The knowledge spirit that had been by my side for nearly five decades swallowed the stone heart I had given it. The heart shattered into a thousand pieces and reformed into a black beating heart, each beat causing the spirit to be less translucent and more solid. My blood went cold as I started to suspect that I had made a huge mistake.
"What is this?!?" I screamed, demanding answers.
"I am whole again, child!" the voice sang in a hauntingly beautiful voice, light no longer passing through it. A beautiful purple wavy-haired woman stood in the place of the spirit, her scarlet eyes meeting mine and her purple lips parting, giving me a wide evil grin.
"Without you, boy, I would have never gained my solid form again, and for that, I thank you for being so trusting," she said with a purr, clicking her long black fingernails.
"You still owe me three answers!"
"I owe you two; you already asked one when I was transforming."
Damn, I thought to myself, wondering how I could make such a rookie mistake. I stroked my white beard, thinking of a question to ask her.
"Who are you?"
"I am called by many names, child, but my most well-known title and name is the first queen of the first empire, Mavra."
My eyes grew wide, and I felt like I could not breathe from the sheer panic of understanding what kind of monster I had just released into the world. I almost asked a trivial question, stopping myself from making another huge mistake, and thought for several moments as the woman gazed at me with a bored expression. I smiled slightly, knowing the question I had to ask.
"How do I defeat you and make sure you never exist again?"
The woman's face snarled at me, making me flinch and step back as she hissed a curse at me.
"You dare ask such a question!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.
Information poured into my mind on how to destroy her once and for all, and her form blurred toward me and slammed me down to the ground, her dagger-like fingernails slamming into my chest, causing an excruciating amount of pain to go throughout my body. A voice echoed throughout the room, repeating itself over and over.
"Jimmy! Jimmy! Jimmy!"
I woke up to Mrs. Zacharias hovering over me, her lips moving, talking to someone out of my vision, her words not entirely reaching my brain. Mrs. Zacharias noticed I was awake and slowly sat me up, making my head spin, and she put my head between my legs. It eventually clicked with me that the one talking to Mrs. Zacharias was our school nurse, and I felt her hand hold my wrist for a few seconds, and then she lifted the back of my shirt and put something cold against my back and instructed me to take deep breaths in and out for her, while the other one checked my head for wounds. All of this was happening as my fuzzy mind inspected my life force by concentrating my senses on it, and I felt it knitting itself back together, growing slowly. That was an excellent sign, I thought, as I felt my headache gradually getting better and no longer felt the world spinning uncontrollably. After a few more moments, they eventually picked me up and took me to the school nurse's office, sat me on the not-so-comfortable bed, and got me a small paper cup of water to sip on until my parents arrived.
While I sat there waiting, my mind kept replaying the memories of how Mavra had tricked me into bringing her back from the dead. I gritted my teeth, and I swore to myself that I would build my powers back up in this world and I would get back to my home world and slay that bitch Mavra for making a fool out of me.
While my mind was jumping from thought to thought, I noticed an odd tingling sensation coming from my chest that I had never felt before and rubbed at it through my shirt, annoyed at the sensation. My parents showed up after a few moments, distracting me from my thoughts, and they asked the nurse a few questions, the nurse assuring them that I had passed out due to not enough electrolytes and suggested that I should take today and tomorrow off to recover and that if I got worse to immediately take me to the hospital.
When we got home, my mother got me a big glass of watermelon-flavored juice, and I happily drank it down as I watched TV for a few hours, taking my problems off my mind for a little while. After the sixth episode of the colorful world about three superpowered girls destroying evil, my chest again let off a tingling sensation for the umpteenth time. I scratched at it again and finally had enough and went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror and took off my shirt to inspect my skin. My stomach sank, and ice went through my veins as I stared at the circle on my chest with symbols inside it so old that not even I could read what they said. I recognized the structure of the symbol, though, and I was confident that this was a curse mark placed on my soul and body. My heart pounded as several possibilities ran through my head on what the curse mark was meant for. My mother walked in, not knowing I was already in the bathroom, and stared at my shirtless body.
"Jimmy, are you okay? Your skin is looking pale." She rummaged through the bathroom drawer for a few seconds and took out a thermometer and placed it in my mouth, checking for a temperature. Right, I thought to myself, I forgot people that don't use magic can't see marks like these, which was probably for the best, considering I didn't want to explain to my mother what a curse mark was and how I had not the foggiest idea of what this specific one did. The thermometer gave a beeping sound, and my mother read it and ruffled my hair, still looking worried, and told me I did not have a fever. She hugged me, kissed me on the forehead, and told me to get some rest. She tucked me in, turned my nightlight on, and turned off my ceiling light and gently closed the door. My thoughts raced as I wondered what the mark was going to do to me or what it had already done to me. My eyes widened as I saw the shadows next to my nightlight move back and forth slowly as the objects that made the shadows did not move even slightly.
"Shit," I whispered and kicked the sheets off my body to get out of bed. I did not even manage to get a foot on the ground before shadows not attached to objects wrapped around my body and held me in place while other shadows swirled around my bedroom slowly, whispering and laughing. My heart drummed in my chest as I watched the largest of the shadows crawl toward me and wrap around me like a snake, engulfing my body in darkness, and whispered in my ear.
"Edward, we have been looking for you."