“Is this why you sacrificed who you are?” The dark skinned man asks, sounding equal parts curious and disappointed.

Galad glances over his shoulder at me, and the look of utter fear scorched into his features is one I know will be with me for the rest of my days. Slowly, my uncle takes a step to place himself in-between me and the other man, turning back to speak to him.

“What I choose to sacrifice and what I choose to keep is none of your concern, old king.”

The air suddenly feels colder. All the cheerful joviality that I’ve so basked in for the day is gone without a trace, even the still-present laughs and cheers of Serasis’ villagers seem far away, as though heard from behind a great wall.

“I disagree…”

The man pauses, then tilts his head slightly.

“What is it you go by now?”

After a reluctant silence, Galad gives him his answer.

“Galad. How uncreative. Well, you’re wrong Galad. Your power is not something you simply have, it is something you have been entrusted with, and the right to forego its use does not belong with you.”

I find myself frowning in confusion at that. Galad is strong, not many can reach the level of a Gladiator, but surely he’s not in such high demand as to be denied a retirement.

“I paid my price, centuries of it. I’m done.”

The anger in my uncle’s tone surprises me, so much so that it takes me a few moments to grasp the implication of his words. What does he mean by centuries?

While I feel confusion, the dark-skinned man seems overcome by mirth. After a second of hearing his bitter, jeering laugh, however, I realise it couldn’t be farther from joy.

“You speak of centuries? Do not test me by taking pride in your youth, boy. I have walked this world longer than you could fathom, and have had sights burned into my memory so deeply as to remain even after all that time.”

“If you’ve come here for no reason other than my help, you may as well leave now.” Galad growled, taking a step towards the man, hunched over the way he always did when preparing for a fight.

That seemed to change the tone, bringing a dangerous glint to the dark-skinned man’s blue eyes. For a few moments they locked with Galad’s, and though I could not see my uncle’s face I knew his gaze must have had an intensity to match that of the stranger’s.

“You forget,” the man said, softly now, “that the days of your invincibility are long behind you.”

There was a great fear in Galad’s voice when he next spoke. Something I’d never heard lining his words before. It felt wrong, like witnessing Ara set in the East, or the rain fall upwards.

“Please don’t.” My uncle whispered. Even from yards back I could see the trembling of his shoulders, so strong was it.

The dark skinned man gave him no answer, not in words at least.

The magic rushed free, moving harmlessly past me as it spread out through the surrounding area. The place we’d been standing was not nearly so densely occupied as others, but there were people around it nonetheless. People in my sights.

I watched as their bodies reacted to the magic, seeming to glow for a brief moment. Made unto candles as the energies soaked into their flesh. Then they broke down.

First, fissures seemed to spread through the skin. Jagged and at least a centimetre in breadth, the luminescent green cracks seemed ethereal in nature. I dully wondered how it was that something so flexible as human skin was splitting like rigid stone, when the second stage began.

Each person’s epidermis simply fell away, like shards of glass dropping from the frame of a shattered window. Yet there was a weightlessness to them, and rather than plummet to the ground they drifted gently as they detached.

With the skin pulled free, I could clearly see the flesh beneath. Muscles, red and slick with the moisture of a human’s body, seemed to tremble uncontrollably. With dawning horror I realised that the villagers realised what was happening, or at least enough to rightly fear it.

Spinning on my heel, I stare out across the field and feel my heart break at the sight.

Toys lay beside feet, delicacies ruinously spilled across the grass. The air was frighteningly still, all the joy and happiness dragged from it by the abrupt touch of the unfriendly magic.

The people, who had been running, dancing and laughing just moments ago, are all reduced to skinless horrors. Remaining upright and quivering madly as if the very wind sends coils of pain with its touch.

Even with their skin billowing in clouds like falling leaves, their torment is made clear by the contortion of their bodies and the gaping of their mouths. I wonder if it’s beyond them to scream. If not, are their vocal cords merely paralysed by the very agonised spasms which seize their limbs and jaws?

An echoey, rhythmic pop reaches my ears at the same time as a second wave. For me, the magic does nothing more than shift my hair as though it were a gentle gust.

Upon contact with the second breath of power, the quivering stops. Another glow kindles deep beneath the surface of the villagers , and then, so suddenly I can scarcely catch the moment it begins, they break apart.

Bodies turn to limbs, which turn to scraps. Scraps to ribbons, ribbons to specks, to drops. In less than a second, the crowd of hundreds has become nothing more than a thin crimson mist, clinging to the air a few paces from the ground like the fog of a cold night.

I stare, transfixed by the despicable reality unfolding before me. Seconds pass in quietude, silence remaining unbroken save for the gentle whisper of the wind. I find myself wondering what the secret to the stranger’s trick is. How on Mirandis was such an illusion possible? Grotesque as it was, the sheer ingenuity amazes me.

My question is killed when the wind grows stronger.

Carried by the newly-heightened breeze, a sickly, pungent odour reaches my nose. I gag upon breathing it in, tasting as much as smelling the iron and bitter tang. It takes me only a moment to realise that I’m inhaling the oblivion of people I had caroused with just minutes before.

The knowledge takes a grip of my guts, aiming to squeeze them free of their contents.

Dazed, I spin once again, eyes wide and breath a mix of heavy and stifled shallowness. My heart’s ever-intensifying beat demands I intake as much of the air as possible, and yet the thought of lacquering my throat and lungs with what’s left of people sickens me further.

When I begin to come to my senses, finally come to face the place Galad and the dark-skinned man had been talking, I see my uncle is gone. Vanished from sight.

A stab of terror paralyses me, and for a terrible moment I fear the worst. Could he have joined the others in Serasis? Reduced to nothing more than a vaporous, swirling mass tinting the sunlight red?

My eyes rest on the dark-skinned man, and though I cannot give voice to it, he seems to sense the question ricocheting madly within my mind.

“Your uncle is with you no longer,” he answered. “Do not weep, child. Count yourself fortunate. Were it not for him, and your own remarkable eyes, I’d have made no distinction between you and the garbage you see diffusing into the air around you.”

I want to say something. To ask where my uncle is. To curse the man for doing such a thing. To ask for his name, so that I might swear to follow it to the ends of Mirandis in order to kill him. And yet my mouth refuses to move, save to set its lips atremble.

After only a few seconds of my silent stare, the dark-skinned man arches an eyebrow and turns away from me. Apparently deeming me of no further interest.

He doesn’t leave by walking, nor by flight, as is common among the strongest mystics. One moment he’s standing with his back to me, and the next he’s gone. The only evidence that he was ever there to begin with being the swirling currents of airborne viscera swiftly rushing in to fill a man-shaped pocket of emptiness, visible for no longer than an instant.