Decay

Decay stood at the front of an empty classroom, staring at the empty desks, and the door that stood just ajar. It was too dark in the hallway beyond to see out there.

He was allowed to decorate the classroom as he wanted, and he had a feeling he'd do that eventually. This skeleton of a room wasn't interesting. But he hadn't yet. Didn't know what he'd want.

It didn't stay empty for long. Two students filed in, one looking at him with skepticism, the other looking at her shoes and fumbling with her books.

Secca? Any advice? Decay asked, internally.

"Why should I care?" Secca shot back, also in his head. "I've never been a teacher. Do what you want."

Secca Keyes was the original owner of this body. Decay had never had a body of his own. He was a presence, an essence, created by an evil God, after all.

Normally, he was very good at pushing the host out, and having a body to himself. It seemed his ability to decay also extended to mental defenses. But Secca had been willing to share. His only condition had been that Decay stay in this body, and not try to kill it to get out faster. (While Decay was inhabiting a body, it didn't age. He could, however, die by being run through with a sword as easily as anyone else.) Decay had thought that an odd, but easy request to grant at the time. He knew better now.

Despite tricking Decay, Secca always seemed to be in a fowl mood.

At this point, most of the desks were filled, and class was supposed to start.

"My name is Damon Keyes," Decay introduced. He wasn't allowed to use his real name with the students, but there was a reference or two that slid in there. "I'll be teaching you this year. Just to be clear, I have very powerful magic, and could kill you all in a blink. So I suggest you be well behaved students this year."

"Prove it."

That was the skeptical student from earlier.

Well. Alright.

Decay grabbed a toad off one of the desks, holding it in the palm of his hand.

"Wait. What-?"

The toad rapidly aged in his palm, skin peeling off and bones crumbling until there was nothing left but a small pile of dust in his gloved palm.

The girl he'd taken it from screamed.

"You can't just decay people's pets!" Secca cried out.

Another student was backing towards the door in horror, while the skeptical boy from earlier had stood up, and was threatening to get him fired.

"Okay, okay, I take it back. Don't do whatever you want. Clearly, you need some hand holding still."

***

Decay stood on the roof of the school, watching the nearest town. They were having some sort of festival. More stalls lined the roads than usual, with lots of people shopping at them. And right now, there was some sort of large dance going on in a park. He could see twenty people involved, some of them in bright costumes of yellow and red.

Decay himself couldn't go. He couldn't leave school grounds. Or rather, Secca Keyes' body couldn't leave school grounds. That was the trap they had set for him, when he took over Secca's body.

If the school had any sort of celebration, he'd be there for that. Celebrations and holidays and parties were interesting. But he couldn't join the one in town, just watch it from the roof, and he'd done enough of that for now.

He turned, possibly stiffly. He was told some of his movements were stiff.

Secca also told him he didn't blink or breath very often. He needed to do those things, but apparently less often than your average person, and people noticed something was off.

Secca couldn't tell him anything right now though. He'd gone to sleep. It was just Decay and his own thoughts.

He lifted the hatch to the roof, and climbed down the ladder.

He started towards his office, which also functioned as his living space. But he wasn't in a hurry, just meandering the halls of the school in that general direction.

Then the hall curved, and suddenly, he wasn't alone in it. There was a woman up ahead. A young woman, about the age of his students. But he knew the people who went to his class, and this wasn't one of them.

After stopping and parsing it out for a moment, he realized this was Eriar, the new cook who helped make meals for the students.

She didn't notice him right away. She was walking down the hall, grasping a pot with both hands, staring into it like it contained the answers to the universe. Decay found it unlikely that it did. From what he could see the pot had some dirt, along with egg shells, an orange peel, and other similar things.

"I thought everyone was at the festival today," Decay said.

Eriar looked up, then to the side. She sniffed. "Yeah. Well . . . I left early, didn't I?"

"I suppose you did."

It was silent for a moment. Eriar blinked a time or two, then turned back to him. "Anyway, I was looking for you. I need your help with the stuff in this pot."

She shook it slightly, not enough to tip anything out.

Decay, meanwhile, felt himself get some mild alarm. "I don't think you understand what it is I do here. I make things rot, decompose. I can't help with anything in there."

Decay's natural state was to make things decay, as his real name implied. When he first came into existence, he made everything in a small sphere around him rot, decompose, or disintegrate. He had to learn not to do that, once he cared enough to try.

Eriar huffed and shook her head. "That's kind of the point. Do you know about compost?" She didn't let him answer. "When this stuff beaks down, it makes the soil healthier. But that takes a while. I wanted to see if you could do that. Would speed things up a bit."

"I can try," Decay said. "Are you sure? If I make something decompose, I can't undo it."

"Of course I'm sure. It's just garbage." She held out the pot towards him and looked at the ground, her voice sounding a little funny on the word 'garbage.'

Decay put a gloved hand at the top of the pot. He could use his abilities either by bringing back the sphere of decay, or by just effecting whatever he was touching. He'd worn gloves when he was first learning to control that ability. Wearing them slowed his ability down, marginally. He didn't need them now, but he supposed he'd grown fond of wearing them.

And he didn't want to say learning that control was hard. He could do it all the time, even when he slept. But it was significant.

He'd struggled to find a metaphor for a while. It wasn't like breathing, as that was ultimately something people had to do. It wasn't like digesting, which was sometimes unpleasant. The best he could come up with, was that using decay was like people who wore glasses. Before they put on their first pair, they might think they were fine, might not notice anything was wrong. But when they put the glasses on, there was an obvious difference. Always a good one, so far as he was aware. So. Using his natural abilities was a bit like that.

The 'garbage' in the pot browned and curled. It crumbled, becoming indistinguishable from the dirt already in there. At that point, he pulled his hand away, so he didn't break the dirt further down into sand or something.

"How's that?"

Eriar took some of the dark dirt and ran it through her fingers, letting it fall back into the pot.

She grunted and gave a single nod. "It's-that's good, thanks."

She didn't leave immediately. Neither did Decay. He didn't want to leave, and apparently, she didn't want him to either?

"So, you want good soil. That means you plant things?" Decay asked.

He started down the hall again, and Eriar fell into step beside him. "I'm a gardener, yes. Helps with the cooking."

"Tell me about that."

"What do you want to know?"

Decay smiled. Just a little. It wasn't the most natural expression for him to make. "Whatever you'd like to tell me."

He thought the celebration outside was interesting. But it went beyond that. He liked hearing about people's food. Their songs. Their religions. People were fascinating. He hadn't heard much about gardening yet. A little bit about plants, especially in regards to eating them. But not about gardening. There was no time like the present to learn.