The team helped with loading Melmarc’s things in the car. It was quick and precise. Nobody grumbled and nobody complained. It was early into the morning, late enough that you could sense the touch of daybreak on the horizon. So they worked in relative darkness.
Throughout the entire process, Deoti just stood and watched, her attention fixed entirely on Melmarc. At some point, she and Fendor exchanged a few words that Melmarc did not hear.
Through it all, she looked bothered.
Melmarc did not understand what was wrong but had a very strong feeling that it would bother her for a very long time. As much as he wanted to address it, his father’s precise and quick movements gave a sense of urgency that Melmarc couldn’t just shake.
Before they left, Axe gave him a firm handshake. Axe always gave him a firm handshake as if they were some kind of business partners. The Delver always liked to say that a serious person that should be taken seriously always had a firm handshake. It was not strong, and it was not a power handshake. It was simply firm.
Fendor cracked a joke about how in no time he would be his father’s height and if Delving didn’t work for him, he could take up a bodyguard role and just stand in front of doors and look intimidating.
“A few more pounds on you and you’ll be a monster.” He smiled at Melmarc as he patted his shoulder.
Saxi only had a nod to offer him, which was not very surprising. They barely knew each other.
Lisa shook his hand, her grip not as firm as Axe’s. “Still remember how to talk to people?”
Melmarc paused. “Uhh…”
He couldn’t say that he knew how to answer that. Lisa was more of a people person. It was not that she was friendly and constantly outspoken but that she knew how to be when she had to be.
Melmarc wanted to say that he still knew how to talk to people, but he couldn’t be sure that the words would actually be true.
I’ve been talking to people, though.
But that was different from what she was asking, and he knew it. He’d spent a long time alone in the portal simply surviving. He remembered how terrible he had been at it in the beginning. How when the critters had been on him and nighttime had come, he’d just abandoned himself to sleep because he didn’t know how to get rid of them.
Then, after a long time of being alone, he’d met Naymond in a terrible state. That had been his first conversation with another person in days, and Naymond had been a little scared of him during the conversation.
Then he’d met Clinton and his team. Saved them and brought them to where Naymond was, only to find the [Sage] on the brink of death.
Then Jude shot me.
Then you broke his rib. Melmarc found himself smiling at that one. His mind had been such a mess during that period. It was normal now, relatively speaking. His mind wasn’t being bombarded with compulsions of different kinds. It hadn’t been since he’d returned from the portal.
Then they’d made their journey to the castle, blown up a wall with an indicator on it, killed a lot of [Damned] and made their way into the castle. Clinton had almost died in the entire process of getting there but he’d survived.
With one hand… Melmarc’s demeanor dampened.
Then he had met his father’s teammates.
He’d had a lot of interactions with people, but not normal people. He was a sixteen-year-old boy who for the past two weeks had spent a large number of days not interacting with anyone and only killing, then the days that followed interacting with Delvers and killing monsters, finalizing it with the death of a Demi-god.
Do I still remember how to talk to people? Normal people.
Melmarc realized that he’d been thinking for too long. When he pulled himself from his thoughts, Lisa was simply looking up at him. She had a simple smile on her face. It was a reassuring smile.
“Don’t worry about it too much,” she said.
Melmarc had a feeling that he was supposed to worry about it a little bit, though. What kid his age didn’t know how to talk to kids his age?
But she was right. It was a worry for another day.
“If you need any help with that,” she said as she released his hand, “just let your dad know. He’ll get in touch with me, and I’ll help.”
Deoti was the last of the group. It was a little saddening to see that she couldn’t even muster up a fake smile for him.
Melmarc pulled her into a careful hug. “See you later, aunt Deoti.”
She held onto his shirt for a little. He had new clothes on, a simple grey shirt and black pants provided by Fendor with his storage power.
When Melmarc released Deoti, she was cleaning tears from her eyes.
“I know we don’t have time,” she said. “But I really want you to know that I’m sorry.”
Melmarc had no idea what she was sorry about. Maybe she was sorry that he had to go through what he’d gone through, sorry that they hadn’t come for him on time or that he’d had to face Caldath alone.
He smiled down at her, their height difference evident.
“I know, aunt,” he said. “I know.”
His father didn’t go through the process that he went through. While he said his goodbyes, his father sat in the driver seat of the car silently waiting for him.
Melmarc reached for the door and opened it. The door opened easily but the handle came with his hand, ripped from its place.
Melmarc looked down at it awkwardly. He opened his mouth, the natural instinct for making an excuse for a mistake you did not intend to make right there at the forefront of his mind. But when he turned to look at the others, they were smiling. Saxi was chuckling.
It seemed he would have to learn control. Before entering the portal, he hadn’t had any strength stats, but [Rings of Saturn] had given him some strength stats. And he’d spent most of his time within the portal using all the strength he could muster. Finesse and control hadn’t really been something to account for.
Axe waved as if to let him know that he had nothing to worry about.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said.
“The strength,” Fendor said. “Not the breaking of things.”
Axe shrugged. “You’ll get used to breaking things, too.”
Lisa looked up at Axe as Melmarc got into the car. “How many things did you break before you got the hang of things?”
Axe chuckled. “Who said I’ve stopped breaking things?”
Melmarc hoped that it was a joke as he closed the door. Luckily, while the outside handle had broken off, the door was still functioning for what it was designed for.
His dad turned the key in the ignition and looked up at the rearview mirror. He didn’t need to since the car had been parked in a way that he didn’t need to reverse to drive out, so it didn’t take Melmarc much thought to realize that he was simply checking on his team.
When his father’s eyes returned to the path before them, their journey began. Melmarc let out a relieved sigh as their journey back home began.
Now he could only hope that their journey back home would lead them straight home. He really couldn’t do with another detour.
His father turned to look at him, then turned his eyes back on the road. “Seat belt.”
Melmarc complied, reaching across him to fasten his seatbelt.
As they drove, the world around Melmarc felt different. The buildings they passed, the roads, the people—as few as they were. He found himself watching everything like a tourist.
“It happens to most people,” his father said simply, without taking his eyes off the road.
Melmarc looked from the road to him, but before he could say anything, his father went on.
“They enter the injuries in the world,” his father said. “Then they come back and the world looks new.” He frowned as his eyes narrowed. “Although, the world looks new right now… better. But you stay in the injuries for too long and you get used to the injury.”
His eyes didn’t return to normal, though. They remained narrowed, watching.
Melmarc knew what his father was talking about. There were articles about it all over the internet. People liked to call it the adjustment period where a Delver readjusted to the world on returning from a long time spent in a portal. Sometimes it was just the simple things, sometimes it was not.
A Delver who’d been in a portal with his team for a month had once said that it was like going to war and coming back. A lot of military fanatics on the internet had not been happy to have a Delver liken it to going to wars where soldiers could be in the war zone for months, but they weren’t overly vocal about it.
There were psychologists and psychiatrists who theorized that something about being a Delver and the nature of portals was what made Delvers come out feeling that way even if they weren’t gone for too long.
In the end, they were all theories. No one really knew why a month in portals was often treated psychologically like a year at a warzone. But it was rarely ever that bad, though. Delvers didn’t always stay for even up to a week in portals, so the internet was mainly filled with Delvers who said they came back missing coffee so much or something simple or the other.
For Melmarc, the world just looked new. Not new as if he’d never been here before, but new as if he’d gone to school and come back just to find out that Ninra had cleaned all his toys until they looked almost as new as the day they’d bought them.
“Maybe everything is new,” his dad muttered.
Melmarc could see it. He was sure of it. Things really did look new. And if his dad was seeing it, then he was probably not imagining it.
As they drove, Melmarc knew that he had no idea where Fendor had actually dropped them off. He couldn’t see any landmark that would help him identify the place. With no idea what state he could possibly be in, he simply stared at the scenery and enjoyed the ride to the best of his ability.
For most of the ride, his companion was silence. His father drove, maneuvering his way through the streets without a map, and Melmarc simply wondered just how much of the place his dad knew in silence.
Now that he thought about it, from the moment he’d met his dad up until now was the longest conversations he’d ever had with his father. In fact, apart from his mom, Melmarc doubted he’d ever seen his father use so many words or have prolonged conversations.
His father could stand in the presence of a thousand people and ignore them completely. As for his kids, he would be a very present participant of any conversation they wished to have, however, he was always a silent one.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
With a lack of facial expressions, it was always complicated to deduce how he felt about what was being said, but the fact that he made eye contact and nodded and made subtle noises that let you know he was ready for you to move on to the next part of the story had always been an assurance that he was listening.
The first time Delano had witnessed Melmarc talking to his father, he had been confused by it. Delano had been the first person to point out how odd it looked to people on the outside, having a boy or girl gesture and narrate an entire conversation in complete excitement only to have their parent look at them and nod and grunt with zero sign of interest.
But Melmarc had grown up that way. Everyone in the family had simply grown to understand their father was simply that kind of person. He was excited and enjoyed their conversations in his own way.
“Therapy,” his father said after hours of driving. The sun was high in the sky and midday was at least an hour in the past.
Melmarc was pulled from something he’d just recently noticed. “What?”
“Therapy,” his father repeated, turning the car at a junction. “Will you go?”
“Do you want me to go to therapy?” Melmarc asked, wondering why they hadn’t been stopped on the road by any officer.
His father seemed too casual for a man that was driving in what was most likely a stolen vehicle.
“If you need it,” his father answered, eyes on the road.
If I need it.
Melmarc definitely thought that he would need it. Personally, he didn’t think he needed a therapist, but he definitely needed therapy… if that makes sense.
Maybe someone to talk to?
Ark was the first person that came to mind, but while Ark was definitely going to get the entire detail about Melmarc’s portal experience, Melmarc doubted that his brother was the therapy he needed.
Ninra, I guess, he thought.
She definitely had that therapist vibe to her. She liked to ask questions like how he felt about things, why he thought he did something that he did, if he would do it again if put in the same position again.
On the very few occasions when he went to her with a complaint of any kind, she always started by asking if he was there to vent or find a solution. Melmarc always said he was always there to find a solution.
He often wondered why she would think he was coming to complain when he didn’t need a solution. It used to make very little sense to him until Ark started telling him things that had happened to him or he had done, and it ended up turning out that with all the chaos in Ark’s life, Melmarc’s role in being told about them was just to listen.
As for Ark, he wasn’t a fan of Ninra’s questions and answers. He said it reminded him that he was talking to his older sister and not just his sister. To him, she only did it because she was the older one. Apparently, it was her responsibility to make sure they always had a good head on their shoulders… so to speak.
Definitely Ninra, Melmarc thought.
If that didn’t help, then maybe a therapist.
Sounds like you’re trying to avoid actual therapy.
Melmarc frowned at the thought. Was he trying to avoid actual therapy?
The answer wasn’t necessarily no, but he had a feeling that at the end of the sessions, the therapist would just end up telling him about how he’d been through a lot but was handling it in a healthy way and he should just go about his life and come back if any problem comes up.
So, he was determined to go to therapy only when a problem came up.
It took him a moment to realize that he had not answered his father. Then it took him another moment to realize that his father had not asked a question. In fact, his father had answered a question he had asked.
He returned his attention to his father only to find him focused on the road. It seemed the conversation had come to some kind of conclusion, so Melmarc didn’t worry too much about it. Returning his attention to the road, he occupied himself with what had initially caught his attention.
The one thing Gifted of every kind always found fascinating was the concept of mana. According to most of them, mana was a constant part of their lives. They could feel it in the way their skills worked. It was a constant part of their interface. It wasn’t some unique thing that screamed in your face, but a subliminal sensation.
All of them could feel it very sharply when certain active skills where used, like when a [Basher] charged a very powerful punch and their fists glowed a deep color, it was there.
But the one thing everyone knew was that there was mana everywhere even if they couldn’t see it. It was in the air, in the trees in the buildings. Everything had mana. And if you focused enough and had enough points in stats like perception, you could even feel it. But if it wasn’t being used by someone—another Gifted—you would not be able to see it.
Ambient mana was felt not seen.
It was common knowledge that Melmarc was aware of as he watched wisps of colorful motes dancing in the air around him. They were all different colors, varying and plentiful. He doubted that there was a color known to man that was not present.
In some places there were more of one color than another. They attached themselves to the exhaust pipes of moving vehicle, hovered over people as they walked about, and danced chaotically in the air, swaying whichever way they wanted regardless of where the wind blew.
Melmarc didn’t want to seem very important even though Veebee had made sure feeling unimportant was next to impossible now. But as he watched the motes dance around, blue and green and orange and teal and red and smoke grey, he only had one thought cross his mind as they drove home and a smile touched his lips.
I can freaking see mana.
…
Melmarc’s trip with his father lasted for two days. They drove until it was evening and drove into the night.
Melmarc’s eyes remained wide awake as he watched how the motes of what he was convinced was mana, even though they could be something else, acted.
It didn’t take him long to get bored of watching them, but he remained enamored with the fact that he could at least see them. Something interesting he learnt about them was how they didn’t react to people.
If someone walked into them, they did not move aside or bounce away from them. Instead, the person simply walked through them as if they were nothing but a figment of Melmarc’s imagination.
There were a handful of people that he noticed had some of the motes clinging to them. It wasn’t in droves, however, just a handful attaching themselves to their shirt or their pants or the trail they walked on before hovering off into the air.
In their entire journey, Melmarc only noticed five people that the motes reacted to. One was an elderly woman who walked with a head of grey hair and a straight back. When he’d seen her, she had been crossing the road with a young girl who was no more than ten years old. The motes of colors reacted to her with every breath she took.
The motes around her drew closer to her with every inhale and moved away with every exhale, but they never went into her.
The other two people he’d seen, however, actually inhaled the colors without even noticing. And every time they exhaled, the motes came out with slightly duller colors that they regained after a period of time. Melmarc only knew they regained their color when his dad stopped at a station to get gas.
Melmarc had come down to use the restroom and had taken some time when he was done to watch the attendant in the minimart. The girl was pretty but that wasn’t what held his attention. When she inhaled, she drew in the motes and let them out when she exhaled.
He noticed that while motes of different colors were drawn in with her breath, only a few came out duller. In her case, the greens and blues came out duller. The browns and yellows and pinks remained vibrant. He watched a while longer as his dad filled up the tank, wondering what would happen to the colors that had dimmed.
It didn’t take long to see the outcome. The dimmed colors floated into the air, drawn to motes of similar colors. They brightened slightly whenever they drew close enough and the others dimmed slightly. It was a cascade of events until all the motes looked as if they were all equally vibrant as they had once been.
They had, in a way, replenished themselves until they were equally at the same level of brightness. But even though Melmarc couldn’t tell the difference in brightness before the girl had inhaled them and after they’d been returned to the air, he was sure that all of them were a smidgen less bright than they had been before she’d inhaled them.
The only way he could be wrong was if the motes actually grew back to their normal brightness on their own over a period of time.
Still, he continued to believe that if what he was seeing was indeed mana, that was a whole new experience he was going through.
As they entered the car to continue their journey, Melmarc came to the conclusion that he would talk about it with his dad and mom when they got home.
Who better to talk to about something completely new in the Gifted world than two Oaths? After all, Veebee had said that they were like extensions of the [August Intruder]. He was supposed to learn from them.
When their car finally pulled into an area Melmarc could comfortably recognize, it was evening of the second day of their journey.
Melmarc wasn’t surprised that his phone didn’t ring because his real phone was still back at the police precinct, and the cloned phone they’d given him for his delivery mission had been lost at some point during his time in the portal.
His father’s phone didn’t ring and Melmarc didn’t even think about it. Unlike his mother, he doubted he’d ever had to pick up his father’s ringing phone just so that he could go running to give it to him.
Their mother got phone calls every now and then, Uncle Dorthna got phone calls at a frequency that felt like once every full moon, and his father got phone calls at… well, his father never got phone calls. None Melmarc had ever been aware of, at least.
He couldn’t even pull up a memory of his father on a call. His father did have a phone, though. And that said that his father got phone calls even if he’d never witnessed one.
Melmarc watched as his father took a turn down a street. He paused, confused by it. Their house was just a straight drive down the road past two intersections.
He said nothing, however, as his father took another turn that sent them further away from the house. He did this almost four times before coming back to the road that led home at a different angle. In fact, it was an entirely different road.
When they finally pulled up to the house, it was almost dark enough to be called night.
His father parked the car and removed his seatbelt. He left the key in the ignition as he came down, and Melmarc came down too.
At the door to the house, Uncle Dorthna stood with folded arms.
Something about the sight of him solidified it somewhere in Melmarc’s mind that he was home.
Uncle Dorthna kept his eyes on Melmarc while Melmarc stood beside his door. His eyes were assessing, watching.
“Did you get taller?” Uncle Dorthna said finally.
Before he could stop himself, Melmarc pushed up on his tiptoes, increasing his height, and nodded. “I think so.”
His father walked up to the front of the car and stood there. He spared Melmarc a very brief glance.
“Four inches,” he said simply. “Maybe five.”
Uncle Dorthna smiled. “Kid’s got your giant genes.”
Melmarc’s father’s reply was a grunt.
Melmarc was about to say something when Dorthna’s expression turned into a sharp frown. His eyes settled on the car and his brows furrowed.
“Tell me that I’m not smelling Broken Divinity right now?” he said, still frowning.
The moment the words left his mouth, Melmarc remembered the color of Caldath’s indicator just before the Demi-god had died.
He hadn’t used his skills so there was no indicator above Dorthna’s head right now, but he was certain that if he used it, he would see the same color.
“It is,” Melmarc’s father answered. “Will you help me bring it inside?”
“Tell me you didn’t go killing something you could’ve just left alone,” Dorthna grumbled as he went down to join them.
“I didn’t kill anything,” Melmarc’s father said, walking to the back of the car. “Mel did.”
Dorthna came to a stop in front of Melmarc and held out his hand for a handshake.
Personally, he found that he would have actually liked a hug, it felt more personal. But he took his uncle’s hand in a firm handshake.
The moment their hands met, his interface lit up.
[Congratulations August Intruder you have met a ?????]
[You have met ???? ???? ????]
It was an odd thing to realize that this part of his interface also didn’t have a designation for Uncle Dorthna.
Is it hiding it from me or does it actually not know?
Dorthna stared momentarily at the space between them as well. He was clearly reading whatever his own interface was telling him.
“I guess you’ll have to be wearing gloves from now on,” Dorthna said to him as he ended their handshake.
Then he walked around Melmarc to go to the back of the car. As he got there, Melmarc heard him continue speaking.
“So, conquest or theft?” Dorthna asked his father.
“Portal reward,” his father answered.
“Belonging to?”
“Mel.”
“Really now,” Dorthna said, his voice a little too pleased. Then he popped his head to the side so that he could look at Melmarc. “Congrats on your first Demi, Mel. Try not to make a habit of it, though. Before you know it, the others will be able to smell it on you.”
Melmarc started for a moment. It was very odd hearing Uncle Dorthna talk to him about killing a Demi-god as if he was commenting on some kind of schoolwork.
He came out from behind the car with the sword and spear Melmarc had gotten as his reward for killing Caldath in both hands.
He came to a stop in front of Melmarc then looked around him. Then he looked around them. In the end, likely not seeing whatever it was that he was looking for, he shrugged.
“I guess you don’t have one yet,” he said, then continued on his path to the house. “You should really start wearing hand gloves, though.”
Melmarc’s dad carried the chest with Valoth’s armor into the house and Melmarc followed behind him.
“Lock the door, will you,” Dorthna requested as Melmarc entered the house.
Melmarc locked the door, doing his best to ease himself into the simplicity of normalcy. He hadn’t closed a door in what seemed like ages. It was weird how something so simple and natural seemed so different. There had been no doors to lock behind him for most of his time in the portal.
There was no house with a couch either.
When he turned away from the door, the first thing his eyes settled on was Ark barreling straight into him.
Despite the height Melmarc had added, Ark picked him up in a bear hug and lifted him off the ground a little too easily for Melmarc’s liking.
Taller but lighter, I guess, he thought. In his defense, he hadn’t eaten anything in days.
How he was still alive was surprising.
And just like that, he was starving.
Ark dropped him back down and stepped away from him with a wide smile.
“I was beginning to get scared that your real family had finally found you and taken you back to some asylum where mom and dad stole you from,” Ark said, smiling.
“Ha ha,” Melmarc laughed sarcastically.
Ark joked about things like that very often when they were growing up. Sometimes he’d say that Melmarc was adopted. Sometimes he would say they’d actually found him on the front porch. Melmarc’s favorite was how Ark had actually saved him from two lions in the wilderness.
The last one Ark had used only when they were little.
The smile dropped slightly from Ark’s face, and his expression turned slightly worried. “How are you?” he asked.
It was Melmarc’s turn to smile. “I’m good, Ark. Hungry, but good.”
Ark’s smile returned. “Ninra’s still in school, but I’ll call her right away and…” he paused. “No need. I don’t think she even realized that you were gone for longer than you were supposed to be.”
Unless she called, Melmarc thought. It rarely happened but sometimes she just called him to talk about nothing important.
Melmarc was about to point out how Ark should still call her when he noticed something.
“Ark,” he said, brows furrowed and walking up to him very slowly.
Ark turned from heading into the kitchen. “What’s up?”
Melmarc could not believe his eyes. There was one thing that he’d been looking forward to shoving in Ark’s face when he got back. But now it was completely useless.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he muttered. In his time since getting a class, he’d grown at least four inches taller.
Ark met Melmarc’s gaze, tilting his head to do it.
“What’s wrong?” he grinned.
There was no way he didn’t know what was wrong. Still, Melmarc couldn’t help himself. He had to ask the question even though he knew the answer.
“Did you get taller?”