Tyrial looked up from his book of applied physics. It may not have been his favorite book, but when you could directly manipulate the very elemental particles of the universe, such books took on new meaning. His favorite part of all was direct experimentation. He had just finished reading about how photons of light were emitted from excited matter. He’d used this trick before, but had not fully understood how it worked. Now perhaps with a better understanding, he could do more than just make sparkly lights. Drawing in his Will he concentrated on a small sphere of air in front of him. He excited the particles there in a particular pattern at particular energy levels. The image wavered and fluoresced, and as he concentrated harder, began to take form as a small two-dimensional rose hanging in mid-air.
— No, he thought, this isn’t right. This isn't now. —
He was quite pleased with himself. He’d never been able to make an image so accurate before. As he sat admiring his handy work, his mother walked over.
“You shouldn’t be playing with that,” his mother said sternly.
“I’m not playing,” Tyrial replied, “I’m practicing, as Father said I should.”
His mother chuckled, smiling she said, “Fine then, if you're going to ‘practice’ at least make me a bouquet.”
“I’m not sure I can manage that yet, Mother, but I can go get you a bouquet of real ones,” said Tyrial. He rather liked flowers, and plants in general. He was always fascinated by the simple processes by which flowers and plants managed to sprout from seeds. How they managed to create such spectacular combinations of colors and shapes. They seemed so simple yet even the most talented of Mages could not replicate their feats.
“No dear, Father will be back soon and dinner’s almost ready. Why don’t you get washed up.” his mother said.
Letting his illusion flicker and fade, Tyrial stood and grabbed his book. “I’ll get you some flowers after dinner then,” said Tyrial. He very much liked making his mother smile, perhaps because it was so easy to do. He often thought that given their current situation, there would be no joy at all in their lives if not for her. His father was something of a pessimist. He would have called himself pragmatic, but for some reason, his pragmatism always sounded like bad news to Tyrial.
— Wake up, this is a dream, thought Tyrial. —
Tyrial walked back to the bookshelf at the rear of the small living space, placing the book he was reading amongst a small collection of other similar volumes. This small room served as a living room, dining room, and kitchen for their small family. Tyrial didn't mind the cramped quarters though; it was infinitely better than living on the streets, which they had done off and on over the last sixteen years of Tyrial’s short life.
Heading down the hallway away from the front of the house, there were four doors. His parent’s room, the bathroom, his room, and a back door leading outside. He still couldn’t believe they had managed to secure a single-family apartment, no matter how small. Having an entire bedroom to himself was not a luxury he had known often over the years. Opening the bathroom door he walked up to the cracked mirror and chipped sink. Turning on the water, he began washing his face and hands.
Looking into the mirror, he examined his face closely but there was still not so much as a whisker. He sighed, so far as he could tell he hadn’t aged a single day since he hit puberty at ten years old. His father said he would begin to show signs of aging soon. Looking like a ten-year-old when you were sixteen, however, was most definitely not something Tyrial would place in the benefits column of being a Mage. He would be glad when he could grow a respectable mustache like his father. Maybe people would be more likely to take him seriously.
As it was now, everyone took him for a little kid. He couldn’t tell them he was a Mage, or that he was actually sixteen years old. He finished washing his hands and face and turned off the water. Still looking at his youthful face, he shook his head. There weren't any good options so far as he could see. Either be branded and herded around like cattle by the Conclave; be feared and hated by every normal human you passed; or as they were doing, live in secrecy pretending to be normal humans themselves.
— No please, Tyrial thought, I can’t go through this again. —
Wiping his hands and face on a towel, he gave the treacherous mirror no further consideration and headed back to the living room. While he and his father were Mages, his mother was a normal human. She could have left them at any time and gone back to something resembling normalcy. The Conclave had no interest in her, only him - an unregistered illegal mage, and his father - a renegade Conclave Mage. His father never went into too much detail on how he had escaped from the Conclave’s grasp. Tyrial knew it had involved a great deal of money and a large scar on his father's forearm, but no more than that.
No, his mother could have left them, but she hadn’t. Love would make you do strange things, it seemed. Sitting down in one of the few comfortable chairs in the room, Tyrial watched his mother make dinner. She was tall, almost as tall as his father. Tyrial hoped he would be at least as tall as her someday, being a one hundred and twenty centimeter tall shrimp at his age was more than galling. Just chalk it up to one more thing he couldn’t change. His father always said you should do your best to accept the things you couldn’t change. There was more to that saying but Tyrial didn’t remember it at the time.
Thinking of his father, Tyrial looked at the clock on the far wall. His father should have been back by now. He worked at the shipyards down at the industrial complex. Not a prestigious job, especially for a Mage, but it paid the bills. There were very few options for illegal Mages, never mind a renegade Conclave Mage. At least with his father's job they could afford to live in something with four walls and a roof again.
— Wake up, you have to wake up, thought Tyrial. Wake up now! —
As Tyrial sat in the chair watching his mother, he felt something. He didn't feel it with his skin, but with his mind. It felt strange and was accompanied by a strange noise, almost like rushing wind. He could feel it, hear it, but he knew it wasn’t there. Sitting forward, something nagged at the back of his mind, something urgent.
Suddenly Tyrial heard the sound of the back door being thrown open and then slammed shut. A few seconds later his father bounded into the living room from the hallway. Tyrial remembered what this feeling meant now, it was the feeling of a Mage using his Will.
“We have to leave now, quickly. Grab the Go-Bag and Tyrial and run,” he said to his wife, pointing at the Go-Bag that was always kept packed by the front door.
Tyrial had never seen him look so wild. In all the times they had run before the searching eyes of the Conclave, his father had always kept his calm. Now, however, he looked like a man on the edge of panic.
— Wake up! Wake Up! Wake up! Tyrial screamed in his head. —
Everything started to slow down as if time itself began to stretch. In slow motion, Tyrial bolted out of his chair. His mother dropped the pan she was holding and moved towards the door and the Go-Bag next to it. His father began to point towards the back door, but before he could begin to speak, the front door burst open in a shower of wooden splinters. His mother, who had been almost directly in front of the door by that time, was peppered with slivers of wood as she was thrown backward.
— Noooooooo! Tyrial’s thoughts rang in his head like a gong. —
He began reaching out his hand towards his slowly falling mother. He knew he couldn't reach her in time. His outstretched hand would be as ineffective as all of their careful preparations had been. In the open doorway once occupied by the now shattered door stood two Conclave Mages. Tyrial stretched out his hand for his mother, knowing he would never reach her, never touch her again. His father, an expression of twisted rage and agony on his face, began moving for the door and the two Mages within. Tyrial reached out his hand for his mother and screamed in his head.
He screamed in his head and with all of his might he ripped the dream away. He overwhelmed the fear, driving his nightmare with anger and rage. He boiled it away into darkness with hatred and loathing. He would kill the Conclave for what they had done to his mother, his father, to them all. His rage demanded an outlet, still asleep he prepared to gather his Will. Pushing through the veil of sleep that held his powers at bay he reached for it. He gathered his rage, mounting it to a fever pitch and prepared to lay waste to the Conclave in his dream.
Someone was holding his hand. With a start, he realized he could feel a small warm hand holding his. The surprise dispelled both his collected rage and his sleep. Slowly he opened his eyes. Above him were the dimly lit durasteel tiles of a starship’s ceiling. To his left, an unremarkable wall. To his right, sat the small Zyrtha girl he had briefly seen on the bridge. She was the one holding his hand. As his eyes fell on hers, she smiled.
“I’m glad you're awake; it seemed like you were having a bad dream,” she said.
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Tyrial was too surprised to reply. He tried to gather his thoughts. Most of them, at any rate. He tried hard to forget the nightmare, as he did every time he had it. He was just thankful that he had snapped out of it when he did. “It’s dangerous being too close to me when I’m asleep,” was all he could eventually manage to say.
“I’ll be careful,” she said lightly, still smiling, and also still holding his hand.
Tyrial didn't think she was taking the danger seriously enough, he shook his head, and then immediately regretted it. With a groan, he remembered his last waking moments. He had overdrawn his Will, and not by an inconsiderable amount.
“Don’t move too much,” the girl said. “Liam said you were lucky to survive at all. Here, drink this.” Removing her hand from his, she picked up a small cup from a nightstand and held it out to him.
Tyrial eyed the contents for a moment; ship doctors would sometimes prescribe some very strange chemicals as medicine. He wasn’t sure he wanted to take a chance on whatever this ship’s backwoods healer had decided to concoct. He was on the verge of refusing when the girl spoke.
“It’s just some mild tea with a little liquid Invarafon in it; I promise it’ll help the pain,” she said.
A good old, reasonably common, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory pain reliever then. He took the cup hesitantly and looked at the contents, a quick sniff confirmed the contents smelled like tea at least. He decided if they’d wanted to poison him they'd had plenty of opportunities. Trying not to make the little hammers in his skull pound any harder, he drank the liquid. The combination of mild caffeine and Invarafon began to take the edge off his headache almost immediately. Finishing the contents of the cup, Tyrial laid it on his chest, loosely holding it with both hands. Laying back he closed his eyes, letting the medication do its work.
As he lay there feeling his headache subside, he experimentally reached out and gathered a small amount of his Will. It came to him grudgingly, but it came nonetheless. Using that small amount, he created a small gravity pocket just above the cup. He opened his eyes and released the cup. It wafted up into the pocket of gravity and hung there, in much the same way that teacups don't.
Putting a hand lightly on his arm, the girl said, “You should take it easy, you’ll make your headache worse.”
Releasing his Will, Tyrial let the cup fall back into his hands. She wasn’t wrong, the strain of using even such a small amount of Will as he had was threatening to bring his headache roaring back. Relaxing into the bed, Tyrial was just grateful he still had his powers. When you over-extended yourself as he had, one of three things usually happened. Somewhere around sixty percent of the time, you would die. Either immediately or in great pain over the course of a few days. Another twenty percent would live but be mostly or completely burned out. The very lucky, the last twenty percent, would also live, but with their powers fully intact. In many cases slightly or substantially stronger than before.
He wouldn’t know for certain which of those last two percentiles he was in for another day or so. If the most he could ever do again was levitate a teacup he wasn’t quite sure what he would do with his life. All of his plans for making the Conclave pay revolved around his powers. Not that this was the first time he had been in this situation. Twice before he had overdrawn his powers, both times being fortunate enough to land in that last twenty percent. The odds were most definitely not with him after so many close calls.
Her hand still on his arm, she leaned over and said, “Don't worry about it for now, I’m sure you’ll fully recover.” She smiled at him reassuringly.
If Tyrial didn’t know better, he would think she was reading his mind. Zyrtha did have some talents in that direction if he remembered his xenobiology books. From what he remembered though, they were not supposed to be able to read anything from a Mage. He shifted uncomfortably on the bed, staring at the ceiling plates. Her close proximity was starting to make him a little uncomfortable. Not that she wasn’t good looking. Zyrtha looked strikingly like humans, the only major differences being their less than average height and their long pointed ears. Still, though, he had never been good with women, or with any other sentient beings, for that matter.
The girl removed her hand and sat back in her chair. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable,” she said.
Tyrial could only muster up a grunt for a reply. From the corner of his eye, Tyrial could see she was still smiling. He wondered if she ever stopped smiling. Trying to keep his mind from amusing itself, he thought back to see if he could manage to remember the girl's name. He was fairly certain the captain had spoken it on the bridge.
The girl was silent for a minute, just looking at him. Finally, she asked, “Did you want to talk about it?”
Tyrial wasn’t entirely certain which ‘it’ she was referring to, but whichever one it was, the answer was the same. “Not really,” he replied. It wasn’t that he disliked her in particular, but the things in his past were buried for a reason. He didn’t feel comfortable getting out the shovel for someone he had just met. For that matter, he wasn’t certain he’d want to talk about that stuff even with a close friend. Tyrial supposed he’d have to get one of those first though, to know for certain.
After looking at him for a few more seconds, the girl stood up and returned her chair to the desk on the far wall. Returning to the bed, she said, “I’ll let you get some rest. There is a bathroom with a shower through the door at the foot of your bed. I’ll bring some food by in a few minutes for you. If you’d like to get out of your room a little later, I’d be happy to show you around the ship and introduce you to everyone.”
Tyrial tried to process all of that. One of the things she said struck him though. “You said ‘my’ room? I have my own room?” he asked.
“Mhm,” she replied. “You’re part of the crew now, so you get a room. Speaking of that, the PA on the desk is also yours. All of the crew's com-links are in it already. If you need anything, don't hesitate to contact me, my name is—”
“Rella,” Tyrial unintentionally interrupted. With all the recent shocks, the memories of that day on the bridge suddenly came back to him.
Her smile got a little bigger, if that was possible. “If you need anything, just call,” she said.
As she walked towards the door, Tyrial worked up his courage and said, “Thank you.” Tyrial felt the words were inadequate. Rescuing him from that nightmare was worth a lot more than that. But he didn’t know what else to say. His thoughts were still tangled and her incessant kindness was making him uncomfortable again. He wasn’t used to someone being nice to him without wanting something in return.
Turning back slightly, she smiled sweetly and said, “You’re welcome.” Walking to the door, she opened it and left. Tyrial watched her as she left, the image not helping him in his quest to keep his mind out of the gutter. For some reason, her kindness still seemed too good to be true. But Tyrial wasn’t certain if that was his intuition talking or years of dealing with people who could only afford to take care of themselves.
Once he was alone, Tyrial was left with a brain full of mush. Maybe some of that was the remnants of his headache talking. Now that he could think a little more clearly though, he was fairly certain most of that mush came from the constant smiles directed his way from Rella. Maybe she just treated everyone that way. It had been many years since he had last been with a woman, and even longer since he’d been with one that had shown him any genuine affection. But then, there was a good reason for that.
The thought of what might have happened to her if he hadn’t woken up when he did sobered him up very quickly. Maybe he would have been too weak to have done any damage but memories of crushed nightstands and broken beds came back to him, along with worse things just at the edges of remembrance. The damage was usually fairly localized, but anyone lying or sitting next to him would likely not have a fun time. He gave the largest sigh yet and decided to put the cute Zyrtha girl out of his mind for now. There was a private bathroom to investigate, assuming he could manage to drag his sorry ass out of bed.
Placing the teacup back on the nightstand next to him, he pulled off his covers. For the first time since he woke up, he realized he was not wearing anything underneath those covers. Pausing for a moment, he wondered how he had gotten that way and who had accomplished it. He decided it would be best if he left those questions unanswered for now. Swinging his legs over the side, he stood up. Or at least he would have, if his legs had obeyed his commands. Instead, he nearly collapsed to the floor with a quick hand gripping the bed being the only thing keeping him upright.
It was bad enough his legs had betrayed him, but apparently his head was giving serious thoughts to rebellion as well; his headache becoming slightly worse as he tried to stand. After a minute of arguing with his body about what he was or was not going to be doing in the next five minutes, he finally got his extremities under control. Even his head appeared to be giving up the fight and began to clear a bit. Stumbling only slightly, he made his way to the bathroom door and opened it.
Inside the bathroom was another surprise almost as shocking as the chair at his station on the bridge had been. Not only did he have a personal bathroom, but it held a self-contained recycling liquid shower unit. These things were not cheap, either to purchase or to maintain. However, if you wanted an actual shower with real non-stop running water on any starship smaller than a colony ship, it was the only option that Tyrial knew of. Stepping in and turning on the warm water, he almost completely forgot about all the hardships over the last few days. It had been years since he last had a chance to immerse himself in real running water. Months since he had a chance to use a shower of any kind.
After spending long enough in the shower to turn his fingers pruny, he decided to give his face a shave while he was at it. That done, he got out and dried off. He realized his headache was almost completely gone, but unfortunately, exhaustion and hunger were quickly starting to replace it. Stepping out of the bathroom with a towel around himself, he found Rella had been true to her word. On his desk— he still couldn’t believe this room was his —was a platter of what smelled like fresh, hot food. Pulling off the top to the tray, he looked at the food piled on it and got his fourth shock since boarding this ship. Several slices of soft crusty bread, a large cup of some kind of juice, a few thick slices of meat with gravy, and a bowl of thick stew with meat and vegetables greeted him. He had never known a meal this good to be served to anyone but a captain on board a capital ship, and rarely even then.
Sitting down to the feast, he dug in like a man half-starved. Before he realized it he was mopping up the last of the stew’s gravy with the last corner of bread, the fruit juice long since drained. He thought he could probably have polished off the same meal twice over, but now that his belly wasn't empty, his exhaustion was finally starting to get the better of him.
Staring at the blank walls around him he thought he would like to have worked up the courage to take Rella up on her tour offer. Unfortunately, he thought it might have been considered rude to fall asleep halfway through it. He decided he would get some rest first, then talk himself into giving the girl a call. He was still somewhat suspicious of her motives; in his experience, no one was nice to him just for the sake of being nice. That said, a genuinely nice person wouldn’t be the first oddity he’d found on this ship. And he knew his hard-earned paranoia was probably tainting his perception. As he crawled into his bed and pulled the covers over himself, he began debating with himself on whether he should give this crew the benefit of the doubt or not. That was hard for him to do given his past and his pragmatic nature.
While still debating the pros and cons of ignoring his paranoia, he drifted off to a dreamless sleep.