I sat back in my bed and lay there like the useless pile of refuse I felt like and was. I was lying in a bed I hadn’t rested in for over a decade, yet it was all too familiar to me. It was a little girl's bed, though more in its colour than its length, that fit me just fine.
My bandaged left arm was limp, pining me to the bed with weight like a thousand anvils, the feeling of it like a shackle made of failures and poor decisions.
My mother had come in, but I just continued to stare ahead, wishing for oblivion to swallow me whole.
I had saved the day. Saved the city and all those who were still in it. I had done it.
I managed to get to the city's center before it burned down, even saving people in the process. I had helped Strause, opened an escape path, pushed back the tide, and called forth a deluge to snuff the fire. I had gotten injured to the temples where they could be tended to and carried on to the main gate, and in clearing the route, I had helped people escape. I had sent Saphine out to protect my brother, saving his life, if at a cost. I had figured out how to quicken the spell inscribed in the staff, carving off probably twenty to thirty minutes of casting time that would have claimed thousands who were trapped between unsafe streets filled with marauding monsters, undead, and a wall of fire that would have cremated everyone in hiding beneath a wall of smoke and a wave of heat, pulling the very air to the center like a candle flame.
I had bypassed all the intended mechanisms of protection without thought or care and covered the parched city in torrential rain, letting nature take its toll on its hated enemy and snuffing the fire. And I had done it in a way that would have sacrificed myself.
It had been unintentional, just part of my rush to power the storm. The only reason it had been that fast was my ability to cast it quickly. Most of the cost had been provided by nature, not by me… And I still needed to ritual cast the spell.
I would have run out on my own. It was far more costly than I had expected. Then again, it was a spell worth somewhere between 200000 and 2000000 points for a full-cast spell. Based on experience, I expected to put maybe 10,000 points of mana into it. The rest had been one part of the medium, that being the sky actively wanting to rain and nature making up the difference.
I had backlashed and exhausted myself, and I had expected that for messing around with the spell, but I hadn’t expected to nearly kill myself.
I also hadn’t expected for Saphine to save me at the expense of her life.
“You look quite miserable,” my Mother told me.
“I’ve been struck by lightning, and I can’t manipulate my mana or use any of my skills,” I told her, “I would say that’s a good reason to be miserable,” I protested.
“You could stop sidestepping the question, Annabeth… Or should I call you Anna?” She asked me.
I cringed at that, the reflexive action giving away more than I wanted. My family shortened my name to Beth. Saphine was the one who called me Anna, and she was a sore spot right now. A fresh wound of my own making to match my arm.
“Don’t. I would prefer you didn’t,” I told her.
I couldn’t meet her gaze. She was far too good at reading them, both charismatic and perceptive enough to read the calm faces of the nobility at court. Compared to them, I might as well be an open book written in bold. I could feel her watching me for a moment, her eyes like lances pressing into me, pinning me in place like a bug.
It was, in fact, the thing I hated most about her. It was a terrible thing, hating your own family. A young nobleman might have a feud, but that was hate and ambition, I held none of the ambition. I did not hate my mother like that; I just hated her a little, and it was, to me, the kind of hate that cut both ways. I didn’t want to hate my mother, or father, or brothers. I just couldn’t like them most of the time, because of what they had done, continued to do, and would do in the future.
It was hard to not hate my mother. She had contributed to a situation that had gotten me kicked out and removed from circles where I could have done more for the valley. Even now, I was trying to break into it by gaining land, land that I could have simply gotten years ago if I had had the connections to do it. And she always scrutinized us hawkishly, trying to read our minds the hard way. I think I could say for all of us how she made us feel uncomfortable just by being near her.
It was as far from what I imagined a mother should feel like as was possible.
Even as a grown woman, my mother put a streak of fear through me, put the fear of being known and disapproved of that was buried in me, deep and hard as a diamond and twice as exploitable.
My mother sighed and pulled her chair close enough to reach me.
“I do wish you would let me into your life Annabeth,” She said, a mixed emotion to her voice, “I don’t like how little you trust me.”
“It's not just about trust, Mother. I feel like I can’t say anything around you without you somehow pulling me apart,” I told her. “You are so used to doing it; you just are that way. I can feel you staring at me, dissecting me like a rat. It's not even that I don’t trust you. It's that I can’t so much as tell you something without you intuiting twenty things I don’t feel comfortable sharing with you.”
“I’m very sorry you feel that way, daughter mine.” She told me.
I doubted she was sorry for her actions; she did them far too frequently for that. I didn’t say so, though. Her words and my refusal to voice my thoughts left a silence between us, a wide, empty one. A barren field of salted earth.
“Well… I remember Strause mentioning you had an interesting guest, but she was certainly… More than I expected. Quite talkative for someone who couldn't do so a few months ago.” My mother said, picking up the conversation.
“She certainly is,” I sighed.
“You seem… Close?” She asked in a way that was intended to lead me on.
“She is indeed my apprentice,” I confirmed without confirming anything.
“Indeed… The last time she came up, she couldn’t speak common; she’s come quite some way since then, by the sounds of it, even if she has an… Accent. I can see you've been hard at work,” She said, a simple statement of fact.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“Indeed, she couldn't speak common, but she could speak an archaic tongue of it; luckily, the difference is in spelling and pronunciation, so she’s been talking for a while,” I told her. I played it straight, as straight as I could, to give as little away as possible.
“Fascinating,” she said, not seeming to care about the idea of a long-dead language.
Ah.
It was a game of platitudes.
My least favourite kind of exchange.
“Indeed, though she picked it up quite quickly, but that’s my student for you,” I told her passively, resting my tired eyes.
“Well, she certainly had a quick tongue,” she said.
That almost got me there and then. It was one of the kinds of statements that could be a whole bunch of things, and I couldn’t tell if that was pointed or not. Was that her telling me I hadn’t taught her manners? Was it an insult? A platitude? For all I knew, it was a sex thing, which would be quite horrifying. The last thing I wanted was for my mother to know we were close enough to share a bed. It shook me a little. I felt cornered by it, and yet, also like I had nothing solid to put my back to. A part of me wished Saphine were here, sat next to me, and that shook me even worse than my mother did.
I was tired, I was hurt, I was frightened and horrified, and I was in the presence of someone that put me on edge, and I had pushed my only friend away. I sat here in a room with a familial stranger, and an evening that would live in my nightmares, the nights events would remain as shadows in my eyes for the rest of my life. It was a good thing that my eyes were closed because I had the urge to cry a little.
“Annabeth? Please don't shut me out. What's wrong? Did I say something wrong? Is it your arm?” she asked, reaching over and laying a hand on my shoulder.
She spoke in a calming voice, a voice to soothe, and one that she had never used with me. Her calm did little but infuriate me. Here she was, suddenly caring about me after a life of treating me like a pawn. It made me want to scream.
“Why do you even care?” I asked her, my voice hoarse, “The Mother I remember wouldn’t have cared. Who are you, and what did you do with her?”
“Calm down, Annabeth, you’ll-” She tried, as could be expected. The problem was I was tired of her pretending to care, and the ball of negative emotion in me turned into a burst of anger.
“Or what? Will I hurt myself? We’re past that point, Mother,” I said angrily. “I’ve gotten myself struck by lightning and survived a spiritual mauling! I not only nearly killed myself tonight, I've killed someone in the process! I should be fucking dead! I should be a lifeless corpse, and I would have made one tonight if my apprentice hadn't been there, and taking my fuck up for me. I should be hurt. More hurt than I am now!”
“And you will be! If you keep moving. Think about your arm!” she told me, chiding but otherwise unaffected by my shouting.
If I were in a reasonable state, perhaps her calm words might bring me to see things her way, but as it was, it made me want to spit the worst kind of words I could. It made me want to hurt her in the only way I could think to.
“Oh? Think about what? This useless thing? It's as good as dead. I’ll never use it properly again. I can’t even move the damn thing. Thanks for all the help, but its wasted. I understand, you can't seem to understand what that means for me. I can see that you took the idea of being a mage seriously. Now, if you have nothing better to do than sit here and act like… Like you care about me beyond being a pawn for you to move around or to get a scoop out of, I would prefer to be left alone!” I spat.
My words left my mouth in a hateful bombardment. Each word drawn without thought, and used without reason. They were untargeted in direction, but chosen based purely by how much I felt they would hurt her, every ounce of my mistrust and recent experience guiding the process.
I spat them forth and the room became silent as they dragged through it.
“That’s very uncharitable, Daughter mine,” she said.
She said it in a voice that told me, ‘and this is the end of the conversation,’ but it wasn’t. She could have left then and there, excused herself, but she didn’t.
Instead, she sat there as I stewed on her continued placement next to me. We sat there alone together.
“I’m not going to leave, though. I’m not going to neglect you. I… I understand that’s how you feel about me, that I was neglectful, that I wasn’t there, and that I used you. Looking back at it, I can understand how you could feel that way. I can’t say it's unreasonable, even if it hurts.” She said, a slight amount of trepidation in her voice. "I did what I felt was best, then, I pushed you away. Everything I have built has come to naught."
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear, nor what I wanted her to do. I wanted her to leave, I wanted her to act the way I remembered she would act, I wanted her to prove my expectations of her so I could give up and pretend like she was the Mother of my childhood, the Mother that would agree and encouraged my Father to turn me out because I was turned down in one her her powerplays.
I wanted her to be the towering figure of childhood that I remembered. The one that always moved things to fit her desires. The woman who treated people like troops, moving them across an invisible board for whatever purpose she wanted. The woman who could look at a child, her own child, and sacrifice them for whatever she wanted.
And here she was, a decade later, older and quieter. I looked at her, frustrated tears in my eyes, and really looked at her. She wasn't that Mother. She was just a 48-year-old woman with brown hair and green eyes, well dressed and tired. A woman who had been younger than me when she had me, seventeen or eighteen when she had Clause, twenty or so when she had me. By the time I was sixteen, she was older than I was now, watching a younger me, pushing me out into the world only for me to scorn it.
It wasn’t like I had made my inclinations public. Hells, most people would get matched with someone and spend the rest of their miserable lives with someone they could barely tolerate. My parents had matched me with a pig, but a rich one, a life of relative luxury. Her look knocked the anger out of me and, with it, the everything that had kept me up. I slumped and started to cry properly, choking back tears as best as I could, and my mother slipped up onto the edge of my bed and did her best to comfort me.
At least something hadn’t changed today; I still cried ugly and hard, sounding like a dying animal and snoting up every surface I came in contact with.
I blubbered to her about my arm, about my mistake, about the dead, the carnage, the whole of the stresses and tension. I blabbed about how my arm would ruin my spell casting, about Saphine, though blessedly not our maybe relationship and about my internal torment, and more on her death.
I had chased Saphine away for doubting my ability to take care of myself, for doubting my competence, but how could I be angry at her, when she was right? I had killed the woman I loved with my lifelong passion before wounding myself in a way that had ruined my ability to use it. I would be half the mage I was but a few hours ago, and now I had no idea what to do. Who would I be without my magical prowess? How would I be useful without my one use? Why would she continue to take care of me, when I couldn't even take care of her?
***
Aww. Look at them, getting over their emotional baggage and bonding over hardships.
“Maybe something good will happen. Maybe it’s a good combo for a level 30 [Mother] with skills for children and sensitivity to emotion,” I mumbled to myself.
Either way, it would be a bit difficult for Anna to fall asleep at the moment. It would tire her out eventually, but it would be a while for that. I might be a bit cold, but I couldn’t understand crying. It was a weird mortal thing; spirits had no tears. I sighed and considered what to do to pass the time. I could check somewhere else, but it would be boring. Most of the crazy stuff was centered on Saphine.
“Speaking of mortal spirits…” I muttered to myself, staring off into the distance at the shape of the mana-less forms of the two.
Who would have thunk it, three mortal spirits, one immortal and two sensitive to the forces of anathema in one place? What a time to be animate.
I would say alive, but I wasn’t, not classically; that would be gross.
I couldn’t shape anima that worked with primordium, that was very much a different kind of spirit… But I could watch it. Perhaps I would get a scoop, but it would be a little wait if I did. Strause would take a bit to find his counter part. Primordium worked on emotion, and we had a hard time getting a hang on spotting it, but from the look of it, his friend Joahana or whatever was warding away stuff.
I gave them some space and turned to the manner. I noticed two souls that should never be in the same room, one a man and one a little sprite, and decided to sneak over there first.
“Let’s check on the brother and the friend,” I murmured to myself, “Now that I’m sure this will work out well… Assuming they talk to one another instead of killing each other.”