Tarous

Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42


Chapter 1
Nothing puts life in perspective like dying.
Another night spent meditating in a graveyard, the story of my life. I was born with a power, a fire, or maybe a miniature sun would be more accurate. It is a power that is too destructive for a mortal body to contain, so from the moment I was born I started to die. No different than anyone else I suppose, I just travel down that path faster than most.
I’ve heard of others being born with powers beyond what their mortal bodies could contain. From the moment I learned to read I’ve spent most of my time researching, gathering all the data I could. Every scrap of information I found related to my condition, I have studied. Every lead I have found, I have followed. All paths I have discovered have all lead me to dead ends.
I once read of an instance over two hundred years ago where a boy was born with the power of nature so great that he gradually lost the ability to move. His body stiffened until he became completely paralyzed. His joints locked, his skin hardened, and eventually he was no different from a tree. The thought of being trapped within my own body, unable to move, caused me to shudder.
I found another story, over a thousand years old, about a young girl with the power of ice. She was without match, her strength grew by leaps and bounds, and entire armies feared her. She was a cold and calculating fighter that had no equal in battle. One night during a full moon, when the yin qi was at its greatest, she lost control of her powers and froze to death. Even the warm blood in her veins turned to ice in an instant. Soon afterwards her body shattered into a thousand shards of ice.
I had found several more stories about children born with amazing powers, but none had survived beyond their twentieth birthday. Every one of them suffered terrible and gruesome deaths at the hands of their own powers.  My power was neither of nature nor ice. The power within me was more like a burning sun, which meant I would probably have a far more violent end. Lucky me.
Imagining what it would be like to spontaneously combust, slowly burning to death from the inside out, I shuddered. I found some comfort by reminding myself it was still better than being turned into a tree. At least it was a fast death, I wouldn’t suffer for more than a minute before I became ash.
Personally I didn’t want to die either way, but if I had a choice… Besides, what if I became a tree and one of my branches started to itch? I wouldn’t be able to scratch it. Now that would truly be torture.
I took a deep breath to calm my nerves. The whole situation just felt so hopeless. Why was I cursed with this power, this life? Life truly wasn’t fair, but no one ever said it was.
I sat in the dark quiet night, a slab of cold marble beneath my butt. Maybe sitting on a grave was disrespectful, but so far the dead had never complained. I read the engraving on the gravestone in front of me.
“Frank, lived to be 78. Lucky you Frank.”
I felt bad for Frank, being dead and all, but a part of me was jealous of his long life. I could expect many things out of life, but a long life wasn’t in the cards for me. I was fated to become barbeque.
The air was frigid, just the way I liked it. If you can’t see your own breath then how do you know you’re still breathing?
I’ve studied thousands of spell books, learned more magic than a witch twice my age. Nothing like having your life on the line to encourage you to learn fast. Despite everything that I had learned, the only thing that I truly knew was that I was a dead man. However, though I hadn’t found a cure, I had found a way to resist my untimely death.
What I found was just a few notes in an old book, barely legible, on a method to absorb a special kind of energy. It was written that in areas where people have been laid to rest a unique energy is formed. I dug deeper into the subject. Since the most informative books on this subject were from the east, I decided to call this energy “death qi”. I never found the book with the actual technique in it, but I managed to cobble together my own incomplete version of the technique from all the scraps of information that I had uncovered.
Death qi was one of the few things that could quench the power within my body. It helped, but it wasn’t a cure. It only prolonged the inevitable and it took time to absorb it, even with the use of my technique. How ironic that the very thing that would bring about my death could only be slowed by death. It seemed like a cruel joke.
I could tell my condition was deteriorating. I could feel my body being slowly cooked like a Thanksgiving turkey. The pain was intense, great enough to make one realize a simple truth: that death could also be a release from pain. I took a deep breath of the cold graveyard air. I inhaled the death qi, wisps of it slowly being absorbed into my body. I guided the energy throughout my body and relief from the pain was almost immediate.
As the pain in my body receded, I noticed the chirping of crickets. I was too distracted by the pain to notice them earlier.