Day 4 Morning

[Magus]

Though he continued to work to maintain the illusion: a head held high and shoulders squared, in spite of the catastrophic pain that seeped through his bones, his feeble necktie-bandage hiding his new, most grievous injury, he felt his control of the situation slipping.

They were good men, these. Strong. Unafraid. Magus wouldn’t betray them by burdening them with a weak leader, even if, in his flagging state, he had been deferring to them and had been a ‘leader’ only by grace of the current status quo.

Still, he would fight to his last breath. For them. For him. The fog of anger crept into his mind, limiting his imagination. He wanted to win. He needed to get to Omni. What a hateful monster Omni must have been, to curse him with such awful power.

His own powers had been stripped from him, replaced with the awesome ability to summon all of his desires, with the only caveat being that one had to amass great power to produce great things. It seemed as though Omni had blessed the ones called Primes with an extraordinary gift.

And yet he was cursed, because the only thing he wanted was to be reunited with Schala, and to bring her here to the Omniverse would damn her.

These plebeians who competed against him, whose eyes shone with the glares of judgement, making it plain that they thought him a monster, thought his needs and aspirations as less than their own. What selfish arrogance. What haughty derision.

He seethed silently, staying in step with the others, his eyes luminescing a hateful shade of crimson.

Magus was numb. He couldn’t tell if his racing thoughts had taken his mind away from the pain, or if he was going into shock.

Or…

Magus’ body racked with a haggard, painful fit of coughing. He covered his mouth as best he could and his palm came away with flecks of blood. He gazed at it for a moment and then realized he felt cold for the first time since arriving on the island.

His hand went to the ferocious wound on his neck, feeling sudden, intense warmness. He was still bleeding. Quite a lot. Was this shock? He almost hoped so; the woman seemed to have been infected with something horrible. He touched his neck again, and again, his fingers met blood.

The glow in his irises faded away as he calmed, unhappily captivated by the idea of dying from… whatever that woman had suffered from. No matter, he rationalized. He’d taken her arms. A life was almost fair recompense. Anyway, death was merely a setback in the Omniverse. He would, by dying, fail, and that would be frustrating, but he could die as many times as it took – another little reminder from the Smiling Bastard that even death couldn’t set you free. You were His. Just a slave – a pawn.

Forever.

He kept walking, trailing behind his friends.