Mark sat in his room, hands to his sides, staring at the ceiling.
Letters sat to the side, opened and plentiful in paper and words. Mom had written a whole ten pages, small print with her perfect penmanship, with no mistakes at all. It had been about growing up and seeing Mark hit milestones, and no matter what happened that he should move forward exactly as he had been. He was a good man. She loved his words about humans helping humans. Mom hoped that this thing with Addashield worked out, and that Addashield returned to being a Hero of Humanity, and then Mark could be a hero like he always wanted.
Dad’s letter had been shorter, and written by mom, though it was clearly Dad’s words on the page.
Mom had probably told Dad to say more here and there, and so Dad had talked about the importance of having a bank account and meeting good people, making sure to keep his spears sharp and to practice his magic more than he thought he needed to practice. Dad said that his fish-yank became fish-yank because he only ever used his arcanaeum-granted telekinesis to work with fish, and that is what it became. One day, after an entire summer of realizing that he never used it for anything but hauling fish out of the ocean, of focusing on fish, it just didn’t work on anything else. He had needed to practice a lot to get it to work on those fish-clips of his, and even then he had needed to make the fish clips out of actual fishscale over a metal base, and then he had to stick fish bones into the metal clips, too.
In Mom’s letter, she had spoken of how she had been scared of cleanse, for how powerful it was, so that is why it started to fail her. She became so concerned with the danger that she became only able to use it in the water-form of the magic, which was the safest by far. And thus, the water-form of cleanse became the only form she could use. She was perfectly fine with the decreased effectiveness, because that meant that she was able to use the real spell in other spaces more easily, without worrying about disintegrating those other spaces.
Growing up, Mark remembered how his bed sheets sometimes ended up with holes in them, and Mom confessed in her letter that she was to blame; her cleanse had gone off-target and eaten the fabric. She got better about that, though.
Mark remembered this whole thing with mothballs and scattering them in every room of the house, because he didn’t want his clothes eaten anymore, and Dad had gone along with it, laughing, while Mom just silently, quietly fumed. But then grandpa had gotten in on it, laughing, talking about how they had to keep the moths away, even if the smell of the mothballs gave the house such a terrible smell.
Mark smiled at remembering that. The jokes about mothballs. The threat of moths eating all of his clothes. How he went to school smelling of mothballs sometimes. At the time it hadn’t been funny, and Mom had been mad, but Dad had laughed, and Mom just rolled her eyes, and Mark had thought it was all because of moths but no. Mom had done that accidentally, with cleanse.
Mark would be safe from that downfall of magic, because his Talents would be the real deal; not a halfer’s attempt at real power that would change with time and failure-to-use-it.
Mark wanted to talk to Mom about that.
But she was gone.
“Ahhh,” Mark breathed out. “This sucks.”
An understatement if there ever was one.
Mark carefully packed the letters away, being careful of the fresh tears he had dropped onto all of Mom’s essay and onto Dad’s 1-page of letter and 2-pages of ‘how to be an adult’.
It wasn’t enough to remember them by.
It was all he had left of—
There was that video recording.
Right.
Mark steeled himself, not sure if he could handle seeing their faces and hearing their voices right now, but he was going to try. He picked up the phone that had come in the communication package… He stared at the phone for a little while. And then he poked around at a few options until he found the one he wanted.
A bright gold application glowed in the app menu. It was labeled COFR, or rather ‘Citadel of Freyala Resources’.
Mark pressed the button.
Golden light spilled out from his phone, along with a feminine voice, “Greetings, Mark Careed. How may COFR help you today?”
“I want… I want to see the video that my parents recorded… for me.”
“I can assist you with that.”
A button propagated. It was labeled ‘Home Movies’.
Mark furrowed his brow a little at the naming of the icon, but then he clicked on it and he almost broke down crying again. It was all of Mark’s videos taken with his previous phone, transferred across the globe and into this phone, probably through the grid and City AIs talking to each other. It was also linked to his parents’ social media videos, that they had taken over the years. There were Dad’s fishing videos. There were Mom’s videos that she used to take all the time about editing tips, and when she went out to her friends’ houses for parties. Vacation memories at the beach and—
And there was a video labeled ‘For Mark. In case the worst should happen.’
Mark pressed play.
Mom and Dad stood in a concrete bunker room, like the one they had in the basement of the house. There was a nice light and some nice furniture, and it looked sort of cozy, but it was a bunker room. The walls were concrete. Mom wore that comfy sweater she always liked, and Dad wore jeans and a shirt. Both of them were looking at the camera—
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Mom teared up instantly, like she was happy crying at a wedding, or watching a good movie. She smiled, and that was all she could do, save for softly whispering, “I’m sorry— You start, Markus.”
Dad put an arm around Mom and Mom tried to bring it back together, as Dad said, “Hey, Mark. We’re here at day 4 of quarantine…” He was smiling a lot, too. “But we’ve seen pictures of you, getting bigger and stronger out there with some fresh weapons!”
Tears streamed down Mark’s face as he smiled to see both of them look happy.
Mom choked up, but she managed to say, “You look so good out there, Mark!”
Dad said, “We heard that treatment is working out well for you! And it really is!”
Mom breathed. She got in control and then she said, “You’re going to do wonderful…” And then she choked up again, and this time her joy was smaller, quieter, becoming a sadness. She controlled herself while Dad held her hand tightly, and then she said, “We’re kinda freehanding this, Mark. We never expected to be in this position, but we’re glad to be here, too.”
Dad said, “Your words there, before we left. You quoted Glorious Man and a bit of Dad— your grandpa, too. Humanity helps each other. That is what we do. And you’re right. That is what we do.”
Mom strongly said, “If it was one of us in your position we would do the same thing, and we would hope that the others would understand. And we do understand, Mark. We understand a lot. We hope this video never needs to reach you, but if it was us, we would want to know that we didn’t leave the others wondering…” She breathed. She said, “We do the right thing, even if it hurts, and the right thing is to bring Addashield back to humanity.”
Mom was the one holding on strongly to Dad’s hand, now.
Dad squared himself, and said, “We raised you well, son. No trauma in this household!”
Mom chuckled through the tears. “When this thing with Addashield works out, don’t blame yourself for what happens to us.”
Dad said, “Don’t live your life for revenge. Don’t give yourself that sort of trauma.”
Mom said, “Live your life to help people, just like you always wanted. You’re good at that!”
“But you should absolutely sue Addashield for what he has done in his near-Fall.”
“Sue that fucker! He’s absolutely going to have a world-action lawsuit against him, like what they did to Verdant Guardian in the 2000’s when she did that plant manipulation that turned monstrous.”
“Just don’t make that consume your life, either. Hop into the world-action suit and let the lawyers take it over for you. And live your life how you want!”
Mom smiled. “We love you, Mark.”
Dad grinned. “We love you, son.” And then he steeled himself, and said, “If the worst should happen and you get this video, then call my brother and his husband. Memphi is a great place to live. Obviously, you should live your life wherever you want, but make that place your home. They’ve told us that our home is probably not going to survive. We hope that it does! But…” He frowned.
Mom was calm as she said, “They’re probably going to blow it up the second you take the Tutorial and leave the space, just so they get a clean shot at whatever comes out of there with Addashield.”
Dad sighed. “Yeah. The house is probably toast. I had a lot of good memories, there. I hope you did, too, Mark. We asked for all of our videos online to be curated for you, and the City AI did that… or at least that was the plan. I recorded some stuff in there to tell you if you get married! And a few other things! Some of them are even funny. Look them up sometime!”
Mom choked up again.
Dad held Mom, saying, “Your mother did, too.”
Mom nodded.
“I love you, son. Goodbye.”
Mom said, “I love you, Mark. Goodbye.”
The video ended there.
Tears fell and Mark’s emotions were somewhere around here, but he could not grasp them at all.
An hour or three later, Mark picked up the phone again.
“I need to contact my uncle and his husband. They live in Memphi, in the Central Cities Union of America. Their names are Alexandro Careed and Gabriel Careed. Ages… 44 and 42, I think. Can you help me find them?”
COFR glowed golden on his phone.
The phone dinged and some buttons appeared, one labeled Alexandro and the other labeled Gabriel. The golden voice said, “I have taken the liberty of updating your phone with possibly relevant numbers, from one Physical Therapist Kevin Bash to childhood friend Sally Wuthers, to neighbors, with all those numbers put into folders in your directory, and also listed alphabetically. Here are buttons for the two requested people. It is 10:20 pm here at Citadel, so it is 3:20 pm there. Alexandro Careed has already left a message with Citadel Freyala in case you should call. I will play the message now.”
Mark almost didn’t want to hear the message but it played instantly.
Alexandro’s deep voice rang out, “Mark. You need to call us. We love you. We need to hear from you. We want you to come to Memphi and live with us. You are loved and…” His voice cracked. “And some people are blaming you for the new High Dragon in the world but we know you were a good boy— a good man. And you’d do what any soldier would have done; you just followed orders. We need to talk about… about everything. We love you! Call me.”
Mark found himself tearing up again.
And then he called Alexandro.
The phone rang twice—
A gruff voice, almost mad, answered, “Hello?”
Mark’s voice cracked. “Un— uncle Alexandro?”
Alexandro’s voice cracked, too. “Mark? Oh gods Mark! You’re alive! Thank the gods!”
Mark made his way through the conversation as best he could, but there was a lot of crying and a lot of softer words and then came talk of Mom and Dad. It was good to talk to Uncle Alexandro. Mark wasn’t sure what he said, not exactly. He ended up talking to Uncle Gabriel, too. It lasted a while.
Eventually, though, Mark said his goodbyes and hung up.
He was feeling better, and he had a plan to go to Memphi in 6 months, or a year, but he wasn't sure. He’d live there… or something. A lot of things were up in the air right now.
The fallout was still falling.
Mark collapsed on his bed.
He was too tired to dream.