Magic Takes Its Price

How much can a single human lose? Turns out, magic always finds more when one would assume there is none left. Turns out, it is still so little.

On the first day, all of her possessions blinked out of existence. Soon she was overwhelmed by confusion and pain and fear. Her thoughts got muddled from time to time, her senses dulled and then overstimulated for no rhyme or reason. A leg was gone, soon followed by another. Bones broke. Blood drained away, leaving her weak and dizzy. She called for help when she discovered the doors in her house had disappeared. She lost her voice several times.

On the second day, her friends wept with her. She had lost her eyesight, this time seemingly for good, but she could still feel the warm tears falling upon her skin. She had lost all abilities to move, aged several decades in a day. Her voice was a whisper that too would disappear soon. But not yet. Someone said something about magic, but she didn't - couldn't - believe in magic. She tried to laugh at the idea that a child's fable has anything to do with what is happening, to entertain her friends' words. She still valued her friends, so their sorrow paid the price, for a time.

On the third day, sorrow was deemed insufficient, so hope and love were taken instead. Her connections were severed, her existence forgotten.

On the fourth day, no one visited. She savoured her memories of her friends for one last time, before those, too, were taken.

On the fifth day, magic still found more to take. The absence of pain was valued, so suffering made do.

On the sixth day, she prayed for the absence of life. So survival made do.

On the seventh day, as the sun set, all of her thoughts stilled. Everything had been eroded away by the hurricane of magical sacrifices, even the fear of pain and the hope for death. Only then, only then, when there was truly nothing of value to her, when existence mattered no more and no less than non-existence, when everything was equally worthless, from her heart to her mind to the world, only then did magic judge her empty and conclude the bargain.


So the Week of Freedom ended.

She lied on the ground, the bodily sensations neither pleasant nor unpleasant, barely noticed. She breathed in mere habit.

In time, she breathed her last.