My brother woke up in a fit one night, swinging like he had bugs crawling all over him while getting attacked by a burglar. One smack of sneaky mind magic later and I had him out till at least the morning when normal people greet the day. The table in the main room of my home had a nice hot pot of coffee sitting in the middle, a ring of clean stone mugs around it. A small stone container was filled with honey courtesy of Lyra gathering it from bees in the forest. Andy angrily walked in from his new room and sat down, slamming the chair as he adjusted it so that he was directly across from me.
“That’s freaky and don’t do it again.” His glare was unsettling but I couldn’t help myself. The sense of innate hostility was gone though which was reassuring. This looked like normal disorientation and morning grumpiness which I could handle. Laughing out loud, I poured some coffee for the both of us and slid his mug over to him.
“Sorry man,” I laughed. “I didn’t want my ugly mug to be the first thing you saw in the morning.”
Lyra walked out coquettishly from his room, grinning like a fat cat with a mouse in its paws even as my brother just kept right on cursing me out even as he grudgingly gripped his coffee mug. “But dearest, you didn’t like me taking care of you? I assure you, I was quite gentle.”
Andy glared at Lyra over his mug, refocusing his grumpiness on her. “My asshole of a brother might not have a problem screwing a plant but I know what y’all can do. We ain’t doin’ that ever.”
Laughing at my brother’s discomfort, Lyra walked out of the Hole. I had asked her to wake him up and maybe give him a bit of a scare but definitely no funny business. It was clear that she deliberately misinterpreted the word ‘surprise’, but having my little brother chase dryads was not what I had planned for him. As Andy glared at me again, reluctantly sipping his coffee, I figured that I might as well come clean. Copying his posture, I hunched over my coffee and sipped it, making sure that he knew I was mocking him.
“So, you want the whole story or just the cliffnotes, dude?”
A grunt was all I got. Luckily, I had prepared for this as well as sheer stubbornness runs in the family. Next to all the mugs was a little metallic cube with the top side covered in granite and the bottom in iron. I had swiped the little artifact from the Centauri obelisk room. Pushing it closer to Andy, I took another sip of coffee. “That’s a copy of all of my memories since the world went to hell. It’s in video form, meaning touch the granite side to your forehead and you’ll get it all as if you were in a narrated movie. The iron side will do the same but all of the emotions and thoughts will be filtered out. Your choice but I gotta say, you’re still my brother.”
His eyes narrowed as I pulled out another chunk of Centauri tech that I had modified but didn’t push it over to him. “This right here is the carrot. I know you still don’t like me but you have to at least review the memories I’ve given you in that one,” I said, pointing at the quartz cube near his mug. “But this one, this holds everything I know about magic in it. All of the information I’ve personally discovered on my own, everything a freaking fire dragon hoarded in his brain as well as what I’ve pulled from what I could get from the Centauri. This right here, it even has the Centauri schematics for runic tattoos that your higher-ups use. And . . . you get this AFTER you look through that.”
I watched as his eyes followed me putting away the latter crystal, the entire thing vanishing as it was deposited in the storage space inside of Gungnir. Still nothing from his side of the table. Realizing that he probably needed a bit more, I continued. “All right fuckstick, I should also probably tell you a couple more things. Let’s see here,” I said, finishing off my coffee. “I saved New Miami from a horde of freaky crab things and their cousins, cleaned out the self-destruct software in your brain and put an assistant in there to help you with magic and . . .”
Reaching under the table, I grabbed what I was looking for and set it between my recalcitrant brother. “And last but not least, TA-DAA!” Poking it with a finger, the dark gray orb rolled towards my brother. “You get your very own mini-flesh golem! This little guy can help you do way more than you think, like healing wounds, replacing organs, painlessly putting on or removing tattoos. Shoot, you can even use it to heal other people in a pinch. Just feed him some meat when he gets small and he’ll be good to go.”
In the blink of an eye, Andy snatched the grapefruit sized flesh golem and hurled him at my face. As it bounced off my forehead, he grabbed the stone table and heaved upwards, causing it to tilt and slam into me, pining me to the floor under its weight. It would have crushed my legs if not for my armor and the stupid amount of mana pumping through it. Grabbing Gungnir from where it had fallen next to me as I lay there in a bit of shock, Andy pointed my own weapon at my face. As he channeled mana into Gungnir, I started laughing.
“You think my own weapon is going to let you blast mana at me? Itss just eating whatever you pump into it right now!”
His face screwing up in anger, he stabbed the butt end of it at my face, figuring that since magic damage wouldn’t be forthcoming maybe blunt damage would get the job done. Right as his swing reached max velocity, Gungnir shocked Andy with a low level surge of power blasting him backwards. Using Earth Sorcery, I molded the stone table to flow around me as I stood up, taking my time to fix it back to where it was.
“Any other stupid things you wanna try? Maybe punch your fully armored brother in the face? Wanna go fight my elementals barehanded? Or maybe whip your dick out and fuck the granite wall in an insane attempt to dig your way out?”
With a wave of my hand, Gungnir returned to me in staff-form, power crackling down its length. As I walked closer to my brother, the snaps and pops of raw mana grew in intensity, almost giving me a supervillain vibe. Standing over his prone form, I nudged my brother in the shoulder. Opening his eyes, Andy rolled over and pivoted, kicking out like a breakdancer to try and take my legs out from under me. SAW engaged the stability protocols, stabbing the leyline wands down into the stone floor even as the stone itself grew up around my legs to take the blow.
It was pointless, this entire fight. But it was kind of necessary. We actually had been through this before, the whole brother fight brother thing. Before all of this madness and time dilation crap, I had seven years and fifty pounds on my brother. Our fights consisted of him trying to fight me and me holding him down, waiting for the inevitable gasp of exhaustion as he wound himself down. Think of a college aged man holding the kid by the forehead as the kid futilely swings for the moon, hitting nothing. That’s what’s going on, that last gasp of a temper tantrum, that anger just before the wind is completely taken out of his sails. My brother wanted to fight, needed to fight, and my job was to let him wear himself out.
Ten minutes of shattered stone furniture, livid screaming and yelling, and some magnificent name calling, my brother sat against the wall of my home in absolute exhaustion. Here, in my home, my place of power, I was basically a magical tank. Without his gear, there just wasn’t much that he was able to do other than chuck any loose item, which thanks to his ungodly strength was pretty much anything. The stone table was in much smaller, much more manageable sized chunks and my dishes were also completely destroyed.
[This is not the sign of a sane individual.] Kraken’s observation was not wrong, but it also wasn’t exactly correct either. And I get it, I kidnapped him, scrubbed his brain, pranked him with a dryad, and then promised explanations of times past and magical knowledge. I’d probably be a bit bonkers after having my head unfucked but a big brother has to do what a big brother has to do.
[True, but we humans also have our ways of fixing things. Guys can fight over something stupid and then be best friends right after. Brothers, well, we’re just reestablishing who’s the ‘big brother’ right now. He’s been off on his own for a long time, thinking I was dead, and now that I’m back, he ain’t gonna listen until he’s sure it’s me.]
[Humans are odd. How in the multiverse did any of you survive?]
[Brains and balls my friend, brains and balls.]
Whipping up a quick bit of magic, I used Earth Sorcery to fix the trashed area. The pieces of the stone table and all of the stone dishes simply melted into the floor as another table with new dishes rose from the floor. The cracks in the walls had already repaired themselves as if nothing had ever happened and I sat in my chair.
“Done yet?” I called out. “We can do it again if you want but I might fight back. You remember when we pissed off the copperhead that summer before I left for college? We kept shooting it with squirt guns to get rid of it but we were too dumb to realize that we were in the way? The whole thing was pointless because the snake just wanted to leave but couldn’t because we were too young and dumb to realize that the only way out was behind us?”
Andy looked at me, sweat dripping down his face as his chest heaved up and down. The anger in his eyes was replaced with exhaustion. “Stupid snake almost bit you too,” I said, smiling at the memory. “Had to drag you away when I realized we were the freaking problem, hahaha.”
“Right before our boxer Juno came in and ripped its head off,” Andy said with a faint smile. Filling up a stone cup with conjured water, I walked over and gave it to him as he held his hand out. “Yeah, I remember. Dad was so pissed. All that blood on his toolbox and it stank up the garage.”
Chuckling to myself, I allowed myself to relax just a bit, the tension flowing out of my shoulders as I sat down on the floor across from my brother whose presence seemed to shrink just a bit. “It really is you.”
“Yeah man, it’s really me.”
*******
Five days later . . .
Eventually, my younger brother is going to kick my ass. Painful as that realization was for me, it almost made me happy. It became my hope for his future.My brother had become Johnny’s new best friend the instant Johnny cracked a joke in my direction and Andy kicked him through a wall. From that moment on they were best friends. The broken and sometimes shattered trees bore testament to burgeoning friendship as they sparred, pitting esoteric martial arts katas against bitterly earned Centauri battlewizard arts.
Andy had adapted fairly well to having a baby computer in his brain, especially since it did all the hard work of analyzing and predicting movements just as well as it was able to break down and compile spellforms. Every night so far for my brother had ended with a big meaty meal and three hours of communing with his own brain, expanding the A.I. and adding the stolen knowledge piece by piece to his compendium. We didn’t really talk about the rest of the family, it simply motivated us to work even harder.
[You should tell him.]
I sighed even though I knew Kraken was right. I had probably overstepped my bounds on this one but damnit, it was for his own good.
[Still should tell’em.]
In exchange for Sybella dropping the fact that I had completely and utterly humiliated her by restraining her without breaking a sweat, I had given her a personalized mana battery, but that wasn’t the end of it. Our little mental conversation included a few more relevant pieces of information that would be life-changing, for more than just Andy. I wanted Andy to learn magic, real badass wizardry but I was not the teacher he needed. I am a sorcerer and our methods of magic are inherently incompatible when it comes to learning. Mine is based off of instinct and affinity while his is grounded in understanding, education and the learned application thereof.
My Faustian bargain was for a bastardized version of a foreign exchange program. Sybella had agreed to take Andy in and teach him everything she and her clan could and then pay for him to go to the oldest magical center of learning. In exchange, she would send me one of her best students, someone that wanted a fresh start. It was weird though, when Sybella and I talked, I could feel her emotions during our conversation. She still thought that she was getting the better end of the deal, that the mana battery was still worth more than my brother’s arcane education and the loss of a promising student.
[Duh, you just gave her exactly what she needed to become the head of her clan, her coven. That bitch could fight off a dragon with one hand tied behind her back with that.]
Ignoring the running commentary, I kept pondering what I had done, working the issue over to better understand the pros and cons. To me, it made so much sense to do this. It’s not like I’ll be sending Andy off into the unknown completely unprepared. By the time Sybella’s protege would be ready, Andy would be too. His A.I. would have a complete and organized log of all of the compiled magical knowledge that I could provide, which was a fuckton considering all of the shit I’d stolen from a dragon’s brain, a minotaur shaman, a couple dwarves, and the Centauri themselves.
Not to mention, I was planning on completely pimping out his gear between now and the day he was headed out, and his A.I. combined with his mini flesh golem would be able to make some epic runic tattoos anytime he wanted. Damn, I’m an awesome big brother, well, if you ignore the fact that I’m still making his decisions for him. Meh, it can wait.
Still ignoring Kraken at this point, I got busy making anything and everything I could think of for Andy and his eventual departure. I had him training with no gear under the guise of ‘intense training’ sessions so I could take apart his stuff and put it back together without questions. The first thing I worked on was his gun and after an hour of frustrating banging my head against the wall, I scrapped it and just made him one like mine, complete with ammo conjuration and a revolving barrel to fire energized particles, shotgun electro taser bolts, a kinetic blast, and even long range crystal magitech rounds.
His Centauri tower shield was reworked to have a blackened outer layer of platinum mixed with iridium to shrug off pretty much any kind of direct magical attack but the iridium was there to help divert what couldn’t be absorbed. The back side of the shield was outfitted with overflow mana batteries covered with the platinum/iridium mix as well.
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The suit of armor I crafted was actually made from scratch. Since Andy’s Centauri genetic enhancements gave him ridiculous strength, I went the rugged platemail approach. The idea was to have his usual nanite armor underneath but the outer layers of plated armor would make him a walking tank. Each piece of armor was made up of layers, the outer being the platinum/iridium mix that I was so fond of with a thin layer of runed quartz forming the bridge to the inner layer of steel. The middle layer would divert the magical or kinetic energy that the upper layer wouldn’t immediately shed and the steel layer was completely devoted to diverting what the other two layers couldn’t. All in all, I basically crafted a suit of armor that I would not stand a chance against.
The helmet had the same layers as the rest of it but with one addition. A small diamond circlet was set in the layer of steel complete with runes to enhance brain power as well as provide an extra layer of protection against mental attacks or unwanted intrusions. If I did it right, it would also function as an antenna or extra processing power for Andy’s A.I. if necessary.
With the defense and offense taken care of, the only thing left was utility. I crafted two slender wands for him grown out of the wood of my own weapon, Gungnir. Kraken required me to channel absolutely stupid amounts of mana into my staff to allow the perfect wands to grow out of it, which meant I had to take a trip to Sunstone Castle to get the required power. The explanation from my familiar was a bit lacking, something about, ‘Artifacts don’t grow on trees, and they sure as shit don’t grow more! Does it look like a plant to you?’. Not caring for the rest of his argument which I studiously ignored, I did as he asked and channeled weeks worth of power gathered from the desert sun into Gungnir, coaxing two fledgling wands to pop out complete with star iron tips.
It almost felt like giving a child away when I put the wands down on my table in the Lab. Andy’s new set of plate armor, his reworked shield, and his brand spankin’ new rifle were laid out and the wands were placed gently next to everything. I had even managed to work in a slot in his armor for the little flesh golem to sit comfortably. Several of my most dense and efficient mana batteries were here as well, fully charged and slotted into the armor in and around the chest and thighs.
[Not that this isn’t interesting, but it does seem like you’re avoiding him. Shit, you’ve been avoiding me!]
[Is it me, Kraken? Or do you sound more and more like a human every time you talk?]
My question sparked a feeling of smugness mixed with a hint of shame that crept down our link from Kraken to me. [Being bonded to a human is odd. Your nature is so malleable and short-lived that we spirits cannot help but be changed. All we are is thought and power and soul but we have no agency. You are the will, the very spark that allows us to exist corporeally. This is what the Scions of Order desire, knowledge in all its forms, which includes what you humans call ‘emotions’ or ‘feelings’.]
[I liked it better when you were silent,] I grumbled, putting the last but most important item next to the ensemble. I had created, with Kraken’s help, a crystal imbued with several ‘builds’ for my brother. Each one was a schematic for a different pattern of runes, one for everyday preparedness and several more for any kind of situation like long term wilderness survival or stealthy missions.
My favorite was what I called the ‘Dense Druid, and yes, you kinda have to be dense to come up with it. It’s the last ditch defense to channel a mammoth amount of power from anywhere and everywhere to summon a crystal exoskeleton capable of withstanding pretty much anything I can think of, and because of my abilities, making volcanoes is not outside of the realm of possibility. The beauty of the dense druid is that it places the body in an enhanced stasis that still allows your brain to work and the exoskeleton will last for as long as some kind of power can be drawn from to make it, which does include ambient mana from a hypothetical blast of raw power.
Taking a quick page out of my own book, I quickly reworked my own runic tattoos to include all of these schematics but I left key connecting channels disconnected so they wouldn’t accidentally activate.
Off to the left, I had an oversized chest comprised of multiple layers which I had dubbed my ‘Forbidden Artifacts’ chest. It was more an exercise of curiosity and experimentation that I realized maybe would not be so good in the wrong hands. The most dangerous experiment was the Dagger of Rending. The point of that experiment was to test and see if I could put ‘seeds’ of my own sorcery into tools and make them epic, and the problem was that I actually succeeded beyond my wildest dreams but revealed a key weakness.
Doing so, creating a ‘seed’ of sorcery from my own soul, weakened my own abilities, but not in a cataclysmic kind of way where I lose my power. In making a seed, it was like plucking a fruit, creating the potential for someone or something else to grow in power but it did make me less. The other side of that potentially dangerous avenue to power is that due to the unique nature of my soul tree, my temporarily weakened power could actually ‘grow’ back to where it was.
But back to the Dagger. This little experiment was a small dagger made of conjured diamond that I shaped to fit snug inside of a handle of cold iron. The core of the dagger though was a braided wire thread made up of three parts: gold, silver, and Yggdrasil wood. The braided tip of the wire came up to the dagger’s tip and protruded just enough so that it would be the first part to make contact if the user made a stabbing motion. When I implanted the ‘seed’ of sorcery, I acted on some unknown instinct and chose Flesh Sorcery. Even Kraken couldn’t guess what it did until I cut the tip of my finger with it and the dagger began ravenously devouring my blood and life force, channeling it down the core of the blade and into the handle where it poured right back into me. That little fucker was basically a handy arrow for any Achilles comin’ my way.
And because I’m a sucker for punishment, I had to try other crazy shit with my sorceries. The ‘Granite Gauntlets’ had a seed of Earth Sorcery that I split in two, and if the gloves grabbed anything at the same time, that object became covered in stone. The worst part was that if I held onto that object, it actually became stone as if Medusa herself was glaring at it. It meant that using the gloves to carry anything delicate was out of the question as it could ruin anything it was holding whether or not I wanted it to.
‘Poseidon’s Trident’ was my version of a joke that actually turned out to be incredibly effective. The trident itself was made from conjured bone and grown coral that my water elementals were more than happy to bring me. With the blades of the trident carved from steel from sunken ships and the bone/coral shaft covered in shaped mangrove wood, I stuck the seed of Water Sorcery in it and massaged it so that its influence permeated the entire weapon. Reeanth played with it for a bit, dancing and walking across the Rappahannock as if it were dry land before I took it back to work on the other project.
The last one I worked on was a bit on the scary side. I called it ‘Yggdrasil’s Wrath’. It was a mace grown from the root of my offshoot of Yggdrasil and that was it, but with the seed of Nature Sorcery it became something more. This test happened about forty miles to the east where a nest of goblins had gotten a bit too comfortable for my taste. Remembering my own run in with the nasty bastards, I sent Johnny and Andy to test it out on them as I held back and observed.
Honestly, it was kind of sickening. Every swing of the mace pulverized flesh as if a tree had literally fallen on them, and when the messed up body hit the ground, every bit of plant life ate it. It was as if Mother Nature herself was angry at the target. Weeds would grab at ankles, trees would suddenly swing their branches and roots would spear from below. It was so gory that I almost threw up, watching the monsters get ripped apart from every swing as every bit of flora became the predator for once.
The results of my experiments were so outside of my expectations that I actually held off on making more with the rest of the sorceries that I hadn’t used, my mana and consciousness. Anything made from those two would be a bit too powerful, in fact, I wouldn’t even trust myself. Visions of me making a mind control helmet or a mana-antimatter bomb, or even some kind of mind melting mana transmitter. Storing those away for later, just in case the world did get a bit too dark, I popped outside to see my dysfunctional family.
Reeanth was currently in the process of whooping my brother while Johnny was in the gravity training Parthenon-looking building I made for him a while ago. Fuzzy and Spot were conked out just past the edge of the clearing, both using each other as a pillow and somehow managing to sleep through the intermittent explosions.
“That was the weakest fireball I’ve ever seen!” Reeanth screamed as she swatted aside a particularly weak golf ball sized flame. Her eyes blazed, firing a flash of mana at Andy as he dodged to the side, scooping up a rock and hurling at her head even before he reached the ground. I could see the problem here. Wizardry takes time to work, time to gather the required spell forms or components, time to concentrate and organize them together, time to channel the mana to alter reality, too much time to be effective for combat.
Apparently, that didn’t seem to apply to Reeanth who simply waved her hand as if lightly back-handing a fly. A fireball the size of a basketball appeared, blazing into existence and launching at my brother. Instinct made me react, honest. A compressed blast of water intercepted the fireball even before I realized that I was the one who shot it. The steam explosion tossed Andy to the side even as I stormed over to Reeanth, preparing to tear her a new one.
Seeing the danger of big brother on the warpath, Andy screamed out. “WAIT! WAIT!” Turning towards him and seeing him unharmed allowed the red tint to leave my eyes. “We’re warded against fire right now, it’s safe! Sheesh.”
My face turning red due to not grasping the obvious nature of the situation, I said a quick apology and stood there awkwardly. “My lord?” Reeanth asked, looking at me with a question on her face.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just that no one picks on my brother but me.”
“That was a long time ago,” Andy cut in, throwing a chunk of dirt at me. “I’m pretty much twice your size now and if you weren’t so fancy with your magic I’d kick your butt.” He was teasing, I could tell that from his smirk but something about the way he said told me that he meant at least part of it. He honestly thought he’d kick my ass.
“You know what?” I said, slowly shucking my armor. “Now’s as good a time as any. I got some news that you may or may not like, but I need you to do it. If I win, you do it without a fuss, and if you don’t, I’ll find a way to get you out of it.”
Andy froze in his tracks like a cat caught stalking a bird. “What did you do?” he growled, every oversized muscle of his tensing as he spat the words.
“Well,” I said, nonchalantly continuing to take off my gear. “You have the potential to be great, powerful even, probably more powerful than me given time. The problem is that you have no training, no education, and here, this place is not the most advantageous setting for you to learn what you need to know.”
“Get to the point.”
Great. Even Reeanth was looking at me curiously now. I figured Kraken would have clued her in by now.
“I got you a full-ride scholarship to the Poly-Arcane Institute, and a crash course of Interstellar Culture with Sybella’s clan before you go.” Andy’s knuckles clenched as if he were imagining that it was my throat between his fingers even as I finished setting all of my gear off to the side. “You need an actual education and since I’m rich as fuck by the standards of the multi-verse, then you’re gonna get one. I’ll be sending you off with a kit that any wizard, sorcerer, mage, or warlock would literally sacrifice their child for but I need you to do this, please.”
The problem with little brothers is that they tend not to think about the long-term, the scope of what could be. We big brothers have to look out for them, not because they aren’t intelligent, but because they simply tend to not look down the road when they’re having fun. And I mean that literally; I remember yanking his happy ass out of the road when he was little. A freaking Ford F250 had almost flattened him when he was riding his bike not paying attention and thanks to me he wasn’t a human pancake.
“Fine,” he snarled, kicking off and launching himself at me. With a small kick of my own, I tapped the earth, sending a column of stone to punch him in the gut. As he stumbled back, I kept talking.
“And to keep it fair, you can use any magic you want and I’ll only be allowed to use one kind, any kind you specify too. No magical weapons and the usual tap out rules.”
“Ten bucks on the little bro!” Johnny yelled, sprinting over from his training, sweat dripping everywhere.
“Money doesn’t exist here anymore dumbass!” Andy said, his eyes never leaving me.
“Lame,” Johnny complained, sitting down and chugging some water.
“And who exactly is the ‘little bro’?” my brother said. “I may be younger but I’m definitely ‘bigger.”
“That’s what he said!”
Another flex of magic from me pushed the ground Johnny was sitting on away from us in a less than gentle manner. “Fine, fine, I get it. Shut up Johnny.”
Pointing a finger at me, Andy spoke. “Healing magic. You can only use healing magic.”
“Too easy,” I laughed, making the ‘come on’ motion with my hand. “I thought you at least wanted half a chance.” Taking and twisting my own interpretation of ‘healing’ magic, I sped up my reaction time to match Andy’s and then got in a boxing stance, but instead of holding my fists up, I had the pointer and middle finger extended out slightly curved. Focusing a bit, I pushed my Flesh Sorcery to compact targeted ‘healing’ energy at the tips of my fingers.
Andy strode forward and ripped the stone column I had hit him with from the ground and wielded it like a bat, swinging for the hills. Each swing missed with centimeters to spare even though he wielded it as if it were as light as a wiffleball bat. Swinging horizontally forced me to back up, giving him time to mutter, setting the last foot of the bat on fire. As I took another step back, Andy held the bat in one arm and conjured a fireball in his other hand only this time it was about the size of a tennis ball.
“Fuck,” I cursed. Either of those would hurt with the limitations I was currently working with which meant the only option was to stick to the dodgeball philosophy. Andy closed faster than I expected, using the fireball as a melee weapon instead of chucking it at me like I expected. Each swing of the fireball and burning bat left me with second degree burns which made me almost instinctively use conjured water to freaking put it out.
Finally using his brain, Andy kicked the dirt up at my face which I blocked with an arm which also ended up momentarily blocking my vision. Tossing the fireball at my feet, the explosion knocked me up into the air where Andy met me, jumping up and bringing the stone column down mercilessly with both hands.
That split second before the bat hit me, I felt a hint of genuine fear. The split second after the bat hit me, I felt a tsunami of pain and then nothing. My Flesh Sorcery cut off the pain and instantly began stitching my organ and spine back to the way they were. Laying there on the ground, I saw Andy’s face go from outright horror to outrage as he saw the condition I was in rapidly going away thanks to my healing capabilities. Bringing the column up for another swing, I grabbed the earth, pushing off with my right hand while yanking on the grass with the other, moving me awkwardly out of the way.
The stone column blew a crater in the clearing where my midsection used to be. Overpowering my arms again with ‘healing’, I army crawled faster than any army dude ever could as my body pulled itself back together. I could hear Reeanth’s muffled shouts as she freaked out, which I was fine with as long as she didn’t interfere.
“Finally!” I yelled as I felt the last of my nerves connect and my bones realign from their shattered fragments. “Fuck you!” The anger was from the pain but the joy was from seeing the expression on his face. Rolling on my back and springing at Andy as he was bringing the column back for the swing, I stabbed my fingers at his joints, each poke blasting ‘healing’ energy into the natural hinges of his body. His bones began to awkwardly grow with each poke, slowing him down and eventually locking his body up so that he couldn’t move. His kneecaps fused his tibia to his femur and his shoulder joint was essentially welded to his humerus due to the new growth.
“That’s not healing!” Andy yelled as he keeled over, unable to catch himself.
“Technically it is,” I said, kneeling down in front of him, his overgrown bones creaking as his muscles strained against them. “I ‘healed’ or ‘encouraged’ your bones to grow just a bit more, to, get a bit closer to their neighbors.”
“Friggin’ cheater.”
“Hey, if you ain’t cheatin-,” I said with a smirk.
Andy finished with a defeated smile. “Then you ain’t competin’.”
Taking the time to numb him from the neck down, I quickly and carefully banished the extra bone mass so he would have normal range of movement. Scanning his body, I injected an overall shot of healing mana just to make sure that he didn’t have any lasting injuries. Reaching out a hand, I helped him get his heavy ass off the ground.
“So,” Andy said. “This college of yours, think maybe they got any weed?”