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She barely dared to breathe and shook her head.
“He quickly climbed the ranks, but it was never enough. He always wanted more money. More influence. More power. He told me when I was just ten, Son, you need signifiers to scare them, but the only true path to being your own man is your proximity to power.
“Increasingly, he was fascinated with new inventions and backed them financially. That’s when he met Mercer.
“From there he talked about how we needed a Wielder king again so Casters could never send Wielders to fight their battles. They’re spilling our blood while they sit in their moral high towers, he would say. He was talking about a war to reset the world order and the Dawson family at the center of it.
“By the time I was seventeen, he was obsessed with having me be one of the first ones to be given Mercer’s Aterna potion so I would have no consequences of using my Dark Magic. My mother was against it, but I was just focused on finally making my father proud. I took Aterna, but I didn’t understand it meant Mercer wanted me to constantly push my limits and become a trained assassin. I had never killed a person before. Only demons. I refused to be his executioner, and he grew increasingly frustrated with me.”
His eyes were trained on the floor, the bottle balanced between his fingers.
“In the beginning, Mercer tortured me pretty regularly in an effort to make me comply. Tried out different spells on me. All it did was make my resolve grow stronger. I guess I’m stubborn that way. The last thing I wanted was to help the bastard. My father was beside himself because I turned out to be even more of a disappointment than he originally thought.”
He took another swig and ran his hand through his hair. Tortured repeatedly when he was just seventeen years old.
“But then one day, I was alone at home, studying, when my father arrived with Mercer. I was a decent Wielder then, but I had no chance against the two of them. All I remember is standing up, and Mercer lifted his hand, and pain shot through me so sharp, it was all there was. I collapsed on the floor. I have this vague image of my father drawing a chalk circle around me while Mercer recited some words.”
His eyes looked empty. Broken.
“I thought I knew pain before…” He shook his head, and the muscles in his arms strained as if in memory of the torture. “Mercer’s amulet glowed red and I felt words carve themselves into my flesh, but something else was happening to my magic. It was as if it corroded. As if acid burned through my veins. When it was done he could make me do whatever he wanted. I was tied to his powers.
“Enthrallments are ancient magic, and I couldn’t figure out how to break it. My mother put me in contact with Obryn back then. But even the expert in Dark Magic had no way to reverse the spell.”
Mercer had created his perfect killing machine. Not only could Dawson use Dark Magic without consequence; he was also enthralled to Mercer’s power.
“I still remember the first person I killed,” Dawson continued in a low voice. “A woman in her thirties. She had apparently uncovered something Mercer didn’t want the council to know. I never learned all the details. I saw her eyes go wide in horror as I lifted my right hand and my magic sliced through her.
“By the end of the war, I didn’t even know if it was him or me wielding the deadly spells. They had become as easy as breathing.”
Who knew how many people Mercer had made him kill? Using his body. His powers. Mira felt sick.
“Best thing the resistance ever did was kill that monster.” He took another long sip of whiskey. “Took them fucking long enough.”
Without Mercer, he was finally free. Or was he? A terrible thought formed in Mira’s mind. Aidric was one of Mercer’s most prolific assassins, and he never went to prison? Why not? He killed for the council. But why? Now it clicked. It made sense. It explained everything. But it was so horrific, she didn’t want to even say it.
“The council…” she began with a weak voice. “They found a way to continue the permanent enthrallment on you.”
He stared at the bottle in his hands and didn’t respond immediately. “It was a smart move on their part. Obryn told them about the permanent enthrallment during the trials, in an effort to keep me out of prison. It worked, but neither of us knew of one crucial factor: Mercer’s amulet had never been recovered.”
She had read about several of Mercer’s belongings that had disappeared after the war.
“The amulet is connected to your enthrallment,” she concluded. “Whoever has it…”
“…can control me like a fucking puppet.” He balled his left hand into a fist. “Had I known about the amulet, I would have rather sat in a cell for the rest of my life than tell the council about the spell.”
Someone had complete control over Dawson’s magic. It made her skin crawl.
He had come out of the war, broken and manipulated, only to be used by those who were supposedly the good guys. She wiped away her tears quickly so he wouldn’t notice.
“Who at the council is doing this?” she asked.
“Corvin. He never told anyone else.”
The Primemage from the Caster section should know better than to use such terrible magic.
Power begets power.
“So he uses the amulet to make you kill?”
