Human Again

by E. L. Tenenbaum

  I received an amused look in response, as if this wasn’t the first time a young man had boasted about his injuries. If only.

  Those incidents aside, the beast was feral but sporadic, appearing most often as an overwhelming feeling that fled almost as quickly as it came. Over my years at the Academy, I tried to learn how to temper it, even convinced myself that I could, but give a beast a taste of willing prey and it will tear it to pieces. The more I called to it, the more it took from me, consuming me bit by bit, winning small skirmishes that would eventually bring total victory in the war for my soul. My room and possessions most suffered the brunt of my anger as I struggled with the beast feeding within me, ashamed at the weakness others may see if they knew what stalked the shadows of my soul.

  Not long after, in my third year at the Academy, I received a letter from Father. This was highly unusual as Mother was usually the one to write, and Father only sometimes appended short missives or notes on official business. Amellia was showing an artistic side with detailed sketches of all the things she was up to, dances, lessons, new dresses, interesting faces at court, and, at least once a year, a sheet of music specially requested from a court composer. Usually, I would take the music to my room, lock the door, and sit for hours playing it over and over in my mind. I rarely wrote back, and never saved any of her drawings. Didn’t she understand the danger of too much attachment? Of loving and relying on someone who might suddenly be taken away? Father may have given her leeway in her lessons, but I knew she was too old for further delay in this one.

  I wonder still what Father felt when he sat down to pen his first letter to me. Was there any joy in what he set forth to write? Did he ever think of how the news would affect me? Perhaps he was only writing as one official to another, an unattached update on the state of the kingdom and what that could bode for its future.

  Unsurprisingly, the letter was brief and straightforward.

  Father was writing to tell me that Heaven had blessed our family with a new baby.

  Her name was Azeria.

  Why?

  My brother, my life, and now my very name was taken from me.

  I broke another sword that night, with purpose.

  And again, I didn’t feel a thing.

  My time at the Academy turned out to be a mixed blessing. It revealed the beast and gave it a name, then taught me how to outmaneuver others and use my body for harm. I became tougher, stronger, and more lethal. It gave the beast the tools with which to unleash its most potent fury, even to fatal results.

  There was only one man who ever perceived the truth about me during that time, though he did have the advantage of magic on his side. His name was Yarrow, and he was his own force to be reckoned with, one of only two people I ever met who could never be intimidated by the beast. The other was the notorious once-Huntsman Prince Daimyon, who was the closest anyone has ever come to being Yarrow’s friend, which reveals much about both men.

  Yarrow was a magical and a man without discernible rhyme or reason, whom I would grow to appreciate but never quite figure out. At first glance, he seemed rather plain, a man easily glanced over in a crowd, but anyone foolish enough to do so missed out on someone extraordinary. His keen eyes were a startlingly vivid purple, intelligent and cunning, revealing that here was a man who knew the truth about lies, who knew how to uncover deeply hidden secrets, who very closely guarded his own. He traded in whatever would sell, without schedule or notification of when or where he would be, yet somehow always around whenever someone was looking for him. Laurendale’s own crown prince, His Highness Prince Henri Christopher Charles Alexander, seemed to call on him often enough.

  Always in reach of Prince Alex was a student called “Captain,” a tall, handsome man with brown hair and warm chocolate eyes. There was no doubt as to his capabilities, he was simply the kind of man someone could rely upon, the kind of man a crown prince could trust with his life. The kind of man I should have been.

  Prince Alex was very much the opposite, though perhaps it was only Captain’s proximity that made the contrast so stark. Alex was stop-and-stare handsome—I saw how ladies looked at him even in adolescence—with sandy hair and clear blue eyes. He possessed an infectious laugh and undeniable charisma, two key components to his distinctive charm. Alex could be, and was, so charming, that he easily won over the strictest of instructors, even succeeded in coaxing rare smiles out of the stiffest ones. Then, I didn’t think overly much about him—in him I saw a crown prince a year younger than I, who had joined the Academy two years after me because his father hadn’t sent him away early—but I did think a lot about him later when his schooling was cut short so he could lead the fight at our kingdoms’ border and I eventually went to join him. He would distinguish himself on the battlefield then ride home after four years of victorious fighting straight into the beginning of his perfect faery tale.

  Until then, however, he was significant to my time at the Academy only because he introduced me to Yarrow.

  I was working on drills after class, struggling to channel the savagery of the beast when he found me, alone, his Captain nowhere in sight.

  “Hello, Beast,” Prince Alex greeted me with an easy grin.

  “Something I can help you with?” I rumbled.

  “Rather, I’d like to help you,” he replied, his mellifluous voice nimbly stepping over the bass of my sporadic grunting.

  “Whatever for?” I shot back, trying in vain to wipe away the sweat dripping into my eyes with a shirt already too soaked to be of much help.

  Prince Alex tossed me a towel. “As one day ruler of Delphe,” he explained, “I would introduce you to a man it would be of true benefit to know. A friend in need and all that.”

  I shrugged back at him, disinterested. I knew I had also been sent to the Academy for diplomatic purposes, but the far more interesting beast occupied my time. Since the day in my second year when I had been pressed to knowingly unleash it, all effort went into either physical training or philosophical and meditative study to calm the mind and strengthen the cage wherein I held the beast.

  “It’ll be worth your time,” Prince Alex went on. “This,” he gestured, “is not more important.”

  I didn’t bother to correct him.

  Realizing that further resistance would be suspicious and futile, I agreed to go. Prince Alex led the way, away from the Academy complex and through a maze of village streets until we came upon a dusty little pawnshop easy to overlook.

  A small bell chimed as we stepped into the shop, the closing of the door behind us causing the variety of trinkets to jerk on their shelves. Yarrow was at the other end, studying something through a magnifying glass on his work counter.

  “Your Highness.” Yarrow politely reclined his head upon seeing who had come in.

  “Yarrow,” Prince Alex replied, striding up to him with a winning grin.

  The man produced a parcel I couldn’t quite make out, and I politely averted my gaze as the exchange took place. I didn’t know much about him yet, but I did know that some things were none of my business.

  I knew they were finished when I heard Yarrow ask, “And the other prince?”

  Prince Alex gestured me forward with a magnanimous sweep of his hand. “His Royal Highness Prince Ignatius Azahr II of Delphe.”

  “Your Highness.” Yarrow now inclined his head to me, an amused yet still inscrutable smile playing across his lips.

  Alex motioned that I should step closer to the strange, magical man and as I did he ducked behind me, his exit from the shop marked with a faint tinkle from the bell. Unimpressed that he’d left me alone, especially with a shady magical he seemed to deal with despite his known distrust of them, I stepped up to the counter. Yarrow’s eyes narrowed as he watched my approach. His face darkened, he hummed with a strange energy as his eyes took on a dim purple glow.

  “I do not deal in spells that meddle with human emotions, Highness,” he told me. “There are some things magic should not trifle with.”
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  His words rocked me. I was certain Alex had stumbled upon me training without design, and even more certain this man knew little of me. And, yet…

  “What do you mean, sir?” I asked, my voice carefully level to hide my indignation.

  Yarrow’s glowing purple gaze pierced mine to plunge into the very depths of my core. “The darkness, I cannot get rid of it,” he explained, convincingly apologetic.

  “I asked no such thing,” I sputtered, unwittingly admitting to something I would anyway have little success of denying before this man.

  He shook his head at me. “The only thing more dangerous than a beast running wild is a wild one caged too long.” He pursed his lips. “There is no telling what it will do when finally free.”

  It was my turn to shake my head at him. “I don’t know what you’re going on about.” I tried hard to sound dismissive, but my upset at being so clearly seen bled into my voice.

  “It will not be contained forever,” Yarrow warned, pushing ahead unperturbed by my denial, “kill it, banish it, be rid of it. It’s consumed enough of you already.”

  “You know so much, yet claim there is nothing you can do!” I accused, looking for some way to shift the attention from myself, anything to get away from the magical eyes that saw too much.

  “Only the prince can cure himself,” Yarrow concluded, a sorrowful hint of kindness in his voice, a flute’s steady refrain hovering over a vast, grassy plain. “Though only if he really wants to.” He paused and glanced up. “Perhaps Heaven will have mercy and send help to ensure you choose correctly.”

  The purple glow around him faded and he turned back to whatever he’d been dealing with before we came in. I stumbled out in a daze, too stunned by the man’s instant discernment of me and livid at how incapable I was to do as he suggested. Not that I wanted to either. There was pain and sorrow buried beneath the beast’s rampaging that I had little interest or intent of unearthing.

  Anyway, I had it under control, didn’t I? I returned to the Academy with Prince Alex, revealing nothing of what had transpired after he’d left the shop.

  For all his mystery, I don’t know how much of the future Yarrow could really see, so I’m still uncertain if his words about Heaven sending help were a blessing or simply a fervent prayer that I would one day be able to conquer what was inside of me. Because even after the curse was over, a dark stain remained, a permanent mark that can’t ever be rubbed out. Is it true, as he said, that it’s there entirely by choice? Or did I wait too long for the cure, the damage becoming too deep to repair?

  My fourth year at the Academy should have been my last, but the beast had seen to it that I so excelled in the military aspects that I was selected to join an elite group deemed worthy of an extra two years of training, and even so, only because of the relationship Delphe had with Laurendale. Although this delayed my return home—I’d only been home once a year since being sent away, and only two weeks at a time at that—I wasn’t disappointed. I knew what awaited me back home, knew the disappointment and bitterness and belittlement would be there whenever I returned.

  I almost preferred to stay at the Academy, the one place I ever excelled. The one place I was finally allowed and encouraged to be who I was supposed to be.

  So while most of my classmates went their own ways after graduation to begin their lives of diplomacy and court intrigue, I moved into a new barracks with a select group of men to immerse in an intense training program.

  In this group, I finally found men who didn’t shy away from practicing with me. They challenged me, they reveled in it, they saw danger and they grinned. Of course, the beast of then wasn’t yet as powerful as it would become or I don’t think they ever would’ve dared to tease it so.

  Either way, I thought then that staying the extra two years would be good for me, turn me into a better, smarter fighter, strategist, and military leader.

  This was true.

  But those two years would also give me my first glimpse into what else I could become, a glimpse into the sort of cruelty the beast was making me capable of.

  The final test of my military training was administered on the completion of my extended stay at the Academy, just a few months before my eighteenth birthday and return to Delphe to resume my position as heir. Ostensibly, the test was supposed to be an effective way of implementing the variety of skills we had acquired in an uncontrolled setting. In truth, the test was a challenge to face the darkest evils and walk away without breaking.

  So it was that our small group bundled up and cut hard through Calladium to the Dark Forest, traveling almost without stop for over a week through an early winter frost. The Dark Forest is not merely a place of shadow, though little sun seems to make it past the high forest canopy, but a warning of its true nature. Spreading its haunted limbs across the unsavory stretch of land where Delphe, Calladium, Yadrehena, and Farthington meet, it’s a place where goodness goes to rot, where men forfeit their souls, and all manner of evil thrives. The only pockets of light found therein are few and far between, mainly around the dwarf mines, but even so, dwarves are careful about who they allow to get close, and only offer shelter for a suitable price.

  We arrived at the Dark Forest in the early morning hours, ahead of dawn and with plenty of time to see how the Forest greedily swallowed up the rising sun’s rays.

  “For the past two years, you have been pushed to your physical and mental limits,” our instructor’s voice boomed his final words before releasing us to the Forest. “You tested those limits, and you broke them. And now,” and here the instructor paused to look each in the eye, “you will test your new limits.” He paused meaningfully. “May Heaven guide your way.”

  With that, we were left at the edge with a crude map and one simple objective: get out alive.

  Calladium’s Huntsmen-in-training must survive two weeks in the Forest before being sworn into their elite service. We had to survive two days and one night, to leave at dawn and find the map’s destination the following evening. Even so, casualties and broken men were expected.

  However, we were allowed to form groups of no more than four to protect ourselves against the Forest. I didn’t bother with such weaknesses. I wanted more than anything to prove I could make it through the darkness on my own, to prove I was still in control.

  I’ll admit to being slightly afraid, considering this was a test for my very life and dying would only confirm my father’s doubts and distrust in allowing me to be his heir. Even more frightening—though I was foolishly exhilarated at the thought—was not knowing what the beast would do the moment I entered a place that would easily welcome it home. Even then, listening to our final instructions, I sensed its restless pacing. The Dark Forest beckoned and it gleefully returned the call. I was certain that if I let it out in the Forest I would never control it again. Yet I had no chance of surviving on my own without it.

  I suppressed a shudder remembering what Yarrow had told me about caging a beast. However often it had escaped until now, it was all still within the confines of my structured training, so there was still some sort of reason to its appearances. There was no way to know what would happen here.

  There was nothing to do but move forward, so I hoisted my small pack of provisions and entered the Forest without further pause. From the moment I slipped through the trees, I felt the Forest pull, pull, pull at the chains I used to subdue the beast. I was sweating after an hour, mainly from the exertion of tamping down the force within me straining to be set free.

  The morning passed well enough and I was able to keep a steady pace, pushing forward with little rest in the hopes that I could outpace the darkness. I almost believed it, too, almost believed that if I could just keep moving through the night, if I refused to let anything touch me, I would make it out of the Forest with little incident. I had to think along such lines or I’d be lost to the scraggy, reaching tree branches and the shifting tendrils of foreboding fog. The heartbeat of the forest thrummed beneath my feet lik
e a percussive drum, its fury vibrating throughout my limbs. It was the beat of the fox slyly alluding the dogs, the beat of the hunter cornering his prey. It was the victim and the victor, the wail of defeat and the cry of war.

  In short, I was entirely wrong in my deluded hope of making it through unaffected.

  Still hopeful even as night began to fall, I looked for a relatively safe place to rest a while and accidentally stumbled upon a group of ogres. My one good fortune was that it was a small camp of only four males, all as surprised to see me as I was to see them. Their number should have ensured they would be left alone, but they hadn’t been prepared for my absentminded stupidity leading me right into their camp.

  At first, none of us moved. Ogres were no friends to humans but that didn’t mean there wasn’t an odd story whispered here and there about a man walking away from an encounter with one. Of course, at that moment, I couldn’t recall the details of how any had managed it.

  All four were grown, with sculpted arms and heavy musculature stretching against their gray skin. The tusks protruding from their lower jaws were long enough to spear a wild boar, their maces sharp enough to shred what remained. They had been relaxed before I came, but my bumbling made them instantly alert.

  The one closest to me lazily reached for his mace and expertly twirled it with his fingers as he stepped toward me. Knowing full well that I was alone, it didn’t rush, and even a human large as myself was hardly a contest for one ogre, let alone four. I eyed him warily as he closed the distance between us, my mind frantically racing between fighting and fleeing. There was no way I could outrun the ogre. There was no way I could beat all of them. But if I had to die, I certainly wouldn’t passively succumb to nature like Adlard had. I wasn’t even eighteen; my life couldn’t end here. I would not give my father the satisfaction of knowing I hadn’t truly been good enough to graduate from an elite military academy, to take his beloved older son’s place, to succeed. I would make it out and I would meet his eyes when I presented myself in a uniform decorated with full honors. Until my last day, I vowed, I would fight.