Icarus Awakens

There were quite a few ways to conceptualize how mana flowed through a body. Water was an easy metaphor even those in the desert tended to. There were still the odd rivers and oasis to which life flocked to take example from, and for whatever reason the mortal mind best grasped mana like a fluid conceptually. It was revealing to some degree if one used another comparison, such as wind or fire. Perhaps they had come from volcanic regions or the very rare few that had no ground at all.

For Calius Thatch of the Cloak, what he saw involved no metaphor. Calius viewed the mana coursing through the young dusker as it really was. She did not have much, nor did it bind firmly with her form, but it had sat unused ever since she’d awakened her class. Unchanneled mana could be problematic if left to sit idle. Almost no one would run into this, even those who attained a class but stopped advancing before unlocking something that used mana. With the girl’s turbulent emotions and the prodding of a Hero, well, to extend the water metaphor a storm was brewing.

Compressed emotions and mana alike were looking for an outlet. Whereas before the child had been near comatose, there was a sudden energy and spontaneity. Randomness. It was like a pocket of gas in a mine, otherwise inert, which had been brought to life by a spark. Calius might have stepped in at this point to head off the trauma of the failed change, he wasn’t cruel, but only the true power backing him could have made a difference and he couldn’t reach for that here. Not without blowing his cover entirely.

Thomas strode into the hallway at a fast pace, just under a run. “What’s going on? What’s he doing?”

“Do not interfere,” Calius intoned, making use of his powers to hide the noise of both from those in the next room. He could have Thomas walk out of here and make it halfway across the desert without realizing if he wanted but, again, not cruel. Neither was he completely benevolent. “Enter that chamber and I will render you senseless.”

“But-” Thomas cut himself off, reigning in the charged attitude he’d developed during his care of the child. His younger counterpart hadn’t done exceptionally well, but neither had he relied on powers for his treatment while ignoring his instincts and training. The mark of either good mentorship or devotion to the Hand. In this case, Calius suspected both. “What’s happening? I thought she wasn’t talking.”

“The Hero appears to have spiked that cactus, to borrow a local expression.” They could both only see Gadriel and Khiat discussing now that Calius was warding against sound. The older Cleric sat, on the floor as there were no chairs, and prompted Thomas to do so as well. There couldn’t be anything but obedience from him given Calius’ supposed level and standing. “You have potential,” Calius said when both were seated, drawing a look of surprise from Thomas. “Especially considering you have awakened Resurrection.”

“You-”

“Oh, hush.” Calius waved a hand. “Anything that could overhear through my powers would know themselves without needing to. This place truly is a backwater, but we are on the periphery I suppose. I’ve seen more Clerics with that power than you have people. Even a few non-Clerics.”

“I thought only Clerics could get it!”

“Stop interrupting!” Calius chastised and, for just a moment, Thomas mistook him as the grandfather who’d died when he was ten. “But you know how important discretion is so I take it you’ve had a good mentor. Hmm. Mark me, but that Hero will be leading incursions one day if he doesn’t die first. You could be in that company yourself.”

Thomas did not take Calius’ advice. “You know when I’ll hit my wall?”

“No,” Calius lied. “Only that it will not be for some time. Perhaps you do not have one. The point of this is that if you are to reach this degree of power there are things you need to learn. I am speaking beyond bone, blood, and infection. This case will be highly informative no matter how it ends. Even if you do not understand all that occurs, you must remember.” Especially if what might happen does. Calius knew Thomas wasn’t what he was looking for, of course. The Cleric was simply earnest and, if nothing else, he was a Cleric. That ruled him out decisively.

As for his tutelage, that was a matter of opportunity. Calius was not in the market for an apprentice and would make Thomas walk halfway across the desert should the young man try to attach himself to him. Otherwise, they were all in arms against the same foe. “I am going to dismiss the effect. Remain quiet. If you have a question, whisper it to me. If you have an idea, keep it to yourself. You rightly judged that you had no way to assist this girl, do not rethink that now.” Thomas, finally listening, merely nodded a response.

In the room beyond, the debate continued between the Hero and the Assassin holding herself hostage. This attempt was far more frustrating to Gadriel than his earlier words with Daniel, if only because his words were having an effect but still changing nothing. At least the Artificer had known when to cut him off. The Hero did not back down, knowing he was the last defense against Khiat losing herself.

Still, the last few minutes had been back and forth. The threat of the murderous impulses within her taking over, something Gadriel could rightly not imagine, was a continuous barrier they’d always find themselves at one way or another. Khiat knew that this was a part of her now and would never be anything else, because that’s how classes worked. She was an Assassin.

“I am an Assassin,” Khiat said for what felt like the twelfth time. There was defeat in her voice, and surety. “You have been so kind to me. You and the others. You protected me.”

“We still can. I can,” The Hero reminded her.

That wasn’t enough. To the many futures she could imagine of her holding a bloody knife over someone, it wasn’t enough. In her starved and worn state, she was yet finding the energy from somewhere to retain her conviction. “I will never kill someone else, even if that means I have to kill myself first.”

Xtalo shot a worried, exhausted glance at his wife. “Perhaps it is time.”

“No! Not yet!”

“We know you have tried,” Achia told the Hero with unending gratitude. “Gods, but if you could reach her we’d give anything. She has suffered enough. We would give you until the end of time if it would help, but I cannot hear her say these things anymore.”

“It will still be a good life,” Xtalo said, more to Khiat than Gadriel. “You can still hunt and live without fearing this class. No one else here has awakened one. You will be with us.”

“No!” Khiat protested. “No, I will remember. Eventually, and then everyone will be in danger.” She was sure. She knew.

“A shame,” Calius spoke to Thomas only, seeing that the parents were making their decision. The Hero, not yet defeated, but his failure on the horizon. The Cleric was so intent on what was ahead of him, drawing all of himself to witness the intervention should it occur, that he almost missed the change in mana flow occurring right next to him.

The almost imperceptible flare of mana as a new pathway was set into the body of a mortal. It shouldn’t have mattered, but the timing was extremely suspect, as was the fact that the power didn’t fit what he was familiar with. The same power didn’t express itself in the mana flow the same way between people, for various reasons, but Calius was experienced enough to still identify them so long as he’d seen it before. “You awakened a new power,” Calius said evenly, more ponderous than surprised.

Thomas was surprised, to the point of taking him out of the tableau ahead of him. “I thought I’d get Flash Heal. I haven’t heard of this one.” There was a crestfallen note to his voice that drew Calius in deeper. “It’s got an incantation though so it has to be it.” Thomas stood. “I’m going to try this.”

“Try what?” Calius asked, not stopping the other Cleric from moving forward. He was curious and knew Thomas wouldn’t harm Khiat. Anyone could have seen that. With but a few words he could call Thomas back and stop whatever was going to happen. He considered it, then declined. There was no possibility his target was a Cleric, but perhaps the use of this new, odd power would be informative as to their identity. Actually, this would be the perfect excuse to interview the man following-

“Flash Balance,” Thomas incanted, and for another time today, Calius’ thoughts stopped and were thrown on a new track. That power? There was a set of abilities Clerics received at level 2, divided by whichever deity they swore to. As a Hand Cleric, Thomas should have received Flash Heal, as Calius had received Flash Illusion from his Cloak affinity. Only instead, Thomas had awakened the one Clerics who chose to follow the Octyrrum undivided used to receive, before that power had been fully restricted. Old as he was, Calius had only heard about it.

There was no denying the effect it had. In the moments following the incantation, Calius watched as the mana within the child evened out. Thomas was working against Gadriel, resetting the pattern of the Assassin class and the feature she’d awakened. That wasn’t the primary purpose of the ability, which was to cleanse all active effects and lower heightened features to release the mana reserved for them. It was strong enough to unlock committed features, which normally permanently reduced one’s maximum mana. Yet, these were unusual circumstances.

Impossible power aside, this sealed Khiat’s fate. All the work the Hero had done was being canceled out and there were none left that could deny Calius’ option was the only sensible one. A shame, truly. Suppressing a rare class was wasteful, but necessary in this case. Thomas had saved Khiat from the negative consequences of an unsuccessful, forced class evolution. Calius, having entered the room, prepared to take charge when something else happened. Halfway through the effect of Thomas’ ability, Daniel pressed a button in a place that was neither here nor there.

…

“If this doesn’t work,” Daniel said, keeping his eyes locked on the back of his double’s head, “Then I don’t know if I can ever trust you.”

“If it does?”

“I’m still not sure,” Daniel admitted. While he couldn’t see the other’s face, his shoulders tensed. “What?”

“There’s, uh, something on the screen.” Other Daniel took in a sharp breath. “Ok, we shouldn’t have done this. Fuck! Do you see anything that says undo?”

Daniel grasped at his phone, hoping, but the semi-permanent notification had disappeared as soon as he’d hit ‘allow’. “No! What’s happening?”

“It’s thirty, forty, it’s just a barrage of question mark notifications. Way more than Hunter’s thing.” Other Daniel was at his keyboard but his fingers were unmoving, head tracking one of the monitors that Daniel couldn’t read. “Look, I’m not going to forward you any of these unless actual text comes up but-” He swiveled around, face panicked. “Fuck, I’m an idiot. You need to get out of here now!”

…

Calius watched, utterly confounded, as the intervention he’d been waiting for came when he’d least expected it. Timed, it had to be said, perfectly. The others hadn’t noticed save for Khiat going stiff again from Thomas’ ability, though she would have regardless. Something shredded the mana flow in the child’s body, going so far as to disrupt the main source pooling at the heart and the major lines running along the vasculature. Mana didn’t doggedly follow biology, of course, and it developed away from that preset pattern with advancement. What was taking shape now was entirely unnatural in the context of the Octyrrum.

Khiat’s trials had left her strained beyond the point of breaking, her refusal to accept her class the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object that was the basic rules of the Octyrrum. Now, someone had removed that immovable object and carried forward Khiat’s will with all the pressure that had built up behind it. This was the potentially devastating outcome Calius had been worried about. He would have had to intervene himself to prevent worst-case scenarios such as the child’s death, though there were darker futures possible.

Only someone else had just inflicted a balancing effect on her. Doing so beforehand was like a prophylactic, setting guardrails on the wild mana that prevented it from poking holes in the side of the dusker’s physical body. Of all the outcomes he’d been expecting this was not one of them. He hadn’t lied to Gadriel when he said class evolution was impossible for Khiat in her current circumstances, and it still was. Something very different was happening.

Should I kill her? He mused darkly. I can do it quickly and remove their memories of it. The risk of letting someone free from the Octyrrum at this place and time may be too great. If Khiat was becoming what he thought she was, the standard procedure would be to clip that bud before it bloomed. Part of the reason he was here was to prevent this from happening, starting at the true source. But Calius was not cruel, and he decided to let the process in front of him carry itself out. Both due to mercy, and a suspicion that wormed its way into his head. It was time to use the scepter.

“Did it work?” Xtalo asked, hoping, and yet still defeated as he saw Calius step past the Hero. Neither Gadriel nor Thomas had realized what had occurred. Their seventh sense was simply too weak.

The very mana structure of the dusker had cracked and shifted. Not in any random way, thank the gods, and yet it couldn’t be denied. Khiat had lost her class, but not the means to improve herself. She was just outside of the Octyrrum now, magically speaking. There was much Calius was uncertain of, he still questioned if letting her live was the best option, but odds were this wouldn’t amount to much if current projections on the state of the world held.

As for Khiat herself? She had been senseless to it all when it came down to it. Too lost in her despair to do anything but parrot the thoughts running through her mind, if she said anything at all. No matter how many times or how many ways someone had reached out, it hadn’t mattered. Until the time it did. Until she looked up and saw just how many hands were reaching out to her.

No one thing saved her. No one thing saved anyone in the depths of despair. It took every kindness of her parents, every effort by her Cleric and the will of a Hero. And yes, yet unknown machinations unleashed by the bumblings of an Artificer. That, and nothing less. Because when you truly cared about someone, you give them every chance to pull themselves from the fire.