Ameris Bishop

> *"Fair is foul, and foul is fair: hover through the fog and filthy air. "*
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The Devourer is a powerful thing, those of who practise magic know that better than most. Almost everyone who encounters the Devourer does not survive. Keyword, of course, being *almost*.

In all my childhood days, I could never learn the magic that all my peers wielded so effortlessly. Bolts, runes, and incantations, they're cute to think about now, but they were the bane of my youth. My inability to match even the youngest students filled me with so much resentment I must wonder if that was when my first steps towards the Devourer began.

My mother was not only a great fighter but also an extremely well-respected mage. One of the best. Everyone would marvel on and on about how incredible it was to be her daughter, how lucky! Perhaps it was said in jest, or even with genuine sentiment, but all I heard were more reminders of how I had been born a failure.

Some children are not attuned to magic, they tell me. Children just come out this way sometimes. There's nothing I can do and must simply accept it.

Father took it in stride; he took a come-as-you-will approach to magic. "You have other gifts!" He used to say, trying to console me when once again I fail to conjure even the simplest of spells. Mother never said anything to me, but I always knew she was distressed at my inability to pick up the crafts of my family.

Oh, how I hated them. I hated the other apprentices for everything that was denied to me that they were freely given. I hated my parents, for trying to tell me it's okay to be this way—to be *lesser—*for even thinking that I *was*lesser. I hated everyone, for putting such expectations upon me; they had no life apart from magic and I was unwillingly pulled into that doctrine.

Perhaps even back then, I knew how wrong they were, how perilous their folly for underestimating me. I was meant for something great, and none of them could see it.

The Devourer was a horror story, a legend of how an all-encompassing blackness had wrought destruction upon every great kingdom that ever was or will be. But I was never afraid. I had no magic to lose. I welcomed it, its power. I often fantasised about bringing it unto the world, sucking every drop of arcane magic away so that everyone would be just like me. I would be their equal.

It didn't quite happen the way I imagined. My worldview was narrow, and it wasn't until the Devourer that I finally opened my eyes. No one is my equal.

The forbidden rituals were not easy to find; mother kept them hidden well so that no one might invoke it. But it's so difficult for her to hide from her own child. No longer would the high mages hoard the secrets to power from everyone else! I would convince the Devourer to grant me its power. I would do anything for it. *Anything*.

By candlelight, I completed the seance, muttering the words of the ancient ritual with my heart hammering at my ribcage. I had never wanted anything more than I wanted this. I craved with every fibre of my being. Give me power, now!

I had accepted the Devourer into my very soul that night. My body was transformed into stained shiny shadows, and the black remnants of the Devourer still clung to me, like dark, glistening wings. My sheep’s skin cast off to finally reveal my true colours.

I had flinched back at the first fluorescent light I saw, a beam parting the veil of blessed darkness, particles of dust dancing gold within it. The sun seared impossibly painful, and I felt as though it would burn the flesh off my bones. I quickly dashed back under shelter, panting, weak and dizzy, head swimming with confusion and pain. I am made of darkness now, light is an anathema to my very being.

The bitter taste of failure was just starting to rise like bile in my throat when the scrolls around me flew upwards and levitated, hanging still in the air as if held taut by an invisible thread. I gaped in shock, I had never been able to move anything like this before. I willed a goblet, left forgotten by some late-night scholar, to come towards me. It flew forwards and hovered, waiting, not spilling a single drop of its contents.

I was ecstatic. I had done it! Magical power at my fingertips, ready to be used at my whim.

You would think that my parents would be proud of how proactive I was. Who else can claim their child had such drive, such ambition, such determination to succeed, no matter what it took? But they recoiled in horror as if my final mastery of magic was abhorrent to them.

Mother reprimanded me with a tremor in her voice, and when I snapped back in protest, she had summoned her magic against me. But a mere mage is no match for the might of the Devourer. Her powers soon failed her, and so did her mind. She crumbled onto the floor, gazing up at me with no recognition. I hissed in an old forgotten tongue, and she nodded with a smile. Hypnotised and trapped in my spell, she turned around and lashed out at my father. He called out in shock and tried to flee, and all the spectators drawn to the spectacle scattered like birds from a falling tree.

With a thought, I suspended my father in the air, right in the path of a vicious bolt of magic. There was a scream and then silence. Blood pooled at my feet, and I felt nothing save a mild curiosity.

I had a taste for it now, and I wanted more. After all, true mastery needed practice, as they had so kindly drilled into me for all those years.

I swept through the nearby communities like a raging tempest, trying out new ways to utilise my telekinesis, and forcing their feeble minds into submission as I enslaved entire settlements.

I tried to justify it to myself then, that they deserved it, for thinking me weak all these years. That I was owed revenge for how they had failed me. But soon I had a revelation. I needed no justification. I can do as I like. The strong do not bow to the demands of the weak.

I was wrong all those years ago when I thought I could drain away the magic of the world with the Devourer. There is magic in all things. Power can be collected, if you know where to look. The meal a young couple shared on the first night in their new home, a lucky rabbit's foot dangled from the ignition in three separate fatal accidents, the prized possession of a young child... add the Devourer's gift of black oozing oil and you've got yourself a fine witches brew.

> Double, double toil and trouble;
> Fire burn and caldron bubble.
> Fillet of a fenny snake,
> In the caldron boil and bake;
> Eye of newt and toe of frog,
> Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
> Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
> Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
> For a charm of powerful trouble,
> Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
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> Double, double toil and trouble;
> Fire burn and caldron bubble.
> Cool it with a baboon's blood,
> Then the charm is firm and good.
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