I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.
-Steven Pinker, psychologist
Seasons passed in the blink of an eye as our benign, peaceful life continued. The diverse colors of autumn surrounded us as a plethora of crops made their way to store baskets, and the first chilling winds of winter swept against us, eliciting shivers of discomfort as the biting cold invaded our thin-walled home. Smoke rose from fire-pits that occupied the yards of many homes.
The winter, though, left as quickly as it had arrived. It took its peaceful landscapes of pure, untouched white, its dangerous freezing temperatures, its mesmerizing icicles hanging from the roofs, its cold, dreary days, and its suffocating, paralyzing atmosphere and simply disappeared. The snow and frost melted away as the Spring sun greeted us once again. Flowers of every color blossomed in the vast open fields surrounding the town. Blue water flowed through freshly melted streams, and trees embraced the new warmth with fresh green leaves.
The warm embrace of the Sun gradually warped and transformed into a suffocating, vengeful chokehold on the land, its scorching heat beating down upon us day after day, hardly receding as night came to relieve us of its tyrannical rule.
Its grasp slowly, carefully lightened though, the exhausted trees losing hold on their fading leaves as they fell to the ground.
And thus, the cycle continued.
The days that had faded into weeks and months finally found themselves drifting and drowning in the ever-consuming sands of time. Countless moons passed through the star-spotted sky. Eight years passed like this, residents and explorers constantly passing in and out of the dusty border-town. Elly would now send me out to buy our food almost every day, giving me extra money to “take my time and do whatever I wanted” whenever Polemos was home, being sure to emphasize the “take my time” part. Given her strong concern toward my partial blindness, this was an uncharacteristic suggestion. I shrugged it off, though, supposing that she was just that madly in love. It was on one of these days that I thought it best to simply drop the groceries off at the door and go wandering off into the fields.
It was on these dim days in mid-Spring, just before a storm rolled in, that the flowers in the fields that surrounded our little town came to life with their vibrant beauty, a colorful light in the melancholy dimness. I wasn’t much one for flowers, but I enjoyed little more than admiring the beauty of this realm. Besides, it created a wonderful atmosphere for experimenting with my aura. I found myself to be much more productive when in a wide open space, and being outside of the city left me free of the need to oblige the mutterings of children who approached me… though I suppose they were the same age as me.
I found my favorite spot with great ease. Just over a small rock face, there stood steadfast a single tree, its leaves spreading widely into the open air above. This spot gave a view of the ocean of swelling waves of hills extending for miles around. Even if my accursed eyes did not let me appreciate their true beauty, simply being in the presence of the vast expanse was fulfilling and relaxing.
In my fervent experimentation, I had found that the aura was composed of nearly infinite tiny waves, each one at a different wavelength and affecting something else. This discovery let me find that which I did not understand before: while I was manipulating vast chunks of this aura indiscriminately, all that I could reliably change were the fundamental laws that affected every single one of those waves. Thanks to these eyes of mine, I could easily visualize single waves and amplify, change, or use them as I wished. This was the one sacrifice that helped me on my journey.
The great thing about the aura was that it was only a concentration of a reservoir of power that permeated everything. If I took a particularly high-frequency wave, compressed it, and multiplied its energy with power from around me, I could launch it forward and cause a massive dispersion of energy as heat in a small area, causing the rapid expansion and displacement of the gas around it - an explosion, in short.
My senses suddenly went completely white. A deafening deep crash shook the ground and shoved against my ears, and a bright white flash took away what little sight I had. Only when I felt ice-cold drops piercing into my sense of touch did I snap out of my shock-induced daze and realize that a storm had begun. More water slowly dripped down from the overfull clouds, and I stood up with urgency. Before the torrential downpour began, I wanted to escape to shelter - if Elly realized that I had soaked the beautiful monochrome dress she had… forced upon me, she would be devastated. Hastily, I slipped down to the cliff face and into a dark hole in the wall.
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I was left utterly blind as I stumbled down the cave, disoriented. The light had long since disappeared, and I hardly knew which way was up. Thoroughly lost already, I put my hand against a cold, damp stone wall and pressed onward, carefully feeling my way across the narrow, jagged floor.
Shortly, I saw pale light reflected against the gray stones of the cave. I ran zealously toward them, hopeful that I had just found my way to freedom.
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Fate wouldn’t have it.
As my steps grew faster, they immediately stopped. I didn’t come to a stop, of course, my feet just ceased to find solid ground.
The light that I had seen was from a pale blue disc below me. I fell faster, the frigid air stinging my neck whipping against my hair as it swung above me.
Soon, that blue circle began to grow, its luminescence multiplying as it did so. Its bright light enveloped me, and I shut and shielded my eyes from the bright light.
I rolled across the grass, spitting foul dirt from my mouth and coughing. My eyes still squinting against the powerful brightness, I shakily stood and brushed the dirt from my dress.
As I finally managed to open my eyes, I looked around agape, amazed by the scenery. Luminescent blue streams marked the landscape of deep blue grass and trees with pale purple trunks and bark that looked like dragon’s scales. Strange beasts of every size and hue with many different wing shapes drifted lazily along the natural stone walls that seemed to stretch on forever. Islands of rock floated lazily in the air, and the streams of blue ended in inverted waterfalls that seemed to disperse into nothingness before their hopeful streams managed to reach into the darkness that lay… above? Below? I actually couldn’t tell which way was up.
Once the awe of the shocking change in scenery had worn off, I realized that I was hardly breathing. I had to force the air in and out of my lungs, my limbs felt too heavy to move, walking was agonizingly slow, and even turning my head felt like trying to unscrew a rusty nut.
This was exactly what it felt like when I had overused magic before. Near-total immobility and slow, one-track thinking restricted what I could do. I felt as if a ten-ton weight was crushing down on my body.
I trudged towards one of the bright riverbanks, dropping to my knees and bringing my hands into the water. Its rejuvenating flow brought life back into my eyes and let my hands move once more. ‘I had expected the water to help me replenish my motor functions, but this is… unexpected.’ I remarked to myself.
I focused on my aura and found the reason for this immediately. What I had consumed was not ordinary water, but water so inundated with magical energy that it might as well be the liquid form of magic. Excited by this discovery and its incredible amplifying effect on my aura, I decided to follow the water upstream and see where it originated, and what the source of its power was.
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The walk was not long. This place seemed to be quite confined, which made the dense energy all the more stifling. As I walked along the bank, the luminescence of my aura seemed to grow boundlessly, though it lost its color as it did. Finally reaching the source, I found it to be a spring. Hot water and energy infused with each other as they rose from the depths of the planet, springing up and vaporizing, dispersing the power into the air.
I felt a paralyzing, cold shiver creeping up my spine as an aggressive low growl met with my ears. I whipped around, preparing to launch a conflagrating mass of energy at the beast. As it rapidly gathered in my hand, though, I felt a burning yet freezing sensation. The agony that fought its way through my body originated in my now-ruptured shoulder, in which there was a long, jagged spike. Its color was pure, soulless black, much alike the skin of the beast that now circled me, as if judging what way was best to kill me.
Suddenly, I felt nothing. That same icy feeling that I was all too familiar with slipped back into my body as sneering, ‘you could never escape!’
My blurred sight seemed to vaporize, overpowered by the pure black that now surrounded me.
That same solitude once again overcame me. The pain that had invaded my body and stopped my mind was real. The body that my mind found itself trapped within was not some puppet I was relegated to controlling. My soul had been wasting away in a corner of my mind, an unfeeling spectator to a life that I was, by all accounts, taking for granted.
There were no more second chances, I had already been granted one of those too great to measure. If I continued on in this unconscious state, toying around with the world and not taking it seriously, I would very quickly find myself without a place.
The world had not abandoned me. I had abandoned it.
My life spent unliving ended this very moment, as the black veil upon my world curled back. My pain was numbed no longer, but I did not mind. If I still felt that burning agony, I still had a chance. I had died once already, and this didn’t feel anything like that.
I was free, and I was myself. The vessel for my soul mattered not, I was bound to this desperate struggle to survive the moment I was created.
As I snapped back out of the dark depths of my own mind, I found myself just a few feet away from a snarling, furious black quadruped, its features indiscernible on its pure black body. It took immense focus to bring my mind away from the pain that clawed at the back of my mind, but as I did, I gathered magical power in my hand. The water of the river ran dry as the energy bonded to it gathered over my hand. With furious vigor, I concentrated it all into a single point of pure black energy and threw it into the ground below the beast.
Within an instant, it was over. The extreme instantaneous gravitational force went far beyond flattening my enemy and completely obliterated it, tearing apart its constituent matter into rubble.
My hands shook, and I collapsed to my knees, my chest rising and falling with ragged, tired, yet terrified breaths. My exhaustion after using such an intense, taxing spell compounded with the painfully cold feeling spreading outward from my pierced shoulder to nearly completely immobilize. It took every ounce of willpower in my body to drag myself to the river.
I arrived at the edge of the water that flowed along apathetically, and gripped the spine that had embedded itself in my flesh. My clammy, sweating palm grabbed the base of the sharp implement, tearing it out as if ripping off a bandage. Hurriedly, I removed the torn and bloodied garment that covered me, dipping into the crystal-clear water to hopefully clean out the stab wound.
As soon as I slipped into that stream, though, the blood ceased to flow from my terrifying wound. Water seemed to change course toward my injury, and I immediately saw my pale skin regain its color… somewhat. It took on an almost otherworldly gray hue. I felt as if I looked undead, though this color was obviously different from the deathly white color it had taken on just seconds earlier.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be bad to spend a few more days down here. I had a lot to learn.