Magus Gravity - Chapter 3

The saliva dribbled down the wall and I could not see it anymore as the winds blew out the torches and darkness enveloped me once again in it’s painfully cold embrace.

I brought my left leg closer and cradled the swollen ankle, the bone is fractured or shattered into different parts, I did kick that armoured person in the helmet. The swollen ankle must be split into a couple of parts, it was easy to tell by the small creases in-between various sections of the ankle that looked like the roots of a tree, so I am fairly certain my bone is shattered. I raised myself and placed the ankle on the floor before pressing down really hard with my hands, similar to how people do if their ligaments are dislocated and they don’t have any medical help within reach.

I don’t know if it’s helping since the pain has started to increase from painful to slightly unbearable, but I did not scream. Screaming from pain only reveals weakness, which I am an expert in hiding. I started hearing light but audible cracks, but I kept forcing my hand down on the ankle in order to force it to its original shape. The purple swollen ankle turned crimson and white shards were sticking out of my foot, the bones must have been disfigured and when I forced my arm down they ripped my skin from inside-out. I stopped attempting to fix my ankle, I probably made it worse.

I stood up using my left foot, placing more pressure on the lump of blood that drizzled onto my straw. I focused on the blood and moved my hand upwards and the small particles of blood started ripping off the cobblestone and floated up. I relaxed my stance and let the pressure off my foot, to stand and stare at the beautiful sight in front of me.

Perfect spheres of dark crimson continued to make their ascent towards the ceiling, like raindrops falling upwards. An oxymoron I would never have used in my life back on Earth, but I used it here.

It is strange to think I would express beauty more than I ever have in my whole life right now - maybe getting transported to this world isn’t so bad afterall. However, I will never feel like I am truly at home and will always stay a foreign object trying to survive in this prison.

My forehead throbbed and my ankle was making me experience sharp pains in regular intervals, but I continued nevertheless to watch as more and more red raindrops made their way up. I forced them to float at my chest height, not letting them reach the ceiling and maybe disappear within the slight cracks. The unreachable window lets in rays of moonlight to illuminate the center of the room, which I am grateful for.

The small spheres become one big one when I crush my hand, I touch it and it runs away from me to bounce on the walls of my home. I try to catch it but my ankle doesn’t move and I trip to fall face flat on the floor crushing my knee into the corner of my table - a single slab of stone. I lose focus of the sphere and I become drenched in red blood. The crimson ball must have been close to me if it fell straight onto my head.

I lay cold and shivering in pain, and closed my eyes for a long time.

How are the other foreigners doing in this world? Maybe they are spending their days training to become “heroes” in this world, they do have the widowed-queen’s protection do they not? Hope they are enjoying their new life as much as I am; from gaining a supernatural ability to finding out I am able to express myself in different ways, that would be near impossible to do in the old world.

...Time Passes

I open my eyes to gaze upon a couple of people standing behind my bars. The only familiar face I saw was the maid’s and she didn’t look happy to see me and infact she looked slightly surprised as her eyelashes twitched noticeably, and after she knew that I was staring at her, her face cringed and she dropped her eyes to the floor. I would also probably look away from the person that could read me like a book, but I have fortunately not met anyone who could.

“What happened here?” A chubby teenager voiced out his thoughts. There was an insignia on his jacket to show what noble house he came from, his was a jester holding up a shield.

I didn’t particularly care about any of these “houses” since if I did then I would most likely become a corrupted person, as most literature books back on Earth included a story about a nobleman bribing someone to assassinate a person that held power, in order to increase that nobleman’s status. It wasn’t exactly the nicest place to be born in from what I could tell. Then you have the class that is said to be trash and is at the bottom of the food chain, the peasants. When people say that a peasant is total garbage I could only agree, since they are the ones that do the least work and have a nice life, if they are lucky.

Anyway, the chubby-cheeked teen looked at the old man standing on his right, who “coincidentally” held the same insignia on his jacket along with everyone else in the room apart from the people who looked like servants, I take a glance at the maid. The old man was going to start saying something but I sort-of interrupted him by standing up, so he is probably a sensitive old fellow.

As I stand feeling the gaze of the people around me and the wind today which was colder than usual, the dried blood on my face was starting to flake off so I rubbed it to speed the process. The look that people gave me as I started to do that wasn’t particularly nice, so I looked at them and introduced myself.

“Hello strangers, I am Yeager Oakley and the occupant of this cell” I said in a comical tone as I gestured with my arms to welcome my guests.

My ankle was snapping so I rested more of my weight on the other leg. I took a glance at my ankle and saw pure white skin with shards of white sticking out, which I knew to be my bones. I have never really seen my own bones apart from an xray scan, as I liked to be more careful and not get injured to not worry any of my parents, but now they are gone so it doesn’t matter anymore. The bone looked sharp and I wanted to bend over and touch it to feel the texture, but there was people watching and I don’t really know any of them and how they react to certain types of behaviour.

“Funny thing to call your owners, slave” A guy with a scruffy beard remarked with a creepy grin.

There was not really any point to this conversation other than let the people observe their “slave” that they had mistaken as me, since I am just here to serve some prison time for the crime that I committed. Oh, the maid was also not informed about me not being a slave but a prisoner, since she said that I am being sold off to a guard. I would love to see who runs this jail/company, that they mistake about something like this. Looking around my cell I noticed that were a couple of additions: a spider started occupying the corner above my straw bed and there was already cobwebs set in place, blood was smeared along the walls and my table had a patch of blood on the corner. Some of my straw was also missing but I could see that it was dangling from the ceiling, I must have been doing a lot of playing around yesterday with my ability.

Seeing that I didn’t respond in anyway at all, the old man opened his mouth to speak but I interrupted him again by sitting down on my table, he didn’t look angry so I continued to do as I wanted.

The bone felt really fragile but durable and sharp, but everytime I touch it or feel it pain just explodes like a floodgate being released. Dizziness started to overwhelm me as I moved my head in a circular motion to balance myself out. To not leave the guests bored I spoke to them:

“I didn’t know that prisoners had owners, I thought they just spend some time here and then leave without their shackles” I said without giving them any eye contact at all, since they seemed like lenient fellows from the way that they walked in.

Obviously, I wasn’t fully awake when they came but I heard a couple of footsteps stop and then proceed again, then it was repeated a couple of times. This was probably that old man needing to catch his breathe after a couple of steps as he did seem like a slow guy. I spare a quick glance at the old man and our eyes met, I could tell straightaway that this person was not slow at all and he probably masked the fact that he was extremely healthy.

There is a saying that the ‘eyes reveal what the heart conceals’ and from what I saw in the old man’s eyes were opposite of what his body said; weak and frail. His eyes revealed that he was healthier that most of the people here right now, and also filled with more wisdom which comes naturally if you are an old person who most likely has seen a lot of things in life. I am not surprised to see an older person in better shape than the younger ones, since those robed guys who summoned me also showed me the same eyes as this guy.

“Yes they do that Yaeger Oakley, unless someone decides to make a slight change” The old man opened his mouth and spoke for the first time, his voice with clarity and smoothness. He turned to look at the people around him and told them I am qualified for the “exchange”, but I would need to be treated and bathed.

I looked at my hands and saw infestation growing in them, scars would begin to form if not for the infection. During my second day here, I was placed against the wall by Big-person and forced to grate my hands off them as a sign to show that these people are serious and should I fall out of line and do something bad then things much worse would happen to me. I didn’t fear them or become scared to death, but I was thankful knowing that prisons in this world were doing their job properly unlike the ones in Earth.

There was scabs on my hands that I would have ripped off if not for the pain from my ankle and knee, I placed my infected hand on my split-open knee and gave it a little pat. The people standing gave a sour but kept on looking at me do my thing, I inspected my knee and noticed blood flowing down under a scab. I willed it to move upwards without using any gestures, and it shakily starting moving but fell down since I lost concentration as my head clashed against something. The requirements to use my “psychic” power must have been changed since I wasn’t using any gestures, and that might have made using the “psychic” much easier, but it feels better knowing I soon won’t need to lift a finger in order to activate my power if I keep practicing like this.

“You are a mage as well?” The old man asked, not me in particular but the whole room.