Though the satin quilts and cushions of his divan were wholly symbolic of another reality and not at all physical, still for all intents and purposes they were exactly what a Greek temple and its ancient Egyptian furnishings should look like. The eyelids of a handsome man, appearing not forty years of age, slowly flickered open. Leaning up in the divan from awakening, Prince scratched his dark beard and felt uneasy in his chambers of the Temple of Hermes Trismegistus in the fifth dimension.
Even after eating some bread and dates (also symbolic of another reality), the feeling of something wrong could not escape from Prince's consciousness.
Feeling he may be becoming old like Horus or maybe the problem was more serious than he suspected, he dressed and went into his Quiet Room, a dark but spacious chamber where his table and Ball were.
The Ball was simply a clear glass which revealed any reality perfectly. Prince could have detected the problem through meditation, but he wanted answers fast.
There was no need to speak. He simply looked at the Ball and directed his query to it.
A black dog. An old man in an old age home. A teenager with his brother. The trail of changed three-dimensional realities made Prince's eyes narrow. 'Location?' he queried. It was revealed.
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Prince appeared on Earth at a dog pound. The young black Labrador had been caught on the street and without a new owner, would be put to sleep in a few more days.
The black dog stared at Prince quietly, but an earnestness was in its deep brown eyes. The same could be said of Prince's own deep brown eyes as he stared also at the dog, probing its psyche.
Enough of the current incarnational memory was intact for reintegration. Prince nodded, and both he and the dog...vanished. Not even the pound owners saw them. Though the disappearance of the black Lab could not be accounted for.
Prince then appeared at an old age home, right in the room of Mark Hanson, the latter appearing to be in his late seventies and verging on senility and death. 'This one will be just as tricky as the dog,' mused Prince.
Prince nodded. They were gone.
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Tyler and Dustin Hanson were getting their bikes from the bike stop to go home. Leaning casually against a lamp post was the tall figure of Prince dressed in black-tie as for the opera. His black walking stick was held tight in his left hand as he stared at the teens, intense, emotionless.
School was out and many teens were getting their bikes and leaving. Dustin pulled out his, saw Ty staring at Prince, and said, "Comin'?"
"Go ahead, Dusty, I'll be right there," said Ty.
Dustin shrugged and hopped on his bike and took off.
Prince's eyes were looking right at Ty, and Ty felt an irresistible desire to talk to this man, and an equally irresistible desire to hop on his bike and pedal as fast as he could.
"Tyler," the man said. And though Ty heard his name normally enough, it seemed like another set of ears inside his head heard the name as well, the name "Tyler" rolling and echoing in the back of his mind as if spoken in a great canyon but also muffled as if spoken under the sea. Tyler got a terrible feeling.
Tyler felt like a zombie, unaware of each foot as they placed in front of the other approaching this too-well-dressed man with the black walking stick looking eerily like a young Abraham Lincoln going to the theatre.
"I don't know you," Tyler said, feeling like a little boy even though he was already fifteen.
"But I know you," said Prince warmly, and to Ty, terrifying in its certainty and intelligence. "You may call me Mr. Prince."
"What do you want?" Ty said.
"To understand," said Prince quietly, "how a young man like yourself can change reality so easily."
Tyler felt himself shivering involuntarily.
"I don't know," Ty said. "It's just something that started."
"But you haven't tried to reject it. Or deflect its consequences. Or understand its origins. Do your parents know?"
Ty detected a note of irony in Prince's voice. He sensed he could not trick this man no matter what he said. And he was abslolutely right.
"They did," mumbled Ty.
"And now they are...out of the way?"
In that split second of thinking how to answer, Prince held up his free right hand in a curious gesture, palm facing towards himself. Only a gold ring with a finely cut ruby faced Ty.
Ty felt a rush like of wind, but it was not wind: a feeling of complete disorientation, like be was going to faint or throw up. Time had stopped for him for a grand total of two seconds. What happened he could not tell. Here is what did:
Prince put Ty into a trance and began extracting the fourth dimensional elemental which had lodged itself firmly in Ty's psyche.
There is a trick to dislodging a lamprey which has attached itself to a host. One method is to burn it off with a match or a cigarette. This is analogous to what Prince was doing. Burning the parasite with raw psychic power until it released its hold. The elemental screamed cavernous inhuman screams, its voice undetectable to three-dimensional ears but not to Prince's. As it came out of Ty's body, it was translucent and formless, but took on a semi-human appearance to address Prince.
"It cannot be!" the elemental roared in Arabic. "Zehuti!"
"Yes, Hazaan," said Prince also in Arabic, recognizing the elemental.
"I thought you perished millenia ago!"
"I almost did, thanks to miscreants like you! But I can assure you, I am not so easily killed, and perhaps it is time I took steps to deal with your kind once and for all."
"No, Zehuti!" the elemental roared desperately.
"I have no time for talk. Your tactics are slipping if you think you can possess a youngster and change three-dimensional reality at will without repercussions!"
"His wishes have been harmless!"
"But human beings are easily corrupted as you well know. And weak minds make it easy for beings like you to take over. Enough. Here is my will, Hazaan. You will abide in this ring and you are henceforth my slave, but also the boy's."
Hazaan raised an ethereal eyebrow.
"Yes," continued Prince. "As part of your punishment, you will continue to grant the boy's wishes. But only randomly and I will create a psychic mechanism which will grant or negate assent of your power to change three-dimensional reality at the boy's command. Hazaan, your freedom is now a dream."
The elemental screamed at Prince but to no avail. Prince exerted his will and the elemental oozed slowly into Prince's ruby ring.
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The trance ended and Ty did a double-take, as if seeing the tail end of an event but had missed it and now was gone. Only the strange name "Zehuti" whispered in anguish through his mind, though he did not know what it meant.
"An old name of mine," said Prince evenly, smiling slightly. "In another language, it was Thoth. And in another Prometheus, and also Hermes Trismegistus. You will find your mother and father returned to you. Your father, having become old, retains vestiges of wear on the body. Your mother was the same age as the dog she became, thus the reintegration to human form was not as...troublesome. Their memories have been modified. It will be as if they were on a vacation and have returned. Your power was due to an invading elemental, what used to be called djinn or genie. I have taken care of this."
"You took my power?!" Ty screamed and he tried to lash out at Prince, transforming him into something, but nothing happened.
"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts...absolutely," said Prince, ironically. "The power to change three-dimensional reality is earned, never given, especially if by outside influences like spirits and elementals without an eventual price...and a high one."
"Even my stretchy body?" said Ty, almost in tears.
"That I can grant myself," said Prince. "But your wishes have been curtailed. I have taken away the invading entity but you can still have your wishes...but only randomly. It is a lesson for you, to wean you away from dependence on miracles to achieve your ends. This is not what human life is for. Your next wish may be granted, or a wish you make twenty years from now may be granted. There are NO guarantees now."
Ty hung his head. "I didn't want to hurt anybody."
"But you did. And you are lucky I intervened. There are great Powers in this reality and others. Eventually you would have been stopped one way or another by one of Them and punished in ways you should be glad you are ignorant of. Someday, perhaps, you will earn the right to change three-dimensional reality at will. Others have done it in the past. Some living today can do it. Certain fifteen-year-olds who have lived hundreds of lives are really not fifteen-year-olds, are they? You, however, are much younger. Today you have been corrected."
"I won't see you again, will I?" said Ty.
"Rest assured, if you 'screw up', you will see one of Us again. It will either be me or another Power far less lenient. Though you have my fondest regards, remember: you have been warned."
And Prince disappeared, like the Cheshire Cat his enigmatic smile the last image to fade in Ty's memory.