2:168 on the 58th day of Winter

My little sister yelled in pain as she hit the stone road. As I ran in to engage the sekteth I knew that I needed to drive them back so I pulled out a grenade from my belt pouch and hurled it at them. I couldn't make high explosive, yet, but gunpowder in an aluminum ball worked pretty well. I had set up a remote trigger circuit in my belt so I could choose exactly when it would go off. I pulled the trigger right as it flew past the one that had hurt my siblings. It went off in a shock of thunder. Through my helmet I was barely affected while I could see the whole front row of demons were disoriented.

"Cover your eyes!" I called out to my siblings to warn them for the next part.

I used both my laser rods to cut through the monsters one at a time. They had come here to kill my only family in this world and I would show them no mercy. The first row was cut down in marks but the second decided to climb the walls to get around me. They had shrouded themselves in magical darkness that would have been impossible to see through without infrared vision. As it was, I simply lined up my shots one at a time and fired. This was the power of a mage. I felt a surge of pride in what I had managed to build. These weapons gave me the power I had wanted my whole life. The sekteth fell one at a time until they were all dead. Their curled bodies lined the street before me.

Silence came over the area. The civilians were safe inside and so the gate guards came out to assist. I could see Ingo getting to his feet but Mistila stayed seated. I walked over to them while looking around for danger.

"Are you two okay?" I asked.

After one last look around I took off my helmet. It was then I noticed that I couldn't hear what they were saying. Everything sounded muted and mumbled like I was deep under water. I guess I was a bit too close to the grenade. Ingo and Mistila were talking and both looked worried. Then he started waving his gauntleted hand in front of Mistila's face without any visible reaction from her. My stomach dropped again. She couldn't see.

The next few measures were a blur. Ingo picked up Mistila and carried her inside while I followed after. The main entrance hall was large but felt cramped with all of the people who were taking shelter. The guards helped make a path for us and eventually we made it to the back of the hall where cots were set up with the injured. How could I have been so stupid? I knew that the lasers were dangerous. Of course the way the battle was going I'm not sure we would have lived if I had not used them. What if Fonsa couldn't heal her eyes? Then someone slapped me on the back of the head.

I looked up to see Fonsa glaring daggers at me. She said something, maybe asking me a question. I looked over to where Mistila was laying down on a cot with a vacant stare at the ceiling.

"Heal her." I said pointing at Mistila.

Fonsa just rolled her eyes at me. Then she licked both her pointer fingers and, before I could react, stuck them in my ears.

"AAAKKK." I yelled. "What was that for?"

But after a few seconds of silence I could hear the noises of the busy room start to return.

"How did Mistila get hurt?" asked Fonsa. "The better my visualization, the more likely I am to be able to heal her eyes."

I took a second to think about it.

"Her eyes were burned by stray reflections of extremely bright light." I said. "Her irises and pupils probably have several spot burns and the back part of the eyes are likely burned as well. There may also be loose material floating in eyes that is blocking her vision."

My mind was racing with all of the things that could be wrong.

"Got it." she said, nodding and moving over to Mistila.

Fonsa sat on a stool by her cot and covered her damaged eyes with her hand. After several measures I couldn't watch any more. Maybe I could get her something from the kitchens.

By the time I returned with tea and buttered bread, Ingo was at the gates talking to the guards. Mistila was sitting up on her cot and looking around.

"It's still a bit blurry, and my eyes feel dry but ya it's a lot better." she said. "I have to treat some of the others for now but I will circle back to you tomorrow morning." said Fonsa, standing up. She shot a look that promised me a stern tongue lashing later before moving off to the other patients.

"I'm so sorry." I said sitting down.

She looked up at me. Her eyes were red and watery but that was probably just from her injury. I held out the tea and bread to her as a peace offering. Then she stood up to hug me.

"I'm glad you're okay." she said. "We were all so worried about you."

She let me go and sat back down.

"Now where in the nine realms were you and what by Mez was that out there?"

I smiled at her curse as it simultaneously chastised me and reminded me just how well she knew me.

"I didn't actually make it that far from the city." I said sheepishly. "Mostly I've been just practicing my magic."

It took me a bit to prepare myself to lie to her but it was coming more and more easily with each telling. I told her what I’d told Fonsa, finishing by explaining the lasers.

“The spell I used out there is basically just making light so intense that it can cut." I said.

Her face scrunched up in confusion.

"Fonsa told me about that." she said. "But I guess I still don't understand. It wasn't all that bright to look at."

"The type of light I am using isn't visible to humans." I said. "Again, I am so sorry that it hurt you. I tried to warn you and Ingo but in hindsight, yelling a warning just after throwing a grenade was a dumb mistake."

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She nodded at that, rubbing the side of her head in pain.

"I'm glad you're back, Theod. I really am." she said. "But I'm also still mad at you for leaving."

We sat in silence for a while. After thinking about it for a bit, I suspected she was actually more angry about my leaving, about making her worry about me, than about hurting her by accident. Before I could formulate an apology for it she spoke.

"I don't need your apology." She said as if she was reading my thoughts. Then she leaned in to whisper close to my ear. "I need you to actually trust me for once in your life. I know that what you told me before you left was a lie, or at least a half truth. I'm not letting you off the hook for that. You tell me the truth or so help me, next time you plan to leave I'll burn your hair off."

She turned and laid back down on the cot. I sat there thinking over her words for a while. I couldn't blame her for wanting the truth but that put me in a tough spot. She had brought this up when we fought before. She wanted me to talk to someone about my problems. There were no therapists on Root but that didn't mean people had no need for therapy. Why couldn't anything ever be easy? I let out a long sigh.

"Not here, and not now." I said. "Maybe you're right that it would be good to talk through, but more likely it would get me and a lot of other people killed."

She didn't respond to that so we just sat in silence again. Then a someone came through the crowd and called out to my sister.

"Mistila?!" they said. "What happened?"

They wore a concerned expression and moved quickly toward us. I tried to think of if I had met this person before and realized they were my sister's dance partner at the Fall Festival. Mistila sat up and looked at them with a joyful expression. What was their name again?

“Are you hurt?" they asked. "You must be hurt if you're in a cot. Where are you hurt?"

"I'm fine." said Mistila. "Nothing that my sister can't fix right up."

They were clearly close and it was sweet how she was getting doted on for once as she was the one that normally did that for the rest of us.

"This is my brother Theod." she said. "Theod, meet Jaku."

Their eyebrows went up at my name and they looked to Mistila with a question. It was then I noticed several details about their appearance. They had a sword at their hip, black demon blood splattered over their light green tunic. There were rips and dirt in places that would suggest they had been in a fight.

"A pleasure to meet you." I said with my hand extended to shake. "And yes, I'm that errant brother. I just got back to Cinder a few days ago."

They shook my hand before responding.

"Nice to meet you too." they said. "Misty was very worried about you so I'm glad you're back safe."

That brought a smile to my face and a blush to my sister's.

"Well, I have been awake for two days straight and need to rest." I said standing up. "I will leave Misty and you to catch up." I put emphasis on the pet name to give my sister a hard time but really I felt happy for her. Being able to find someone in this messed up world was a real blessing.

As I walked away I looked back to see them forehead to forehead. My chest hurt for just a moment so I rubbed at it before making my way upstairs to my old bed.

***

1:175 on the 60th day of Winter

Hroadant and I entered a large hall. The high vaulted ceiling was a semicircle dome of solid stone with a bright magic light at the apex. The light shined like a bright summer's day which was a contrast to the softer violet light that bright-leaf lanterns tended to have. In the center of the room was the outside of a stone sphere. We could only see the top half as the bottom was submerged in a narrow pool of boiling water. The pool was surrounded by several dozen mages in heavy coats. That was weird, wouldn't they overheat standing so close to the pool?

"There's Flood." said Hroadant pointing to the right side of the sphere. Sure enough, there he was talking to Baldor. As we walked over Flood spotted us and got a very confused look on his face.

"What is he doing here?" he asked.

It didn't seem to come with outright disdain, just puzzlement. Like I was here to carry Hroadant's non-existent bags or something.

"Theod here awakened light magic and came to help out." said Hroadant.

Flood looked shocked but then gave me a scrutinizing look.

"Is that right!?" he asked. "Well then I guess congratulations are in order." It was the first note of friendliness I had ever heard from the man.

"Mage Bolt will be giving first timers a basic tutorial." he said. "You will be on the outside of the circle and given some minor detail to focus on."

I nodded and we moved off to wait for Bolt. After a few minutes a short woman with curly white hair raised her hand.

"All those new to summoning come to me!" she shouted over the din of conversation.

I made my way over while Hroadant trailed off to talk to Baldor. A small group of ten or so teenagers gathered around who I suspected was Bolt.

"Okay," she said as soon as we were all gathered. "today we are going to be summoning a green death worm to aid in the defense of the city." she said,

There was a murmuring around the room.

"Who here knows what a green death worm is?" she asked.

A girl I didn't recognize raised her hand.

"Death worms are some of the only creatures with death magic." she said. "Why are we summoning something so dangerous?"

There was more murmuring now and a few curses.

"Thank you Eillanhilt." Bolt said. "You are correct. As a creature with death magic they are one of the most dangerous monsters in existence. Under normal circumstances we would not consider something this risky. But the enemy is at our gates. I and the other mages reviewed everything we could possibly summon and the death worm has the greatest chance of driving off the demons."

She gave everyone a hard look before continuing.

"To ease your fear, know that they don't use much of their magic unless they are injured. We will not be hurting it so we will have very little to worry about." she explained.

She then went on to give an extensive lecture on the death worm in exacting detail. Everything from the number and size of its lamprey-like teeth, to the number of ridges along its length. She handed out artistic drawings of the monster and passed around a box that held earthworms, maggots and several other legless crawling creatures for comparison. Eventually I raised my hand.

"Mage Bolt, what is the purpose of learning all this?" I asked. "How does the summoning actually work?"

"Right. I suppose walking through the procedure could help." she said.

She retrieved a ceramic ball.

"The summoning chamber is made to isolate the inside from the outside." she said. "The pool chills the outside of the outer chamber."

Then she twisted the ball to remove the top half and reveal a smaller ball inside.

"There is a pool of much colder liquid between the outer chamber and the inner chamber. The cold keeps heat from disrupting the ritual." she said.

"Wait." I said holding up my hand again. "The pool is cold? But the water is boiling."

"That's not water, young man." she said reproachfully. "That air is so cold it condenses into a liquid."

I stared at the pool wide-eyed. That was a liquid nitrogen oxygen mixture. No wonder it was so cold in here. She then set the lid aside and opened the next ball with a twist to reveal a third smaller ball. The model was like a set of nesting dolls.

"Air mages remove all air from the inner chamber. This is to keep sound from disrupting the ritual. Of course the stone keeps light from disrupting it."

Then she picked up the center ball.

"At this point the central chamber is still touching the bottom of the inner chamber." she said, gesturing to the large sphere in the center of the room. "When the ritual begins, earth mages will flood the central chamber with their power to briefly suspend it within the inner chamber. That is the moment when everyone focuses their will on bringing the worm into reality. It is like casting any other spell. If we all have a clear picture of it in our minds and our will is strong enough then it will appear in the central chamber."

My mind was racing trying to figure out what this all meant. That's a lot of work to isolate the central chamber. Two thick stone layers, the outer one is at something close to minus two hundred degrees Celsius, with the inner one apparently much colder. Perhaps they use another gas like helium or even hydrogen. That would put it close to absolute zero. Then there was pulling a vacuum and suspending the central chamber with earth magic. The whole setup tickled something in the back of my head but I couldn't place it.

I went back to memorizing the description of the death worm with the teenagers. It was perhaps twenty measures before there was a loud gong sound and we were all called to attention. The ritual was about to begin.