Kevin Wade Johnson
2023
I stole into Domina's private rooms through the secret entrance. I'd spent days scrying in my crystal ball to find the entrance and the passage through the red-orange sandstone that led to it. She sat in lotus herself, on a silken cushion, the only sign of self-indulgence in an otherwise ascetic room. The stone walls and ceiling were only marginally smoother than those of my chamber. The flame from a burning shallow bowl of oil provided the only light, reddening the stone even further. I ducked back, so if she should open her eyes I would not be seen. I spent a minute in total concentration, envisioning my own body in detail, the veins and the arteries in particular. In my mind I drew the Kenn, Sigil, and Mann runes upon my wrists and ankles. I had practiced Enflaumen many times over the decades, and it did not fail me now. My body burst into flames, and I charged around the corner at Domina, threw myself upon her as she opened her eyes, and enveloped her in immolation. She said, "Who taught you that spell?" I couldn't speak, but I could think. Protas, one of your…oh. "Fool," she said. "Aelwin, you are nothing more than a Diviner, with a spell or two for self-protection. What were you thinking?" Then she cried out in a throat-tearing shriek, "Iqbi-Damiq!" A monstrous, ghostly hand appeared, reached into my inmost self, and tore out my soul. Second Excerpt Tears would come for a long time, I knew, years and then some. Grief takes so much time. Loss of someone or even something you love rips out a piece of your heart. The hole it leaves behind is like when you lose a tooth, and you keep going back to touch the edges of the hole, feeling the absence anew. Feeling the lack of what you had. But just as the hole where the tooth was eventually heals over, so does the hole in your heart. The hole remains, because no one can ever fill the place that a parent or pal or pet once took up. No one can be that person for you. So the edges that once occupied so much attention gradu
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