Subject: [MI] Nescie's project

     "Youth is wasted on the young."

                            *       *       *

     Nescie stared gloomily into the mirror in his private chambers.  He
avoided looking into his eyes, but he couldn't help but notice his burgeoning
stomach.  He ran a hand through his thinning and greying hair.  He was getting
older and older and...  Ugh.  He felt utterly useless.

     He thought back to almost forty years ago.  He was very young then, but
quick for his age.  At a precocious twenty-two, he had already been a full-
fledged mage for eight years.  Then, while studying planar travel at the Mage's
College at Miskatonic U., he met Jameson in the Dimensional Cartography class.

     Even though had she looked about as old as he was at the time, she was
older by far -- over seven hundred, she said.  While some might have called her
plain, her eyes sparkled and she was filled with a delightfully vivacious
energy that Nescie found irresistible.  They had been lab partners, working on
the buddy system that the College advocated for students, exploring and mapping
planes together for over a year.  He helped her with rudimentary magical
techniques, she helped him with dimensional geometry and world survival.

     Those had been good years -- weeks of "lab work", long chats in the coffee
shop at times, and walks in the woods by moonlight...

     But she wouldn't stay; after finishing her courses, Jameson wanted to
continue exploring.  Nescie was unable to leave with her:  he had accepted a
professorship at the Magickal Institute of Technology, having discovered his
natural talent for simplifying magical formula and his love for teaching.  So
they parted ways.

     Nescie sighed, looking at the newly-empty vial that had held his failed
youth potion.  Maybe Dasham could help him.  A dark depression engulfed him.
After all this time, Jameson still looked as young as the day they had met
while he, he...

     He slumped into his chair, putting his head on the table, and closed his
eyes.  He would give _anything_ to be young again.

     When his eyelids opened again, his eyes had turned completely matte black,
with no pupils.  Mar looked out at the world from Nescie's body.

                            *       *       *

     It took a half an hour for Mar to find what he wanted, pawing through
Nescie's memories and grimoires.  He summoned a larva with a pint of Nescie's
blood.  The slimy six inch high demonic worm appeared on his desk.

     "Mather," it lisped.  "How can thith one athitht you?"

     "Give Names of Forsaken Ones."

     "A Forthaken One, Mather?  Thith one knowth not of what you thpeak."

     "Get one who does."

     "Thith is motht irregular, Mather.  There ith inthuffifent thacrifife."

     "Have power to destroy you.  Completely.  Bring more informed source.
Or perish."

     "Yeth, Mather.  Ath thy will, tho m--"

     "Go!!!"

     "Yeth, Mather."

     The larva disappeared and returned shortly with a foot tall imp who was
nearly as obsequious but not much more knowledgeable.  Mar ground the larva
underfoot and ate its soul.  The imp nervously sent for a two foot high
servitor.  The servitor responded to Mar's dismemberment and assimilation of
the imp by fetching a four foot tall lesser demon.  The lesser demon was amused
by the servitor's screams for mercy until Mar exhibited the ability to disrupt
him in much the same manner.

     The eight foot tall greater demon whose name Mar had wrenched from the
lesser also professed ignorance, but gated in a sixteen foot demon lord.  The
lord towered over Mar but watched dispassionately as its subject was
disassembled before its eyes.

     "Tell what _you_ know about Forsaken Ones," Mar said in a flat monotone,
the sulfurous smoke still spiralling from Nescie's hands.

     "And if I do not or cannot?" the lord gurgled.

     "Die.  Like others.  Not seven times seventy years.  Forever."

     "Cepin, a power of storm and ocean, has not been worshipped for thousands
of years.  His followers are dispersed and his heritage lost."

     "Water.  Air," Mar said slowly.  "None sun or dawn or light?"

     "No!  He's the only one I know!  I swear it!"

     Mar nodded once, stiffly, then devoured the demon lord too.  These beings
were easy to take apart, but their free Power was pathetically small, crumbling
away and gone before it could be transferred.  He made the preparations to
acquire a portion of the Power he desired.  To murder a god...

                            *       *       *

     "Who calls Cepin?" the voice whispered hollowly as if from a far away,
empty corridor.  "Who calls Cepin?"

     A man-sized glow shaped itself across from the desk.  "It has been so
long.  I have not had a representative for near six thousand years."  The
lonely voice grew stronger as the image solidified into an bearded old man.
He wore a crown of seaweed and bore a conch shell.

     Mar struck at that moment, entering the god's golden aura, which then
flickered and went black around the edges.  The long-forgotten god shouted as
Mar bound them together with hidden bands of nothingness.  Mar soaked up the
Power that buffeted Nescie's body as they wrestled, the god howling in anguish.

     And the god opened his mouth and sang.  He told of his birth uncounted
years ago, the son of the foam of the stormy sea.  Of his rise in strength and
the grandeur of the race of island men he fathered who he guarded and inspired
long ago, before their homeland slipped beneath the waves.  But Mar sang also,
a queer atonal counterpoint that drowned out the melody and disrupted the
rhythm of the god's song.

     And the god raised his hand and painted.  He drew the waves of his birth;
the spires of his children's temples; the victories and sacrifices, the mighty
deeds his followers did in his name.  But Mar painted also, dark blotches
obliterating the features and smearing the colors of the god's work.

     And the god twisted and danced.  The motion of his body was the freedom of
the ocean spume, formed by the interaction of water and wind.  The god's body
moved through holy depictions of his people, re-enacting their greatest
triumphs.  But Mar danced also, his arms blocking and diverting the god's arms
and his legs entangling the god's legs, spoiling the god's dance.

     And Mar broke the couch shell the god held in one hand and tore the crown
of seaweed from his brow.

     And Mar pierced the core of the god's identity with his own center,
burning, and tearing, and smashing.  The essence unravelled.  Fluctuating,
many-colored tendrils curled and thrashed over Nescie's body with the
crackling of wild lightning as Mar internalized the Power for his own use.

     There was a last outburst of raw energies.

     A farmer in a Generican field who also happened to be the last of the
people of Cepin felt a sudden wave of cold seize his heart.  He cried out in a
tongue long unused, a phrase passed down from father to son and from mother to
daughter without knowledge of its meaning, then pitched forward, senseless.

                            *       *       *

     Mar looked at Nescie's body in the mirror and resculpted it.  Fat melted
into muscle; muscle was redistributed and enhanced.  Hair thickened and
browned.  Nescie soon looked exactly as he did when he was much, much younger.
Only the unblinking pits of darkness that served Mar as eyes had changed not at
all.  He sat at the desk again and picked up the empty vial that had contained
the failed youth potion and lifted it to his lips.

     He closed his eyes.

     Nescie's brown eyes blinked as he lowered the vial and saw himself in the
mirror.  He flinched away from his glance, then grinned as he looked more
closely.  The youth potion appeared to have worked perfectly.  And the first
time, too.  Dasham would be envious.  He stood, admiring the smooth motion of
his body obeying his will.  He felt better than he had in years, almost charged
with inhuman energies.  Why hadn't he ever tried this before?
--
Comments, compliments, and complaints can be conveyed to:
Bernie Hsiung (bshsiung@eecs.umich.edu)
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