Nathaniel, A Child of The Other Place

Chapter 2: The Child

Well, hey, it's ME again! Yeah, I hope that you were waiting with BAITED BREATH for my newest update! (But I know that you weren't.)

So, yeah, once again, I do not own Bartimaeus. I own nothing!

Yeah, true story. So, warning for this chapter: Fluff!

Lots of it!

Have fun READING!

~Y~E~A~H~I~K~N~O~W~T~H~A~T~Y~O~U~L~O~V~E~I~T~Y~A~Y

My Point of View

Nathaniel looked at Bartimaeus, and awaited his response. But the demon wasn't talking. No, it was too busy changing itself into various forms, all of them looking slightly like Nathaniel, but either really old, or destroyed horribly.

Nathaniel held his ground, looking at him, glaring, for most of this. That is, until Bartimaeus started flickering through images of Nathaniel being tortured by several entities. That's when he started getting a bit creeped out.

And that was not a good state of mind for an already weak, really pitiful fourteen year old boy.

So, he did what he had to do to stop it. He fired an Inverted Skin at Bartimaeus.

That stopped the demon rather quickly.

In fact, he immediately screamed out 'NATHANIEL", and sent it back at him. He jumped out of the way just in time, and it didn't hit him. But, something (arguably) much, much worse happened. He jumped out of the way, yes…

Right out of the Pentacle.

~Hey~It's~Bartimaeus'~Turn~To~Tell~The~Story~Now!~

Bartimaeus' Point of View

My luck was falling into place. The boy might not have turned his own skin inside out (as I would have wished), but he did put himself in danger by jumping out of the Pentacle. And I was prepared to use that.

So I jumped out, and instead of eating him right away (1) I decided to gloat a little first.

"Well, well, look what we have here! The tables have turned, now, haven't they?"

"Please, Bartimaeus, no… I don't want to die like this… You are still under my command!"

"Oh, please! How cheeky can you get!? You ARE under my control. I am going to kill you. And you, you basically let me!"

"No, Bartimaeus… Please, I'm sorry…"

"A bit too late for that, isn't it?"

That was when I decided to kill him. But, as I said in the footnote, I should have just done this at the beginning, because while I talked, he decided that he wanted to fight back.

Even while he was sick.

I should have noticed that his eyes were darting back and forth, should have sensed the silver's aura from the desk.

Well, yeah, but I was a bit caught up in the moment, and can you blame me? I was about to get to go back to my home, the Other Place. And there would be no chance of this annoying boy summoning me back!

Yeah, normally, I would say that you can guess what happened next, but since you idiots reading this are HUMAN, I suppose that I should just tell you, plain and simple.

He reached up, grabbed the silver pendant that he had from someplace (2) and hit me in the head with it, right as I was about to kill him. I mean, come on! Couldn't he let me have ANYTHING? But nooo, he couldn't even let me have that. So, that was how I ended up barely cutting him, and he ended up severely hurting my essence.

That, well, that was when things were about to start happening.

Now, he got me mad.

~Yes, this is a thing.~

My Point of View (again)

The silver pendant in question was in fact an ancient artifact, found in a tomb of some sort. It seemed to have once been part of a rather interesting thing, used to protect something or other.

Now it was a crumpled piece of silver that sat on the desk of a fourteen year old boy's desk.

But it was a rather important thing that it did, because without it, Nathaniel would have died that night.

And that, well, that would really suck, because then the story would be ruined, and then I would have nothing to write about!

So, he pressed the metal to Bartimaeus' forehead (he was still in Nathaniel's guise, so if anyone was watching, it would have seemed rather odd to see a boy fighting himself) and watched as it seared his essence. Unfortunately, that victory came at a price.

Bartimaeus swiped out a claw, and cut across his face.

It wasn't deep, but extremely painful, and he cried out in pain, dropped the silver, and fainted.

~Oh, no~ What's going to happen next?~ ~Is Nathaniel going to die?~

Bartimaeus' Point of View

That's when I realized it. That I wouldn't kill him. I had the perfect opportunity, of course… He was outside of the Pentacle, he was unconscious, and he had put no protective clauses in place.

But… I couldn't do it.

I looked at the poor sap lying there, with a cut across his face, and blood pouring out, and… I couldn't do it.

Maybe he reminded me too much of Ptolemy. Maybe something else was going on. But no matter what the reason was, I couldn't do it.

I might have had an actual… (and it pained me to even consider this) affection for the boy. We had been through things together, and I wasn't about to kill him.

So, instead, I picked him off of the floor, where he lay, bleeding, and I put him down on the posh couch in the main room of his flat.

And I put my (his? I was still wearing a guise of him for whatever reason) hand on his cut. I waved it, and muttered an incantation.

The cut glowed, and I almost shrieked with pain (3) as my essence was ripped out. In place of the cut, now there was a silvery line that glowed on his face. That was it, I guess. I had started the transformation. (4)

He was going to bother me forever.

And it was my own fault.

As I should have, as it would have saved my existence from being so… threatened, all the time, constantly…

Never asked from where, never really cared enough to…

Almost, of course. I would never do something that *hum* unmanly

His charge, to make him a 'Child of the Other Place' meant that he wanted me to donate some of my (rare and incredibly important) essence to his, which would slowly transform him into a djinn, who I would be stuck with forever. I shouldn't have allowed this. But he looked so pathetic, so sad, that I decided to help the poor sap. Never again.

Well, that was the second chapter. WAY too short, I know, but, well, what are you going to do? I have a bit of writer's block, and… I don't know… I just wanted to get this down, okay? Anyhow, I have TWO more things to say before I go, and those things are:

Thank you, Jigoku Pie, for reviewing! That was really nice! Yeah, I try, with my writing, but I think that that might have been the single most nice and AWESOME review ever posted! So, yeah, read!

And thank YOU, masterdisk, for favoriting my story! You will not regret this! (hopefully)