Holy shit.

  Tanya’s eyes could barely believe what they were seeing. She walked around him, seeing the hand from more angles and trying to convince her brain that this wasn’t some haunted house. This was a real person in a real home in the real apocalypse.

  “What…” Tanya started before trailing off.

  She saw that the boy’s mouth was opening and closing but no sound was coming out. His eyes and mouth were like spaces of normal wallpaper in the darkness, simplified to two ovals and a semicircle like an old animation.

  “He said there was a voice, didn’t you babu? It called itself The System and called him Worthy.” Ishita sobbed harder. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t protect you.”

  Tanya was sure that the blackness was creeping up his arm now. She’d looked around the room for anything she could use to pull him out to no avail and now the darkness was an inch further up his arm.

  She grabbed the boy’s hand with one arm and elbow with the other, pulling along with Ishita. It didn’t work.

  “Protect him from The System?” Tanya said, straining.

  Ishita began the soothing chant again in another language. She swapped between pulling and stroking his hand. Tanya thought it was a prayer.

  Tanya walked closer to her, his arm grabbed onto her shirt and gripped, almost pulling her over. She wrestled him back off. Patting her hands all over his shadow on the wall, she couldn’t feel him at all. It was like a real shadow.

  “Ishita, I’m gonna try an’ save your son but I need you to talk to me.”

  Ishita didn’t look up, she held her son’s hand whilst tears flowed down her face.

  Tanya grabbed her shoulders, speaking louder. “Ishita, I need you here with me.”

  Ishita’s eyes were wide. “Y—yes. What do you need?”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  The black had crept another few centimetres up his arm. Tanya forced her eyes away. She couldn’t make this go any faster by stressing.

  “My h-husband… he came home and he wasn’t himself. I swear, he’d never lay a hand on me—he’s not a violent man. I left that all behind but…”

  “It’s alright, it was The System, not him. What powers did he have?”

  Tanya didn’t know that for sure but it’s what she needed to hear right now.

  “Strength or…something. He hit our dining table and it split in two… then he screamed and the lights—“

  “And your son?” Tanya interjected.

  “He ran into his room and hid. Peter…he wanted Fahad. Broke everything apart looking for him everywhere.”

  Tanya’s thoughts were racing a mile a minute. So Fahad unlocked his powers from how well he hid and now…she stole another glance at the shadow boy on the wall. She strode closer so they were eye to eye. The dimensionality was even weirder up close. It all looked so fake.

  Tanya lowered her voice. She knew she was terrible with kids but she needed to try and not freak him out. “Fahad can you talk? This is important.”

  His mouth opened and closed over and over like words were coming out that she couldn’t hear.

  “I haven’t been able to hear him since his head…” Ishita said.

  System, can you tell me anything about his powers?

  Insufficient Ability to perform inspection.

  It’s what she expected but yes—Abilities. Maybe she could help him with her tattoos.

  System, I wanna see my Abilities.

  * * *

  Abilities

  More than Meets the Eye

  Level 1

  Tattoos created by you are imbued with latent magic. They can be summoned by their Wielder for unique effects. These effects are determined by the design, Vitality of the Wielder, and cost of creation.

  * * *

  How much can I influence the effect of the tattoos I make?

  Error: non quantifiable response.

  She didn’t have time for this. His outline was less clear now too, like he was fading into the shadow around him. Her heart lurched. Being trapped was one thing but disappearing from existence…

  As if by divine intervention, a car passed the window. Tanya hadn’t seen a car on this street all day. If she wasn’t hyperfocused on helping this family she may have wondered who it was, but instead, she just saw its headlights.

  It was daylight outside but the blinds were angled down to not let much in. But the car passing from below the blinds flooded the room with beams of white, reflecting off the ceiling to the rest of the room. The shadows morphed as the light pushed and pulled the darkness with it. The destroyed furniture created huge sweeping black spikes across the walls, splintered wood becoming huge stakes in a strange warlike shadow landscape.

  When the light hit Fahad she saw him scream, his face contorted into one of pain. His mother dived in front of him to shield him from the light. But Tanya’s eyes were locked onto his arm when the light hit him, the shadows crept back.

  Tanya ran into the hallway.

  Shit.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  She’d forgotten. Every single bulb had burst. Was that part of his powers?

  My phone.

  Her hands grasped at her pockets but it was left inside. She spotted Ishita’s phone on the side and grabbed that instead, running back into the room.

  “I’m sorry Fahad,” Tanya said, turning the torch on full blast. Fahad writhed and Ishita sobbed. Then the light began to dim further and further until with a deafening crack the LED broke and the room was plunged back into darkness.

  If his power could break lights then her only hope was she could use her powers to make one he couldn’t break.

  "Ishita, I got a plan. I need some gear from me shop and some from you. Can you get me an extension cord, soap, water, towel? Can you sort that?"

  She nodded, looking confused but for the first time hopeful. Tanya ran off before she needed to stomach how far up Fahad’s arm the shadow was.

  Walking into her shop Tanya balked. She’d somehow forgotten. The stench of of flesh from Dreadlocks' body choked her and she coughed with her sleeve in her mouth. Shattered glass crunched under her feet and she wasn’t sure if the drips on her cheeks were tears from the shock or her eyes watering from the smell. She stumbled through the shop to grab her tattoo gun and inks, settling with whatever was in arms reach. Ink footprints coated her floor as she walked across the shattered bottles. The memory of Maria’s face dropping as she stared over Tanya’s head flooded her mind.

  Not right now.

  Tanya grabbed whatever else she could carry and stormed out of the shop. The blinds upstairs in the flat next door to hers twitched. She ignored it, gulping deep breaths of air. It felt like she’d never smell anything but that body again. The moment she could will herself forward again she ran back to Fahad and Ishita, forcing thoughts of her shop away.

  Back in the flat with a handful of various tattooing supplies, she came face to face with Ishita again. “What are—“

  Tanya interjected. "My class is Tattoo Summoner, an’ I’m gonna do whatever it takes to get him out with a tattoo.”

  All of the caution left Ishita’s face and her mouth was left in a straight line. She nodded sharply.

  Tanya nodded back.

  System—an’ not that fake, bloody coded voice—I want the real one. I’m savin’ a kid’s life here, and I need your goddamn help, or so help me—

  She felt its presence pool around her.

  Present.

  Tanya was convinced it almost sounded amused.

  Give me a crash course in me Ability, More than Meets the Eye. Enough to design an’ do a tattoo in…

  She’d not looked at his arm yet, there were too many things that needed plugging in and moving around and working out in the space. It was halfway up his forearm now.

  Fuck, that’s gotta be another eight inches. I ain’t got time for this. Please.

  The main purpose of this form of levelling is to see the way you decide to utilise the Abilities, which then shapes the way you are granted further access—

  Tanya was about to cuss them out. The System seemed to sense that.

  However, I can go over a breakdown of logistics here in more detail.

  The first stage of the tattoo is its creation. This is done through Will and Dexterity. Through the design, the aim of its purpose should be apparent. Don’t try to overcomplicate its purpose as your Ability Level will then require The System to simplify it for you.

  The second stage is summoning. This uses Vitality. You should be aware of the Vitality of the future Wielder of the tattoo. A complex or strong purpose will place more strain on the Wielder.

  Some tattoos may require other stats to utilise such as Will to control something that has been imbued with its own aims, or Dexterity to wield a weapon.

  Tanya drew up her design whilst The System talked.

  When Tanya drew it was like all the words in her brain switched off, so rather than thinking about Fahad in words she sketched her thoughts: his body, representations of his powers, and ways he may want to use them. It made it far easier to listen at the same time but really difficult to explain to someone her thought process.

  She needed something that made light but most of all she wanted him to be able to control it. It began as a flame, then turned into a lantern, the shapes that decorated it becoming more and more like Ishita’s traditional lanterns in the hall of the flat.

  Her pencil pulled away and she felt that it was right. It was very sketchy, she didn’t have time to refine it, but she could tell exactly what she wanted and that it was made for him.

  Then the world slowed down.

  Ishita’s prayers became just the subtlest movement of her lips and as she tipped her head back her hair bounced through the air and it didn’t look like Fahad was moving at all.

  It was as if there was a person standing behind her. Tanya could almost feel the breath on her neck and feel the eyes watching her and her design and all of reality all at once.

  Then everything sped up again and the world burst to life. She ran towards him with the stencil and grasped a towel that Ishita had brought, dunking it into the water and wiping it all up and down what remained of Fahad’s arm.

  Her instincts told her not to use the stencil, to freehand it on him and feel the movement of it as it wrapped up his arm. It’s something she did sometimes in the shop to make something perfectly fit the curves of the person's body—but using even more time was ludicrous. So why did she want to so badly?

  The eyes were still there. She could feel them. This fucking system, whatever it was, was watching her.

  Is this some fuckin’ test?

  The System didn’t reply. For the first time, Tanya felt the panic rising in her chest. She’d held it in, did what she knew how to do, listening then drawing and making it specially for the customer. But now she felt this urge to decide between two different paths. She’d never had to rush any part of a tattoo before. Her chest was tightening and her vision was blurring and it felt like she was a kid that had spent far too much time on the roundabout.

  Stencil or freehand?

  Her eyes danced between them before settling.

  Art’s made for people, not the other way ‘round.

  She listened to her instincts and pulled a Sharpie cap off with her teeth. The sharpie squeaked across his skin, forming swirling lines she hadn’t drawn before. Now instead of just being a lantern, it had this long metal chain attached to it swirling as far up Fahad’s arm as she could go. The lantern itself became rounder, all soft edges and playful shapes like the boy she saw in the picture on his bedside table. The stylised image sucked her back into being a kid again waking up early to watch her favourite Saturday morning cartoons.

  Her frantic energy dispersed with the hum of her tattoo gun turning on. It was just her and the gun and the canvas, laying down the sweeping lines from the darkness at the top of his line down to the lantern at the bottom. The darkness ate at the ink, flowing faster down his arm. It reminded her of mould growing in patches on the places the ink was richest. The lineart almost reached his elbow, the shading running out of space halfway up his forearm as the darkness ate away her canvas.

  She was running out of time but her breathing was stable and deep, she could hear the slow rush of air going in and out over and over.

  Grasping at the bottles of ink she realised she’d only picked up the ones from the tattoo with Adder, black and orange.

  Perfect.

  The nozzle guzzled up the new brighter ink. She didn’t have time to clean it out properly so she laid down a weird murky mix of black and orange right in the centre of the lantern until the last of the black was used up. Then the orange grew brighter. She didn’t want to limit the light this time like she had with the snake so she used dashes to indicate the light spreading as far up his arm as she could still reach. The darkness bubbled as the light touched it, similar to how Adder’s tattoo had sprung from his neck but rather than a face of pain, Fahad’s cartoony semicircular eyes and mouth were one of curiosity. It was like he couldn’t feel the needle at all.

  Creating a summonable tattoo on purpose turned out to be nothing like making the snake, like making a pact, or in fact, any other types of magic Tanya had explored so far. She’d begun to think magic just wasn’t like it was in storybooks, that creating her kind of magic was covert and needed analysing to be seen.

  Which made this the loudest, brightest, and most obnoxious spell she could have ever dreamed of.

  The Tattoo Summoner this far!