1.17

Everything here is beige: the sort of off-white of the eyes of a man left too long in the sun to watch his friends desiccate and blow away like dust. Everything here is old, tired, and used up. In this sad city made of mud on the edge of a great lake that reflects the white hot sky, we have the ability to use magic. Like with all magic worth having, wizards need the study of an entire lifetime to master the essentials and truly transcend the mortal realm into something truly useful. Scholars of ancient manuscripts, constantly trying to revive the ways of the man before them, these men and women push the limits of what I know is possible for a human. It's beautiful and serene. It's sensible and well-practiced. It's slow.

The only way to release the magic is through writing, either of the alphanumeric system of the present day, or the glyphs of the ancients. The glyphs have the benefit of being faster, easier, and more powerful. The lengthier spells have the benefit of being more precise. It's all very logical, of course. Just as you would expect, with complexity comes usefulness and reduced potency.

But.

There is a shortcut. I haven't told anyone that I found it. It involves no glyphs or calligraphy or tablets of unbreakable stone. It is a cloth of intricate design and infinite variability. I think it is the most colorful thing in the otherwise bleak landscape of the city. I have heard of colors, and I have seen every one and more in the twisting, gyrating color of the cloth. Moreover, the cloth never needs to retain a single shape or size. It is infinitely malleable, flying directly in the face of logic and good sense. The cloth itself has no power. However, in the hands of a wizard, it can unleash magic without the need for writing. The spoken word takes all the power of the written with speed and precision.

I would be a fool to think that the cloth is only perfection and no downside. The cloth is dangerous, of course. The only stories I could find of it were in a language generally unreadable--the language of the ancients, written in the glyphs of spells. The stories were terse. Abrupt. Obviously the writer had no time for flowing ambiguities, as in so many other texts. Danger. Caution. Sentience. The cloth had the ability to flow into a living wizard's mouth and command his tongue and will, rendering him or her to a mere puppet. Properly controlled, the cloth offered nearly unlimited power. Released, the cloth dealt catatonic any wizard in its control. The true terror of the cloth is that it would flee its host for a more powerful wizard, without warning. When this story was written, the cloth had been made, discovered, sentenced, and secreted away. Everything was past tense. Everything was safe. Its creation by the scientist-wizard Amesh led to a general condemnation of any mix of science and magic. Shortly after its creation, the cloth was lost and began running through the ranks of wizards. Finally, the cloth possessed the headmaster's son. It was within striking distance of the greatest of wizards. The headmaster blew the child's head off with a single stroke of the simplest, outlawed, most powerful glyph. Destroy. The cloth, unscathed, settled to the floor and was stapled down by a bystander with the sword Thanatos. The cloth reputedly fretted around the sword, but could not escape. The headmaster's mind broke from the raw power of the glyph through his body. The bystander who drove Thanatos into the temple ground, pinning the cloth, was never seen again. Many assumed it was Amesh, repenting his sins.

Thanatos and the enigmatic cloth stayed in the antechamber of the temple for generations. No man dared pull Thanatos from the ground or attempt to use the power of the cloth.

I did.

I spoke to the cloth yesterday. I am only twelve. Maybe they will forgive me because of my age, but I doubt it. I asked the cloth to free itself. It slowly shuddered from the crumpled wrap I had seen every day as I passed it, going to classes. It slid free from Thanatos, and the tear reformed behind the sword. Slowly, like a lethargic old man shaking off the last scraps of sleep, the cloth wandered towards my head. I snatched it from the air, and spoke to it again. It filled me with purpose and confidence. Using it, I escaped the city.

Today, I returned to the city in a brilliant flash of light. I hurtled downward towards the gate. I killed the two guards. They were well trained in combat, but no match for a wizard who could summon blades of air to quickly hamstring them without access to a scroll, palate, pen, or even so much as a pile of sand. They watched my hands when they should have watched my mouth.

As arrows from the walls whizzed around me, I demanded that the cloth be a winged horse for me. I gripped it tightly still as it transformed underneath my legs. The horse of every color took off into the sky, carrying me far from the militia and towards the wizard's tower where I knew he would be waiting.

The cloth and I tore along the coastline, watching the white waters beat the clay walls under the pale sky. The city skyline drifted lazily under me until I reached the academy, the temple, and the tower. Amplify, I commanded, and yelled his name again and again. I knew he was waiting for me. I had made sure to make sufficient display as I reentered the city. I saw the old man, portly and smooth, standing in the towertop, watching me with such sorrow in his face it almost made me hate myself. Cut, I said, and the cloth used the power in my words to blow the stones from the top of the tower like a chef slicing through the neck of dinner, dispassionate. The rocks dribbled away like blood, and the cloth and I closed our circle of flight. He stood up from the floor where he had fallen, and walked to a bench near the crumbling wall. The cloth and I turned tightly to dive at him and stop him from writing, but Bind the Arms was already on the paper, and I scudded as I slid across the floor at his feet. The cloth in my hand struggled to loose itself. I prayed that it did not. It did. It flew at my mouth, and

suddenly, the world burst color again. I had never realized the shades of intricacy at play in the single sky above. The whole view faded to a velvet red around the edges of the nearly perfectly white sky, punctuated by the intricacies of skycover. I rolled over and saw moss in between the edges of the rocks, green against the speckled brown of the wooden tower floor. The whole of my life seemed to happen in a single moment as my mind reclaimed itself and I watched the last of the cloth as it flew from my mouth. My hands still bound, I nonetheless tried to move to clutch the cloth in its flight from me to my waiting father who had never had any reason to read the old records of an heirloom of great danger and little redeeming value, who knew little to nothing about the workings of the cloth and its incessant  search for the most powerful wizard in the world, so it could subdue him and control him for whatever purpose it deemed necessary. The tool of ultimate ease and power flowed through the air like liquid falling from a great height. My muscles strained themselves against my unseen, magical bondage. My father's eyes grew wider in shock. His neck muscles twitched. His pupils dilated as his mind tried to keep up with the speed of the cloth as it rushed towards him. I wanted to scream everything I knew, to say anything as a word of warning to the man I hated and loved more than any other. The cloth hit his face like the force of a great gust of wind, and he fell backwards, the cloth slowly sliding sinuously into his mouth.

He hit the ground and twiched, to lie still. He had no chance. He had no reason to know or suspect the cloth. He had no reason to suspect that his only daughter would feel inadequate in his shadow. He had no reason to suspect that she would need his attention so badly. He had no reason to know how to deal with the force that sought he and he alone.

Arms bound, I inched my way to him, eyes flowing tears, shirt torn, happiness shorn off like the tower itself. I screamed for the cloth to hear.

"Take me! Want me!"

I attacked to prove my worth, but the cloth knew my worth was nothing compared to his. It took him instead.

His mouth slowly opened. The breath caught in my throat. Would the cloth leave him? Would I have a chance of redemption?
"Hilfe" came the quiet croak. "Help. Aide." He croaked the same word in every language. Words I knew. Words I didn't. Words no one knew. Words forgotten since the beginning of the world.

As the cloth slowly took him, his magic crumbled. The wards around the city dissipated. The golems of the city crashed to the ground. The globe in the temple started pulling the walls of the temple down and drawing them in as it grew. My arms loosened. I knew my only recourse. Crying so hard I couldn't see, I knelt to write in the dust left by my foolishness and wrote binding spells that clamped his mouth shut and his arms down. I used a pilfered teleportation spell to take his body and mine to the temple doors. The globe, continually growing, no longer contained, pulsed slightly behind us, giving everything a ghastly pale hue. I walked to Thanatos and loosed it from the stone where it sat for a thousand years. Walking back to my father, I laid my head on his chest one last time, stood, and drove the sword through the cloth and through my father.

I am only twelve. I hope they will forgive me because of this, but I doubt it. I am kneeling here by a corpse I will remember forever for its infinite patience and love. It is those that killed him, I know. When I cried for help, though I was a rebel and a killer, though I attacked him and meant to prove my worth by killing him, he heard my cry. He heard me cry for help and came to save me.

I don't claim that it means anything, but my father's humanity is what eventually killed him.

Everything is off-white here.