LIGHTNOVELONLINE 35
I sat up in my bed with a gasp and looked around me. A heart monitor beeped steadily on my wrist, but I could see from the readout that my heart had just been racing. I slid out of bed and into my slippers, only to find that they didn’t fit right. They were too big.
A woman in a nurse’s outfit walked in wheeling a cart with a silver dome on the top. My guess was my breakfast for the day. You could save the world and they would still bring you crappy hospital food. I paused for a minute as I noticed that the woman had yellow hair. Not blond, but yellow. She looked at me sitting halfway out of bed and frowned.
‘Magus, you shouldn’t be getting out of bed after the surgery you just had. Please lay back down and get some rest.’
‘Nonsense, Victoria. I feel fine! I just need a little fresh air. The antiseptic smell of this hospital is getting to me.’
‘Fine, then I will send someone to wheel you outside in your chair. I don’t care if you are some big military hero, you'll follow the Doc’s orders while you're here.’
‘Fine, fine. Just make it quick, or I’m walkin' out of here on my own.’
I reached over and grabbed the chair that was beside my bed and unfolded it. I heard a sigh from the nurse and she walked out, leaving my food on a little table by the window. I slipped into the chair and wheeled myself over and started to eat. Eggs and grits. I ate better when the world was going to hell. I turned the holotube on to drown out the silence for a bit and distract me from my thoughts.
‘Today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the end of the mutant threat. This day has become a day of remembrance that humanity was once almost wiped off the face of the planet, and yet we pressed forward. Unfortunately, due to recent medical procedure our savior, the Magus, will not be making a public appearance. Instead, we will be hearing from his father, General…’
I cut off the screen and stared out the window. The view was nice from here. You could see down into the city, but there was enough greenery that you still felt like you were removed from it all. I wondered when they had put up that ominous-looking black spike of a tower in the center of the city.
‘Sam!’
I jumped and my heart monitor peeked for a second. I turned to the girl that had just placed her hands on the back of my chair.
‘Blue?’
‘Huh? Oh, because of my hair? Nah, I’m Marina, remember? I’ll be taking you for your morning stroll, Mrs. Rye.’
‘Mrs. Rye? That’s not my…’
I was suddenly distracted by the sight of a brown-haired girl in the corner of my vision. I quickly turned my head to see her, but it was just my reflection in the mirror. I don’t know why I reacted so strongly to her image.
‘Off we go!’
The attendant wheeled me down the hall and to the elevator. I stared in wonder as I noticed that all of the people in the hospital looked like girls between the age of sixteen and twenty. And they all had such striking hair colors. I’d have thought I was in some kind of all-girls school if it wasn’t for the droning clean hallways and that metallic smell. What was that, blood?
The attendant pushed me outside and I took in a deep breath of fresh air. The smell of iron seemed to be stuck inside my nose because I could still smell it. I felt an itching in my chest and my heart monitor peeked again. I closed my eyes and tried to settle down. Focus.
I opened my eyes to a girl with pink, shoulder-length hair with one side shaved staring at me real close to my face.
‘Wakey wakey Magus! It’s time for you to wake up!’
‘Pink! I thought you were…’
‘Dead? Ya, but life has a way of continuing on.’
My heart rate monitor began to furiously beep as I took in her face. It was then that I noticed gaps in the beeping like my heart was stopping and starting over again.
‘How?!’
‘That’s a question for Iggy. You should really pay her a visit, like, soon. I don’t know how much time you have left.’
‘What do you mean? The surgery went fine. I should be up and walking in no time.’
‘If that’s what you want to tell yourself. Look, I know time’s a little weird between the leaves, but I promise I’ll come find you on the other side, just give me a little time to remember. Here, you need this. You look great, by the way.’
She gave me a wink and held out a metal cuff and placed it in my hands. I looked down and realized that my hands were so small and soft looking. I looked back up and she was gone. I held the cuff in my hand and examined the magic circle etched into the face. The circle that I had etched into its face. The earth shook deeply and the black tower in the distance began to sink into the ground. I slipped the cuff on my wrist, closed my eyes, and focused inward.
-
The temple came into focus as the mental fog cleared from my brain. The ground shook and I fell to the floor. The stone tablet groaned in resistance. I got up and ran out as fast as I could. A massive beam of green energy surged into the center of my leaf from an unknown location in the sky. At the center of it, Apocolyptia stood, holding it off with some sort of crimson barrier. Iggy stood off to the side of me, watching with concern.
‘Iggy! What’s going on!’
‘The spike it attempting to corrupt your body and mind with Aura. A-chan is holding it off as best she can, but she is not here in full power yet, and it’s a LOT of Aura!’
I looked around as green wind whipped the edges of my leaf, a dark black began to corrode the edges.
‘With how much of my memory is back, how deep can I get into my skill set?’
Iggy covered her head to hold down a straw hat as a branch flew past and the wind picked up. She looked at me through the gale and grinned.
‘What skill are you planning to get you out of this?’
‘Two, actually. The first one is Overdrive. The second one…well, I was recently given a good idea by a certain someone. They told me you could do anything with enough Mana, and it appears I have a LOT of Aura to convert on hand.’
Her grin grew wider as I explained my plan. She let go of her hat and it flew furiously into the wind and off the side of the leaf. She clapped her hands together as if dusting them off.
‘Alright, then. Let’s get to work! I’ll shape the stone; you purify the Aura!’
‘Got it. I’ll go help Apocolyptia then.’
I blinked through the wind as I rushed to Apocolyptia’s side. She now looked like she was about sixteen, and her metal wings were expanded wide in an impressive show as she withheld the crushing Aura with a crimson shield made of energy. I walked up and placed a hand on her shoulder.
‘Welcome back…child. It seems we are…meeting…at a bad time. I know this might seem...opportunistic, but if you bond…with me, I…can help you…overcome this.’
She winced as the green energy clashed with her own. A bead of sweat dripped off of her head and was caught by her blindfold.
‘Thanks for the offer, A, but I’m going to take over from here. If your sister thinks she can kill a Magus by throwing Mana at it, she doesn’t know what I’m made of. When I start, I’m going to need you to rush to the temple and help Iggy. Things are going to get crazy fast. Just listen to her and it will be worth it, I promise.’
She turned her head in my direction and a puzzled look fell across her eyebrows. She hesitated for a while and then nodded and braced herself to swap with me. I moved in beside her, touching hip to hip. I braced myself and held my cuff up into the air.
‘Now!’
She dropped her guard and dashed in the direction of the temple. Her wings threw gusts of wind in opposition to the torrent as she darted. The green energy crashed into me and my nerves felt like I had been hit by a hundred thousand volts of electricity. I reached deep and began to pull the Aura in. It started off slowly, but the green energy began to shift blue as it swirled around me. I sucked it in like a kid trying to drink from a fire hose.
All at once, my legs gave out and I fell to one knee. My body was screaming at me to just give up and be consumed. My arm faltered and I raised my other arm up to support it. Just as I felt like I was going to pass out, I heard Iggy yell to me from the temple.
‘Overdrive is ready! Do it, Magus!’
I felt something click in me as the skill took hold and I slammed my cuff into the ground and activated it. Mana poured from my body as it was covered in a radiant blue. The leaf below me rippled as the energy spiraled outward. The Aura-changing magic circle etched itself into the ground and blue light filled the lines.
With that, the green energy began to be gobbled up. Before long, the stream was blue half-way up. I stood in the energy as I felt it coursing into me. A calm had come over the leaf and only a slight gentle breeze persisted. I walked over to the temple.
There stood Apocolyptia standing in confusion as Iggy drew an intricate circle around her. As she moved her hand across the stone, it sunk in, etching itself deep into the stone. When she finished, the circle gave off a blue and white glow that pulsed steadily.
A new gem appeared on the stone about the size of my fist. I took a minute to feed a few of the other stones and create a few more before getting ready to dump a metric ton of Mana into the newly created one.
'Are you ready, A?'
She nodded, but her face still read with concern. I smiled warmly at her and pushed the Mana into the stone. It flashed blue and the circle on the ground resonated with it. Blue energy surged up from the circle and surrounded Apocolyptia. It seemed to lash against her at first, and she fought against it. The energy whipped violently and her crimson energy lashed out to ward it off. The two energies wrapped around each other, and then the red leeched down into the circle. The blue energy subsided and the circle turned red, as did the gem on the stone.
She looked up at me in surprise. I grinned at her and she smiled back. Suddenly I felt a flash of pain across my cheek.
‘Ow! What was that? I thought I couldn’t feel anything from the outside when I was in here.’
Iggy grinned again and caressed her hand across my cheek as I felt it turn red.
‘That was a little gift from me. A little pain to remember that it is time to wake up. You will understand when you do. Have fun storming the castle, dear!’
‘What?’
With that, I felt myself being pulled out of the leaf and back into my body.
-
I opened my eyes just in time to be slapped in the face by a very feminine hand. My vision blurred as the pain of the spike in my gut returned with a rush to my brain. I squinted through my wet eyes to see who had hit me.
‘Like Hell I’m gonna let you die before even getting a chance to see you again! Wake up you piece of crap! Magus!’
My eyes focused and the person cursing me came into view. She had hot pink, shoulder-length hair pulled to the side, emphasizing the shaved right side of her head. She had gauged earrings that were big metal studs that were topped with pink gems. Her outfit was a mix of pink and white frills with a baby pink bow in the center of her chest.
She tugged at the spike, trying to keep it from sinking deeper, as her pink translucent angel wings flapped furiously. She grabbed me with her other hand as she tugged, and shook me hard.
‘Get up, you moron! You can’t fight this if you’re out cold!’
I coughed a few times and blood dripped from my mouth. I put one hand on the spike and wiped the thick substance away with the other. I squinted again at the angelic figure.
‘Pink?’