"Master Aren! I had thought you were dead, I was going to... to..." She hesitated, the unspoken conclusion hanging heavy in the air. Her voice dropped to a whisper as she continued after that fractured moment. "Just... stay with me, please. I’ll get help..."
She darted toward the doorway, shouting down the hall, "Physic Callen! Please! He is awake! I swear he is not dead!" Then she was gone.
Daniel was left alone, dimly watching the shadows that spilled across the stone floor. He tried to turn his head more, to bring the door fully into view. A vain attempt that summoned a fresh wave of fatigue, strong enough that everything turned grey and his vision contracted sharply. He blacked out for several sharp, hammering heartbeats. His breathing stuttered, stopped. But as the world stubbornly came back into view, his breathing returned in shallow, ragged gasps.
A sudden, mad urge to move seized him, but his limbs refused. He felt hollow, brittle, as though left in the sun for weeks, starving, thirsty to the point of desiccation.
The door was suddenly filled with a tall, lean figure dressed in pale green robes. Silver sigils woven into the fabric caught the candlelight, making Daniel’s eyes water. A long silver monocle hung over one eye, tethered to his collar by a thin chain. Even before he spoke, Daniel knew who it was, especially with the girl appearing in the hallway behind him. He reached toward her, as if grasping a lifeline in the chaos.
For a moment, she looked younger, her reddish-brown hair fallen loose from its braid, the cloth band gone. Fallen to the floor or removed in mid-run, he couldn’t tell. Loose strands framed her face, blotchy with days of worry and grief. Her eyes were rimmed red, her nose pink, exhaustion and heartache settling over her. She looked as though she hadn’t slept in a day, perhaps longer, bracing against the spectre of death. Still, she tried, breathless, to explain herself to Callen.
That ended abruptly when Callen scowled at her, sharp and commanding. "Out of the way, girl," he barked, waving her aside like a bothersome fly.
She shrank back, hands wringing her apron, but did not leave.
"Let’s see what this so-called miracle is that has wasted my morning." Looking at Daniel, he added, "Okay, brat. Hold still."
Callen stepped closer and leaned in, one hand rising to subtly adjust his monocle. The glass flared faintly, a spiderweb tracery of strange runes beginning to rotate across its finely etched surface. A low chant spilled from his lips, clipped and rhythmic, resonating faintly through the air.
The unpleasant feeling of fire ants in Daniel’s head returned, crawling beneath his skull as he struggled to understand the words Callen was using. They felt older, heavier than the Darshevi he now understood. It was like trying to grasp a long-forgotten, yet intensely precise tongue. Sharp. Fierce.
Then, as the air shimmered hotly between him and Callen, understanding stubbornly clicked into place.
[System Invocation: Assess]
Callen’s monocle flared, spinning colors so fast it ought to come with a written warning about photosensitive seizures. The beam washed over Daniel, then withdrew to reveal a strange window within the glass, glowing Cherenkov blue, edged with bright silver, unreadable runes blazing with jade fire.
It looked almost like etched circuits sealed within crystal. An arcane interface? Daniel squinted at it. Maybe. For a moment, it had the same feel as a computer's interface, but as if wrought by an artificer rather than an engineer. Daniel’s mind seized on that strange feeling, trying to understand as waves of dizziness continued to plague his existence.
After a moment studying the display, Callen started to mutter to himself. "Hmph... Extreme Mana Sickness. I knew that already." His hand played with the rim of his monocle, making the display shift and change. "Though how you managed to get so inundated... fah, it doesn't matter... What is this? Stabilizing? How in the name of all the hells of all the cults is that possible? A Tier 0 Human in this condition ought to be a corpse."
That last word came out thin and flat. Growing increasingly sarcastic as he muttered, "The Baron will be thrilled... his eldest illegitimate brat..."
Callen turned to the girl, the light in his monocle draining away so quickly it was as if it had never been there. His tone curdled.
"You dragged me from the surgery wing for a bastard who finally had the good sense to stop dying? The boy’s Intersitium is inflamed and ridden with Soma. His Eidolon is literally aflame with the leakage of uncontrolled metaphysical energies, and he has no Mana Core there to tame and remediate it. His breathing is compromised and weak. He cannot stand unaided, let alone wield a blade. I'm surprised his attributes even read as high as the minimal degree. Why are you wasting my time, Mari?"
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
During this tirade, Mari shrunk back further, as though each of Callen’s words was a slap to her face.
"This bastard will never live long enough to Ascend. Even if he somehow lingers on long enough to reach his thirtieth seasons, he cannot possibly survive the demands of an Ascension Crystal. He cannot acquire any useful skills in this condition, much less forge a Class or take a Class Imprinting. He will never be a Knight."
With a small hiccup, an effort that made the word sound like a profanity, he added, "That bastard, that Aren, is as good as dead. He should have the grace to end his life and stop wasting Baron Waytinne’s resources. If you had enough mercy and intelligence to see it clearly, you would bring the lad a dagger and slit his throat."
She didn’t defend herself. Instead, she looked away, her bottom lip trembling. While she didn’t move, scarcely breathed, Daniel could see what Callen missed. Her eyes darkened with loathing and hatred, perhaps aimed at Physic Callen personally, or perhaps at the soulless manner in which he dismissed her concern. Daniel could not tell, and in that moment he wanted to say something, to fill the frustrated silence, but he could not manage more than a shaky groan.
Callen gave Daniel a harsh look, scoffed, and then turned sharply and stalked back toward the door. "I’ll have the steward deduct my time from your wages," he muttered over his shoulder.
Then he was gone, his footsteps fading into the distance, leaving only silence in his wake.
The two of them were left behind, Daniel aching inside the youthful, very youthful body he now inhabited. His chest rattled with every breath, each one a miserable labor. His skin felt both cold and burning, as though fever and frost were arguing over him. His nerves skittered and danced, unable to control his intensely heavy limbs, yet unable to silence the tremors that wracked his body.
Mari, on the other hand, simply knelt at the bedside, her face lowered, her features drawn tight, uncertainty shadowing her eyes. "I'm... I'm sorry," she whispered softly, drawing the only movement Daniel could make, his eyes moving towards her.
Daniel made a few attempts to speak, but after a groan, he croaked out, "Why?" An octave too high, the voice unfamiliar. Daniel's face twisted into a grimace that had nothing to do with the agony he was enduring.
"We thought you had died, Master Aren. You had stopped breathing... you..." She faltered, choked back sobs. "You were dead! I’m sure of it. You had the death-stiffness."
When she managed to continue, her words were so broken that Daniel could barely understand, even with the System's support. "You... you were so cold. You were... weren't..." she stammered before blurting out, "You were dead! I'm sure of it. You had the death-stiffness."
Rigor mortis.
"I was about to get the page, to have your body committed to the Holy Flame. Rendering down into ashes to be incorporated into the Godwall," she continued while Daniel was taken aback. His mind recoiled, his dizziness increased to the point of dry heaving again. He had died? Or maybe the prior owner of this body did? That... made a fair bit of sense. Maybe.
Mari helped him onto his side, but nothing came up. Silence eventually returned, and then reigned supreme save for ragged gasps and chattering teeth. Then Daniel said, slowly, each word a struggle.
"Not... not dead... thirsty..."
Mari stiffened, and then backed away, almost falling on her backside as she got her feet under her again. It would almost be comical, if the situation wasn't as serious as it was.
"Of... of course, Master Aren..." she stammered, before turning to race out the door.
As she left Daniel's line of sight, a sound like tinnitus built in his ears. After a moment of dealing with it, Daniel was forced to reconsider. Tinnitus? Tinnitus didn't have this sort of melodic feel to it. Like it was tuned.
Before his eyes, a moment later, a deep purple, almost black, window rimmed in jade so bright that it seemed to pulse like a living flame. It was covered in bright silver runes that made anything he remembered from Earth look like a mere approximation to what arcane truly looks like.
Patently unreadable, but as Daniel stared at this window, so out of place that he felt like he was stuck in some hyper-realistic video game instead of the real world, the runes began to melt, writhing into new shapes. Reforming into something that looked distinctly like a mix of calligraphy spat out by the Localization Team when code went wrong.
Very wrong.
As if that was not surreal enough, he watched as the Klingon glyphs emerged, faded, then were replaced by the straight runic font of the Ancients from the Stargate franchise. This too faded, as Daniel focused hard on this strange window. Finally, after what felt like a double eternity, everything suddenly snapped into focus as plain and very readable English. It was even in a font that Daniel used to favor, in his past life. Open Dyslexic.
How very accommodating, that. Not that he ever suffered from dyslexia, but it did reduce eye strain a bit.
> [New Quest Activated:
> [Objective: Remain alive for the next full day]
> [Reward: Reduction in your Mana Sickness symptoms (Extreme → Severe)]
Daniel blinked. A quest? His head spun. He was alive. Well, whatever this body was alive... though it hadn't been. And somehow, whatever System that was obviously part of existence here had finally measured him, marked his continued existence, and him assigned a goal. The words shimmered, as if alive, pulsing faintly in time with the jade rim of the window.
The phrase “Remain alive” sank into him like ice water, sharp and immediate. Whatever the System was, it either had a sense of humor or it cared enough to couch reassurance in the form of a task. Or, perhaps, it merely wanted to see if the anomaly of his existence was persistent enough to warrant further attention. A single full day, it wouldn't be hard. Then, perhaps, something would change. A reduction of his misery would definitely be welcome. Maybe he could reclaim some fragment of strength, some control over this body.
Pain still throbbed beneath every breath, his chest and limbs reminding him of his fragility. Yet beneath that, buried beneath the trembling and the nausea, something new stirred: awareness. Focus. A purpose suddenly given shape.
Survive.
And now he had a tangible measure for it.
[Assess] which augments the more basic [Inspect] that is common in Darshev. Assess can be, as seen in Callen's case, be further augmented by use of a specialized tool, requiring a System Invocation to use.
[Biocontrol] which allows the Physic to exert a degree of control over their own, or a touched individual's bodily functions on par with the effects of acupuncture and mild electrostimulation, by using their Soulfire to probe into the body and temporarily shape a given process.
[Scalpel], which sheathes a finger with a dense shroud of Soulfire with a keen edge that makes obsidian look dull. This is not technically a weapon, though it can be used as such, capable of cutting physical matter or slicing surgically into the metaphysical self, into the Eidolon.