7 What Comes with the Power

Paim and Graham were sitting next to each other; the latter was trying to control his breathing. One and a half hours had passed since he began the ritual. The dimly lit room was as cluttered as before. There were four black candles that had been extinguished; each much smaller than when they were lit. It was very quiet; Graham's heavy breathing could be heard faintly.

"Now, I'm going to give you some warnings regarding the world of Contractbounds. Listen carefully." Paim said softly but sternly.

Graham turned his attention to her; the glimmer in his red eyes got stronger the more he recovered.

"First, you need to learn to control your power. Your red eyes will attract attention."

"Why?" he had guessed that Contractbounds should not display their power in the open, but he didn't understand the reason.

"The Police are not a fan of stray Contractbounds. They will monitor you strictly if they find out that you are one. And the moment you cause trouble, they will lock you up. You don't want that, don't you?" she asked.

"No, of course not. You said stray Contractbounds; does it imply that there are official Contractbounds?" he tried to confirm.

"Yes. The Police have their own division of Contractbounds. Of course, they keep it a secret from the public."

Graham nodded. He could understand that making the existence of Contractbounds public would cause panic in society. They had strange powers, and the offering materials were taboo, at least in his case.

"Second, as I've said, you can be in contract with several Deities, but you must be very careful in choosing. Some Deities are malicious. That brings us to the third point: the Deities you're in a contract with will ask you to please them from time to time. Every Deity is different in the way you can please them. The malicious ones can go as far as ask you to kill innocent people or sacrifice living humans to them."

"What about my Deity?" he worriedly asked.

"I don't know, but His nature is not evil. You will know when His messenger comes to you. A personal note; an encounter with a messenger is very rarely pleasant." she emphasized the word 'very'.

"How did yours go?"

"Oh that, I don't want to tell you. It's really personal, dear." she refused to answer.

Graham's mind started to wonder how it was.

"Now with that out of the way, I need to close my store. You should go now." she smiled and looked at Graham, and looked at the door.

"Alright alright." he got up. "Thank you very much for your help. Can I come here to ask you questions if I have any?"

"I'm sure you do, but I'm afraid not. I won't be around anymore. But we will see each other again when the time is right." she smiled, her eyes showed a hint of regret.

"Where are you going?" he asked while rubbing dust off his coat and pants. He was lying on the floor after all when he was in pain.

"I cannot tell you that. Now go!"

"Okay okay." Graham put his knife back inside his pocket and walked out of the store. The moment he walked out, he heard a loud noise.

Thump!

He looked back and the antique store was gone!

"Val, I'm not the only one seeing this, right?" he looked around the area trying to find the store. The spot where the store had been was now an empty plot of land with grass and weed growing wild.

"Whatever, let's just trust her. She said we would meet again after all." he decided to just let it go and went home.

It was a cold early morning, with the full moon shining brightly. His body was strangely warm, but not hot enough to cause him to sweat. It was comfortable warmth. He started walking and noticed that his eyesight was tremendously better, even slightly better than when he was wearing the ring. He also felt there was new knowledge in his brain, but he set it aside for now. He needed to focus on getting home safely.

Oosteindestraat had always been famous for its crime rate. The street was big but dark. It was far from Central Sloten, so patrols were scarce. There were also slums nearby. Desperate people sought desperate measures. Usually, normal people wouldn't walk down that street late at night, not to mention at two-thirty in the morning.

Graham walked fast, with eyes on his surroundings. There were no motor carriages driving by, and only a few people were left in the street. Some of the street lights were broken, making some parts darker than the others. He saw a man ahead of him walking in his direction. The man was wearing a beanie and a mask covering his lower face. His clothes looked elastic, the kind that made it easy to move around in. Graham could deduce that the man might be a thief. He watched the man carefully with his new eyes.

As they got closer, the man's movement became weird. His mouth underneath his mask seemed to be moving, and his left hand was making a kind of movement as if it was taking something from the air. Graham saw his weird behavior and checked his belongings right away, and his feeling was correct; his wallet had gone missing!

When the man saw him checking his belongings, he got into a position to start running, but it was too late. The gap between them was close, so with a slight move, Graham could grab the man's right arm. He pinned him down to the ground and got on top of the man to prevent him from running away.

Other people in the street watched what was happening, but they stayed out of it. Graham looked the man in the eye and said convincingly,

"You will now return my wallet."

"I-- I don't understand what you're talking about!" the man tried to deny it.

"You will return my wallet now because my money is inside it. I don't want to lose my money because otherwise, I'll be angry. I'll bring the Police here if I'm angry. I am friends with people from the Police. You don't want to be a wanted man, do you?" he gave the man some reasons that he just made up, but he said it very seriously.

The man looked confused, and as if he was enchanted, he took out a medium-sized brown wallet from under his shirt. It was Graham's. He checked the content of his wallet while still pinning the man down.

"Yes, everything is inside. Thank you. Now you may leave."

He got off the man and cleaned the dust off his coat. The man ran away and went into an alley. Graham continued heading home.

"Val, the street is dangerous at night. I wish there was a motor carriage we could take."

The people in the street turned away from him as he walked past them.

"That man earlier used a strange trick to swipe our wallet. So there is also that kind of power." he thought for a while. "These new eyes are amazing. Thanks to these I could see his weird behavior. Also, how did the man just give me back my wallet? I gave him bullshit reasons. Is it maybe part of the power?"

He continued walking home, but as he was walking, he felt a headache that was growing stronger with each passing moment. He deduced it was the effect of the eyes because it was similar to the ring. He increased his pace because the headache was getting unbearable. At one point, he even ran. Graham arrived home at three fifteen. Once he arrived, he went straight to the shower. The water eased his pain a little, but it was not enough.

After showering, he dressed up in a simple t-shirt and loose pants. He sat on his bed and thought about what had happened today while massaging the back of his head.

"Val, the first thing we need to do is learn to control our power. Paim was right; the eyes are too eye-catching. Not many people have bright red eyes after all." he touched his closed eyelids, "and the headache too."

His contract granted him powerful eyesight. He had already tried it first-hand and although amazing, it had limitations. It drained a lot of his stamina, and the result was the headache that might at one point make him pass out.

"Val, we really need to turn off this eye power now. I can't bear the headache any longer."

Graham tried to concentrate. He controlled his breathing like Paim had told him after the ritual. He then focused on his eyes. After a while, he felt like there was a switch somewhere in his brain that was connected to his eyes. He switched it off and his eyes felt cold for a while. However, the headache was slowly receding.

"Okay, we did it, Val. But it is too troublesome to have to do this every time we need the eyes. We need to learn to do it faster tomorrow."

"Speaking of Paim, who exactly is she? Her store just vanished into thin air. I think she must be very powerful to pull something like that. Although she has been nice so far, we must still be careful of her."

"Now, I think it is time to access the knowledge that entered our brain earlier," he said and focused on a part of his memory that seemed new. It was the knowledge about his powers.

Besides his eyesight, he also got two powers of divination. The first one was fire divination, which included paper burning, fire scrying, smoke divination, and ashes divination. The second was palmistry, the extent of which was still unknown to him.

"We should try out our new powers, especially palmistry. It is really not clear what I can do with it; is it for reading fate? Reading personality? Should I become a fortune-teller?"

His contract also granted him the knowledge of logic and rhetoric, the former strengthening his already great logical mind, the latter giving him the power to better persuade people.

"These abilities seem to be well-suited for my job, don't you think so, Val? We need to practice often so these abilities will get stronger. I think that's how it works."

"Now, on to the next thing: about being a Contractbound. As we have seen, Val, there are different strange abilities out there. One that can make people sleep, one that can give someone a nightmare, and one that can steal belongings in secret. That man was unlucky to meet us; if it had been someone else, they would have never noticed. His movements were very subtle."

"There is also that thing about meeting the messenger. Paim said it would not be pleasant. I'm curious about it now." his mind seemed to wander for a while.

"Well, nothing to be done now. We need to sleep. I feel exhausted."

He lied down in bed and started sleeping. After a while, his breathing became regular.

...

It was still early in the morning. The room was dark; the street light couldn't penetrate the thick curtains. Graham was lying down in his bed when suddenly he opened his eyes.

He couldn't move!

His chest felt heavy as if there was something sitting on it. He tried to move his fingers, but he failed. He tried to turn his head to the right, and yet he failed again. He could only raise his head slightly and see straight. He could see the door to his room and the clock on the wall. It showed 3:33. He tried to scream for help, but no sound came out of his open mouth.

His chest felt heavier and heavier, making it difficult for him to breathe. As he was panting for air, he saw the door to his room being opened slowly.

Creak...

The door creaked as it was being opened very, very slowly. Cold sweat ran down Graham's neck. He tried to scream once again and moved his body, but nothing seemed to bear success.

Bang!

Suddenly the door shut close. Then there were footsteps.

Clomp... clomp... clomp...

The sound of heavy footsteps could be heard.

Clomp clomp clomp clomp...

The footsteps became faster and closer.

Time seemed to have frozen. Graham tried to force his eyelids close, but he couldn't.

The footsteps disappeared.

Suddenly, there was a giant black figure standing at the door staring at Graham.

His heart skipped a beat from the shock. The figure was just standing there, staring at him. Graham couldn't make out what figure that was; his mind was just refusing to process the image.

Clomp... clomp... clomp...

The sound of heavy footsteps came from the figure. It was walking towards Graham.

The closer it got, the faster his heartbeat.

Clomp... clomp... clomp...

The figure was now standing right next to him. He couldn't turn his head, so he couldn't see what it was doing.

Hee... hee... hee...

He heard a creepy laugh. Suddenly, there was a face in front oh him. It blocked all his field of vision.

It was the figure!

It was smiling!

It showed its sharp yellow teeth. Graham wanted to scream so badly and just ran away but he couldn't do anything. He felt his knees go weak.

He suddenly opened his eyes. He woke up for real now. There was no figure, and the clock showed four in the morning. He just had sleep paralysis. Sweat ran down his neck and arms. It took him some time to calm down. Once he had calmed down, sat down on his bed and said,

"Val, did you also see that?" he then shook his head, "I don't think so. After all, we don't share dreams."

He decided to go back to sleep after going to the toilet to pee and drinking some water in the kitchen. When he got back to his bedroom, he saw a piece of brown colored paper on his bed. He flipped it over and there were words that were burned into the paper.

'Please the Deity by divining great secrets.'

Graham read the words and it dawned on him: it was the messenger that Paim was telling him. After he finished reading it, the paper burned itself into ashes.

"Great, now I have to clean it. So, that's what she meant by meeting the messenger is not something pleasant. I will never get used to something like that, Val." he complained. He wiped the ashes from his bed with his right hand and took it with his left. He then threw the ashes into the dust bin and sat on his bed.

"So, I have to divine great secrets to please my Deity. What even counts as a great secret? I guess we will just have to do it."

Graham yawned. He felt very sleepy and tired since his sleep was interrupted. He lied in bed and tried to sleep again. It didn't take long for him to enter the dream world. This time, no figure disturbed him.