"Ian, what are you doing with a scythe?"
"Oh, you know, cutting the grass, harvesting wheat, severing heads..."
"Oh shut up."
"Jeez Greta, can't take a joke?"
Greta stalked off and I went to look for the others. With the number of girls in the house, I figured that the bathroom was a good place to look. Since I could still see glass for some reason, I had to check inside the shower for someone. Once I was in the room, however, I could tell by the humidity that no one had recently showered. As I turned to leave, the mirror caught my eye. I realized that I hadn't looked at a mirror since that first day at Zaak's... the strange thing was, the mirror was alive. It moved, it swirled, it twisted. And then I saw them. The other five me's stood behind me in the mirror. I spun around, and there they stood. Death smiled.
"Hello, Ian."
"What the hell are you doing in the real world?"
"We think that your new power has unlocked the potential of the portals."
"Portals?"
"The Greeks believed that mirrors were portals between the worlds, and apparently they were right."
"So my power physically manifested your reflextions by pulling them out of the world between worlds?"
"And the reason you saw our reflextions is because the mirror shows you what is inside you now."
"Wow, that actually mostly makes since for once."
Now that they were real, I began to really look at the five.
Pain was me hunched over, face contorted. He was heavily muscled, his body covered in scars.
Misery was me unnaturaly thinned out, a wry smile on his face, wiry and dangerous looking.
Truth was me even taller, thick and solid, but at the same time shifty. His face was horribly distorted.
Love was me, softer featured and well defined. He was the kind that made girls swoon. Instead of blue his eyes now burned red.
Death was tall, dark and handsome. He was tall and elegant. His smile sent shivers down my spine. He was powerful, unstoppable. He was Death.
I noticed that the other me's all had the scar over their left eye, just like me.
Then it clicked. The dream I had, the dream of Kuchiki's death, was a metaphor. The man in my dream was Death. Death had carried her away.
"Ian, look in the mirror behind you..."
I turned to see myself. At first I thought it was Death, but then I realized it was me. Death stepped up beside me. The juxtaposition was subtle, but it was there. It was the way we carried ourselves. I was relaxed in my powerful new body, while Death was coiled, ready to... well, kill.
Death smiled once again.
"Check this out." Death stepped towards me, and then into me. I felt his conciousness return to my mind. He stepped back out. The second mind left.
"That is so cool."
"I know, right?"
It took me two seconds to figure out what to do next.
"Hop on in guys, we have a prank to pull."

I walked into the kitchen, a smile on my face. The whole group was already there.
"They already know about the scythe," informed Greta.
"But none of you have seen my newest trick."
My five other selfs stepped out, all smiling.
Zaak's jaw dropped.
Greta's plate crashed to the floor.
Alisha screamed.
Zoe fainted.

After things began to cool down, I talked to Zaak for the first time in a long while.
"Zaak, there are some things I need to know."
"So you finally figured it out, eh?" Zaak look saddened by this turn of events, even though I didn't know what was going on. "Ian, long before you were born there was a prophecy concerning you and two other people. Unfortunately, you were the only one with a specified birth date. the prophecy did, however, state that you would know where to find the other two."
"Other two what?"
"They were called the Gods of Power. The three of you were to be the most powerful magical creatures ever known. One thing that doesn't fit the prophecy though is the fact that you were supposed to be a prophet as well."
"But I never..."
Zaak smiled.
"Exactly. But since you were supposed to be a prophet, I, the chief prophet of the Council, was chosen to solely train you. Ever since it was shown that you didn't have the gift of prophecy, we all hoped that you weren't actually the subject of the prophecy. But that's enough history for today."
"Bu-bu-but..."
Zaak smiled again and walked out of the room.
Disapointed with my half answers, I began to wander around outside. Basking in the glory of nature, I began to play around with the power inside my body. I found that by speeding up my heart I could slow time, similar to what had happened when I first had the ring on. Bored with that, I began to play with the plants in the woods. While I couldn't make them grow on command, some odd things began to happen. By channeling the power in me, I could make woods springier, softer, more flexible, and harder. Much much harder. In fact, I found that I could make branch so strong even I couldn't break it. After some searching, I found a branch as tall as I was. I brought it back to the shop at the house, and carved it into a slender pole. I grabbed Greta's broken sword out of my room, and brought it to the grinder in the shop. Once I ground the blade into a tapering curve, I cut off most off the handle. I cut a notch in the end of the staff, and fitted the remaining handle in the notch. After hardening the still-living-wood as much as I could, I pounded a metal cap over the notch, holding the blade in place.
Stepping out of the shop, I brandished my new scythe.

"Is this awkward for you? Fine." I took off the ring and slammed it on the table. "There! No one had to know, but you felt the need to tell them anyway, didn't you!"
"Sorry, Ian, I--"
"I just-- sorry Zoe, I'm stressed out right now, and that ring is the only thing that gives me comfort."
"So that ring does what, exactly?" asked Greta.
"It allows me to see things that are alive in... an odd way. I see them as what they are, things of nature, of simple beauty. Things that aren't alive appear as a haze. Things like cars, or instruments, or.... clothes."
"How is that comforting?" asked Alisha.
"What allows me to see things that way is this strange...force. It flows through me, and I don't have to pretend to be what I'm not. I don't have to be human."
"Ian, this is very important. What does this force feel like?"
I looked at Zaak, expressionless. "The Earth's beating heart."
"My God."
"What is it?"
"That ring is... forbidden."
"What do you mean?"
"The magic in that ring has the power to become nature itself."
I picked up the ring.
"Ian, how long have you had that ring on?"
"Um... four days?"
"And you haven't lost your mind?"
"Zaak, I lost my mind a long time ago."
Zoe decided to enter the conversation.
"What do you mean 'you don't have to be human?'"
"Zoe, I haven't felt like a human being since I was changed. With that ring on, I don't have to try to feel like I'm a person. I can be a force."
I slipped the ring on, and I felt relief flood through me.
"How does it feel?"
"I feel... alive. I feel like a force, an action. I feel powerful. I feel like I can do anything, but I don't have to do anything."
"So you can see... everything?"
I willed myself to stand in front of Zoe, and my body brought me there in an instant.
"I do. But I don't see things the way a human would. What is beautiful to me is the blood rushing through your arteries, the fibers of your muscles seamlessly contracting and relaxing, gliding back and forth to produce motion. But I appreciate their beauty the same way you appreciate the colors of autumn."
"Ahhh that is so creepy. It's like your looking right through me, to underneath my skin."
I looked into her eyes, sparkling with the gentle beauty of life.
"I am."
"What? You can see my insides?"
"And by simply touching you, I can learn everything that there is to know about your body."
"Really?"
"For example." I appeared next to Greta and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Greta, you've broken three bones in your life, burned your left palm twice once exactly eight years ago and once two years and 67 days ago, and you've drank 3.275 onces of alcohol since you were born."
"How do you--?"
"Your body remembers everything."
"That's creepy," said Zoe.
"Creepy? That's beyond creepy!" replied Alisha.

I'm not sure how I got to the house, and I didn't really care. I was numb, completely numb, and that was good enough for me. I was, however, tired of everything else moving so slowly. I found that with some effort, I could raise the pulse of the beating power that slowly washed over me. After some time, the heart beat in time with mine. But then something unexpected happened. The world changed. The air became humid, there was ozone hanging in the breeze. There was tension in everything, and the earth turned a strange color.
Slowly but steadily, I lowered my heart rate to match the Earth's heart before I had messed with it. And everything was at normal speed.
"Ian! How did you do that?"
"What?"
"You just appeared out of nowhere!"
"Sorry, I'm not sure whats going on. Zoe, where is everyone?"
"They aren't here?"
"Everyone is at the battle, I can conjure things from here... Zach, are you ok? The fighting just ended..."
"What! No time has passed? Then no else knows yet..."
Just then Zaak, Greta, and Alisha came through the door.
"Ian, what the hell happened back there!"
"I uh, well Zaak, uh." I showed the ring.
"What's that?"
"A gift Kuchiki left for me. It's hard to explain."
"Left for.... No!"
"I'm sorry Zoe, she died. Because of me."

We held Kuchiki's funeral that night. We cremated her, and scattered her ashes. When we came back to house, I headed for the music room. It was hard to walk through the halls when I could hardly make out the walls, but the occasional insect made it a lot easier. I sat down at the piano, and I began to play. I played Bach, Brahms, Mozart. And I played Beethoven. Lots and lots of Beethoven. After a few days straight, however, I ran out of music to play. So I began to play violin. Vivaldi, Mozart, Bach. A day or so later, I once again was out of music. So I began to play my guitar. I began to play around with minor chords, and an endless song of death flowed from my fingers. After a couple of hours, Zaak peeked in the door.
"Ian, I'm going to have to ask you to stop."
"Why?"
"Whenever you start playing, Alisha starts bawling hysterically, Greta breaks whatever she's holding, and Zoe has been in the shower for three hours straight."
"Oh. I'll see what I can do."
I made my way to the bathroom, not sure what I'd say.
"Zoe!?" I knocked. No response. I knocked louder. No response. I gave the door a good whack,... and there went the door.
I walked in, and I knew I was about to lose some hearing.
"IAN! WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN HERE!?" Zoe had thrust her head from behind the shower curtain, and I knew the red color of her face wasn't from the shower.
"I, came to get you out of the, uh, shower. And that sounded weird."
"Why are still in here!?"
"That shower curtain doesn't block anything anyway."
"What!?"
"I, ... nevermind. Zoe, we're worried about you is all." Zoe still looked like she felt akward, but I could tell a lot of the tension in her was gone.
"Ok, I'll be out in a bit."
"K."

The next morning, Zoe stood in front of the table at breakfast and proclaimed,
"You're all naked!"
I almost died laughing.
"Ian has X-ray vision now."
The others in the room stiffened, and akwardness filled the room.

It was the next day when it happened. At 2:31 in the afternoon, over 100 magic users attacked Zaak's house. All of us went to fight, each in our own way. Zaak and Greta launched several types of missiles, Zoe conjured boulders and made men disappeared, Alisha transformed men into twisted, disfigured shapes. Kuchiki struck out with the elements, killing many. And I killed. I snapped bones, crushed organs, and slashed arteries. I moved like a shadow, killing many before they even saw me. Suddenly, like before, a ring was formed around me. But this time at least thirty men had me surrounded. They launched lightning attacks all at once. I lept into the air, spinning as the attacks hit me. The attacks bounced off in all directions, some at strange angles. As I finished my spin, I saw Kuchiki. And I saw the bolt of lightning heading towards her. And I realized how inadequate I was. I couldn't protect her. I caught her before she hit the ground. She smiled that precious smile, and then the light left her eyes. The ring she gave me glowed on my right hand, and as I watched, the gold cracked and shattered, and silver was left behind. The black stoned turned to dust, and a red stone was in its place. Suddenly, my senses sharpened beyond belief. I could see everything. I could hear everything. I could smell everything. I could taste things in the air. I could feel every living thing nearby. I could see the blood pumping through men's veins, I could see everything about them. But the men's clothes were hard to see. They formed a shadowy wisp over the men, and didn't conceal anything. But that didn't bother me. They didn't feel like people anymore, they felt like living things, a part of nature. And I was one with nature.

The heartbeat passed through me, and I could feel its power. It was power that I wanted. I felt alive, at one with the living world around me. I could feel the gentle power of the world seeping into me, and I found it strangely soothing. I remembered that Kuchiki was dead. She could never feel what I felt. I looked to the men around me, and I realized that they were the ones that killed her. So I killed them. Then I realized that I was the one who killed her. Then the heartbeat passed through me again. I fell to my knees, my breath taken. A voice entered my head. Kuchiki's voice.
"Do not wear the ring for more than 34 minutes, or you will lose your self."
I began to weep.
An hour later, the ring hadn't left my finger. And I still wept.

Every thing went back normal after my birthday. I played several pranks with my portable hole, and it turns out that trapped lightning makes a great lantern. I still practiced religiously with my sword, but with no one to fight, I didn't have much use for it. I loved the ring that Kuchiki gave me, but I had no idea if it had any abilities or not. And as I went back to training, my voices began to speak less and less. At first it puzzled me, but then I realized that it was because I was leading a semi-normal life.


And then they came. Just after lunch, a rumble passed through the house. I was at the window in an instant. The thirty, a mix of all the classes, marched towards the house. And in the back were three that didn't match any of the classes.Their magic was unlike any I'd ever seen. It was dispersed over their entire body, and shimmered like a billion tiny flames. It hit me. They were knock-offs of me. I had no idea what they were capable of, and I had to be careful.


I was out of the door with my sword moving at a 350 mile an hour dead sprint, and I took out the first six attackers with my first swing. I could feel Death growing closer to the front of my mind, and I knew his power could overwhelm me at any moment if I wasn't careful. I hacked and slashed through the enemies. Suddenly, a ring formed around me. Launching numerous missiles simultaneously, my shield reflected the attacks, but I feel its strength waining. Apparently my shield wasn't impervious. The reflected missiles took out some more of the men, but I noticed that the three mysteries were still holding out. I decided to say hello.
I swung up, dropping my knee to cut under then up through his defences. He was fast, and manged to dodge almost all of my uppercut. When my sword hit his skin, the sword shattered. I threw the remaining three-fourths of the sword up in to the air. I knew that his shield couldn't hold up forever, and I began to barrage him with my fists. I found out after three punches that while his skin rivaled mine, his bones were normal. He crumpled to the ground, dead. Apparently he couldn't heal like me either. As the second launched himself at me, I spun and grabbed his arm, flipping him over. I threw him to the ground, and before he could move, my sword pierced his heart. I yanked and twisted, pulling my blade from his limp corpse. The third swung his fist at me, but I dodged and raked his stomach with the jagged edge of my blade. The thick red line disappeared rapidly. He swung his hand towards my face, raking a long, deep line across my eye. With my shield down, I couldn't stop his hand. The cut went from my forehead to my chin, splitting my eyelid. I clasped my hand to my face, clenching the skin together. I pulled my hand away from the cut a secong later, and even though the cut was fully healed, I knew that that I had a huge scar across my face. Before he had time to attack again, I slashed again, cutting a ragged welt over his heart. Stabbing my sword into the earth, I sprung. I pulled the gash open, ripping open his ribcage. I pulled out the man's beating heart. I turned to the remaining warlocks who were still fighting my friends. I raised the man's still beating heart above my head, and shouted,
"Leave me ALONE!"
The warlocks turned, horror on their faces. I crushed the heart, blood and heart spraying through the woods.
The warlocks died with fear on their face.

"What the hell is going on!?"
"Damn, Zach, how did you know we were in here?"
"I could hear you, Greta."
"Well, happy birthday anyway, Ian"
"Thanks, Kuchiki."
"Surprise!" Zoe and Alisha jumped in from the deck.
"Yeah, he already knew."
"S***, Ian, why do you do that?"
"I'm sorry I can hear, Zoe."
After the bruhaha died down, I actually did have a good time. I got an entire cake to myself, and some awesome presents. Zoe gave me a real portable hole and Alisha captured lightning in crystal, both of which were pretty much amazing. Greta made me a sword. A freakin huge, magically reinforced, mind-blowingly cool sword. But I liked Kuchiki's gift the best. It was a gold ring, with a small black stone embedded in the top. Inside the ring was an inscription.
"Zu Herrn Ian meine polierende Nacht."
"Nice play on words. And since when do you know German?"
"I looked it up on the internet."
"Thank you."
After spending an hour suffering through girls' obsession with photos, I finally got out of the house. The ring fit my finger perfectly, of course, and I didn't even have to adjust the strap on the baldric. It was kinda creepy that Greta knew how wide my shoulders were, but I didn't think much of it. I decided to put the sword throught its paces. It was a greatsword, with a blade a bit over four feet long, a little wider than a palm, and a two-handed grip. It was a beautiful sword, and I soon found out that it never lost its edge, could cut through almost anything, and was incrediblely resistant to breakage. After a few hours of chopping down trees, I headed for home. The house was deserted, and walking through its silent halls, I found that I had never been there when there was nothing to hear. I wandered for hours, never going anywhere. And yet I went everywhere. I visited my favorite places, including the practice room I had thoroughly destroyed when I was 11. Suddenly I remembered again. Zaak should have another apprentice. He should be about ten, and just be starting defensive spells... nothing made sense. When Zaak spoke to the council man that day... something was wrong.
And it involved me.