Beast Tamer's Damned Regression

Chapter 2: The Voice in the Dark

Varek did not stop walking until he reached the back gate of the Soren manor.

He pushed through into the dead garden and stood there for a moment with his back against the cold stone wall. His legs were shaking, his chest was tight. The laughter from the colosseum was still ringing in his ears, but it was gradually fading now, replaced by the heavy silence of the empty house.

The voice in the alley had been the System. It was cold, distant and mechanical. It had given him the Regression Gift and warned him about the cost but the single word he heard before that, the whisper against his mind as the Gnarl pressed against his chest, that had not been the System, it had been something else entirely. Something old and ancient and he needs to know what it was.

Marta was in the kitchen when he came through the door. She turned and saw his face and the bundle tucked inside his coat, the smile she held disappeared from her face instantly

"Show me," she said quietly.

He pulled back his coat and showed her the Gnarl. It lay in his arms like a wet rag, blind and black and shivering. Marta stared at it for a long time speechless. Then she made a sound that was half a sigh and half a prayer.

"A Gnarl? The System gave my boy a Gnarl."

"It is what it is."

"What will you do with it? Most Tamers have them killed, they say it is mercy."

Varek looked down at the creature. Its blind face was turned up toward him, and its tiny mouth opened in a silent cry. He thought about the cold table and the silver instruments and the woman with the steady hands. He thought about the Lightbringer cutting him open to rip this creature out of his bloodline and he thought about the fact that the most powerful man in the realm was terrified of a thing that everyone else called worthless.

"I am keeping it," he said.

Marta opened her mouth to argue, but he was already walking past her toward the stairs.

"I need bandages and hot water. And please, Marta. Do not tell anyone the beast is here."

He climbed to his narrow room and closed the door. The floor was still wet from the broken basin. The wooden chest was still pushed against the wall where his foot had sent it. He cleared a space on the bed and laid the Gnarl down on the blanket. It curled into a ball immediately, tucking its blind head under its own body.

Varek sat beside it and waited.

He did not know what he was waiting for. He only knew that something was wrong with this creature. Or something was right with it. When the red eye had flickered open for that single moment at the colosseum, he had felt something move inside his own mind. Something ancient.

Marta knocked and came in with a bowl of warm water and clean cloth. She set them on the floor and looked at the Gnarl with a worried frown.

"You really mean to keep it."

"I do."

"Then I will say nothing but be careful, Master Varek. The city is already talking about it and if they see you caring for a pest, they will mock you even more."

"Let them mock me, I am tired of caring about what they think of me."

When she left and closed the door, Varek dipped a cloth into the warm water and began to clean the oily fur. The Gnarl did not struggle. It lay still and let him do his work, its tiny ribs rising and falling with each breath. As the oil came away, the fur underneath was not matted and rough anymore. It became smooth and black had a faint shine like a raven's wing.

"What are you?" he whispered.

The Gnarl opened its mouth and a voice spoke inside his skull.

[I am the thing they tried to bury.]

Varek dropped the cloth immediately, he scrambled backward and nearly fell off the bed. The voice was not in his ears. It was inside his head, very ancient, old and heavy, like stones grinding together at the bottom of a river.

"You can talk," he breathed.

[I can talk, I can think and I remember things i am not supposed to. I have been sealed inside your bloodline for centuries. I have been waiting for one of you to wake me and you are the first.]

Varek stared at the tiny creature. Its blind face had not moved, it's mouth had not opened but the red eye was flickering beneath the closed lids, a faint glow that pulsed like a heartbeat.

"What is your name?" Varek asked still scared.

[I am Azrath-Kai, the Void Leech that the old gods sealed away because they were afraid of what I could become. I am the reason your father died. Aurelius murdered him to keep me from waking up and now that I am awake, the Lightbringer will come for you too.]

Varek felt the words hit him like a punch to the gut. He had already known his father was murdered. He had already known Aurelius was a monster but hearing it spoken aloud by a voice that had been there, that had watched it happen from inside the Soren bloodline, made it real in a way the visions never had.

"I know," he said. "I have seen it. I died on a cold table two weeks from now. Vespera drugged me and Aurelius cut me open."

[Yes. That was the first timeline but the System has given you something rare. Something that has never been granted to a mortal Tamer before.]

"The Regression Gift?"

[Yes… you can borrow memories from the future, you can see what is coming before it arrives and you can change it.]

Varek sat very still. The words still echoing in his skull.

"I don't really understand how it works?"

[You reach forward with your mind and pull a vision of something that has not happened yet. The System will show you what you need to see but there is a cost.]

"What's the cost?" Varek is now so eager to know it all.

[Every borrowed memory brings your death closer. The future you see will come faster. If you borrow too many visions, the Apocalypse will arrive before you are ready. You will die on that cold table or you will die on the battlefield or you will die in some other way, but you will die sooner than you were meant to.]

Varek looked down at his hands, they were shaking and vibrating again not from fear this time but from something else, from the weight of it all.

"So I can see what is coming, I can change it but every time I do, I lose time, I lose days… I speed up the end."

[Yes. That is the trade. The System always takes as much as it gives. You must use the gift wisely or it will destroy you.]

Varek was quiet for a long time. The candle flickered on the floor. The Gnarl, Azrath-Kai, watched him with that hidden red eye.

"How do I use it?" he asked finally. "How do I borrow a memory?"

[Close your eyes, reach forward with your mind… ask for what you need to see. The System will answer but start small. Do not reach for the big things yet. Your body is weak and your soul is still raw from the regression. If you push too hard, you will break down completely.]

Varek closed his eyes and reached forward the way the voice told him to. For a moment there was nothing but the darkness behind his eyelids and the sound of his own breathing. Then the pain came, a sharp spike behind his left eye that made him gasp.

A vision flickered, it was not the full flood he had seen before, it was a single image… a single moment.

He saw Vespera standing in a ballroom full of people. She was holding his ring between her two fingers. She dropped it in the mud, Draven was beside her with his arm around her waist and a glass of wine in his hand and the crowd was laughing.

The vision vanished.

Varek opened his eyes. His head was throbbing but his heart was still and calm.

"The engagement," he whispered. "She is going to break it tonight at Draven's celebration."

[ Yes… now you know about it, you walk into that party prepared. You can let her drop the ring and you will not break because you have already seen it happen. That is the power of the Regression Gift. You face the future with open eyes.]

Varek leaned back against the wall. The Gnarl crawled onto his lap and pressed its warm body against his stomach.

"Thank you," he said quietly. "For telling me the truth."

[I will always tell you the truth. You are my vessel. You are the last Soren and together we will burn the Lightbringer's throne to ash.]

Varek looked at the dark window and the pale moon hanging over the dead garden. Tomorrow he would walk into the Academy and wear the mask of the broken boy. Tonight he would walk into the Valerius estate and watch the woman he loved drop his father's ring in the mud and he would not break.

Because now he knew what was coming and he had a beast that the old gods had been afraid of