skonen_blades (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skonen_blades) wrote2008-01-11 01:31 pm
skonen_blades) wrote2008-01-11 01:31 pm
The Magus
The spells were tattooed onto the magician in small print. He was a living book.
There were different languages etched across him, many different typefaces. Some of them were small beads pushed under the skin to form Braille.
Some of the spells were transcribed from other magicians in the prison cells, magicians that were to be put to death but wanted their spells to survive. Their crooked jailhouse hot-pin-and-ink block printing faded over time.
The magician ran his fingertips across the appropriate spell when the occasion called for it. Touching the spell activated it. A quick brush of his fingertips and whatever spell he tickled was set in motion. He was naked so that he had constant access to his own bare skin.
The magician studied yoga and the art of contortion so that every part of his body could be reached by his hands.
The magician was old now, and dangerous, but he remembered his schooling. He cast his mind back.
To create as much skin as possible, the magician was fed in the magery. He was force-fed the fattiest foods the kingdom could provide. At the age of eighteen, the boy-mage weighed over five hundred pounds, a veritable sphere of flesh.
When he celebrated his twentieth birthday, he tipped the scales at seven hundred pounds. The limits of his own body were pushed by the magic of his teachers. It was agony
On the eve of his twenty-first birthday, he was put in a cell and the starvation began. Water and a small amount of meat of vegetables every two days were all that were allowed him. He could not move his bulk without the magic to support it. Moving like a walrus, he had to position his mouth by the food slot at the door.
His body shriveled without the food to keep the skin taut. His screams and begging echoed through the stone prisons, much to the delight and jeering of his fellow inmates. They were familiar with the tortures that magic could provide. They had no sympathy for a magician.
After six months, driven nearly insane, the young mage was brought out of the cell. The skin hung off of him in folds and aprons. Stretch marks fissured his entire body.
In the months that followed, the skin was stretched even more by the infernal machines in the bowels of the torturers domain. Pincers designed to grasp but not pierce the flesh were used to pull the skin one more notch each day. The pain drove even the most dedicated magicians over the edge sometimes.
But not this one. He survived the gluttony, starvation, and stretching.
So began the tattooing. The six hundred base spells were laid out on him by the mages in charge of the school. His skin pinned up and back like elaborate hairstyles to give the artisans access to the deeper crevasses and folds available.
Over time, the magician had travelled by means both mundane and mystical to the far reaches of the globe. He bartered, pilfered, stole, and bought all of the magic he could seek out.
That was the game of magic. Each magician tried to amass the most spells during his or her life.
Now, this magician was old. Artificially prolonged life had given him the ability to serve four kings and an emperor, outlasting them all. He was crafty and sharp. His quickness and flexibility weren’t what they used to be but with the art of magic dying, he was the most powerful man alive.
The ink competed with flesh for space. The skin, wrinkled now and translucent in places with age, made him look like he was clad in a strange, flowing dress cut from thick, densely scribbled material. It was not material. He was naked.
A naked, ancient man in a stone room. He’d traveled the world and seen the most amazing things anyone had ever seen.
He wept.
tags
There were different languages etched across him, many different typefaces. Some of them were small beads pushed under the skin to form Braille.
Some of the spells were transcribed from other magicians in the prison cells, magicians that were to be put to death but wanted their spells to survive. Their crooked jailhouse hot-pin-and-ink block printing faded over time.
The magician ran his fingertips across the appropriate spell when the occasion called for it. Touching the spell activated it. A quick brush of his fingertips and whatever spell he tickled was set in motion. He was naked so that he had constant access to his own bare skin.
The magician studied yoga and the art of contortion so that every part of his body could be reached by his hands.
The magician was old now, and dangerous, but he remembered his schooling. He cast his mind back.
To create as much skin as possible, the magician was fed in the magery. He was force-fed the fattiest foods the kingdom could provide. At the age of eighteen, the boy-mage weighed over five hundred pounds, a veritable sphere of flesh.
When he celebrated his twentieth birthday, he tipped the scales at seven hundred pounds. The limits of his own body were pushed by the magic of his teachers. It was agony
On the eve of his twenty-first birthday, he was put in a cell and the starvation began. Water and a small amount of meat of vegetables every two days were all that were allowed him. He could not move his bulk without the magic to support it. Moving like a walrus, he had to position his mouth by the food slot at the door.
His body shriveled without the food to keep the skin taut. His screams and begging echoed through the stone prisons, much to the delight and jeering of his fellow inmates. They were familiar with the tortures that magic could provide. They had no sympathy for a magician.
After six months, driven nearly insane, the young mage was brought out of the cell. The skin hung off of him in folds and aprons. Stretch marks fissured his entire body.
In the months that followed, the skin was stretched even more by the infernal machines in the bowels of the torturers domain. Pincers designed to grasp but not pierce the flesh were used to pull the skin one more notch each day. The pain drove even the most dedicated magicians over the edge sometimes.
But not this one. He survived the gluttony, starvation, and stretching.
So began the tattooing. The six hundred base spells were laid out on him by the mages in charge of the school. His skin pinned up and back like elaborate hairstyles to give the artisans access to the deeper crevasses and folds available.
Over time, the magician had travelled by means both mundane and mystical to the far reaches of the globe. He bartered, pilfered, stole, and bought all of the magic he could seek out.
That was the game of magic. Each magician tried to amass the most spells during his or her life.
Now, this magician was old. Artificially prolonged life had given him the ability to serve four kings and an emperor, outlasting them all. He was crafty and sharp. His quickness and flexibility weren’t what they used to be but with the art of magic dying, he was the most powerful man alive.
The ink competed with flesh for space. The skin, wrinkled now and translucent in places with age, made him look like he was clad in a strange, flowing dress cut from thick, densely scribbled material. It was not material. He was naked.
A naked, ancient man in a stone room. He’d traveled the world and seen the most amazing things anyone had ever seen.
He wept.
tags