Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #19 October 2015 | Page 52

stretched out on two chairs, eating peanuts. For the
past three months he came closer to understanding
her than he thought he would. He did feel bad every
time he discovered a new piece of her past with Malik,
especially when he finally convinced her to let him go
through similar training as she. But that also gave him
unique insight into how peculiar her mind was. She
was in a mold that didn’t let her develop any empathy, so she treated her kills as nonchalantly as buying
bread. But she never felt pleasure from it. Murder and
torture were ingrained in her, she used them as any
other skill, but not for kicks. She was bluntly realistic
about the things she had done, and expressed both
negativity and positivity with the same level of indifference. And yet she was capable of love. He never
forgot how she saved his life, and after their first small
conversation he learned to look at her actions through
a magnifying glass. How difficult it was to convince
her to make his training more arduous, how he woke
up one day to a stack of college books on his bedside
table and it took him a week to figure out that neither
Jake or Patrick had bought them.
The bartender handed Lucas a tray. As he was
walking over to the table, he started to get introspective. The biggest tell that he was getting more comfortable in his skin was his demonic side. It was about
time, his awkward years were supposed to be over
when he stopped being a teenager. He would sometimes wake up in his demonic form and not even think
about it. It had stopped being a burden and started
being just a fact. The abilities he had had began being
just that – the abilities he was born with. He never
thought that hiding magic was so detrimental. And yet
here he was. And speaking of XY