked at the end of the tunnel, and focused on the heat as well as the room that had formed in my head. A flame grew in the distance until it filled the space available to it in the hall and then expanded, leaving only the cut-out version of the room I had envisioned: the cut-out platform for a bed, the chairs and table that grew out of the floor, the shelves that were carved into the wall.
“Good work kid, most people don’t think of vaulting the ceiling, and the chandelier is a nice touch!”
I hadn’t realized that I had envisioned the glimmering chandelier that hung from the ceiling by its rock chain… it was only missing candles to be a functioning fixture. I looked away from it toward Jack, he was walking to the table and chairs.
“Impressive,” he said as he picked up the chair. It was as though he had thought it would be attached to the ground. “Most of the guys forget to do that, and their chairs are stuck in place until they right their mistake, or break them off of the floor.”
I just smiled, a bit smug I’ll admit, and lit the chandelier with six flames that burnt without a wick.
Jack and I had spent quite a bit of time together since my inception. It was kind of like having an older brother. He constantly made jokes at my expense, but would kick the crap out of any of the others that tried to do the same. It was interesting, like a school yard, and I was friends with the biggest, baddest kid.
Sparring was the only time that he let any of the others come anywhere near me, and then it was all business. I only knew what I knew about the others from Jack’s descriptions of them, and from the way that they interacted during our training sessions. They boasted about their past – the only other way I learned about them – but many of their grandiose claims were quickly negated by one of the others and I chose to ignore a vast amount of the tales they tried to spin.
I had learned a lot about the demonic under and outer worlds, but I had yet to go back to the world of the living and find some of the answers I sought. I wondered how my parents were taking my disappearance, and what Ellie was doing now, if she’d been saddened by my loss. I hoped that she didn’t blame herself, she had said
“If you hadn’t stopped that, nothing would have.” Jack said with a smirk. “You can control more aspects of it than you would expect.”
“What’s the point of this exercise, though?” I asked, amused by the new trick I had learned, but still less than trusting of my new environment and its inhabitants. “I can bore holes in rock. I’m not seeing this as a marketable skill for my future career path.”
“It’s not exactly necessary, per se.” Jack said with a deep laugh, he seemed to be the only one here that understood my humor. “But it’s a lot of fun.”
I just rolled my eyes. I couldn’t always tell if Jack was genuinely amused when he laughed. There was definitely something to his mannerisms that seemed bought and paid for. But perhaps that’s just how one acts after they hit a few century marks.
“Believe me, fun is necessary for the length of our existence.” Jack shrugged his shoulders slightly, as though he wasn’t sure that I’d actually need that bit of information. “Here’s what you can use it for right now…” he moved in front of me. “I want you to think very carefully about what you would want in a room… bed, shelves, chairs…. Whatever you want, it’s going to be your room. Then think about all of those things being made from the rock of these walls.” His claw-like hands swept through the air in front of me, like he was mapping out his own thoughts.
I thought about all of those things and then I mentally placed them in a room where they were made out of the same substance of the walls and floors that surrounded them.
“Alright, now all you need to do is think of the heat and that room at the same time.”
I looked at the end of the tunnel, and focused on the heat as well as the room that had formed in my head. A flame grew in the distance until it filled the space available to it in the hall and then expanded, leaving only the cut-out version of the room I had envisioned: the cut-out platform for a bed, the chairs and table that grew out of the floor, the shelves that were carved into the wall.
“Good work kid, most people don’t think of vaulting the ceiling, and the chandelier is a nice touch!”
I hadn’t realized that I had envisioned the glimmering chandelier that hung from the ceiling by its rock chain… it was only missing candles to be a functioning fixture. I looked away from it toward Jack, he was walking to the table and chairs.
“Impressive,” he said as he picked up the chair. It was as though he had thought it would be attached to the ground. “Most of the guys forget to do that, and their chairs are stuck in place until they right their mistake, or break them off of the floor.”
I just smiled, a bit smug I’ll admit, and lit the chandelier with six flames that burnt without a wick.
Jack and I had spent quite a bit of time together since my inception. It was kind of like having an older brother. He constantly made jokes at my expense, but would kick the crap out of any of the others that tried to do the same. It was interesting, like a school yard, and I was friends with the biggest, baddest kid.
Sparring was the only time that he let any of the others come anywhere near me, and then it was all business. I only knew what I knew about the others from Jack’s descriptions of them, and from the way that they interacted during our training sessions. They boasted about their past – the only other way I learned about them – but many of their grandiose claims were quickly negated by one of the others and I chose to ignore a vast amount of the tales they tried to spin.
I had learned a lot about the demonic under and outer worlds, but I had yet to go back to the world of the living and find some of the answers I sought. I wondered how my parents were taking my disappearance, and what Ellie was doing now, if she’d been saddened by my loss. I hoped that she didn’t blame herself, she had said
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