For as long as he could remember, Hai had wanted to pilot a Cosu. One of the suits that let people use mana instead of suffering from it, powered by the same crystal spires that kept them safe. He didn’t have any grand dreams of saving the world–just a childlike desire to run as fast as a bullet train and jump a mountain. Or lift that very same mountain. Of course, that also encompassed all the crazy spells Cosu pilots could use.
As he dug through the scraps in his mom’s garage, he’d never wanted it less. She had been a true Mage, meaning the amount of Spire that powered her Cosu would most likely be lethal to Hai. Not just lethal, though–he could easily handle that since he was already dying. No–this kind of lethality was one that left him paralyzed and brain dead in a hospital bed for years until they decided to take him off life support.
“I can’t find it.” He slurred as one of his fingers bent the wrong way as easily as soft cheese. “What kind of Cosu did mom have?”
“An old briefcase model. Bronze with green-ish highlights.” Cici relayed. “Hopefully she kept it loaded, or else you’re gonna have to find a spell to get it working.”
Hai nodded weakly and continued sifting. He pulled a heavy briefcase out from under a pile of scrap metal a few minutes later. “Is this it?”
“I can’t see what you’re referencing, kid.”
“It’s a bronze briefcase with some kind of mossy stone hinges and accents.”
“That’s the one. Dig into it and hope.”
Hai’s fingers scraped against the clasps for a few seconds before he got them to catch. They flipped open easily enough, but the blood that stained them wasn’t a good sign. The lid slammed onto the workbench, and Hai found himself face to face with three empty indents and a glass tube with a chunk of Spire much larger than a simple Mage would be able to handle.
“You’re sure mom was just a mage?”
“It’s what she always told us. But it wouldn’t surprise me if she kept some secrets.” Cici made a strange hum from deep in her throat, which was followed by hollow impacts like knuckles against a cheap plastic desk. “How much is there, kid? Ten grams? Fifteen?”
Hai leaned in and swiped at the Spire tube until it spun around to show mom’s hand-written label. His hopes fell for the second time that day.
“One-hundred and seventy.”
A choking sound emerged from the phone. “A hundred and seventy?! Gods almighty, that’s way too much radiation for you! Close it, kid!”
Hai almost did. But a nagging voice in the back of his head told him the truth–if he closed the briefcase, he was dead. The mana radiation would kill him long before anyone found him, and he’d be nothing but a dusty stain on the floor. Just like everyone else. If he kept the case open and risked his life, then there was only a chance that he died. A very high chance, and one that would be extremely painful before he died, but a one-in-a-million chance was infinitely better than guaranteed death.
“I don’t want to die.” Hai said quietly.
Silence answered him over the line. Hai bristled in the absence of noise, and began humming to himself to fill the void. A nothing song that was a mixture of all the choruses and hits he could remember, but comforting nevertheless. At that moment, he decided.
If he was going to die, he wouldn’t go quietly.
“Hai. There are things worse than death.” Cici said quietly, as if she didn’t want to say it, but felt she had to. “Mana poisoning is painless. If you’re already this far gone–”
Hai swiped his finger across the phone. Blood silenced Cici, and the tone of an empty line cut off a handful of seconds later. Nobody should tell anyone with a chance to give up. Especially not when it was their life on the line.
He reached up and wiped tears from his eyes. Living was already the most painful thing he could think of. But it was still far, far from the worst.
Screw you, Cici. He thought as he fumbled with the priority 10 canister. You’re apparently monitoring our house all the time, and you still couldn’t detect the rupture. Mom’s phone doesn’t even have any missed calls, so you just decided to call her now? However long after everyone died? You don’t get to tell me how to kill myself.
The spell canister slotted perfectly into one of the briefcase’s three empty compartments. Holographic spellforms crept down from the top of it and encroached onto the spell, bringing with them a slow drip of bronze that sealed the spell in. It's perfectly clear mana began to lazily swirl around the sphere, and a low hum filled the garage as the Cosu powered up.
ERROR: BONDED PILOT NO LONGER IN RANGE.
BROADENING SEARCH DISTANCE–WIDE. NO RESPONSE.
BROADENING SEARCH DISTANCE–CONTINENTAL. NO RESPONSE.
BROADENING SEARCH DISTANCE–WORLDWIDE. SEARCHING… SEARCHING…
NO RESPONSE.
ABANDONMENT PROTOCOL INITIATED: H-T
The holographic screen flickered, then began to slowly type out a message as if someone was writing it in real-time.
HYACINTH.
IF CHRIS IS WITH YOU, TAKE CARE OF HIM. DO NOT FAIL HIM.
MOM
Hai closed his eyes and laughed, even as his chest heaved with sobs. Even with her last words, Mom only cared about Chris. All the emotions he’d been hoping were wrong flooded out with the confirmation he never wanted to get. With a great effort he closed the case with the holographic screen still intact, fumbled with the latches again, and splayed his hand out on top of it. Just like they did at the assignment festivals when all the new pilots were officially assigned their training or full-time Cosu.
“I–” he began the acceptance speech that everyone repeated, but felt a horrible shock echo through his bones. Like someone had grabbed onto his marrow and… twisted it. The Spire shard was not happy that a weakling was trying to use it.
The worst it can do is kill me. Hai shakily reassured himself. Anything else is better than that.
He grit his teeth and held his hand in place as something latched onto his piddly little pool of personal mana. He wasn’t exactly sure what was happening, but that was the explanation he’d learned about in class, and he didn’t have room to question it.
The Spire fought for control, then for dominance, and finally for every single ounce of mana the Cosu had to offer. Hai didn’t fight it back. He let the sensations wash over him. All he wanted was to cover himself in the containment suit to hopefully live just a little bit longer.
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Something gave. Hai stumbled forward as his hand sunk into the briefcase, which had grown unbearably hot and sticky like fresh tar. He bit back a scream and steeled his nerves as the Cosu climbed up his arm, coating him in a suit of metal-like mana armor as it went. Far less material transferred from the briefcase than stuck to him as the Cosu worked its wonder, but the radiation from the Spire proved a different kind of hell.
If mana poisoning was dying in silence, Spire radiation was dying as loud as humanly possible.
Every single one of Hai’s nerves cried out in existential agony. Mana that was supposed to be purified by the Spire scoured him like fiery sandpaper, setting every pain receptor alight and keeping them at their greatest moment of agony. Even his broken and numb fingers burned, but their pain was very quickly forgotten as the Cosu crept up his elbow and nipped at his neck.
Sensations beyond anything Hai could ever explain wracked his body.
Everything went red.
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“Hey, looks like he’s waking up.”
“You said that half an hour ago. His body’s ripped to pieces, and whatever luck kept him alive’s still doing its damndest.”
“No, seriously–look. His eyes are open.”
Hai blinked slowly as light filtered through a veil of darkness. His vision was blurry aside from a single pinpoint at the very middle, and two misshapen blobs hovered over him. He tried to open his mouth to speak, but none of his muscles responded.
“Huh. I’ll be damned.” A distorted voice Hai was fairly sure belonged to Cici laughed shakily. “You’ve got a demon’s luck, kid. Now you’re paying the price for that bargain.”
The other shape nodded solemnly. “When you got here, the Cosu had almost completely fused to your body. There’s not much skin left on you, and a few of your muscles got shredded when we peeled it off you. Unfortunately, that’s just the beginning of the dama...”
Cici pulled a lump of misshapen metal into view that dripped red.
“Cici! No!” The other person hissed and shoved her out of Hai’s field of view. “What’s wrong with you?!”
“I thought he’d want to see the thing that saved his life.” Cici said shakily. “Mary’s Cosu is almost completely scrapped now, but it did exactly what it had to. Still not sure how it worked without a spell.”
Hai tried to turn away as he felt tears beginning to form. Somehow, he’d thought that the Cosu would be his. It made a lot more sense that it’d turn to scrap after the misuse, but that left him without a memento of his life. He hadn’t exactly thought to grab some photos before the Cosu ripped his consciousness away.
Wait. No spell? Hai narrowed his eyes as much as he could and tried to say something. His voice was a series of rasps and wet gurgles that didn’t even sound remotely close to any known language.
“Is that bad?” Cici grabbed the other person by the shoulders. “He doesn’t sound good. Is he suffocating? Drowning? Suffo-drowning?”
“Cici. We’re monitoring all his vitals.” The other person assured her and pulled her hands from their shoulders. “If anything goes wrong, we’ll know before he does. Ricky already did the hard part, and now it’s our turn.”
Hai felt something nudge against his hand. Sensations spread from the point, like a single ripple on an otherwise still ocean. Pain was the primary among them–sharp and visceral and real. It was almost reassuring in a ‘reminding you you’re alive’ kind of way, but after the first second, it just hurt. Even if nothing else did.
Someone clicked their tongue. “Brain activity spike. He’s feeling pain again–give him more painkillers and put him under until we get a spell that can start repairing him.”
Cici nodded a little too vigorously and bent over, gently resting her hand on Hai’s neck as a Cosu snapped into place around her other arm. Frosty mana gathered in her other hand, and she gently brought it toward Hai’s neck until it looked like she was strangling him.
Everything dimmed, albeit slowly and comfortably. Different mana flared against his hand, far more powerful than what Cici had just done, but it felt so much different. Two words burned themselves into his vision, written in perfectly clear mana that he shouldn’t have been able to see in the first place.
LOOK, ELSEWHERE.
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Time passed in an uncomfortable haze. Hai fell in and out of consciousness every now and again, but he couldn’t perceive anything beyond blurred lights and garbled sounds. There was always a shape above him when he woke, and it spoke with the same non-Cici voice from before. Until eventually he woke up one time and didn’t fall back asleep right away.
Two days passed in a blur of discomfort and confusion. When his mind finally recovered enough for thoughts, the woman who he was pretty sure had introduced herself as Doctor Reiss slapped something on his arm and gave him a pill that seemed to clear the excess fog away.
He winced as the cuff squeezed his arm a little tighter than was comfortable with a pneumatic wheeze. Pricks of mana stuck into his skin as the diagnostic device did its thing, and Dr. Reiss hummed to herself as she recorded the results.
“Looks like your fluid pressure levels are back to normal.” She said as she carefully removed the device. “Your heart and blood vessels are cleared for rehabilitation.”
“So I can finally go back to school?”
Cici snorted out a little laugh. “First thing he says out of the induced coma is that he wants to go back to school. That’s how you know something’s wrong with him, doc.”
“I don’t know. For someone who went through what he went through, I’d expect him to be in a lot worse shape. Mentally and physically.” Dr. Reiss said with a hint of suspicion. “If you ever feel overwhelmed, or something starts to hurt for no reason, don’t hesitate to contact me. You just lost your only family a few weeks ago, and woke up two days ago. It’s alright to not be alright.”
Maybe everything just hadn’t sunk in yet, but Hai felt empty. His body ached like nothing else, and he knew he’d lost muscle and mobility, but he was alive. Something told him that he wasn’t allowed to be miserable when the alternate was being dead.
It wasn’t healthy. And it wasn’t true. But it was what he felt.
When the silence stretched beyond a few heartbeats, Hai forced a smile and closed his hand around the silvery thing he’d woken up clutching. “Thanks. I’ll remember you for when I eventually need therapy.”
Dr. Reiss and Cici shared a look.
“I can’t tell if that was a joke.” Cici said.
“Neither can I.” Dr. Reiss agreed. “Well, Hai, I’ll be waiting for your eventual call. And I’ll be back tomorrow so we can get started with your rehabilitation. You just focus on getting better, okay? And don’t even think about school.”
Hai snorted, then winced. “I’m seventeen. Don’t treat me like a kid.”
Dr. Reiss’ expression was unreadable. She hefted her bag of stuff over her shoulder, nodded to Cici, and left through the only door to the operating room. Which had been converted into a recovery room since Hai apparently needed all the machines hooked up to him.
“Damn, kid, you had me really worried there for a minute.” Cici ran a hand through her short hair with a sigh. “You didn’t wake up after we put you under, and your vital signs were… well… alright. You don’t want to be treated like a kid, I won’t treat you like one. You died three times on that table.”
Hai choked on his spit. “Three times?!”
“Once when we pulled the Cosu off, once when a spell blew your heart up, and another time when the Spire radiation spiked from close contact.” Cici ticked off her fingers as she spoke. “It almost happened a fourth time when our own Spire had a little surge, but we had the mana shields up, so you just almost died. That thing your mom gave you protected you a little, but I have no idea how that happened.”
Cici gestured at the silvery trinket in Hai’s hand. It rippled with mana in response, which all but served to confirm what Hai assumed it was. Mom’s Cosu didn’t have a spell when they pulled it off him. The thing was the exact same colour as the spell’s catalyst. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the monster part had somehow broken free of the cylinder.
It definitely meant mom had been wrong about the priority 10 label.
“What happened to mom’s Cosu?”
“Not much. We got the material cleaned, but the spellforms are all completely busted. Spire radiation broke down the main spell, and everything else just sort of followed. Well… not exactly, but that’s close enough to the truth.”
“Close enough?”
Cici tapped on Hai’s hand. “Your trinket absorbed some of the Spire radiation and the unsafe mana. We couldn’t identify what it’s made of, but it's strong enough that it could handle both at once. We’re betting that’s why your mom’s Cosu even activated at all–the trinket took over the spell requirement somehow.”
Hai didn’t know what to say. The truth wasn’t much stranger than what Cici had just said–in fact, it was nearly a one-to-one copy of the truth. There was only one hole in it; how had the spell broken out of its canister and ended up in his hand? If there had been enough Spire radiation to destroy the Cosu itself, then there was no way a single spell should’ve survived. And no way it should’ve kept surviving without mana to sustain it.
“And it’s probably why you lived through the rupture.”
“What?” Hai tried to turn, but his neck cramped up halfway through. “Ow, ow, ow.”
That silvery thing hadn’t played a part until he cracked open mom’s Cosu. Whatever had kept him alive until then was something else–something he couldn’t even start to imagine.
“Don’t push yourself too hard, kid. Your body’s held together with hopes and dreams right now.” Cici said. “We’ll get you patched up enough to start, and then we’ll find some relative that can look after you. You got a… good relationship with your dad?”
Hai sneered, then blanked his face. Nope. Not telling the truth.
“Wouldn’t know. Never talked to him for more than five minutes.” Hai said bitterly. “Mom’s letters were always addressed to somewhere in the Labradorite Spire Sanctuaries, but I don’t know anything other than that.”
“Not even his name?”
Hai went to shake his head again, but stopped himself at the first twinge of pain. “Mom only ever called him ‘dad’, but she wasn’t ever… mad about it? I mean, she loved him enough to have two kids with him, so he can’t be that bad. But, um, I don’t want anything to do with him.”
Cici didn’t answer right away. “...Yeah, sure, kid. We’ll send out some feelers and see what kind of relatives Mary had. So… can I get you a book or something? Kids still read books, right? Or is it all e-books now?”
“They’re the same thing. I don’t know if my fingers can deal with a paper book right now, but if you have a reader somewhere, I’d like that. Or just a tablet. I’ve got a big backlog of shows I still need to get through.”
“Sure, kid. I’ll go see what we have. Sit tight.”
Not like Hai could do anything else. He leaned back against the sterile white bed and tried to ignore the ache that was his entire body. Failure came as easily as breathing. Which was to say, not quite as easily as usual. Every muscle seemed like it had a delay before it did anything, and even then, it only had a fifty percent chance to do what he wanted it to.
The other fifty percent of the time it just stopped. Painfully so.
Silence crept in from the edges of Hai’s perception. Just before it got too overwhelming the sound of flowing mana echoed through the building, loud and sharp like a waterfall of small razors. He craned his neck, regretted it, and kept straining anyway. Someone out there was doing something magical.
And he wanted to be a part of it.