Recruited

The moment after I heard those words from that woman claiming that I’d passed, I instantly blacked out.

I woke up to find that woman standing over me with a smile alongside two other cultists who had their hoods on.

“Good, you’re awake.” She said.

I noticed that I was laying down on a bed and tried to get up, but she easily pushed me back down with one hand.

“Calm down, you’re still completely drained from the test.”

“….what was that?” I asked.

“Oh nothing, just a simple test to see how much potential your body has to produce magic. Usually, it takes a long time to learn how to do that, but that hourglass forcibly injects a huge amount of magical energy into your body, causing it to react really badly, which explains why you randomly felt that much pain when touching the hourglass: it serves as a conduit between your physical form and the magical energy that’s getting shoved into you.”

“Umm, I didn’t really understand….but that means I passed?”

“Yes.” She continued explaining. “The sand serves as a timer, the more it fills the more the energy that flows into you gets increased, albeit little by little. Anyway, that’s not the point, you passed, making you an official member of the masked order, the youngest ever. I should introduce myself, the name is Esmeralda.”

“….I’m Arthur.” I hesitantly returned the introduction to be polite, but since she hadn’t given me her last name, I had no need to do so either.

“Nice to meet you, Arthur. Anyways, you should probably get a bit more sleep, we’ve patched up your physical injuries but surely you’ve got be exhausted, mentally and emotionally.”

“No, it’s fine, I’m alright…” I clearly wasn’t alright, as my eyes were getting very heavy, I could barely keep them open, and it seemed like she could see that.

“Hush, just go to sleep for now. When you’re all rested up, I’ll start by explaining to you everything that you need to know before you get started here, alright?”

I immediately fell asleep, unable to even mutter a response to her.

A little while later, I woke up, but heard two people talking in the room, they assumed I was fast asleep.

“Listen boss, why act like you care about a child’s life when you’re just going to end up recruiting him anyway?” That was clearly John’s voice, I could tell.

“Haven’t you heard of something called reverse psychology, fool?” Esmeralda responded. “The more I made it clear to him how dangerous this gig was and how much I didn’t want him to be part of hit, the likelier it would be that he’d become even more interested, you must understand how a child’s mind works in order to make use of them.”

“An….interesting tactic, I admit.” John replied. “But I’m still not convinced this is the right thing to do.”

“We need every man, woman or child we can get our hands on, John, this isn’t the time to take a moral stand. Anyway, it’s too late, he’s part of this now, he can’t get out. Besides, weren’t you the one that brought him to me in the first place?”

“I brought him to you so that you could erase his memory, not bloody recruit him, boss!”

I heard her snort and walk away, John sighed and immediately followed.

I decided to go to sleep again, but it didn’t come easily.

When I next awoke, I still felt completely exhausted and not refreshed at all. However, I concluded that no amount of sleep would do me any more good, so I decided to get up.

There were stairs leading up, I went through and opened what looked like a cellar door of some sorts, and climbed out to fight myself back in that space. Esmeralda immediately spotted me, and I made my way towards her, knowing this would be the start of my journey in this supernatural world of magic.