My Name is Drak Berklin.

  I am a Monster. A scary, frightening Monster. While I live with my only Friend and Maid Claire, many things changed too fast.

  My Father and his Wife, I made them suffer. Suffer as much as I had suffered. I used the new whip on them. The Whip tore through skin and muscle, broke bones and sometimes removed limbs.

  [Death Defiance]

  [Aura of Healing]

  [High Heal]

  Their cries did not register to me. Only one thing was in my mind, they wanted to kill the only one who smiled at me. They wanted to kill Claire in torturous ways.

  [Domain of Time Stop]

  I put everyone in Stasis except two of the four people I hate the most and… the one I care for the most. The Wife of my Father might have noticed her Servants not moving or maybe she heard his wails? Whatever it was she ran to the voice of her Husband to understand what was going on. Her shriek made me realize she came and she needed punishment too.

  [Telekinesis]

  [Chains of Sin]

  Putting her next to Father in the air I could now choose which one I whip. Options were always good and I felt this deep, deep knot in my stomach burning and getting less painful with each whip, wail and unintelligible apology.

  “Drak…”

  So much Blood, but high heal even replenishes that, it is so funny.

  [Stable Sanity]

  [Indomitable Will]

  I do not want them to go insane. No, if I am not allowed to, they will not be allowed to either.

  “Drak!”

  Such an awful odor. So metallic, it reminds me, when I had so much hunger, I took the bloody and rotten flesh of the Garbage, as they had gone out to a vacation without me and the Servants were eager to not let there be any leftovers like in Noble dinners often are.

  [Echoes of Pain]

  Making them feel the whipping from before while whipping them at the same time must really hurt, they cry so hard they throw up blood while I am not even whipping their Chest-

  “DRAK!”

  Something… hugged me? From behind? But they are all in Stasis- Oh, that is right, Claire is not so it must be her. Warm and somehow soothing. Why is my vision going blurry?

  “Stop it. It is enough! I know they deserve it a hundred times over, but! You are not like them! You are my Master. Right? My gentle Master, are you not?”

  After I fell to my knees I do not know how long I cried in Claire’s arms. An hour or maybe two? While weeping the Aura had healed the Demons back to their healthy state but I heard not one single word. Maybe they hoped for me to cry myself to death? I bet they just wanted to stay silent to not anger me into whipping them again like that.

  “It is okay, I am here. I will protect you, my Master. Let it out, let it all out.”

  Such soothing words. I think I fell asleep some time later. When I awoke everything was quiet. I was in my Pyjamas and laid down in my bed and Claire held my head in her arms resting it on her chest. I mean there was nothing there, but those thoughts were short until I remembered what I did.

  —

  Claire carried me out of the Study when I fell asleep exhausted. She is strong, very strong. Afterwards she took the fully destroyed clothes off me and put new garments on. My marks were already gone as I was also inside the Aura of healing.

  Going back into the Study there were the People of this Duchy hanging. Seeing me they must have tried to pee themselves but there is not much anymore in their bowels.

  “Drak… My precious Son! I beg you, cease this insanity! Why would you torture your own blood like this?!”

  Funny how he can say such words after what he did to me and wanted to do to… BASTARDS!

  Noticing my rage Claire hugged me again and I started to breathe heavily. I needed time to come back to my senses and it was not easy. I was now in control and I was… afraid.

  What now? They know about me and what I can do. Will they kill me? I need to stop that somehow.

  In my seventeen thousand Spells, I never used but knew without knowing why, I searched for a solution. So many variations and so much power, I do not want to have. Why could I not be normal? No, I would have never met Claire if not everything happened like it did. Running through my Options I got to something that might do it. I don’t know how powerful others are, but if Father and that Woman are kept under control until I know how dangerous things outside are, I can work with it.

  [Curse of Loyalty]

  [Curse of Secrecy]

  [Curse of Misidentification]

  [Curse of Promise]

  [Curse of Delay]

  [Curse of interwoven release]

  [Curse of Hellfire]

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  [Curse of Retribution]

  [Curse of Bone Melting]

  [Curse of Disintegration]

  [Curse of…

  Interwoven Curses were put into them. One after another. Those two got more and more scared. It was hard for me to hold all those Curses from igniting but after I put them into a horrifying ball inside their Soul everything got connected with interwoven release while hidden by Misidentification. They look as healthy as can be and everything was normal except their horrified look and the Study being flooded in blood.

  [Clean]

  —

  “What… are you?”

  Sitting in the meeting room my Father and his Wife were obediently sitting down and not even trying to go against the curses. This was the good thing, the talk was the bad thing. I never talked with them for years and it makes me so uncomfortable.

  “Drak, the stain of the Berklin family. Can you not even remember the face you regularly whipped? And I am asking the questions from now on. Why do you hate me so much?”

  Silence. All I get is silence, if I ask something someone scoffed or ignored me outright. Sometimes a kick would be aimed at me for making noise. I had enough from this annoying silence.

  “I order you to answer!”

  “You are fat and ugly. While your genius in the first few years was seen, it fell down right away with you only reading but not even being able to write a simple word. You stayed fat while growing even with Diet and your Face never became chiseled like true Berklins, which showed us how low your Magic had to be.”

  “You are the Bastard son of my Husband and a whore of a Maid. I despised you from the day you were born, but had to play a beautiful family as Eric, my husband saw potential in you. When he finally gave up on you I could vent all of it subtly. If it weren’t for his Blood in your veins I would have long killed you like…”

  The Order I gave made them tell me the truth in their minds. That was the time when I noticed how scary Curses were and made a note of that. What surprised me was his Wife Clementine, as she let something slip, maybe because she was ordered to say it and just let it flow out of her?

  “Like who?”

  “...”

  “I asked ‘like who’?”

  “Do not make me say it boy.”

  “I am in command! Answer me!”

  “Your Mother!”

  Claire nearly let the tea cup fall she brought after brewing some for me. I can not blame her, as I myself was not understanding what that woman just said. Anger was in me but I held it down, deep down. The silence was deep and the missing shock of my ‘Father’ showed he knew. He KNEW!

  “...Maid, two Tea for us, hurry.”

  “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE ORDERING MY MAID!”

  They were shocked and started to shiver again. I would have tortured them again, if Claire did not rub over my back to soothe me. So much anger and so much pain, but I was just a child, how could I understand any of that?

  After long questions of how many people they knew were as strong as me and if Curses can be seen or detected by some strong people I finally gave them their true orders. I do not trust them. I do not trust this whole Duchy, I do not trust anyone! But… Claire I trust. I need Friends, like Claire. Somehow to save me from myself and this pain that is not coming from the physical abuse but from somewhere deep in me.

  “I order you to not tell anyone about what I can do. You want to hate me? Still hate me without telling my secrets, I do not care. You want to ignore me? Good! If Servants or any other Person notices something you will be punished. PROMISE!”

  “W… We Promise!”

  “Me too!”

  The Curse of Promise clicked in place, as they seem to not know what it was. It was a Curse which needed the Promise of the other one to take effect. Now the Bomb is set.

  “Br… Son, we are hungry after… After you did that. Can you undo the Servants with whatever you did?”

  “In six hours I will do that. If you are hungry, go eat what I always eat.”

  “What do you eat… dear step son?”

  “As I am not allowed to eat on the table with you I eat the rest they throw into the large crate to be disposed of. Sometimes when you are not that hungry there are some nice pieces inside, albeit as the Servants know I eat from there they often Spit in it after throwing it inside.”

  Their disgusted faces were a nice addition to what they suffered. Let them eat, they need to eat as their stomach is totally empty. Heal just makes things that are needed for the body. Somehow Food is not needed, while I do not understand why that might be.

  —

  While they looked at the refuse box, they did not touch it. The pantries were all specially locked so I would not be able to eat something nice. The Servants ordered those locks and made sure they were thorough. They could not even brew themselves good tea and by the look of it it was bitter.

  Time came and I removed the spell of Time stop. The cogs of time started to click again and everything moved. The Doors of the Study opened and surprised the Head Butler. Claire with her small frame dragged me pretending to be unconscious, wearing ripped clothes through the door and slowly brought me back to our chambers, one slow step at a time. The caked blood and welts were obvious to the keen eye of the Butler, but he did not care about me at all.

  “So Master just wanted her to bring out the garbage. How generous of him to not make us touch that thing.”

  —

  It took not long for the people to notice something was off. A day was missing, but there was no reason for it. Also the behaviour of their Masters was somewhat off. While they did not know what those excentrics thought they ordered strange things like how the little maggot the Bastard son had as a Maid was allowed to cook and get ingredients herself.

  After a week a strange request came.

  “Make the table have an extra plate, for… that bastard Drak.”

  It was quite strange but the Lord must have been in a really good mood to let him eat at the same table. When the table was made ready, the head of the house and his wife were on one end and a single table was put all the way at the other end of the long table for him to sit there.

  “Put the plate closer to us and bring out better Cutlery and a better plate. This looks more like a dog bowl than… *cough cough*”

  When Duke Berklin said this he noticed he coughed up pure black blood with a vile stench. It was not much but he definitely noticed he was close to giving hints Drak did not want to be leaked.

  “Forget what I said! That fat meatball would just let my appetite go bad with his smell. Still call him, so he can taste what life would be if he were not so damn useless.”

  The Duke’s sense of a terrible death being way too close started to subside after the Servants looked like they had an epiphany.

  While the Servants believed this some kind of psychological mockery to Drak, he himself was not sure what those two were playing at. They did so much that bordered the curses and might be dangerous if it were too obvious. Still Drak played his role and sat down.

  Claire looked at how the Maids gave precise portions on the plates of the Duke and Duchess. After they precisely made a plate that was close to art she took Drak’s plate and tried to imitate them. She was rather clumsy and it was all over the place but she tried her best and brought it back to Drak with a smile.

  —

  Things slowly changed. Since the event where Drak used so much Magic, his body started to rapidly accumulate more and more of it. He could not control it and it was even painful sometimes.

  His respite came when he looked through the things his Father collected over the years for his ‘hobbies’. One thing was a rusty ring from a convicted Magician. A cursed ring but the Curse was gone. In the notes there was an explanation of what the ring did.

  Not really sure Drak put it on and noticed how the pain vanished. This was when he started to search for more and more rings the stronger he got.