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Magic doesn’t feel how you would expect it to. It doesn’t feel like light or wind or prayer, like something you can touch and see and control. No, magic slams into you with a force that isn’t a force. It’s the absence that we notice most; there is not doubling over from the sheer force of it as it happens, there is no flying backward as it hits you. Magic hits you all at once and then sinks in.
It hit him solidly in the chest, with a weight that wasn’t weight. It was almost warm, burning, searing as it seeped into his skin in an instant. When he doubled over, it wasn’t from the force of it; it was in an attempt to shield himself from it, though he was far too late for that. In a sudden and intense panic, as he felt the searing that didn’t hurt spread from the center of his chest out and over his body, lighting every surface on fire and setting every muscle to a smolder, he looked up at her and cried out, “Why have you done this to me? What did I do to deserve this?!”
“Why have I done this?” she repeated with disdain, “I? I have done nothing but beg and plead for your help, offer you all I have and hope that it was enough. You laughed in my face, and threw back my only payment.”
His voice deepened with every word, stretched and distorted though he tried in vain to stave it off. “You-you are a stranger! A stranger, who…who comes to my home and demands, with no preface and no invitation, demands my respect, my hospitality-!”
“I AM WHAT YOU FEAR!” she bellowed as he cowered, as he watched the ground slide away from him though his feet remained planted. “I AM ONE WHO BEGS ALL AND RETURNS IT MORE THAN IN FULL FOR THE SMALL COST OF YOUR TIME WHEN TIME IS ALL YOU HAVE TO GIVE.”
He grew heavier and heavier, sinking to his knees with an unfamiliar weight, and itched as if his skin were covered in crawling bugs.
“Then my time I will take back. Ten years you would have had of prosperity and growth, blessings beyond your imaginings. Ten years, your gates would have always opened upon full orchards and fields overflowing, and your ballroom would have been light with laughter and music to rival Heaven. So, ten years, you will be silent, and your gates will be frozen as your heart, and no human comfort will you find. Ten years, your home will be forgotten and you, alone, will bear the weight. Your servants will join you, but still, there will be no human comfort. They will be as you see them.”
Screams echoed in the halls. His hands, if hands they still were, slammed into the cobbles. He had not realized the steps were behind him now, and he craned his unbalanced head to see lights coming on in every window, and misshapen shadows running, fleeing from what was already consuming them. He turned back to the woman, the terror setting into his heart.
“You…would curse them, as well? Would make them suffer for my supposed sins?”
“They will not suffer. Whatever your outcome, they will survive. They will fade from this place, stiffen and still until they awaken far from here, without memory of you or your home. They will be here only as long as they are remembered, will forget as forgotten. But they will not know this. And you will not know this.”
And as it was said, it left his memory.
No longer able to bear his own weight, he collapsed. It was all he could do to stare up at her as his vision faded.
“I will send hope for you. Another will come here, and you will have again the opportunity to offer shelter. If you can learn to love another and earn their love in return, the spell will be broken. If not, you will be doomed, to remain outwardly what you are inwardly…a beast.”
The darkness consumed him.