Nathaniel- A Child of the Other Place
Wow, that was a long hiatus! Sorry, everyone, I hope you can forgive me… I know I hate it when people do this to me, so.
If you were very interested in my story, I am very sorry for giving you such a long wait.
However, I am back now, so yay! Well, I still don't own Bartimaeus yet. Yeah, not that much has changed. Yeah. Okay, so what are you reading here for, still? The real crap is down there.
~Woo~Hoo~To~The~New~Chapter~
Nathaniel woke with a pounding headache and a really painful and disturbing feeling in his hand. He looked down and almost screamed at the strange, gooey, silver substance that was seeping from his hand.
The memories of the night before swamped his brain, and once again he felt like screaming. But… he wasn't dead.
He was alive, although he shouldn't have been. Bartimaeus let him live. Bartimaeus let him live. And also- and this was the weirdest thing to him- he helped him. In the end, Bartimaeus helped him. He gave him some of HIS OWN ESSENCE.
That was actually scary to Nathaniel.
It was scary because he should have died. It was scary because he ended up alive.
And now he was going to have to deal with it.
Mysterious Assassin time
The Mysterious assassin was outside his window. She looked in at the sleeping, pompous boy with greasy black hair. She hated him.
But that wasn't why she was here. She was here for one reason and one reason only: she was hired to kill him. And by God, she was going to do her job. That's what she was raised to do, as the most recent and last survivor of the Assassins of the Hill, an old cult that originated all the way back in Egypt. Her grandfather had kept the school running, and his grandfather before him.
Now they were all dead, and it was up to her to do something about to do something about the greasy fourteen year old.
She crept up to his window…
-~~~~!MY POINT OF VIEW I GET TO TALK!~~~_-`-`-`-
Nathaniel woke up with a sharp pain in his arm. He looked down, and saw a large grayish silver area, where his skin used to be. It was spreading fast. Now, this should have elated them. That was a good thing, right? The essence was creeping over him, helping him, healing him…
But no, that was one of the worst things ever to happen to him. And do you know why? Well, it's because the essence was disolving the weak flesh of the boy. It cut through where his arm and chest used to be, and he passed out from the pain. Technically, he died from it. His heart was cut off, and then his brain, and he was nothing. Nothing but a glob of essence on the floor.
The last thing the boy ever did with his own body was scream.
It was probably the most blood curdling sound ever heard.
He didn't even notice the assassin at the window, although her mind would forever be scared by what she had just witnessed.
$$ $$!N Time!
The assassin watched from the window, wondering when the perfect time to make the throw of the dagger would be.
And then the boy she was sent to kill bolted upright. And then something happened that she wished that she had not seen.
He dissolved. He dissolved into a glob of goo onto his carpet. She stood there for a while, and when she couldn't cope with that any longer, she slipped silently into the night, to cut off her own hand for failure of the kill.
She would have to kill herself, but since he ended up dead anyhow, she didn't think that her punishment had to be that harsh.
As long as it never happened again.
That night, the police would find a severed hand, dripping with blood, and a girl without a left hand, holding a knife in her right hand, on a city street. She was rushed to the hospital, and survived, although she left a lot of blood around London.
The strange thing was that no matter what, the girl wouldn't tell anyone her name.
But I know. It was Fire.
Bartimaeus' Point of View
I felt the tug of the Earth world and groaned. Was Nathaniel really summoning me? I would have thought that he would be here, in the Other Place by now… I guess my essence took longer to spread than I thought it would.
No! I remembered then, that I had supplied my essence. That meant that I had to dismiss him back to the Other Place.
Ugh.
That meant I actually had to do something that helped Nathaniel. But what choice did I have? If I did it fast, then at least both of us got to go back to the Other Place faster. So I materialized, sat down, and looked at the sorry lump of essence at my feet. Turning into Ptolemy, I kicked it. (1)
It jerked, and I could hear a slight noise in my head(2)
"Ow."
"Natty boy?"
"Yes?"
"You look disgusting. Make a form, I beg of you."
The kid pulled himself into a shape. It could have been a passable piece of modern art, but it was better than conversing with a lump, so I allowed it.
"Come on, I'm dismissing you."
I began the dismissal spell, letting my essence relax just as much as I could allow, and we were ready to go back to the Other Place, back to safety, back to life as it should be.
But no, that would be too easy for Nathaniel. He had to make my life the most miserable thing that had ever happened to me. He had to struggle out of the bond that had formed between our essences. And it hurt. A lot. So much that I was knocked out, and the next day, I didn't remember anything that had happen. And the worst part? Nathaniel's essence had formed into his old self, and he didn't remember anything, either. As far as both he and I were concerned, we were both just normal, he was still a magician and a human, and I had no recollection of helping the sorry git.
He didn't dismiss me for a while after that. In fact, it was about two years until I got out of that servitude...
(1) Hard. He deserved it.
(2) I had a connection with the kid now, as much as it disgusted me.
