When Izzy pulled his hands apart they were connected by a warm, yellow-red thread of light. The light was building up in a ball in the middle of the thread; he recognized the light! It was the same as the one from the first coin he had accidentally broken earlier. Either it was a lower grade coin or hadn’t required all the extra stuff that Titus had described, but Izzy didn’t remember doing anything special or any backlash from that coin.
“Good, it looks stable,” Titus said, his eyes focused on the thread of light. “Nice and smooth, touch each patient and get the imprint. You don’t have to move fast, you have some time. Just don’t let yourself get too distracted.”
“Kinda hard,” Izzy began, his speech halting in concentration, “with you talking.”
Titus had the good graces to look embarrassed and got out of Izzy’s line of sight and stopped talking.
Izzy started to realize there was some mental effort to this activity. The warm light was cozy and relieving, but he had for a moment felt like it was leaking into his arms. Scared the gathering ball of light that was now the size of a coconut would expel completely into him, he searched for a mental image and landed on a closed system with a battery.
“Okay,” Izzy thought. “An anode and a cathode, and I’m holding the fully charged battery in my hand. Don’t let it zap me and make sure to get it connected to what needs the power.”
This mental image helped Izzy focus as he reached down to touch Elana’s shoulder. When he did, a few things happened.
The first thing that happened was a surge from the power between his hands. It felt like the energy was conscious and knew it now had a place to go and wanted to rush to get there; like a lightning bolt seeking out the nearest possible ground. Izzy quickly checked in with his battery imagery and realized that a new connection had been made that he needed to manage.
There was the thread between his hands with the ball of light, but now there was also a new connection to Elana. It was like an extension cord had come out of his battery and the energy sought to rush out. He imagined a switch along the connection and mentally flipped it off. It helped a lot and the energy calmed down for the moment.
The other thing he noticed was that it didn’t feel like he was only touching Elana’s shoulder. It was like he was touching her entire body all at once, but it didn’t feel like skin contact. It was his awareness that covered her whole body, recognizing and understanding her overall shape. The image this produced in his mind was similar to what he had thought before about video game interfaces, with a few more details. Instead of a two dimensional outline, it had some depth to it and had structure represented like a wireframe, 3-D Computer-Aided Design model.
Working on this mental image a little more, he noticed some flickering of the wireframe where her injuries marred the image. Little strands of light where her ear had been were swishing about on the model like threads of a spider web in the breeze. These lines sought to shape something, but couldn’t do it on their own. He took stock of the rest of her injuries.
Beyond her lost ear, there was the chunk missing from her arm which displayed in the model as a deep indentation of the wireframe. Izzy noticed a slight pressure building behind the concave area as if it wanted to pop the section of the wireframe back into place. Her left foot and her teeth were shown in the model similar to her ear with loose strands trying to straighten out into a known shape.
Izzy started to sweat. The magic felt like it was getting hotter and the mental energy it was starting to take to keep all of this straight was a strain. He felt like he was getting the hang of it and figured it was time for patient number two.
He let his awareness come back to the room and noticed that for however long it had felt in his head to do all of this, Titus and Rajir hadn’t appeared to move much. He checked in on his battery concept again and all the connections were still there and his “switch” was still set to “off”. The urgency was still growing in the ball of light, but it wasn’t unbearable yet.
Double checking he still remembered Elana’s wireframe diagram, he made it over to the next patient. Taking in deep breaths and hissing them out between his teeth with the effort, he laid his hand on the occupant of the next bed.
Understanding better how this worked, Izzy controlled the flow of information better. Sensing that the first thing to do was to set up the connection and flip the mental switch, he made sure to get that done and less of the energy leaked. It was much easier this time and he could move on to the mental model a little faster.
The next patient appeared to be a dwarf, and Izzy almost giggled when he realized the dwarf’s beard was actually part of the wireframe. If what Titus said about the soul and body knowing what they were, this man’s beard was literally a part of his body as recognized by his soul.
The dwarf was in a condition almost as bad as Elana, but Izzy noticed the opacity of the mental model was a little brighter. This made seeing all of the injuries a little easier. He was missing his right hand, he had a head injury of some kind, and there was a giant gash along his right thigh. The hand looked like some of Elana’s wounds, but there was something different with the head and leg injuries.
Besides the wireframe acting like it wanted to be shaped differently, beneath each wound there was a darker swirling mass of some kind.
“Internal bleeding or an infection of some kind?” Izzy thought.
He let his senses wash over each dark mass as well and noticed a kind of pressure pushing out from within the mass as well as something trying to encapsulate and crush it. He added it to the mental image and did his double checks of the dwarf and Elana’s models and connections.
“All systems green,” he narrated in his mind and moved onto the next two patients.
These two patients were in better shape, comparatively, and their mental models were much more robust and bright. Each was only sporting either head injuries or were cut up instead of both. Izzy added their connections and images in his head, double checking his work as he went. As he finished up the image for the last patient the sense of urgency from the ball of light started growing with a renewed vigor.
Previously, the feeling was only about as strong as the pang of thinking that someone would get when they thought they forgot to pack something for a trip, but after the fourth patient it was growing to full on existential crisis. He stood between the four patients, their connections to the thread stretching out from between his hands. Izzy refreshed the body models and brought them forward in his mind and, with a strong sense of unease, mentally flipped the switches of the connections to the patients.
The next few seconds were actually quite pleasant. The comforting, all-encompassing light and feeling of relief he had received earlier came back, though at a much lower intensity. He eased into the feeling and it actually helped him focus on the mental images of the patients. Each one reacted in slightly differing ways, but for the most part he could see the wispy lines of the wireframe models growing firm and the pressure building behind misshapen parts was released.
Then, something seemed to pop in his own brain.
He instinctively knew that meant that the body models were really good and would heal quite nicely, though he didn’t know why or how. This was in contrast with the warm glow turning into a blinding, scalding light. Izzy could tell that while the energy stored in this coin was only one number higher than the one he’d accidentally used on himself, it was significantly more complex and powerful.
“Uh oh…” was all he thought before the magic fiercely pulsed once and then ramped up to nothing Izzy had felt before.
The world went a blinding, hot white like somebody had set off a giant ball of magnesium right in front of his chest. Izzy felt like he was melting front to back, being reconstituted, and melted all over again. It wasn’t something physical though, it was as if the light was so bright it was drilling right past his eyes and passing over his mind in waves.
As he weathered this storm, it took every ounce of his willpower to focus on the four body models in his mind. He visualized them like projected images on a heads-up display; the problem was that the intensity of magic was making the display fizz and pop with static. Each time one of the models flickered he had to work harder to bring it back online.
Eventually, the model for the fourth person he touched flickered out and didn’t come back. This was shortly followed by the second person, and then finally the dwarf. The last one was Elana, and he could see it more clearly now since there weren’t three others splitting his focus.
After one particularly bad flash, he brought her model back up and had just enough presence of thought to look closely. Her foot was back, her teeth had grown in, and the indentation of her arm had popped back out. He watched as the final strands of ear wove themselves back together and with one last pulse from her model, it faded from Izzy’s HUD.
All that was left was white. Hot, mind-numbing white.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Eventually it turned into a swirl of black and white, looking a lot like being in the music video for A-Ha’s Take On Me; it was all black and white charcoal animation with no control over what the next scene was and all of it painful. There was no longer anything to focus on and distract Izzy’s mind from the backlash as it rolled over him like he rode a kayak on a storm-ridden ocean.
Sometimes he could ride a wave, but most of the time they crashed over his brain with a force that made his whole awareness flicker in and out. Deep from within the storm, a new sound approached.
This wasn’t the static or pulsing of the magic; it was a sound he knew and liked but couldn’t quite place with his muddled mind. Glad for a potential distraction from the pain, he focused every ounce of energy he had on hearing the sound.
“Let go Izzy!”
“It is Rajir,” Izzy mumbled weakly. His words were slurred and sing-songy. “I like Rajir… His voice is nice and so is he.”
Izzy’s mind was foggy, as though he’d been drinking heavily.
“You did it! You’re done!” Rajir’s voice said as it echoed over the fiery pain in Izzy’s mind.
The light and heat kept washing over Izzy, confusing him and not understanding what needed to be done.
Then Rajir’s voice came through again, as if it were right next to Izzy’s ear. The soft purr of his voice soothing Izzy’s mind. Izzy could have sworn he felt a whisker tickle his face.
“Let go, friend. You did so well…”
With that statement, the confirmation of why he was going through all of this, Izzy’s mind finally sharpened again. Wanting to get away from the pain, he figured out he needed to stop fighting the magic and give into it.
He put out the effort to form the mental image of an actual kayak resting on waves of white and gray. The charcoal style animation grew less fuzzy and Izzy stood up shakily on the kayak. With one last bit of effort, he dove over the side into the nothingness.
As he fell past the kayak there was one last flash of pain. The brightness eased, the gray took over the white and, as the last of the pain left him, it all faded to black.
—
Rajir heard Izzy say something weird as his hands clapped together over the coin, smashing it. Rajir was trying to figure out what Izzy had said when the stable threads and ball of healing magic manifested between the strange man’s two hands. It was beautiful and reminiscent of a lot of the magic he’d seen over the last few hours from Titus.
“Good, it looks stable,” Titus said, startling Rajir. “Now, nice and smooth, touch each patient and get the imprint. You don’t have to move fast, you have some time. Just don’t let yourself get too distracted.”
“Kinda hard…” Izzy began, clearly frustrated with the interruption, voice halting from effort. “With you talking.”
Rajir caught Titus looking embarrassed and he was glad the man took the not so subtle hint. This was already going to be difficult for Izzy, he didn’t need any distractions from the robust healer. Rajir put his hand on Titus’s arm and drew him back towards the cot to give Izzy some space.
They watched together as the magic pulsed a few times and finally stabilized. Izzy touched Elana’s shoulder and a vibrant connection sprang between the orb and Elana’s chest, burning brightly. That connection also stabilized and Izzy eventually drew away, moving over to the dwarf whose name Rajir hadn’t learned.
“How is he doing?” Rajir asked Titus quietly.
“Remarkably well,” Titus said, transfixed on the connection. “He has managed to hold back the flow quickly after the first patient was targeted. I didn’t tell him about it because I didn’t think he could do it. It makes it so they start healing right away, but it drains the power of the spell much faster. This is a good news, bad news situation.”
“Okay,” Rajir said, raising his eyebrows as Izzy stepped away, a second connection already made and stabilized. “What’s that mean?”
“The good news,” Titus said excitedly, “is the healing is going to be much more powerful. It will more evenly distribute between the patients. He might even be able to help with some regeneration of limbs.” He paused for a moment and looked at Rajir with a worried look on his face. “The bad news is that means the backlash will be about as bad as it possibly can be. If he had let it drain a bit as he went, the way I thought it would have naturally, by the time the backlash hit it might have been more like a Grade 3 or even a Grade 2. This is going to be incredible to watch, but this makes it much rougher for Izzy.”
“Can we stop it?” Rajir said, looking back at Izzy concerned. “Or reduce the power?”
Rajir didn’t know much about Izzy, but the man had given up an incredibly expensive coin for just a set of clothes when he could have asked for much, much more. Then he put himself in danger to help complete strangers.
This was when Rajir had realized he liked the man and was growing to respect his tenacity. Clearly Izzy was confused and something terrible must have happened to him. He said weird things and didn’t know how magic worked. How was that even possible in S’or Voril?
Titus shook his head. “No… if we interfered now the coin would dispel poorly. The healing would likely be minimal and Izzy would probably still get some serious backlash. The best we can do is make sure he gives into the backlash once the healing is done.”
The two men stood watching as Izzy went into the middle of the four patients, the fourth and final connection made and stabilized. The four connections flared to a bright white and the orb between Izzy’s hands started pulsating. Titus went over to the dwarf and Rajir stepped over to Elana.
Rajir watched in disbelief as the bandages on her massive wounds started getting stretched taut as the flesh underneath grew out against the wrappings. He reached down and eased off some of the bandages on her foot and gasped as he watched the foot slowly stitch itself back together.
Bright light strands, same as those emanating from Izzy, weaved themselves out from the wound into the shape of a foot. The shape finished and grew brighter, pulsing with the magic. After a handful of flashes, the light dimmed, darkened, and coalesced into a solid foot. No fur covered Elana’s new foot but it appeared to Rajir to have grown back completely, showing no signs of its absence just moments ago.
Shaking his head clear of the shock, he quickly moved to remove the bandages on Elana’s arm and ear. These hadn’t completely finished growing back but were no longer gaping wounds. Careful not to bump into Izzy or any of the magical strands, Rajir did the same for the other patient on his side of the room as Titus quietly directed one of the attendants to do the same for the fourth patient. Titus didn’t dare try to make his way through the small space, his girth making it impossible to avoid both Izzy and the magical strands.
Now in front of Izzy, Rajir could make out his face and gasped again. Izzy’s face was in a pained, defiant expression. He glared at the magic ball in his hands like it had insulted his mother, his mouth wide open and teeth bared in a silent roar.
Rajir was taken aback and briefly scared of the intensity on the face of this weird, silly man. He was thankful for Izzy’s strength and generosity, but Rajir decided he was in over his head with this person and should give him over to Yelric as soon as he could. Yelric would know what to do with somebody clearly so gifted and headstrong.
“He did it!” Titus exclaimed. “I can’t believe it, he did it! Look at them!”
“Look at him!” Rajir yelled to make his voice go beyond the crackling of power from the spell that had intensified into a roar.
The connections with each of the patients had broken one by one, fading out of existence. As the last one went away, the ball entered Izzy and the light and sounds started coming directly out of him. Izzy’s body became the only thing Rajir could see as Izzy got brighter. The light didn’t appear to shine upon anything in the room, making it look like a white-hot Izzy was standing in an ocean of darkness.
“How do I get him to stop?” Rajir roared at Titus, unsure of the large man’s position or if he was already trying to do something.
“Get up in his face and tell him to!” Titus yelled back from somewhere near Elana.
Izzy had fallen to his knees, hands clutching the sides of his head and his face screwed up in a visage of pain and anger. Rajir pushed through the light and heat to clasp Izzy’s hands; they were scalding to the touch but Rajir held on.
“Let go Izzy!” He yelled right in front of the terrified and terrifying face. The anger eased from Izzy’s face as his expression got more confused. His eyes were terribly out of focus.
“It is Rajir,” Izzy slurred weakly, rolling the R of the name way too hard. “I like Rajir… His voice is nice and so is he.”
He sounded drunk, like a man getting dragged out the gutter by a city guard. Rajir had to get him to focus and shake him out of it.
“You did it! You’re done!” Rajir yelled. This didn’t seem to resonate with the confused Izzy.
He needed to try something to get through to the man. Rajir thought about how scared and confused he had been at the beginning of the night and how this strange man had come bearing some strand of hope. He was weird, and scary, and talked strangely sometimes, but clearly he trusted Rajir’s intentions enough to go through all of this.
From the glimpses of who this man really was, Rajir felt that Izzy was probably just as scared and confused. “Feel free to add me to that list,” Izzy had said when Rajir was talking about how terrible the night had been. Rajir had written it off as snark originally, but now Rajir really felt for this young man; lost and alone on this night of terror and horror.
Rajir lowered his voice and smiled, tears welling in his eyes for everything they’d gone through. Anguish for all the pain inflicted by this awful night crashed down over him.
“Let go, friend.” Rajir crooned, squeezing Izzy’s hands softly and putting his forehead against Izzy’s. “You did so well…”
Izzy’s vision appeared to snap into focus and his face softened. Rajir backed up as Izzy stood up shakily. Then Rajir watched as, inexplicably, Izzy threw his hands over his head like he was about to dive into water, and swan-dived straight onto the hard floor. The sound of his head cracking against the floor made Rajir wince as the light left Izzy’s body.
“Oh shit!” Titus said across the room, bustling over to Izzy.
He placed his hand on Izzy’s head and after a moment the tension left his body. Rajir was just standing there, caught between amusement and concern.
“He’s alright,” Titus concluded, removing his hand from Izzy. “If he hadn’t just had a Grade 4 healing coin in him, I would have been more worried. Seems like anything he just did to himself was healed by the last of the magic. He’s pretty solidly unconscious and will be out for the rest of the night and at least most of the day tomorrow, maybe longer.”
Rajir let out the breath he’d been holding, Izzy was safe.
Then, grinning, he looked at Titus. The serious man was also starting to grin. The tension of the moment popped like a bubble, and the two men started roaring with laughter. Relief and the release of tension filled them as if they had been the ones healed as they cried and laughed, making jokes about the ridiculous way Izzy had put an end to the spell.
