Chapter 26 – Life 6 – The New Power
If I thought I was ‘famous’ before, when it was just my mother who was a High Caster of a rare element, it was nothing compared to now. Post-combat epiphanies were known to *sometimes* occur, but never from one’s very first Arena run. Byron, the old Storm Caster, was actually quite angry. According to him, he would now have to deal with ‘a buncha Low Caster newbies getting themselves killed tryin’ ‘ta recreate your one inna million power up.’
My team-mates were thrilled. Not only did we all get out of the Arena alive, with the best score it’s had in years, but some of my fame was rubbing off on them. Lambert even got his arm fixed from a Healer with nothing but a promise to speak highly of the work he did in any interviews.
And interviews there were. The Ministry of History people, in their quest to make things like the way they were, had been trying to resurrect the Pre-Apocalypse art of ‘journalism’ for years. For this story, ‘The Miracle of Class 4’, they got more than they bargained for. Newspapers were selling out faster than they could write.
They were forced to think ‘outside the box’, as they liked to say, and started selling metal tablets with finely Folded letters carved out. Some weren’t happy about that, since this was nothing like the newspapers of old. Others claimed that it was the closest thing we had to the Pre-Apocalypse wonder machines called ‘eye-pads’. But most… were just happy about all the money coming in. Plus, it was good practice for a bunch of Metal Folders. I even heard talk of one of these ‘journalists’ who worked hard enough to become a High Folder, specifically for Rust. Which, in turn, deserved a chunk of stories written by new Metal Folders. Good work if you can get it, I guess.
Still, across the Five States, there was one question on everyone’s minds: what does Metal and Life combine to make? People speculated endlessly. Common knowledge held that each element had an opposite: Fire and Water, Earth and Air, and of course Metal and Life. When opposites combined, you got the rather interesting elements of Fog and Sand. Sand’s utility was well-known: a good sandstorm was considered the best way to shred a monster’s defenses. Fog was a little more obtuse: its attack power was basically nil, but it seemed to addle the mind of any foe its wielder wished, monster or human.
With those two in mind, attack and support, people suspected that my power would be something defensive. Perhaps a type of metal that could harden or liquify on the Caster’s will? But then, someone pointed out, there was precedent for that already being the ability of Metal and Water, as shown by a High Caster who was briefly observed serving as a warlord in the tropical south.
The Ministry of History people had record of people’s blood containing trace amounts of metal, and so believed that I would have command over that. This, in turn, turned much of the anticipation of my abilities into fear. Apparently, there was a large wave of immigrants some decades back that was caused by something they only referred to as blóðnótt, which apparently translated to “The Night of Blood”. From what I could gather, their city was attacked by ‘blood-men’ who could absorb the blood they spilled to strengthen themselves. Some said that the attack ended as suddenly as it began, but the damage was done. All of this caused a vague feeling of… familiarity… like I had heard this story before. I wasn’t sure from where, though.
Regardless, it could easily be said that all eyes within the Five States were on me. And after weeks of testing, I did figure out one thing about my ability…
It was very hard to use.
Apparently, there were drawbacks to ascending to High Caster as quickly as I had. Most people spent years or even decades as a Low Caster before intentionally combining their elements. Sure, some daredevils out there would fight a High Monster to speed up this process… but conventional wisdom said it still should have taken me several years to accomplish what I had.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
My powers were… sluggish. I tried going back to the Arena, getting preferential treatment to kill as many mantises as I wanted, but the rush of essence that I so enjoyed before was now barely noticeable.
As for my Metal Casting… unlike before, when I could make a set of daggers over the course of a few minutes, now it took me hours. The only difference that I could tell was that the brown-ish generic metal that all Metal Casters made was now more orange. That was it! As far as I could tell, it weighed the same, was equally as sharp, and could take exactly the same amount of damage before being destroyed. It was just… harder to make.
My mother actually left her post to try and come teach me, but even she couldn’t figure out what was wrong. As far as she was concerned, when she attempted to cast a normal Air burst, it came out as lightning every time. It shouldn’t just be unlikely that I would make the same metal as before… it should be down-right impossible.
As the months went on, the better news-tablets forgot me, and the worst ones actually tried to draw attention to my failure. The lesson everyone took from me, really, was that it was dangerous to ascend to High Caster too quickly. Dangerous to your career, at least, since no one wanted to hire someone who took several times as long to do the same Casting as everyone else. I was now a cautionary tale. My mother eventually had to return to the endless battle against monsters. She made it clear that she still loved me… but that unless I regained the ability to hold my own in combat, I would be in danger by being next to her. It was a subtle disownment, but a disownment just the same.
The shame of it all ate at me. Had I really ruined my abilities just on some gut feeling? I felt like I *had* to get stronger but had only ended up weaker. The Swordsman in my dreams never had this problem… should I have followed his path more closely? Sometimes I spent ages Casting little statues of the man, hoping to appease his spirit. Remembering that other life was painful, knowing that he had accomplished so much, and I, so little.
That’s when I started to notice something odd. I began to see objects made of the same orange metal that I could Cast, but which I had no memory of making. Crude little knobs, at first, then shapes that reminded me of arrowheads, then there were even little daggers. I began to fear I was going mad. Eventually, I woke up and saw a series of 6 little swords, barely the size of my finger, all arranged in a circle around… one of the figurines I had made.
Was I Casting in my sleep? Were my memories of the Swordsman so powerful they were taking over my mind? As I examined the swords more closely, I saw movement in the corner of my eye. I looked back up. Nothing seemed to have changed…
I looked at the figurine closely, held it for a while. I didn’t notice anything off about it… but then, I looked around for my other figurines. They were… missing! Or, in the case of one, half-missing. The lower half was still there, but at the chest was a strange cut where the upper half was taken. What the hell was going on?
The next day, as I tried to get back to sleep, I heard odd, metalic noises. I opened my eyes and tried to look around as subtly as possible. What I saw shocked me. The remaining ‘whole’ figurine was covered in green veins that shifted around as it… moved? Yes, the little metal man, only a few inches tall, was moving around on its own, as if it were human. Not just that, but it was wielding a pair of the little swords I had found around it. As I stared at it, I began to recognize its movements. This was a training exercise that the Swordsman often did, in his years of exile.
I tried to sit up further, but the bed creaked. It was a quiet sound, but it felt like a cacophony at this moment. Sure enough, the green veins on the little figurine instantly faded, and the thing stopped moving. I got up and looked all around it, but while it was frozen in a position in the middle of training, it didn’t move an inch.
“Hey there… little guy? It’s okay… I won’t hurt you…”, I said, unsure of what I was doing. There could be any number of reasons that the figure stopped moving. Maybe it could only do work while I was asleep? Maybe it had run out of power?
But then, the green veins appeared again, this time around the figure’s neck. It looked up at me… and gave a salute that I recognized from the Swordsman’s Empire. I gulped. I think I had an idea of what my power was, now… Metal, given Life itself!