[Akashic System integration complete.]
[Core boot complete.]
[Welcome, new Core.]
[Status]
[Name: Zack]
[Core type: Unassigned (Please choose an assignment)]
[Level: 1]
[Integrity: 100%]
[Mana: 15/30]
Zack stared blankly at the strange message. None of that made any sense to him, so he decided not to pay attention to it. He instead tried to take stock of himself. He knew he’d been asleep for a long time, but he didn’t know how long or why. None of that mattered, though.
He really wanted to get up and stretch his legs. And yet, he couldn’t stand up. He didn’t even twitch. He simply lay in place, perfectly motionless.
Okay, that’s a little weird. Am I paralyzed?
Zack tried to move his head and… Nope, still nothing. As he gave it some thought, he realized that he couldn’t see anything, either. He knew he was awake, but his body… It refused to move.
Okay, time to panic.
Zack tried to scream, but found that he couldn’t. He had no mouth and couldn’t scream!
There was something warm pressing against him. He could feel the rise and fall of breath, the thumping of a heartbeat, and could hear the loud but all too familiar snoring of his roommate. Alex was nearby.
No, closer than nearby. Alex was right on top of him!
“Dude, get off me!” Zack shouted. Or, at least, tried to shout. Despite his best efforts, no actual sound was produced. “Holy crap, dude, you weigh like a million pounds!”
The weight eased off him, and Zack let out a mental cry of alarm as he was tossed into the air, before something snagged along his body and he tumbled back to Earth. He bounced against something soft, but continued feeling the rise and fall of his friend’s breath. Zack was about to berate Alex for sleeping on top of him, when he realized that he was once again able to see. What he saw took his breath away.
The world was tinted in blues and greens, distorted as though the light were bent through misshapen glass. In one direction, Zack saw the infinite expanse of Alex’s stomach, his legs off in the distance. In the other direction, Alex’s mouth hung open as he snored loudly, his head hanging off at an awkward angle.
“Your neck is going to be sore in the morning, dude,” Zack chuckled. He could hear his own words, but much like everything else it was distorted, like it was vibrating through glass.
That was when Zack finally took himself in.
He was a rock, maybe three inches long and two inches wide, made of some blue-green crystal. Zack calmly took a moment to realize that he was distinctly aware of himself, despite being so small and literally a rock. He took another moment to realize that being a rock didn’t surprise him. That message about core integration and Akashic Systems itched in his mind, and he shoved it aside again.
“Okay, think, think,” Zack muttered. “The last thing I remember was going to work at MallMart with Alex. We were walking from our apartment, same as we always do, and then…”
Boom. Explosions, bright blue fire, and a distinct, agonizing pain. Next thing he knew, he woke up on his roommate’s chest, and he was a rock.
It didn’t make any sense, but at least it was a start.
“First things first; food.” He’d been asleep for who knows how long, and though he didn’t feel hungry, he knew he should probably get something to snack on.
The problem was, he was a rock. What did rocks eat?
As he gave it some thought, he kept dodging the notion that rocks didn’t eat anything, they’re rocks. It didn’t feel right to him. He was awake and conscious, so there should be something he could eat, right?
Then he felt it, the faint hum of something he could consume, right underneath him. It was faint, but it was there. When he turned his attention down to it, he could see a swirl of bluish energy just within Alex’s chest. As he stared at it, words flashed before his eyes again.
[Name: Alexander Hale]
[Species: Human]
[Level: 3]
[Health: 85/100]
[Mana: 12/12]
[Stamina: 50/100]
[Would you like to see a more detailed statistic breakdown? Yes or no?]
“Um. No.” As if on command, the floating words vanished, and Zack was left staring once more at the swirling color within his friend’s chest.
He wasn’t sure how he touched it, having no hands of any kind, but the moment his will came into contact with the energy, it was sucked into him.
And it felt good.
“What is this stuff?” Zack murmured, slurping on the sweet nectar.
[Definition request: Mana]
[An aspect of the power of creation. Mana is magical energy in a tempered state, usable by living beings. The more mana a person has access to, the greater magical ability they possess.]
Zack shook his non-existent head and brought himself back to focus, the sudden rush of knowing things leaving him dizzy. He could feel the mana inside his crystal body, a vast quantity more than any that Alex had. A similar energy hung in the air, thin compared to the mana inside Alex but still consumable. It wasn’t mana, though. It was similar, but also different?
[Definition request: Aether]
[An aspect of the power of creation. Aether is magical energy in an untempered state and must be tempered by a core before it can be used.]
Brushing aside the words, Zack realized that even if he could move, he wouldn’t get very far. He appeared to be tied around Alex’s neck by a thin strand of string. The momentary indignity of it was quickly washed away as he realized this was a perfect opportunity to try this power of creation.
He didn’t need something too extreme, but it would be nice to have a pair of legs. And maybe arms, too. Had he a nose, Zack would have snorted as those thoughts unintentionally formed an absurd mental image of himself as a rock with a wildly out of place pair of over muscled arms and legs attached to his facets. Not trusting himself to be mature enough to not try that, he decided to forgo modifying himself and instead create something separate. All he needed was something that could move on its own. Something to cut the string away and free him from being relegated to a piece of jewelry around Alex’s neck.
How about a rabbit?
“Oh, yeah, that’ll work,” Zack chuckled. A rabbit could chew away the string and carry him around. It wasn’t the same as having a full fledged body, but it was good enough start. Plus, rabbits were cute.
Zack concentrated on the abundance of mana within himself, and was startled by what he found. He instinctively understood that his mana pool was above his baseline amount, but overextending would be a really bad idea. As in put him back to sleep bad idea. He glanced down at Alex’s magic again. Surely his friend wouldn’t miss a few more drops of the stuff?
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Zack greedily gulped up the remaining drops of Alex’s mana, and then sucked up what he could of the aether in the air. It didn’t fill up his reserves nearly as much as he would have liked, but it still gave him more to work with. Satisfied, he grabbed his mana and got to work.
The shape of the rabbit was easy. He could picture it so clearly in his mind, like a three-dimensional object in modeling software. It was unexpectedly easy to solidify the mental framework of a 3D rendering program in his mind to direct the process. He started with a cube, and extruded bits and pieces of it, adding vertices and edges until it started to resemble the shape he had in mind. Then he gave it fur, two beady little eyes, a pair of bucked teeth to chew through string and—just because it felt right—a cute little horn in between its ears.
When Zack was done, there was a bunny sitting beside Alex in the bed. It had snow white fur, black eyes, and a twitchy nose. It didn’t move or act of its own accord but seemed indistinguishable from any normal rabbit, save for the horn on its head.
“Rabbit, cut me free,” Zack commanded.
The bunny leapt into action, pouncing on Alex’s chest and started nibbling at the string. It fell away easy enough, the cheap twine barely holding itself together.
“Rabbit, pick me up.”
The rabbit did as it was told, carefully plucking Zack off Alex’s chest with its teeth. Despite the sharp bucked teeth surrounding him, Zack felt no danger from the critter. It was entirely under his control, and wouldn’t do anything he didn’t want.
“Okay, bunny, let’s go explore!”
The bunny leapt off Alex’s chest, thumping the sleeping man as it did. The sudden shock of it was enough to rouse him from his slumber.
Alex rubbed his eyes sleepily, frowning in alarm at the creature on his bedroom floor. “Crap,” Alex swore, patting his chest as he noticed the crystal dangling from the rabbit’s mouth. “Give that back, you little rodent!”
Alex rolled off the bed and lunged for the rabbit. Zack, in a moment of panic, envisioned the rabbit jumping to the side to dodge his friend’s grasp. The bunny obeyed the mental command, leaping away from Alex’s grasp and giving him a kick to the face for good measure.
“Hey! I didn’t command that,” Zack said to the rabbit, as Alex reeled back from the blow. “Sorry, dude, I’m still getting the hang of all this.”
Alex, still momentarily stunned by the kick, didn’t even seem to register Zack’s words. Could he even hear Zack? Could stones even talk? “Alright, you little shit,” Alex growled, grabbing something leaning against his bedside table. “I don’t know how you got into my apartment, but I’m not in the mood for this!”
“Dude, holy crap, is that a sword!?” Zack blurted, as Alex extracted a three-foot-long length of steel from a leather scabbard. The weapon gleamed in the low light of the bedroom. “Why do you have a sword!?”
Alex hesitated for a moment, his eyes flicking about the room as though searching for something, before lunging towards the rabbit with the weapon. Zack, in fear for his life, commanded the rabbit to dodge. Alex swung the weapon down in a low arc, stopping just short of digging his blade into the floor of his bedroom.
“DUDE!” Zack shouted, desperate to get his friend’s attention. “Could you cut the Kill Bill act for five seconds!?”
Alex leapt in surprise again, looking around in confusion as the bunny landed by the foot of his bed. He locked eyes with the animal, staring at the blue-green crystal.
“Give that back,” Alex ordered the animal, pointing his weapon at it.
It was obvious that shouting at Alex wasn’t getting him to calm now. As Zack gave it some thought, he realized that he didn’t actually know how he was talking at all. He was a rock. How was he speaking?
I have no mouth but I must scream. How do I scream?
Just like his questions about mana, the moment Zack asked the question, the knowledge was there for him to take. The concept was so simple, he would have slapped himself across the face had he hands or a face to slap. All he had to do was run a little bit of mana through his crystalline surface to vibrate it at the necessary frequencies, and…
“Oh my god, Alex, could you just chill?”
Alex blinked. It had been so quiet it barely picked up on it, but he swore he heard a voice. “W-what?
“Seriously, take a breather, would you?”
Alex looked around frantically, before his eyes locked on Zack’s crystalline body. “Z-Zack?”
“Hey dude.”
Alex’s sword slipped from his fingers, and he barely leapt to the side to avoid it stabbing his foot. “No, that’s not—Zack’s dead. Zack’s been dead for five years!”
“What are you talking about? I’m right here!”
Alex swayed on his feet, before falling backward. He swore as he banged his head on the bedroom wall, rubbing at his sore scalp to ease the pain.
Worried for his friend, Zack willed the rabbit forward. The bunny approached Alex, watching him cautiously in case he lunged to attack or grab it again. When it became clear that Alex was too shocked to move, the bunny carefully set Zack on the ground in front of him.
“Are you a freaking bunny?” Alex asked, after a moment of heavy breathing.
“Um, no. I’m a rock, in case you hadn’t noticed?”
Alex’s gaze flicked from Zack, to the rabbit, and back again. Tentatively, Alex leaned down and turned his head partially to the side in hopes of hearing Zach better.
“Heeeey buddy,” Zack said. “How’s it going?”
"It's kind of hard to hear you,” Alex admitted.
Zack considered that. As far as he could tell, his voice was about as loud as Alex’s, maybe a bit quieter? How am I hearing, anyway? I have no ears, but I must hear.
“Zack, you still in there? This is real?” Alex asked.
The rabbit twitched as its ears picked up the words. Zack felt Alex’s voice hit his crystalline surface and vibrate the threads of mana within, in almost the same way Zack vibrated them to speak.
He could have slapped himself again. The rabbit was smaller than a human and had more sensitive hearing. Zack must have tuned his voice to the rabbit without realizing it, rather than to human ears.
"Is this better? How about now?" Zack asked, experimenting with vibrations in his surface.
Alex cried out in pain and clapped his hands over his ears, reeling back from the sudden volume.
“Whoops, sorry! Lemme try that again,” Zack said, again lowering his volume. It sounded like Zack's voice was being tuned up and down like an old transistor radio. “How’s this?” He asked, squeaking like a chipmunk.
“No,” Alex blurted.
“Dang it,” Zack grumbled, trying again. “Now?”
"There! Stop, that's good!" Alex called out before Zack changed his voice again.
"Oh good, sorry about that." Zack apologized. "I’m still figuring this stuff out.”
Alex stared at Zack in bewildered silence for a moment, before slapping himself across the face and pinching his upper arm. Both times he winced.
“You, uh, good?” Zack asked.
“Fine, I’m just… This is so freaking weird,” Alex admitted. Carefully, he reached out to pluck Zack off the floor, only to receive a sharp bite from the bunny for his troubles. “Dude, what the hell!?” He slapped the bunny to knock it away.
“Sorry! I haven’t quite got the hang of this. I think it’s confusing my previous orders and is… Protecting me, or something?” Zack said quickly.
Before the bunny had a chance to recover, Alex snatched Zack off the floor and scrambled back to his feet. The bunny let out a furious hiss and darted towards him, only to receive a kick to the head for its trouble.
“Call it off!” Alex demanded as the bunny lowered its head, priming its horn to impale Alex’s knee. He hopped to dodge, stepping around the rabid rabbit in an attempt to avoid its deadly weapon. Only then did it occur to Alex that the otherwise normal-looking rabbit had an inexplicable horn jutting out of its head. “Why does it have a horn!?”
“I dunno, the horn just felt right,” Zack admitted. Had he shoulders, he would have shrugged.
“DUDE!”
“Sorry, sorry. Right, right. Ahem." Zack paused for an instant before speaking with an imperious tone of authority to the bunny. "I command you to cease any and all hostilities.”
The rabbit abruptly stopped mid-charge and lowered its haunches to the ground. It stared up at Zack and Alex expectantly, as though waiting for further orders.
Alex took several deep breaths, waiting to see what the furious demon bunny from hell might try to do. He scrambled to pick up his weapon, holding it in a loose, clumsy grip.
“Dude, you can relax. It’s not going to hurt you,” Zack chuckled.
Alex jumped in surprise again, and stared down at the blue-green rock still clutched in his fingers.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Zack laughed.
Alex’s gaze flicked nervously to the bunny, and he slowly slipped out of the bedroom. The bunny flicked its ears and made to follow him out, practically nipping at his heels. Watching the rabbit nervously, he plopped himself on the sofa. The old cushions buckled beneath his weight, and he adjusted his posture for a moment before setting the crystal down on the coffee table. The rabbit leapt onto the table and sat protectively behind the rock, like a bodyguard protecting precious cargo.
Zack and Alex sat in an awkward silence for a full minute before either of them saw fit to speak again.
“So, how about them Blue Jays, they win anything this season?” Zack asked, only half-jokingly.
“Holy crap, it really is you,” Alex breathed, shaking his head in awe. Now that he wasn't under attack from a wild monster—albeit one that looked more at home at a petting zoo than on a rampage—he was finally able to really process the situation. “You’re… You’re Zack, you’re alive.”
“You sound surprised.”
Alex blanched. “You don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
“The Boom?”
“What’s the Boom?”
No sooner did the question leave Zack’s surface did the answer seem to manifest in his mind. This time, instead of a wall of text, it was a memory. Bright blue explosions and searing pain. Zack felt like every inch of his body was on fire. The next thing he knew, he was screaming.
“Zack? Zack, are you okay!?” Alex asked, worry in his voice.
And just like that, Zack was back in his body—his crystal core. “I remember the Boom,” he said quietly. “I was in it, one of the explosions…”
Alex’s jaw tightened and he nodded. “Magic burst from the planet in a destructive force. Exploding out of the earth and washing the planet in mana and aether. I watched you burn away in one of the fires.”
“But I didn’t burn away, I turned into…” Zack started.
“Everyone that got caught in those aetheric fires…” Alex looked away. “All that was left of you was a small crystal.”
Zack sat in silence on the coffee table for a few. “It feels like that happened yesterday,” he admitted.
“It wasn’t.”
“Five years… I lost five years… What about my life, my family? What happened to them.”
Alex shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re legally dead.”
“What?”
“I mean, you were gone. All that was left of you was a rock. There wasn’t a body to bury. Your parents didn’t even want you, because your crystal brought back painful memories. You, and everyone else like you, were declared dead.”
“Did they at least build a monument to us?”
“Dude, seriously?”
“I’m only half joking,” Zack chuckled. “Seriously, it would be cool to see my name on a monument.”
Alex shook his head in exasperation and leaned back in the sofa. “You know, when I wished you were here, this isn’t quite what I had in mind.”
“Aw, you missed me, that’s so cute,” Zack teased, laughing at his own joke.
Alex didn’t laugh. “I did miss you,” he said. “I had to go through the last five years thinking you were dead. Do you know the kind of shit I’ve had to put up with?”
Zack sat silently for a moment, thinking about it, and choosing his words carefully. A scene replayed in his head like a dream, of a woman wreathed in violet light firing a bolt of purple mana at Alex. Zack hadn’t thought of it at the time, he thought he was dreaming, and he’d simply drank the mana up. The energy was still there, in his pool of power. All he had to do was reach out and touch it.
“So, magic is real, and I’m a rock.”