The magic flows through the man, and so does his anger. This time it isn’t about being hired to carry out some petty revenge, as he clutches the doll he thinks about how personal this matter is.
There are two ways the usik can move through a person’s body. The man thanks his dark gods that he was born with the power, he had lived with it his whole life and knew the small ways the magic could move from one person to another.
Then there was his apprentice. The usik could be taught to others, it was an excruciating process, one that no normal person would be crazy enough to try, but then again the curse always attracted those desperate or cruel enough to learn its ways.
He stared at the doll and sat in silence. This was a war unlike any that would be fought, and he didn’t know if he wanted to stage a preemptive strike. The apprentice was not his flesh and blood, but the man still cared about his student in the way monsters cared about their own kind.
The first time his apprentice ever successfully practiced the curse was a proud day in the man’s life. The boy chose shards of glass to transfer into the victim’s body, the man had a soft spot for the classics and smiled as the screams of the victim echoed through the night sky.
Pride was all they felt that night. Pride would also be his downfall.
The candle was slowly burning away when the man suddenly felt an itch in his cheek. He scratched until small grains fell out.
Sand.
A challenge and an insult.
Now the war had truly begun. Master and apprentice would battle until only one of them would be left. The man wished it didn’t have to be this way, truly, in his heart he believed that there was room for more than one usikan in the village.
But he could not tolerate disobedience and he would certainly not tolerate a young upstart trying to show people the power he had just barely earned.
The man took the doll in his hands and set a few razorblades inside where the doll’s eyes were. There was no point in dragging the battle longer than it had to be.
The young apprentice was about to learn that true power is something that you are born with.
————————–
Written by Karl Gaverza
Copyright © Karl Gaverza
Inspired by the Usikan description in Cebuano Sorcery: Malign Magic in the Philippines. Lieban 1967.
Usikan Illustration by Leandro Geniston from Aklat ng mga Anito
FB: That Guy With A Pen
Color by Yanna Gemora
FB: Yannami