I can count the number of times I have used this thing we call magic on one hand and still have a few fingers left over.
It wasn’t a request, but rather a plea born from exhaustion.
They had nowhere else to turn.
I wasn’t offended at being the last on the list, rather, that meant they took it seriously and had tried everything else.
The hidden question was just how I was recommended and why the person who did so thought I was the best for the job.
A certain place needed clearing out, the general contractors working inside the unit unable to put a name to the feeling, yet it was causing problems.
I promised nothing other than to take a look.
As soon as I stepped out of the car there was just a feeling of something wrong, the feeling a place has when one wants to pass through it as quickly as possible. The layout of the buildings, the geometry, was all wrong, suggesting the buildings were put up as quickly and cheaply as possible, stacking the most together to fit as many on the property.
The effect was sets of buildings of different heights, joined at harsh angles, material that appeared to be selected with what was on hand, as creative as possible.
Some of the people exercised care, decorating the windows for the season, planting random bushes and trees, while other units looked unchanged from when they were built.
There was zero uniformity.
What I brought with me was wrapped in a cloth bag, tied down at the top, and carefully held hilt up in my right hand as I walked and counted the numbers.
I was at the 800s, and I had to go to 1141.
The courtyard and hallway shared the same wrongness, brutal walls erected for function alone, sharp turns and misshapen steps that did not care if one was carrying anything or needed to move carefully.
Three locks to open the front door before I walked into the space and put what I was carrying gently down on the only piece of furniture in the place, a worn round table that might have been a dinner table at some time.
What did I see?
Square rooms, old plaster walls, polished wooden floors recently redone, with a slant in one corner of the unit. Everything in the unit had been removed, no traces of who might have lived here before, the only hint being the appliances, which looked to be around fifty years old.
What did I feel?
Anguish.
The frustration of a life wasted.
An unhappiness that had seeped into the walls and pressed down heavy from the ceiling.
A failure of personal accounting.
What did I see when I closed my eyes?
I’d need my sword in hand first, as my actions so far had been passive.
Discreet.
Looking beyond that would be like turning on a flashlight in a dark room.
I couldn’t offer the solution they wanted.
Things were a bit better, some of the pressure released, but it wasn’t just the unit itself; it was the entire complex, a network of past and present lives.
I wasn’t Adept enough.