Chaos Unleashed by Drew Karpyshyn Page A

you should be completely blind. Yet you clearly see the world better than I.”
    He’s fishing for information!
Rexol hissed.
He’s up to something!
    It did seem as if the doctor wanted to know more, but Cassandra didn’t sense anything sinister in his words.
    “My Sight is far superior to ordinary vision,” she admitted. “Yet it also serves as a powerful reminder of the twisted nature of Chaos. Only by becoming blind can we truly learn to see.”
    “Did it hurt?” Methodis asked. Then he drew in his breath sharply. “I’m sorry. I have no right to pry into your personal life. Sometimes my curiosity gets the better of my manners.”
    “It burns for a few seconds,” Cassandra said, speaking slowly as she thought back to the memory of the ritual that forever marked her. “But the pain passes quickly. A small price to pay for what I have gained.”
    “How old were you when they did this to you?”
    “This was not done to me,” Cassandra said, a sudden urge to defend the Order she was no longer even a part of. “It was my choice!”
    “A poor choice of words on my part,” Methodis apologized. “Please forgive a foolish old man. We don’t have to talk about this.”
    “I was thirteen,” Cassandra said after a brief pause. She wasn’t sure why she was opening up to him, but she suddenly wanted to get the words out.
    “That seems quite young to make such an important decision,” he said. But his tone was mild, and Cassandra didn’t see his comment as a challenge.
    “I understood the consequences of my choice,” she said. “I had already been living and studying at the Monastery for many years before that.”
    “I’ve never understood that,” Methodis continued. “Why must the Order take children from their parents at such a young age?”
    They didn’t take you from your parents!
Rexol shouted inside her head.
They stole you from me!
    “The training must begin early in life,” Cassandra explained, ignoring the wizard. “If the Order waited until we were older, we could never learn to control the Chaos that rages inside us.”
    “They took you in as a child and set you on this path,” Methodis pressed. “Don’t you ever feel like your future was stolen from you?”
    It was,
Rexol chimed in.
You should have been the greatest Chaos mage since the Cataclysm.
    “Life and fortune pushes us all down certain paths,” Cassandra answered. “This was mine. I have no regrets.”
    “Yet now the Order is hunting you,” Methodis reminded her. “Something clearly happened that was not part of the plan.”
    Don’t tell him anything else!
Rexol snapped.
You’ve said too much already.
    This time Cassandra decided to heed the wizard’s advice. She wasn’t worried about Methodis betraying her, but she wasn’t eager to confess her betrayal of her brothers and sisters at the Monastery, or the terrible burden Nazir had put on her before his death.
    “I’m feeling a bit tired,” she said. “I think I need to rest.”
    “Of course,” Methodis said, clearly sensing he had gone too far. “I will get you something to help you sleep.”
    A few minutes later he returned with the familiar elixir. Knowing rest would help her body heal more quickly, she drank it without protest. Within seconds she felt herself slipping away into unconsciousness. Yet even as her muscles relaxed and her Sight faded into blackness, she kept her mind focused and alert, knowing what was to come. It was time to resume her battle with Rexol.
    Each time she drifted off to sleep now she would find herself as a child once again, remembering lessons at the mage’s feet that never actually happened. And though she tried to resist his efforts to teach her, the mage was crafty and cunning. He would constantly change her surroundings, altering the trappings of the dream each time to disorient her. He would craft elaborately detailed scenarios to trick her into believing she was still a child. Sometimes she would be studying incantations