Even after the impassioned declaration and her directions, Mevi was unable to do anything more. She quickly realized the others had their talents set to work but she didn’t know what she could do. Returning inside the crashed ship, with the aid of the Sentinel, Mevi watched the others work and organize. So dedicated to their tasks and goals despite the situation, Mevi tried her best to not look perturbed. Yet there was one thing Mevi could try, she realized.
Finding her way to the room that was originally meant to be her personal quarters, she entered inside alone. The lights were nonfunctional, but she felt that was better for what she wanted. Sitting inside, the dark pressing in as so little light flowed in from the dim light from the rest of the ship, Mevi resumed a task she had yet to finish.
Closing her eyes and immersing herself in the dark, Mevi delved once more into the meditative training her Magi masters had tasked for her. What was once a task meant to reawaken a potential that had gone quiet, was now a tool to rediscover the healing powers she had shown before falling unconscious. Her first goal was to remember.
Recalling anything from the moment her trance began was difficult. Where there should be a memory was instead an empty feeling with strange touchless sensations and fleeting images. The thoughts that strung together were frayed and fragmented, dim lights in an inky emptiness that should be a clear thought. Yet if Mevi pressed, if she focused and pried open the embers of memory fragments, she felt them give way and acquiesce to her.
In a sense, Mevi knew that even her ability to do this, to recover memories from mere fragments and impressions, was a sign her powers were growing to a fraction of the scale of when she faced Modrak’s terror or the Daemon’s possession. Yet she couldn’t help but feel her progress was slow. She pressed and pried, she stoked the embers inside her and channeled a feeling of flowing water that fought against her grip. Like trying to physically pick up a stream of water, only drops and drips were retained, yet the specks of power she could hold inside her was enough proof that it was there. These strenuous events, life or death encounters, panic over loved ones, and emotions that threatened to break her was what caused her body and mind to run wild and uncontrolled. She needed calm and focus, she needed to control the flow of whatever was inside her without wielding it recklessly.
As she focused more, her Maige, her Magicae’s tool, thrummed in response. Its aid was like giving her a pale to push and collect the stream of power inside of her. Not strong enough to dictate the stream’s direction, but enough to collect the power to use small portions to perform tiny miracles. When her Maige responded to her imaginations she realized an idea.
When Mevi tried to force the memories to mend themselves they only showed emptiness and a green tinted teal glow. But along with the colors were feelings and abstract ideas. There was almost nothing to the thoughts within at all, like all she experienced was nothing but raw emotion without any other thought or even real sight. Yet she had felt similarly before. When she wanted to avenge Kalesi, despite the Daemon’s possession, all she felt was rage and a want for vengeance. There was no higher or more complex thought or reasoning. When she fought against Modrak she only wanted to save her friends, she had no time for planning or thinking within the moment. In this latest incident the only thing she remembered was feeling an intense care, empathy and desire to fix what was hurting Tanaka, she perhaps didn’t think anything at all beyond that. Mevi didn’t know how her powers worked, but they only responded when she felt an emotion so strong it was overpowering. Could this be some kind of answer?
Mevi opened her eyes, the dark seeming bright after her mental seclusion. Yet the light behind her seemed dimmer than it was before. Her companions must have put out the fire and lights they used outside and returned to the ship’s safety. Regardless, Mevi needed to experiment. Looking around the cabin she searched for something sharp, yet to her companion’s credit there was not a single item that fit what she needed.
Stepping outside, her Sentinel waiting patiently beside the open doorway, Mevi looked towards the pile of mostly organized rubble. A glint of metal caught her eye. Moving to the pile, and digging through the stacks of rubble, destroyed furniture, equipment, and electronics, Mevi found something suitable. A shard of gold-tinted metal, a sharp piece of the hull’s shrapnel, something that could cut and tear seamlessly. Mevi’s Sentinel stared at her, and she felt she could almost sense a cautiousness from it, a worried curiosity. However Mevi was likely projecting her own anxiety onto the emotionless guardian.
Returning quietly to her cabin, Mevi became hesitant about the soundness of her experiment. She noticed that her Sentinel was standing inside the doorway rather than beside it like before, as if it had an inclination to her plan. Perhaps the Sentinel had actually worried about what she was doing? Could it have guessed what she planned to do? Mevi wondered. “Sentinel…” Mevi began, unsure how to explain herself, “I don’t plan to actually hurt myself. This is for my training. Only a small nik, the barest of cuts.” She tried to elaborate. Yet the Sentinel stared in silence, looming in the doorway it barely fit in.
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Mevi hoped the Sentinel wouldn’t stop her from conducting her experimental training. Carefully wielding the metal shard, Mevi gently placed it against the back of her hand and pulled. A sharp pain came from the spot where metal met skin and crimson slowly bled out of the tiny wound. Yet small it was, barely a fingernail’s width. Turning to see her Sentinel’s reaction, Mevi watched as the golden-clad guardian watched quietly. As Mevi put the metal shard onto the ground, she was startled as her Sentinel suddenly moved inside the cabin. Leaning down and picking up the shard, Mevi placed a barely bleeding hand on its arm, “Wait, I might need that again later…” she insisted.
The Sentinel stared at Mevi for a time longer than what felt comfortable. Despite Mevi’s request, the Sentinel continued to stand, holding the metal shard tightly in its grip. It didn't leave, however, instead holding onto the bloodied metal and moving to carefully watch Mevi from beside the doorway. Mevi could never tell what the hulking Sentinel was thinking, she apparently couldn't even properly tell it to do anything either. Yet Mevi’s original purpose still stood, her experiment set up. Mevi was going to heal herself, and in-so-doing learn how to heal others.
How long would it take for Mevi to teach herself something she can't even recall doing? She wasn’t sure. She couldn’t even say for certain that she had any real control over her so-called powers at all. Producing light was simple enough, she asked for light and it appeared when she had a Maige. Yet something so abstract? Something that is not necessarily a product of any devices she knew of? What could have she asked for that Tanaka would experience a total recovery? Mevi had to find out.
Mevi closed her eyes. Focusing on the meditative trance she had almost become fully capable of. Yet the pain in her hand distracted her. As she focused on her meditation, to become one with the dark nothing around her so as to probe her sleeping Daemon, the pain twanged and yelled for attention. She fought against the thoughts distracting her, the pulse of blood in her hand as it leaked out so slowly and so small. Her nerves firing messages of warning into her body. An urge to itch and put pressure on the wound as the wet blood dried against her skin. She forced all the thoughts and distractions away, pushing everything past. She needed silence.
Unable to focus, Mevi forced all thoughts to be banished and gone. Sweeping away her original intent for meditation, knowing she could begin once the pain and intrusive thoughts were no longer distracting her. She emptied her mind, a surprisingly simple thing to do. To imagine a blank white. A great nothing. Not something dark and intangible, not a shadow that showed nothing but could be hiding anything. An empty white with no thoughts to accompany it. The pain and wetness caused by the cut slowly began to fade to the background until nothing was left. An empty husk of a mind that was void of any and all distractions. Yet something did begin to emerge, a small speck of memory that also sought solace within this great white space.
Mevi had become used to this space in her mind, so often retreating into it. Usually her mind was wild with strangeness or terrifying visages, sometimes it was empty and easily forgotten, yet it didn’t normally offer something up quite as easily as this. This speck of thought, which didn’t speak or call out but was simply there; as if stored for another day’s use. A calm blue-green swirl of dust twisting in an otherwise empty place. Mevi reached out to it, curious, and felt a twang of emotion and thought. A recollection of feeling, a desire to fix and help coated with a paint of care and empathy.
Mevi had found it. She found the memory of her healing Tanaka. It was so easily forgotten because it was made in this place where there was nothing. Completely emptied of all other thoughts and emotions, Mevi had willed every fiber of her being into fixing a wound with the diligence and care of an empath. So singularly focused, her Maige channeled whatever was inside her to a single goal. In so doing she could pour every facet of herself into aiding and healing.
Despite finding the method of her miracle, this didn’t give Mevi a full picture. Could she will herself to do things in this blank place, a place that so easily allowed her full focus on a single task? Even as she wondered and pondered the memory, no longer just a raw experience to be witnessed, Mevi felt thoughts and ideas infecting and destabilizing her focus. To experience nothing and to debate a thought were paradoxical opposites, which was quickly showing as her focus waned quickly and began to return to normal.
Mevi opened her eyes, feeling frustration infect her mind and tearing herself away from whatever might follow. Yet as she did, she refocused on the physical world once more. Instinctively driven by a too-long pushed back urge, Mevi scratched the wound on her hand to remove the dried blood and satiate an ich. As she rubbed the wound and scratched at where the dry blood was, she realized it was no longer bleeding. Completely normal in every respect, it was a small wound after all, but as she continued to feel her hand in the unconscious urge to touch and scratch she felt nothing at all. Looking down, Mevi noticed there was no blood at all, dried, wet, or flowing. A few drops of red on the ground but barely enough to even notice in the dimness that fought to illuminate the otherwise complete darkness. The wound itself was almost entirely gone as well, nothing but a small scar remained of where she had cut herself. A tiny mark, barely noticeable unless you knew where to look. A scar that looked weeks into the healing process, one that was nearly entirely finished and completed.
Mevi came to realize what she had done. In that short time experiencing the memory of her healing, Mevi had somehow healed herself. An outcome that had been her experiement’s goal but not something she thought would have happened so quickly. She hadn’t even noticed the process occuring, like breathing she didn’t mean to do it and instead it just happened. She had, in so short a time she thought impossible, uncovered the access to her greatest wish. She could help people, and more importantly save Kalesi from her comatose state.