PreCursive

  Split second thought from my core was the only reason I even considered what I did next. My inner self frantically pointed out a half-remembered history lesson from my youth, on the effects of particurly intense explosions.

  I tensed, and yelled as loudly as I could over the rumblings of the earth, directing my words to my companions who had rubbernecked along with me. “DON’T LOOK AT IT!” I screamed. “TURN AWAY, TURN AWAY!” There was no time for me to see if they were going to listen, though I prayed they would. Instead, I turned back around and crushed Aveline and myself as closely as I could to the fur of Shurenga’s back, ignoring her protests at the movement.

  They soon turned to screams, anyway. This time, I could tell that I was screaming alongside us.

  The core finally went critical, and the world went white. An impossibly loud booming noise echoed out from behind us, and a light so bright that I could see it through both my closed eyelids and my turned head struck me with an almost physical force. Screaming gale force winds suddenly struck Shurenga and everyone upon her flying back, and I think if it wasn’t for our Status-enhanced strengths, all of us would have been sent flying from her back. In fact, I think one of us nearly did.

  From behind me, I heard Renauld let out a pained, panicked scream as I…I think he lost his grip. My heart dropped out of my chest, but I didn’t dare turn in pce to see what had happened. I think if I did, my eyes would have been burned out of their sockets by the light of the explosion

  Thankfully, it came to a halt a moment ter, driven mainly by a scream of effort from Kazuma. I think the Kawamaran samurai might have caught him if I was correct.

  But I was occupied by something else. Something much, much more immediately dangerous.

  There was a rising wave of heat coming from behind us. Every millisecond, the temperature all around our fleeing forms was rising to an arming degree. Even though Shurenga was covering dozens of feet ever second on her conjured path, the heat wasn’t decreasing.

  That didn’t seem good.

  I hissed as I felt the enchanted silk of my cloak catch fire on my back. I didn’t dare try and put it out, though. That would just expose Aveline to the force of the explosion behind us, and she was the most fragile person here. The little girl was years away from gaining a Status.

  Beneath me, I heard Shurenga speak, sounding audibly angry. “Think you I shall be sin by mere fire? I am the daughter of fme itself! I shall not be defeated by some pale imitation of my father!”

  Shurenga growled, and in that rumble, I heard the tone of words in an incomprehensible nguage. I…think she was chanting a spell of some kind.

  I was shortly proven right. All around Shurenga’s sprinting form, and most importantly us, a bubble shield of what looked to be transparent orange-colored Mana. Immediately, the temperature inside the bubble dropped to something much more pleasant. Tentatively, I straightened up from my desperate huddle on the back of the enormous feline and looked ahead of us. To my relief, I found that Shurenga was only seconds away from reaching the ridgeline. That probably wasn’t a safe enough distance, but it would have to be good enough.

  And then something happened that I wasn’t expecting.

  A second explosion boomed through the air from behind us, much, much bigger than what occurred what felt like only moments ago. The shockwave of it hit Shurenga only moments ter and the force of it impacted her shield like the impact point of a hammer.

  Thankfully, the shield held.

  Not so thankfully, that just meant the forward momentum of the bst flung everyone, Shurenga included, spinning through the air. The daughter of Tarus was knocked off of her conjured path, and all her passengers were flung off of her back to tumble into the space of her protective spell. Mid-air, I had only moments to see the surface of the range rushing up to meet us before I frantically tried to turn in midair and curl around Aveline’s tiny, fragile body as much as I could.

  Impact.

  The entire bubble holding Shurenga, her daughter, my friends and companions, and most importantly Aveline and I…

  Shattered, and I hit the ground back first. My head bounced off of the hard stone of the mountains, and somehow…somehow I didn’t lose consciousness.

  A minor miracle, my Core ring noted distantly, considering my track record. I was too out of it to snap back at it. But not too much to see what was now looming on the horizon, ft on my back as the world darkened with the blooming of a second, surface-born star.

  The mountain of Gorenzan, famous roost of the Dread Wyrm Tatsugan and tallest mountain on Vereden, was gone. In its pce rose an enormous mushroom cloud, so dense with Aether that the fire of it glowed with an intense, cascading rainbow light. Sharp fingers were all that remained of the once titanic mountain, jutting up from the surface of the caldera like the hand of some ancient giant, fossilized and frozen and in time. For a moment, I was delirious enough at the impossible sight of the cloud rising high into the sky that I could only goggle at it, wondering where all the stone had gone.

  Until I saw the thousands and thousands of tiny, fiery stars high in the sky, falling from the heavens like a swarm of meteors.

  In fact…

  One of them looked like it was falling towards us.

  As I felt a warm liquid ooze from somewhere on the back of my head, all I could do was tighten my arms around…something I held in my arms. I couldn’t remember what it was, or why I was so protective of it. All I could recall was that it was beyond precious.

  And that I had made a promise to someone.

  Soon, all I could see was the form of a massive hunk of stone rapidly falling towards me.

  As I felt myself start to lose the battle for consciousness, my eyes drifting shut one by one, I caught a strange noise. It almost sounded like the shattering of stone, upon an immense metal surface. Surrounded by the tinkling of stone, I thought I heard a voice.

  A creaky, aged, irritated one.

  “The hells did you kids do?”

  That was the st thing I heard before I lost the battle with consciousness.

  …………………………………….

  The world was warm, and dark, and quiet all around me. I was nothing, nothing was part of me, and nothing became me. No thoughts swam through the space of my expanded mind, no feelings or worries.

  I simply floated in a bck space that felt all too familiar.

  Nothing stirred in the still pond of ink that became my existence.

  Occasionally, oh so occasionally, I thought I heard something as if from a great distance, impossibly vast in scope.

  Voices.

  I thought I heard voices, at times calling out to me, and at times simply…talking. Sometimes I thought I might recognize those voices, even though I couldn’t make out the words. They were too muffled to properly reach me.

  One was low, and gruff, and short. When it spoke, it spoke infrequently, but when it did, I could feel the concern in its deep tones.

  One was higher pitched, almost animalistic in tone. It sounded harried, and when it spoke it was in clipped, observational tones. Still, sometimes concern would creep into it.

  One sounded like a woman, smoky and rough. This voice was awkward, struggling to convey the emotions I could hear buried deep inside of it. This voice never stuck around for long, and when it did, it almost seemed desperate to be anywhere else.

  Only one other voice ever truly reached me, in my comforting darkness. It was small, quiet, and young. There was a purity to it that was almost comforting. This voice was the most common, in truth. It was almost always present, speaking to me from the closest distance, small murmurs of youth that spoke of anything and everything.

  A truly remote part of myself almost thought that the existence that was myself should be relieved to hear it, in rare moments of lucidity. But those instances were few and far between, and the idea never stuck.

  Gradually, though, the darkness began to recede. I couldn’t say how long it took. It could have been days, weeks, or even years. But eventually, light began to stream into my comforting pool. Over time, it grew until eventually…

  My eyes creaked open, to stare unseeingly up at an indistinct ceiling. I didn’t truly register what y above me, and yet my ears still worked. I heard a sudden, high-pitched shout somewhere off to my left, followed by more. Rapid footsteps approached where I y ft on my back until suddenly a triangur bck thing appeared in my field of view.

  I flinched away from it when it began to emit a bright, white light. I groaned as the light began to move back and forth in front of my eyes. However, it was doing its job. My mind grew more aware, and I focused more on the object in front of me. This time, I could tell that it seemed to be a bck cw of some kind, attached to an equally bck, furry finger. Just beyond it, I could see a grey canvas ceiling.

  My lips parted, and I blinked. Before I could even ask, the rim of something cool and ceramic was at my lips, and something cool and sweet greeted a tongue I hadn’t even realized was drier than a desert. I greedily drank from the vessel at my lips and with that…

  Full awareness snapped into being, and I realized where I was, and what was happening to me.

  I turned my head, and I found what I was expecting.

  Looming over me was the Gnollish form of one of my friends.

  Renauld.

  The Healer was the one wagging one Mana brightened finger over my field of view, and just beyond that I could see his stressed features. However, when I focused on him fully for the first time, a wave of relief swept over him. Although my friend wasn’t that old, it still seemed as if he lost several years from the creases beneath his fur. Still, something puzzled me. Renauld wasn’t the one who had held the cup to my lips.

  I turned my head and found someone who nearly caused me to start weeping in realization.

  The one who had given me the cup…was Aveline.

  She stood off to the side of my bed with a wide smile on her small face, looking as relieved as I believe a child could be. The little girl I hadn’t failed to save in the end was wearing a small yellow sundress, free from the white hospital gown of her long imprisonment in the halls of the Netherim bunker. I felt a fleeting moment of concern at the sight of a long white bandage wrapped around her forehead, but she seemed fine to me. When she saw that I was looking at her, her smile grew even wider, and she flung her arms around my neck in a hug, uncaring about the water she spshed on the Gnoll above me. The Healer yelped from it, but both of us ignored it.

  Instead, I shakily raised one weak hand and rested it on the head of the daughter of Cecily Montbnc and Jonathon Travers. “Aveline,” I managed to croak weakly, soul-deep relief rolling over me.

  “Mr. Hart…” She murmured back, in the crook of my neck. “You’re awake…”

  Tears welled up in my eyes at the sound of it.

  I’d done it.

  Despite everything, and despite how I had feared that I would fail…I’d done it.

  I had actually managed to save Aveline from the bunker.

  I buried my face in her hair, and let silent tears flow from my eyes in the golden mass.

  ………………………………

  Renauld let us have our moment, but eventually, he cleared his throat professionally. The sound of it caused Aveline to draw back from me embarrassedly, though I didn’t think she had anything to be embarrassed about. The Gnoll smiled down at her kindly with closed lips. “Aveline, be a dear and go tell the others that zy-bones here is finally up, eh? I’m sure they’ll want to see him.”

  Aveline nodded up at him shyly. “Okay, Mr. Renauld,” She said quietly, gncing over at me quickly. “I-I’ll be right back, okay? Don’t…please don’t go anywhere.” Before I could even process that, the little Netherim girl scurried out of the small, private tent that I was just now realizing we were in.

  I didn’t realize I was staring after her before Renauld spoke up again. “She’s been here by your side the whole time, Nate. That’s a good kid you found down in that hell.”

  I dragged my still unsteady eyes away from the waving tent fp and looked up at the Gnoll. “Whole time?” I asked a bit groggily. “How…how long have I been out?”

  Renauld grimaced, then. “A week,” He said, after a pause. I tensed in shock at his words, adrenaline racing through me, and unexpectedly, sending a bolt of pain ncing through my head. I raised one hand to hold it, only to finally realize that my entire skull was wrapped in bandages simir to Aveline’s own. Renauld stopped me before I could explore it too much. “Don’t! Don’t touch it too much, Nate. That’s…that’s part of what we have to talk about.”

  I raised my head and furrowed my brow at the Healer. Because that was definitely Reanauld’s Healer voice. I’d heard him use it before when it came to serious situations.

  That he was using it now wasn’t a good sign.

  Renauld sat on the side of the bed and faced me with a serious frown. “This was a close one for you, Nate. Like, really close, for multiple reasons. The explosion that happened a week ago hurt some people, and it even killed a few unfortunate Solstice’s Fme members-”

  That answered one question my newly awakened Core ring had. We must be in one of the encampments of the Order of Solstice’s Fme.

  “-but it was the fall that nearly killed you,” Renauld continued. “It almost cracked your head open like a melon. In fact, when I found you, it was open. I could see your damn brain, Nate.”

  Oh.

  That…didn’t sound good. It made me a little queasy, actually.

  “If you weren’t past the first breakthrough, I’m pretty sure you’d be dead right now,” The Gnoll said with a sigh, picking up a vial and handing it to me. I recognized it as a mild nausea potion. I suppose he had noticed the effect of his words on me. I drank it down as my Healer kept speaking. “Luckily I managed to stabilize you by the time the Order rolled in, but you were still in a coma for the st week. But in that time I’ve done some deeper probes on your condition, Nate. And it’s not exactly good.”

  I sighed, setting down the now empty bottle. “Hit me.”

  “You can’t afford another concussion, Nate,” Renauld said bluntly. “At least, not for another half a year, at the very least. That means no fighting, no sparring, and sure as hell no heavy combat like we’ve been doing. You need that time to let your Status fix the built-up damage in your brain. They’re delicate things, Nate, even with the System. Not even Honoka advises outright healing something like this. You just can’t take the risk. Instead, you need to let the quickened natural healing of your Status take the reigns. If you don’t take it easy, and you take another hard hit to the skull, I’m not sure if you’ll ever wake up again.”

  I was quiet for a moment, absorbing that. “Was it really that bad this time?”

  To my surprise, Renauld shook his head. “Yes and no. From what I could tell, this looks like built-up damage over the course of a year or so that just wasn’t visible until now. In other words, you’ve been knocked out way too often since you nded on Vereden, and this, combined with your injury, pushed things to the edge.”

  “For now, Nate…that means you’re benched.”

  PreCursive