Hashim stood in the field as other students began to arrive, the early ones trickling in. He instinctively reached for Regus, but Regus was of course not there. So Hashim cloaked himself in his ability and pressed the tip of his cane to the packed mud, standing still as his group swarmed him. Most of them were first years, yes. Unexperienced. It was likely that they didn't all understand that each class didn't have its own leader. They didn't yet know that Hashim didn't break the mold.
And that was unacceptable.
The students chattered among themselves. Somebody brought him a plate of breakfast. He didn't take it. His muscles were still humming with energy from what Anguis had given him last night.
They wanted to do something. To act. But what?
He needed a target.
Hashim grabbed at something in their brain. It stuck at first, but then it came. It was a short, round tube. He positioned it directly behind his eyes, and then he found what he was looking for.
Blue painted circles on some of their heads. People who had powerful abilities, especially in the upper classes. People who had too many others circling around them. People who—
Hashim cut off. Xavier and Jake surged forward, and the round object fell away, back into the Deep Consciousness. Together they stole control from him.
Hashim slammed back against the stone wall. He grunted, wheezing, but this wasn't the time for letting mere discomfort get in his way. He immediately surged to his feet and launched himself at the door. He had been so close. So close to finally releasing his tension. It would've been glorious. A beautiful spectacle that would have been exactly what they wanted.
Jake and Xavier each grabbed one of his arms as he tried to sprint between them. He snarled at them, but they just threw him back. He felt his body impact the solid bricks, and then a clanking crash as iron bars fell down, almost shattering the stone floor they met. The cell around him shifted, again and again, as he screamed and raged, trying to get out, or even feel something, anything.
It was fire, then it was water, then obsidian, then simple stone again, then gilded marble, then hardened clay brick again.
Hashim shouted, but they were silent. He could hear nothing from them. He could say nothing to them. Nothing that they would hear.
Why was this so different from the blackness?
Hashim paused.
The blackness. Didn't he have control?
He let his body collapse on the carpeted floor, and then a dark shadow began to creep out, converting the area around him. Then the carpet vanished, leaving bare wooden planks side-by-side, the change rejecting the darkness. that he had been forcing into it.
No, it wouldn't work. The prison was shifting too quickly.
Hashim cried out one last time before falling silent. Frustration, anger, confusion. Why had they stopped him?
He closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands. He was locked in a prison in his own mind.
But is it your mind? Haven't the others always been there? Don't they have as much right to it as you?
Of course they did. But he had the right too. That was what he had meant, right? Why would he think of it as his mind? Perhaps it was the name getting to him. He must have told someone at some point that he was Hashim when he was in control of the body.
Darkness. Panic. Anger. A bloody silence. An accusing emptiness.
Yes, that must be it. He was just being arrogant because of them all having to go by his name. He really wasn't any greater than the others. He wasn't.
One foot before the other was all he could do. They asked him his name as he stumbled down the stairs into their bunker. He didn't answer. He couldn't. The people around him were too many.
He didn't need anything else. Their memories from the dark time were lost, split up between them and buried in the thousand minds in the Deep Consciousness, but that was okay. No one would be able to find anything about him. He hadn't mattered since before he came to the Academy. This was where his life, where their life, started.
So many eyes. Too many. Too many eyes. Everywhere, eyes. Eyes, eyes, eyes.
He would rise up and become the one and only emperor. No man would stand before him without trembling, or they would discover what fear really meant.
Please let me go home. I want to leave.
Together they would rise. Only together.
Then the full memory hit him, a brick dropped into his cell.