Traveling from northern Canada to the Falkland Isles, a British territory in southern South America, would take a long time for anyone.
Yet every freaking time, I forgot just how big my whole-ass planet was.
Nine hours, that’s how long it took me to get there, traveling at over 300 darn meters a second(.3 kilos a second, essentially).
But hey, at least the books and pizza were good.
I stopped at Chicago two hours in, buying myself a pizza for the road there. I also finished reading the two books I was interested in, so I stopped by a bookstore and wildlife center for the full set of The Lord of the Rings(because I had been procrastinating on reading it) and a local wildlife book for some national park in Mexico.
I crossed the whole of the Americas while reading, and by the time I was done, I was pissed at Parkarka for making me go all the way to her house. Can you believe this girl?
I went through Canada, the United States, the Caribbean Sea, Brazil, Mexico, and some other countries in Midamerica, then across the Scotia Sea, and finally, I made it to her house, in a city so small I would have called it a village.
When I finally got there, I crashed into her lawn and fell flat in the grass.
“Psychi? What are you doing on the ground like that?” a British-accented voice called.
I looked up at the source of the voice with a frustrated frown. “Stewing over how you made me fly across half the planet to get here.”
Parkarka looked like a princess and held herself like the daughter of a chief. Her dress was long and handsewn with many colors and patterns, and her shirt was of similar make, though quite frilly and pink. Her skin was also a little darker than the island’s other residents of mostly British origin(or she was just tan, I couldn’t tell). She was a few years older than me, but unlike me, she chose not to float much...
And man, she made me look like an ugly dog. I wondered if she wore makeup at all. I, admittedly, didn’t often put on that sort of thing.
She stood on the porch and waved off my complaints. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic! I’m sure you had plenty to keep you entertained, judging by your cute little basket. Meet anyone new?”
“Uhh, some pizza dude, I guess. And a Mexican Ranger. I’m not good with Spanish, though, so it was a bit awkward,” as conversations tended to be when you were me.
I stood with difficulty, unused to gravity, and stretched. When I finally shook off my dizziness from standing too quick, Parkarka was looking at me with mild annoyance.
“Uhh, my lawn?”
I looked down and realized the grass below me had been decimated. “Oh, sorry! I tend to release psychic energy when I’m dizzy. I’m really sorry about that.”
“I know, but could you be a dear and put back the dirt?”
“Sorry, I can do that,” I said, shuffling the dirt and grass back.
“So, want to come in for tea?”
“Oh, of course.”
So, you know when I said I couldn’t read my own mind? Yeah, I can’t read other psychics’ minds either...so maybe I was being a little dramatic.
Look, it seemed poetic in the moment!
I walked in and sat down at her dining table in her kitchen while Parkarka brewed water in a vintage kettle.
Parkarka was a collector of sorts. She had paintings strung about, and most of her appliances were either old, cute, or high-tech, with no in-between. There were plenty of trinkets from across the world on shelves and counters: a ceramic teapot, cups of various sizes and materials, old furniture, sculptures of animals, carvings, signs...
If she thought it looked cool, she took it home.
Which wasn’t to say that Parkarka didn’t have taste, because she definitely did. Much of it, I knew, was far more expensive than the look let on, and the colors and placements were all competent.
Every time I saw her house, I couldn’t help but feel like my own wasn’t good enough.
“So...what’s the occasion?” She asked, leaning back on her counter as the tea brewed.
“Uhh, not much. Sorry for calling you up like this.”
She waved off my apology. “No, no, it’s always a pleasure. You’re the most normal psychic like me I can talk with.” She chuckled. “Jana and Kalai only know how to make a mess, unlike you.”
I tried to avoid the rest of the super psychics, knowing that they had their own agendas. Jana owned a multi-billion dollar corporation, and Kalai had taken over a country in the middle east after The Catastrophe.
Parkarka, on the other hand, did everything she could to save people. Under most circumstances, she acted as a neutral party, mediating conflicts between super psychics and governments to maintain peace. In recent years, she had become a prominent political figure, despite only being 21. Plus, everyone knew that she was the one to finally defeat The Living Catastrophe, and that was amazing, even though…he was still out there…
And here I was...
“How do you do it?” I blurted out.
“Hmm?” She plucked a strand of her hair off and began fiddling with it. “Do what?”
“Umm..how do you stand those people?”
Parkarka gained a more thoughtful expression, leaning forward on the back of her hand. “The other super psychics are...difficult. But for the most part, they’re real people I believe can be reasoned with. Yes, some might…deign to control countries, but in the end, it isn’t their power that makes them so influential. It’s the confidence that comes with it.”
“Confidence? More like arrogance…” I muttered.
She nodded her head with a slight, grim smirk. “Perhaps, but most of them act the way they do for their own reasons. Whatever their reasons might be, the confidence in their beliefs, ethics, and ideals is what drives them, and I respect that.”
I sighed, accepting what she said. After a moment, I asked, “Do you have any close friends?”
“Does my family count?” she asked, with a chuckle to her expense.
“No.”
“In which case,” Parkarka began, “Yes, I do.”
“Have you ever lost them?”
She looked at me with a discerning expression. “In what way?”
“Like, they stopped liking you?”
“Oh,” she said, her tone shifting. “Well, yes, I have. He didn’t like being around me because he felt…‘threatened’.”
“Threatened? Like, physically?” I asked, confused.
“I couldn’t say. He stormed off after scolding me for getting into a fight, then texted me never to get near him again because ‘I feel threatened whenever I’m around you’ and that was that.” She snorted in rare vitriol. “Ch! So much for being a healer if nobody feels safe near you...” She cleared her throat, trying to remain composed. “Well, was that what you wanted to hear?”
“I…I guess so,” I said in response. Why hadn’t I turned to her sooner? She understood.
The kettle began ringing, so Parkarka poured it into a french press then, walked to a cute, cherry-red table then motioned for me to sit with her. “Why do you ask?” she said. “Did something happen between you and a friend?”
I nodded. “It…was complicated.”
“If you’re implying that it’s too complicated for me, it must be truly convoluted.”
“Oh, no…she…you know how I can read minds?”
“All but other super psychics’, right?”
“Yeah…well, I try to be really open about my thoughts,” I said. “Because I can read other people’s. It’s…supposed to be fair…but I don’t think anyone notices. Anyway, my friend, Emma, she has a boyfriend, but she still thinks some guys look good and stuff, right?”
Parkarka slowly nodded.
“Umm…I guess it really isn’t that complicated now that I think about it. I accidentally said in front of her boyfriend that she had been thinking about how good some boys looked…multiple times,” I admitted. “And the last time it happened…it made them break up.”
“H-huh,” Parkarka said, her expression inscrutable. “How?”
“I guess he thought it meant she didn’t really like him.”
“Hmm…sounds more like a pretense…” she whispered to herself.
“A pretense?”
“More like he had his own reasons.” She glanced to the side. “Not to say that you didn’t make a mistake, but I doubt he broke up with her because of that.”
“Really?” I said hopefully.
“Not that it matters anyway,” she said with a shrug. “If your friend Emma dissolved your friendship over that, it was…” she trailed off…
She didn’t want to say it, but she probably meant that it was a pretense, too.
As I remained quiet, only feeling worse about myself, a cup of tea floated in front of me. “Here is your tea, mam,” Parkarka said.
“Thanks…” I quietly responded before tasting it. As usual, she had really good tea.
Another pause ensued, but after a while of sipping on our tea, Parkarka said, “You know, you’re really strong.”
“I know,” I said.
“No, seriously, Jana told me that you might be able to beat me if you put in your all.”
“I doubt it,” I muttered.
“Really, Jana wouldn’t admit that to me unless she was sure.” Parkarka insisted. “Cause she hates me, for some reason…” she muttered.
“Hmm…” That seemed pretty normal between psychics like them, as far as I was concerned. Jana really hated me for no reason, too. Maybe she just hated everyone.
“Do you think we could beat…him?” I said, regretting mentioning him instantly.
Parkarka’s face darkened immediately. “No,” she said with certainty.
We lulled back into silence for a minute after that, my mind panicking, making me afraid she was angry I’d mentioned The Living Catastrophe.
Then, before I could say anything, she said, her voice softer, almost as if in apology, “So…what did you really want to talk about.”
“Well, I was just sad about Emma…” I muttered lowly, averting my eyes.
She said nothing, but I could tell she was waiting for me to revoke the statement.
“I…” As I looked down, I noticed how nice the tea cup and plate were. They seemed hand-crafted, with small irregularities in their painting and crafting. “Where did you get these ?” I asked, trying to avert the topic.
She didn’t try to force the topic, thankfully. “I don’t honestly remember,” she said. “I got them a while back, but I don’t remember why…”
“Do you want to know?”
“Sure, why not?” she said, despite being confused by the question.
I concentrated on the cup, and I began to relive someone else’s vague memory.
-
A woman with great power offered us aid and saved our son from the brink of death.
When we treated her to dinner and tea, she mentioned how nice our cups were, and I eagerly gifted them to her, insisting she take them as a gift.
They were part of our late grandmother’s tea set, but I was just so glad that I didn’t mind at all and wouldn’t let her reject it.
-
I chuckled, wiping my eyes as some other person’s emotions had quickly overwhelmed me. “That’s cute,” I said.
“What is?”
“Oh, I used psychometry to read its past. Apparently, you saved the son of some couple, and they gave it to you.”
“Really?” she looked into the distance thoughtfully. “Eh, I can’t remember it.”
“Can’t remember it?” I asked with a humorous edge, “You saved someone. That’s really cool!”
“If you say so. Oh, and also, that’s a cool ability. I’d love to have psychometry, I can’t remember where I got half the things in my own house,” she said with a chuckle.
“It’s not as useful as you’d think,” I said. “I’d love to have the ability to heal people, like you can.”
Her face drooped grimly. “It’s nothing nice like psychometry,” she muttered.
“Why?” I said, concerned. It seemed like a miracle ability, being able to heal wounds easily. She had saved thousands of lives during the Catastrophe.
Parkarka set her cup down silently, a small puddle still left in the tea. “Psychi…” she said as if she were about to impress a painful truth on me, “You can choose to live your life carefree, to live how you want to. You should do that. But I…prefer…I refuse to let my talents go to waste. Healing is just another respons-”
“I get it.” I looked down. “I don’t know how help people.”
…
“Psychi-”
“No,” I said, more forceful than I wanted to be, standing in my seat. “I get it. I obviously shouldn’t be expected to help. I-I’m useless compared to you. I can’t do anything but lie down and wait for him to return. I shouldn’t be part of what you all do.”
Suddenly, Parkarka’s cup shattered into a thousand pieces.
I stared at it, stunned. Then, I panickedly said, “Oh, oh, I’m so sorry-” I began to telekinetically collect the pieces, but Parkarka grabbed my arm, causing me to pause. “I didn’t mean to-”
“It’s fine, Psychi,” she said, her voice stern for a moment before softening. “I’m sorry…that was not what I wanted…what I want to say. So tell me what’s wrong. Can you please tell me?”
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
“I-I…” I fell back into my seat, rattling the table as I looked down. “Am…” I began, my voice quiet, “…I a bad person?”
“No, of course not,” she said, as quiet as me. “Why would you think that?”
“I…” I looked away, my throat suddenly feeling dry, telling me not to keep speaking as I remembered just why it was I was so scared of myself. “I’m about to tell you something…really personal…” I almost muttered. “Is that fine?”
“Yes, absolutely,” she took my arm again, then led me to a couch with old cushions not far away, in the corner of the room, then sat me next her. “Now say what you want.”
“I…” I felt at a loss for words, even though the next ones were the true reason why I had called Parkarka in the first place. “I have...” I couldn’t spit it out, and my throat felt too try to speak through. This was something others who knew me knew but...I hadn’t talked about it before, and...
Parkarka was a friend. And not just that, she was the greatest person I knew...no, I firmly believed nobody was better, more serene, more competent, more collected. Everything I wasn’t. Not just that, she was a fellow super psychic, someone who could and would hold me accountable if I made a mistake.
I gulped down my apprehension, then spit it out, closing my eyes as I spoke. “I’ve killed people before.”
I glanced at her, but Parkarka only narrowed her eyes, her expression inscrutable to me. “What do you mean?”
“I-I’ve accidentally...killed people…And...I-I was angry. I wanted them dead, but...I didn’t...I didn’t want them dead! It was just my powers...my emotions. A-and I tried to save them, but...” I slowly placed the teacup atop my rock, not wanting to spill or pollute it with my rapidly forming tears. “I took them to a hospital, and everyone saw what had happened, but they never said a thing! If I were anyone else, I’d be in jail. But that can’t happen, and I wouldn’t let it happen.”
“So...why are you telling me this?” Her voice asked, calm.
I crossed my arms for stability. “I-I don’t know...my friend doesn’t want to be around me, my brother thinks I should go out and do stuff, and I- you’re the only person...”
“Who can understand, right? Who can tell you what’s right and wrong? Who can beat you to a pulp? The only person just like you?”
...
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. I looked at my hands, fidgeting restlessly in my lap.
I heard her shuffle across the couch, then Parkarka looped her arms around me, dragging me close. “I understand, Psychi.”
I didn’t know how to feel. I wanted her to scold me, to say I was some cold-hearted menace, even though that made no sense. And...
When she consoled me and held me to her chest, I realized:
The only person who resented me was myself.
I dried my tears on her shirt, too uncertain to say a word or make a decision.
Every option was wrong, each choice a wall blocking my leave. On all sides, they pressured me into a claustrophobic room, holding me back.
Why am I such a dramatic...
I wasn’t sure how long I had sat in her arms, but eventually, I regained my self-consciousness, and my thoughts finally sorted.
Until then, I went to school to procrastinate. I said it was to improve myself, but I knew best how much of an excuse that was. In the end, I spent a long time doing a whole lot of nothing.
Finally ready to face that reality, I moved to eye level with Parkarka and hugged her, squeezing tightly. “Thanks a lot. I’m sorry I put you through all this.”
She giggled. “Why do you say sorry so much? You know it makes you seem too nice.”
I giggled too. “Nice? I seem nice? I wasn’t aware.”
“Really? You just radiate ‘I just want to be nice’ vibes. Like a lill’ pupper.”
“Hope I didn’t scratch any of the furniture. And if you were wondering...” I let go and gave her the fullest smile I could. “It’s a Canadian thing; we’re just too nice.”
I saw streaks of dried tears on her face as she reciprocated my smile, patting me on the shoulder. “That’s why I just can’t get mad at you.”
Our conversation died down after that, falling into idle talk about this and that.
Eventually, though, I looked outside and noticed that the sun was nigh on the horizon. “I loved talking with you and all,” I said, somewhat soberly, “But…maybe next time we could meet halfway?”
“Halfway? What do you mean?”
“Umm, like, maybe in Mexico?”
“Mexico? How did we start talking about that?”
I shrugged. “Cause’ you dragged me eight hours away to talk with me?”
“Oh…” she said quietly, with a pang of guilt. “Sorry, I didn’t think at all about how long that would take you! I’d just gotten out of Parliament, and my mind was a bit frazzled. I just wanted an excuse to go home for, like, the first time in a week.”
“Parliament?” I said confusedly. “What about it again?”
“I started acting as a mediator for the English Parliament a month back,” she said nonchalantly. “Though, I’m beginning to realize that they don’t really need me there.”
“Huh…” I narrowed my eyebrows. “Wait, then how did you get here so fast?”
She shrugged. “Space travel.”
“Space…wait, you can do that?”
“Yep. I can use Lumikinesis to repel solar winds, so I travel through space. It more than halves the time it takes for me to travel around the place.”
“I really didn’t know that,” I said.
She nodded. “I try to keep it on the down low, to surprise people. Could you keep it a secret for me?” she said playfully, a finger to her mouth.
“Oh, yeah, of course!”
“And in turn, I’ll try to come to you. Speaking of which, why don’t you stay here for the night?”
“I’d love to!”
Though, I still felt guilty for leaving Jeremy all alone.
——————————————————————————————
“I cannot risk keeping another one of you alive. Thus, I won’t. I don’t know if this is fair to you, but...”
A green circle, the size of the street block, encircled me, then a green light poured from its perimeter, encapsulating me faster than I could attempt to escape...
I clawed at my neck, a cold, metal object choking the life out of me.
A green world, where the sky and floor were a cartoonish shade of green. Sitting in front of me, a strangely dressed man sat in a wooden chair, a slinky in his hand...
Crack! A swipe of her hand too quick for me to register bent my hand just a little too far. My eyes widened, and I let out a scream of pain. My fury unstable, I released psychic energy enough to level the grove of trees beneath me...)
——————————————————————————————————————
I flailed around in midair, getting a grip on myself as I regained consciousness, confused.
I was surprised to find myself in Parkarka’s guest room, though I quickly remembered why.
Floating upright, I briefly reflected upon what I had experienced. A prophetic dream? A fairly regular occurrence, for me, but this particular one was so strange...perhaps it was just a dream and nothing else.
I walked out of my room and followed the smell of breakfast to the kitchen. Parkarka was already making food for me. It was strange that she began making breakfast just as I woke up, but I dismissed it as a coincidence.
After flipping an egg telekinetically, she glanced at me. “Had a good sleep?”
“I guess,” I yawned out. Really, I had trouble sleeping. I’d fallen asleep too early, too. “Oh, and there’s no need to make breakfast for m-”
“It’s already made.” She motioned to a plate with biscuits on it, then floated the egg to it, and then the plate to me.
I didn’t take it into hand. “You really shouldn’t h-”
“No, Psychi, I want you to eat,” Parkarka said, looking at me smugly from the corner of her eye. “Why don’t you be a dear and accept my insistence?”
I sighed and took the plate. What was I even complaining about… “Fine. I’ll eat your...” I took a bite. “Your delicious and perfectly cooked meal,” I finished through my mouthful.
“Thanks. But, with that, I’ve finished my business here. I’ll say bye to you here.”
“You’re just leaving me at your house?”
Parkarka shrugged. “I trust you enough, and I’ve memorized the names and faces of everyone in this whole country. Nobody would steal from me if you didn’t lock the door.”
“I’ll lock it anyway.”
“With what? You can’t-”
“Telekinesis.”
She blinked. “Oh, how silly of me. I’m so used to doing it by key that I forgot I don’t even need to use it.”
“Why would you use a key in the first place?”
“Because keys...are cool,” she admitted.
I couldn’t argue with that.
Finally, I flew home. Taking roughly the same route I had before, I had plenty of time to ponder what I had dreamed about.
Among my array of powers, I had prophetic dreams. They were predictions of what would happen the next day without their influence. I only got the dreams randomly, usually on important days.
I spent an hour or so of my flight back home wondering what the dreams would have meant. The last one before I woke up included Jana, but the rest of them were borderline nonsensical. Maybe only the last one was real? But then again, I wasn’t sure why she would try to hurt me like that. When I got bored of thinking about it, largely dismissing them as normal dreams, I continued reading the second book of The Lord of the Rings.
Finally, I was flying above the snowy land of my hometown. The sun already setting after my many hours of flight.
I put my book back into my basket and looked around, searching for evidence anything had changed. It felt like I’d been away from home for quite a while, yet when I actually looked, I realized it had basically been a day.
The same peaceful, thinly populated town as al-
“There you are!”
CRASH!
Something hit me with enough force to send me tumbling a mile away, leaving a poor farmer’s snow-covered dirt plowed through by my psychic barrier.
Before I could gather myself, a house-sized chunk of ice flew toward me. I soared to the side as it crashed into the farmland, but I didn’t escape quick enough, part of the supersonic attack glancing my barrier, putting a toll on my mind as it did.
A girl clad in a tank top and shorts(in the middle of a Canadian winter) barreled towards me, flying at Mach speed, and punched me faster than my eye could see, her fist covered in a gauntlet of hyper-condensed ice. Taken aback, I blocked the blow, my barrier letting out an otherworldly moan heard for miles, like a collapsing bridge.
The psychic exertion of doing so caused me a headache, but I managed.
I retaliated by launching the ice chunk back at the girl. She tried to run from the attack, but I was clearly faster as I flew in front of her and enlarged my psychic barrier, cutting her off.
Apparently, I was so fast that my fellow super psychic’s barrier bonked into mine, halting her movement and causing her to be carried a bit more than a mile north from the ice.
Say hi to Jana, the hyperaggressive cryokinetic super psychic who loves to pile-drive me but mostly loves to be pile-drived.
Before the ice could hit the ground, possibly killing someone or destroying their home, I ran and caught it midair with a thought, along with my basket, which hadn’t yet hit the ground after being put into freefall. I set it down as I approached. Jana was still reeling, holding her hurt head and flipping around at 200 RPM out of pain.
As I got close, her powers were going haywire with pain, causing deadly icicles to spout from the air around her, flying in every direction as she muttered some angry gibberish in french that amounted to ‘I don’t like that stupid bitch’.
Before I did anything, I waited for her to stop spitting out deadly projectiles, catching them before they could hit the ground.
Eventually, she regained enough focus to glare at me.
“Ok, seriously, what’s your problem?” I asked, searching for a quiet place to dump all the ice.
“My problem...” she said, pointing at me, “is that you agreed you’d fight me yesterday, and you flaked out!”
“I did no such thing!” I said back, indignant. “You didn’t give me the opportunity to turn you down, as always,” I said, remembering what she was talking about too late. She had mentioned something about it the last time we fought. I previously had a feeling my dream’s prophecy could’ve been related to her, but I hadn’t remembered the date she mentioned or, for that matter, expected to be ambushed.
“And not just that,” she continued, ignoring my perfectly reasonable response, “I’m pissed you just won’t go down! What does it take to beat you!?”
She was seventeen like me, but Jana looked pretty strange since she was really muscular and dyed her hair white -probably just to be extra icy- but as I mentioned, she seemed not to mind the below-freezing temperatures, wearing basically nothing.
“I dunno,” I said, “mutual respect and cooperative discussion? What does it matter to you? Day after day, you ram into me, send me flying into some poor man’s yard, then try to beat the crap out of me. All you can make me use is 50% of my power. Just deal with it.”
“Where the hell are you getting that number from!?”
“I mean, you haven’t given me much worse than a migraine -if you want to drive me braindead, you’ll need a lot more power.”
“You’ve already driven me braindead five times!”
“Thanks for proving my point?” I said, not sure how to respond to her obliviousness.
Jana’s cheeks burnt red with unwarranted frustration as she yelled, then plunged towards me. I shielded myself with all the ice she’d made, which crumbled like drywall under her intense strikes, filled with so much kinetic energy that the ice sublimated into steam.
“Ok, seriously, why are you a cryo-kinetic if you’re so hotheaded?” I yelled, chucking the remaining ice to some nearby woods so I could focus more on the fight she was picking.
She began madly punching me with her ice gauntlets once more, shooting a flurry of blows, which I blocked.
Now, I just want to preface this: I’m not a fighter.
And while I was aware that Jana probably had a dozen openings, I had no idea how to find them.
So, like the newbie to combat I was, I felt overwhelmed by her rage-fueled strikes. It didn’t help that holding my psychic barrier against her savage strikes used a certain amount of my brain power either, though that couldn’t be helped.
Panicking, I uprooted a tree and threw it at her from below, only for her to split it in two with a knife of ice, rendering the attack harmless. I regretted the choice as I had to drift it down to safety.
For almost a minute straight, she hit me over and over, slamming her fists into my barrier without end. Then, her punches got weak. She kept throwing punches, but they rapidly slowed. I watched as sweat pooled on her forehead, and she began to show signs of fatigue.
“Why…” she yelled, out of breath for some reason, even though her attacks were purely fueled by telekinesis, “Can’t I…win?” she finished.
Eventually, after a minute of relentless attacks, her expression grew vague and tired.
“Why…” she said again, this time only barely audible over her slowing punches, “am I so weak…” she said defeatedly, an expression of regret on her face.
Then, her expression grew tired. Her movements slowed even more, and her eyelids began to flutter. She began to descend.
I’d taken all of her strength straight-on, and all the damage I’d sustained was a hard migraine.
In a battle against super psychics, I wasn’t supposed to just stand still, right? I was pretty sure I was meant to, like, dodge and weave and throw rocks and stuff, but clearly that wasn’t needed at all.
Jana kept throwing punches with futility, in a fugue state from her mental exhaustion. She began to fall faster, dangerously accelerating toward. She was considered a super psychic like me, yet she easily consumed all her mental strength. I guess raw biological ability couldn’t be underestimated.
I descended to her level, then reached out of my barrier to grab her before she lost her flight and plummeted to the ground. “Come on, Jana, just give it up alrea-”
My memory called back to me as I outstretched my arm. I almost instinctively pulled back to protect myself, but I didn’t see any way things could end like they had in the-
Somehow, she had enough concentration to swing her hand towards my arm at an intense speed in a pointless, last-ditch effort.
In an instant, her hand swung toward me, and her gauntlet collided with my unprotected arm, swatting it aside.
My arm bent a half-inch in the wrong direction, and I swore I could hear each part of my bone as it cracked from the inside. First the shell, then the marrow, splintering like wood.
I screeched at the top of my lungs, the pain overwhelming my other senses for a split second. In that same second, I released a shockwave of raw telekinetic energy so strong it left a crater beneath me, uprooting nearby trees and sending them sprawling. I dropped like a rock, falling to the exposed dirt beneath me and only barely regaining control over my flight before I got hurt.
Searching as an outlet to relieve my pain, I pounded the ground with telekinetic force, drilling into it with explosions of raw energy over and over. Fear overwhelmed my pain as a thought boiled to the surface, a horrid possibility.
What had happened to Jana?
I had seen her eyes widen with shock just before she’d hit me, but was she conscious enough to guard against my explosion of wrath, or even gravity!?
My heart beating, pounding in terror at the possibility that the past had repeated, I discarded all thought of handling my pain and searched for Jana.
I saw an alcove of ice in the crater, its exposed faces chipped and battered by my attack but barely standing. I tumbled towards it and looked for her, my arm pulsing with heat and pain with each telekinetic surge of movement.
Looking behind the alcove, I saw Jana, with blood dribbling from her forehead, unconscious behind the ice. However, the alcove would melt before long. The alcove that protected her was hastily made and rendered structurally unsound by my attack. It was now rapidly crumbling, threatening to bury its creator beneath a tomb of ice.
I dragged her through the snow and to the side of a nearby road, which had taken serious damage from the fight above. I placed her beside a fence, then began treating my wound. If only I could heal us...
Since it was the first thing I thought of, I made a cast of ice, immobilizing my hand with my amateurish cryo-kinesis. The ice made my wound sting for a moment, and I squeaked like a mouse, but my arm eventually began to grow numb, the pain lessening.
While I racked my brain for how to treat a broken bone, something strange began to happen.
A green light in the shape of a circle with intricate patterns inside it, the size of the street block, surrounded me.
My immediate instinct, seeing what I had seen in my dream, was to run. But...was it a healing circle? Was I just seeing things? Who would have the psychic power to create it? Was it really a good idea to-
No! Angered by my own hesitation, I threw Jana out of the circle, then ran as far from whatever it was as I could before looking back at it from a few hundred meters away.
I watched it with cautious curiosity as the circle’s perimeter began to rise like a barrier of light and converged on the center in a cone. The whole cone then collapsed into the pinnacle, coalesced into just a single green sphere.
Then, the sphere of vibrating light chased me. Immediately, I tried to outrun the laser, bursting off at my top speed. When I looked back, I was stunned to see it had matched my speed, even though I was moving almost five times the speed of sound. In fact, it began to gain on me. I tried to outmaneuver it, but wherever I flew, it outpaced me, tracking me down and moving through objects as if they didn’t exist.
Maybe if I could use my telekinesis on it...no, it was light, and I couldn’t control light...
I kept thinking of ways to stop it, maneuvering through woods and between houses in vain, and yet...
Faced with the reality that nothing physical could stop the laser, I had to try, as futile and last-ditch as it was.
I let go of my flight and fell to the ground. My barrier scraped against the snow and dirt, sending enough snow flying into the air that it could be mistaken for an avalanche as I careened to a stop.
Meanwhile, I focused the whole of my mind on the beam, pushing against it with telekinesis, throwing everything I had into halting its momentum. Despite my doubts, my telekinesis contacted. The sheer force of its approach made my psychic power, which could halt hypersonic objects in a second or two, insubstantial.
I managed to slow it to crawl, though, planting my feet in the snow as I struggled. It kept approaching, creeping closer. Then, it hit my psychic barrier.
Like a chainsaw cutting steel, blue sparks of raw psychic energy sizzled about as it ground against the brunt of my psychic power, pushing me back and leaving my mind aching with a migraine strong enough to leave my consciousness in a state of raw concentration.
If I hadn’t been weakened, I may have defended against it. If I had run further away before it chased me, I may have stopped it earlier. If Jana were conscious, she could have helped defend me. If I had realized its weakness earlier, it would have been easy to put down.
If I hadn’t hesitated at every step of the way, I could have stopped it.
Inevitably, it cleaved through my psychic barrier, and its green light encircled me like a net. It enveloped me, and I lost consciousness, filled with regret.