Munaf's Story
The Black Void - Episode 6887
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Everybody is staring at me wide-eyed, aside from Munaf. He's holding his head in his hands, and muttering, "I knew it... I knew I shouldn't have tried it..."
"Shouldn't have tried what?" I say, my eyes narrowing. Munaf sits down on a rock, and begins to explain. "When I was a healer at the Copper Monastery to the west and I was developing my magic, we had a lot of pregnant women in, hoping to give birth in a safe place, away from the war. I developed that spell to keep track of the baby in the womb, but sometimes... things went wrong.""You have to understand that magic's not a human's servant, something that'll do whatever you want. Oh, it'll obey you if you ask nicely, but it's a force with a will of its own. I was young and foolish, and I thought I could control it. Sometimes it worked, but a lot of the time... it didn't. Sometimes the pregnancy was accelerated, sometimes it was slowed... things you didn't want. The elders told me to stop, but I was arrogant. I thought I'd get it right some day." "But I didn't. It came to a head when I accelerated the pregnancy of one woman so fast, it killed her. I was cast out of the monastery for that, and they forced me to join the army as punishment. And... well, I think Teran's told you what happened then.""The eunuch is the lowest of men in Artazia. There's only one place for a half-man like me, and that's as a harem guard. Two years I served there, watching girls come and go, barely getting to see the man who employed me. The only solace I had was my magical practice, but I was still no master. I only tried to use that spell again to defy Arif. He treated me kindly enough in front of you, but in private, he treated me like a dog. I wanted to know if there was a chance, even a slim chance, that you could be pregnant. I wanted to see the bastard fall some day." Silence surrounds us. Nobody seems to know what to say."What have you done?" I say, hesitantly, in an awkward attempt to break the silence. "Don't worry," Munaf says hastily. "Your pregnancy's accelerated, but from the energies around you, I would estimate that it will still take you four months to give birth. We can reach the Vale in that time, definitely, but we'll have to move fast."
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An anonymous contributor (That kick was totally intentional and not just me not thinking things through and getting the timescale wrong... honest :)
3/16/2012 2:24:30 AM
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