“Oh, God,” Liz exhaled heavily as she saw the skull I held in my hand. Tendons and muscle still covered half of Officer Fulton’s skull, and one of his eyes was still intact. The force of the blast had torn off most of the flesh, but it was not a clean removal. Even the bare skull was flecked with flesh and sinew.
Slowly, I began to explain the reality of what had happened. “When the Bull of Heaven fired its first attack, your father was in the lobby, and the rest were in the auditorium. No one survived.”
The realization hit Liz like a truck, and the thin veneer of denial fell away. She had been clinging on to some faint hope that her father could have survived somehow, but I cruelly tore that hope away.
“A-are you sure?” Liz asked.
“Yes. The fact that Officer Fulton’s skull is here proves that my reconstruction of the scene was completely accurate. There is no room for doubt. I’m sorry.”
She fell to her knees upon the fine stone rubble, her chest heaving with wracking sobs. Doubt had been cast aside, and all that remained was grief.
Dropping Officer Fulton’s head back to the ground, I stepped forward and grabbed Liz around the shoulders. I pulled her toward me, and she began sobbing into my shoulder.
That’s the nature of connection. The closer you are to someone, the more it hurts when they’re taken from you. It has always been easier to keep a safe distance from others, but that goes against human nature. We just can’t help ourselves from growing attached.
For Carlos and me, System Integration was easy. We weren’t attached to anyone in the old world; my family had been dead for ten years, and no love was lost between Carlos and his parents. For normal people like Liz, System Integration was much harder.
Seeing the pain Liz was going through, I wanted to do something to alleviate her grief, even a little bit. For the first time in my life, my wish was granted.
[NEW SKILL ACQUIRED: GRAND REVERIE]
“Grand Reverie?” I muttered quietly. Why was the System giving me a new skill now? I hadn’t told it to take a new skill. As I quickly navigated over to the [Skills] page, I felt a strange tightening sensation in my brain that was similar to a minor headache.
Grand Reverie (Lunatic Advancement): By expending a spell slot and chanting the phrase “Grand Reverie,” you can project your hallucinations onto other people or monsters. You must concentrate to maintain the effect, and a higher-level spell slot can be used to affect multiple targets at once. This skill can be maintained for a maximum of ten minutes.
“What was that?” Liz asked, slowly pulling away from me and wiping the tears from her eyes.
I would have liked to stay like that for a bit longer, but it was probably good to move on. “It’s nothing. Are you all right?”
“No,” Liz began, “but none of us are. Grief can wait until we’re safe.”
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Professor Carlyle and Officer Fulton certainly weren’t the only people who died on the day of System Integration. As we spoke, billions of people all across the planet were dying.
We began to walk back toward the car over the mountainous pile of rubble. As we walked, my mind drifted once more to the scene of Professor Carlyle’s death. I wanted to see the Carolina Union once more before we left, since it was probable that I would never again return to Chapel Hill after that day.
I thought once more of Simonides of Creo, and the lobby of the Carolina Union reformed within the space of my own diseased mind. Standing there alone, in the center of the lobby, was Professor Edward Carlyle.
“What is this?” Liz gasped and took a step backward in confusion. She looked around at the walls and ceiling of the lobby with a fearful expression.
“Huh?” I muttered, blinking. Right, Liz must have been pulled into my hallucination by [Grand Reverie]. “Sorry, I activated my new skill accidentally. I’m projecting my hallucination into your mind. I’ll stop it as soon as I figure out how.”
“You can do that?” Liz asked, though her voice made it evident that her attention wasn’t focused on her words. Her eyes were locked on to the hallucinatory form of Professor Carlyle.
“The System is weird.” I tried to relax my mind in order to release [Concentration], but my thoughts only served to increase the force of the tightness in my mind. It felt like a cramp in my mind, and purposefully trying to relax the cramp only made it worse.
“Is this what you see all the time?”
“Usually it’s worse,” I answered truthfully.
Liz walked up to Professor Carlyle’s unmoving body. “Can… can you control it?”
“I can control this one, yeah. It’s like lucid dreaming.”
“Can you let him move? Please?” There was a strange sense of desperation in her voice that I didn’t understand. I had never been close to my parents, myself, so it was hard for me to comprehend what she was feeling.
Either way, I released my hold on the model, and the scene began playing once more. Professor Carlyle started moving, and the Bull of Heaven quietly lowered its head in preparation for its cataclysmic attack.
Professor Carlyle held a smartphone to his ear, and his gaze was locked on the Bull. In his features, I could see an echo of the intensity and intelligence that I had seen so often in Liz’s eyes.
The ghost of Liz’s father opened his mouth and began to speak. “No, the beast hasn’t moved since you left. Just get the students to safety, and I’ll keep you updated on its behavior.”
A moment passed as Professor Carlyle listened to Officer Fulton’s question over the phone. “Why am I staying behind?” Carlyle asked rhetorically. “My daughter will have to pass that way to get back. Obviously, I have to keep an eye out.”
Professor Carlyle smiled as he listened in silence for several seconds. “You’re a father, too? Good, then you understand why I have to do this.”
Fifteen more seconds of wordless silence passed before a bright orb of destructive energy appeared in between the Bull’s horns. Instead of allowing the moment to play out, I held the hallucination stationary in time.
“What?” Liz asked through tears. “What happened?”
“That’s it,” I said as I dispelled the hallucination with great effort. It would have been easier for me to simply let the scene play out until the reconstruction was indistinguishable from the scene’s current state, but I couldn’t let Liz witness the moment of her father’s death. “There’s nothing else to show.”
With great effort, Liz regained control of her emotions enough to keep walking. I let her lead the way to the car. As she walked past me, she said two words in a quiet voice just loud enough for me to hear.
“Thank you.”