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“I know you’re awake, you stopped snoring a while ago.”

Nan wasn’t quite motivated to open her eyes; she didn’t remember closing them. Perhaps there’d been some mistake in the cosmos. If she stayed still and swallowed down that burbling urge to scream, everything would be okay. Maybe.

“Pretty please? You’re safe, I promise.”

The Grim Reaper wasn’t so easily turned away, or maybe it was Saint Luke. Saint Luke was the border security guy for the Pearly Gates, right? No, probably not. Nan wasn’t keen on her biblical lore. Not when most sermons tended to lull her to sleep. In any case, she doubted either would have such a cheery feminine chime. The person beyond the dark could easily be an elementary teacher.

So Nan opened her eyes.

The woman hovering above looked like she was in her early thirties. Orange hair, freckles, green eyes. Pretty in the way grandparents would gush over and pinch cheeks long after the appropriate time.

More importantly, instead of a halo or horns, she had…

“Cat ears?”

Her left ear flicked upon mention, as if bracing itself for some moronic barrage of questions. Nan would have obliged, had she not felt so bleary.

The woman smiled. “I’m a bit closer to a bat, I think.” She stood, releasing a soft creak from the bed. “Got a pair of wings bound under here.” She patted the shoulders of her dress, made of fuzzy cyan material with a black mantel. “And this thing.” A thin, stringy tail with a tuft of dark fur on its end waved in greeting.

“Izusa Keme, soother and named mystic.” She could feel something in the latter title.

A soother was a doctor that used magic to help people get better. Mystics were mages that drew primarily from spells etched into their souls. The terms, and magic for that matter, didn’t exist the last time she checked. Her brain dug up the information like the name of a song left aside for ages but not forgotten. Strange, but she couldn’t think anything else of it. A more intrusive sensation, cold and gnarled, squeezed at her throat.

Something bad happened, surely. She shouldn’t be unbroken, shouldn’t be able to get more than a gurgle past her lips. The how and why of it wasn’t forthcoming, but she had no right to a sound body and mind.

Again, Nan felt like she might scream. If her sanity was under suspicion, that would be a good way to secure a snug jacket and a room with padded walls. She went for the next best thing.

“Nan Beauchamp, undergrad?” It felt right, stating some kind of title, unimpressive as it was. She put out her hand.

Izusa did the same, though haltingly. She wavered between looking at Nan and her offer like she wasn’t sure if it was okay to touch. It put a mite of worry in her heart. Was she contagious or something? They ended up lightly pressing their palms together for one awkward moment. Weirdest handshake of the century.

“You’re rather calm, that’s good. Are you feeling alright? No wooziness?”

“Only a bit. My vision’s blurry though, just the edges.” It was like someone smeared the rims of her eyes with murky water, not truly noticeable until she stopped focusing.

“That’s normal, just tell me if it worsens or doesn’t pass in a cycle, okay?”

“Okay.” Nan sighed. An entire day? What kind of bug hit her?

Izusa gave a light “Hm“ of approval. “I have to do a quick spot check, then we can get you something to munch on.”

Nan tried to ignore her dread. It was a paper tiger; some lingering icky feeling from a bad dream she couldn’t remember, nothing more. The room was warm and smelled faintly of cinnamon. She was safe, albeit sluggish and a bit confused.

Familiar splotches of brown and white surrounded her. A simple cube-ish structure sat aside the bed, a drawer or a desk of some kind. The thing snaking up from its center was decidedly not a wood eating superworm with a gleaming silvery blue eye, but a curly lamp when seen through the non-fuzzy part of her vision.

She lifted her arms when asked, only flinching slightly at the cold touch of something Izusa plucked from a tray beside her. It looked enough like a stethoscope, but the instruments that were brought along with it mocked her attempts at recognition. As long as the more weird ones stayed away from her skin, she’d have no complaints.

Instead of ‘What the hell is that unholy union of a reflex hammer and scalpel for, and why does it need a light?’ Nan thought of practical questions.

“I don’t have any money on me, do you need to call my parents?” Nan grimaced, if this was going to be like any of the other times she checked in at the hospital, there would be no escape from Ma and Pa’s doting. She didn’t hate them for it, quite the opposite really. Nan was just the kind of person that shied away from overzealous displays of affection.

“Don’t worry, even if you came with coins, we couldn’t take accept ’em.” Izusa hid a yawn with her hand. “Repeat your ABCs, please.”

That was worthy of a raised eyebrow, but Nan did as requested. Probably just testing her for a concussion. Her memory was kind of hazy, the last thing Nan recalled was walking her way back from Mona’s ice cream place. Pavement to hospital building was quite the transition.

“Hyulic…” That was not a letter. Another foreign sounding bit of gibberish danced at the tip of her tongue, though she opted to look up at Izusa rather than let it spill.

“Out of native letters? Don’t think about the translation spell too hard. Just go with what feels right, It’ll save me an hour, and you a headache.”

“Gin and… Pylt?”

“Yep.” Izusa clapped her hands together, “That’s all of them. Now I need you to sit really still for a second. Okay, Nan?”

“Wait. You messed with my brain?”

“No no no. I wouldn’t poke around with your brain, I messed with your soul.”

…

“My what?!” Nan managed to bolt upwards and swing her legs off the mattress. Bare feet met wood, and promptly gave out.

She teetered, failing to realign herself on the bedframe. Her legs were as useful as giant sausages, she barreled forward. Her muscles coiled and uncoiled uncontrollably.

Everything was wrong wrong wrong. Impulses she sent through her lower body returned more motion than asked for. The most that Nan could do was shift the path of her fall into Izusa’s arms.

“What’s wrong with me?! Where’s my mom an- “

“Hush.” Nan found her head gently buried in the space between Izusa’s shoulder and neck. The mantle of her dress was as soft as it looked. A hand stroked idly at the top of her head. Faint warmth that was a bit too much for skin accompanied the same something she felt earlier for an instant.

Carried by a cool breeze of cinnamon laced air, the panic washed over and around her, leaving a drowsy feeling in its wake. After a while, Izusa detangled herself and helped Nan back into a seated position.

She felt better. Fully aware of just how peculiar the sudden shift in emotion was, but unable to care about it overly much. More pertinent was erasing the image of herself blubbering. She considered kicking her legs nervously, but common sense murdered the idea.

“Are you calm?”

“Mm.”

Izusa kept a steady grip on her shoulders. Nan preferred it that way. She didn’t trust herself to not fall again.

“Are you sure?”

“Mm.”

“Alright, Nan. I’m going to dispel your whym restraints. Stay still, okay?”

“Mm.”

A collection of wispy, golden cogs and turning rods jutted out in a bell-shaped mass. Nan felt it again. Intangible, yet insistent upon proving its existence. This time, it waxed beyond her ability to overlook. The scent of cinnamon came stronger. Flint against steel, spark against tinder, flame against the chill of night. Nan’s something- her whym broke free and swelled; a full breath of air where a pitiful wheeze in her depths once stood. Her entire body and something more flushed with vigor, a dullness within her will tumbled away like fog chased by the wind.

“Did it work?”

Nan, nodded. The least, and most she could manage at the moment.

“Whew! I’m getting better at this!” Izusa let go, her tail lashing happily about. Nan hardly registered her words.

Gold, the woman’s whym was gold. A whirling mass of something akin to both liquid and gas, running from her middle into lines across her body like a system of veins fed by a hurricane. Passageways of lifeless silver streaked across the walls, as similar motes burrowed into a few of the odd instruments on Izusa’s tray. Vibrant purple coursed through Nan’s palms and fingertips.

The new layer of sight didn’t blot out what her eyes picked up, it simply existed in a parallel space with none of the headache she imagined something like that would bring. Even the bits of silver she “saw” under and behind her failed to rouse anything other than awe as the new world of sensations unfurled.

“Do you think you can channel?”

Nan stared in askance, for the moment, pulling her attention from the whym signatures surrounding her. She wondered if what she felt was similar to someone getting their first pair of hearing aids. There was just so much that she failed to notice before.

“Like this.” Izusa held out her palm. This time, she could see a tiny piece of Izusa’s whym separate, a storm parting with a sliver of itself. The piece fell into her palm with a flash of gold, revealing a single slow turning cog.

“Oh, that. I can try.” Nan copied Izusa’s gesture, squinted, and let out a breath. She imagined a cog appearing in her hand just like the other. Nothing. She frowned, this time “reaching within” like one of the corny shows her brother was addicted to.

Her palm flickered, a bright purple splotch that refused to settle into a coherent form rested just above her skin. Nan felt for the current of her whym, imagined it rushing forth. More. She needed more.

Purple flames danced above Nan’s palm, three of them, drifting around a much larger fourth. More whym bled into the flames, feeding them, hastening their lazy path around the formation’s center. In a few heartbeats the little burning solar system dwarfed her hand. The smaller bits spun themselves into a blur.

“This is wicked!” Nan preferred to maintain a cool, unflappable appearance, but she couldn’t help herself. At this point, Nan didn’t care about the weird nagging sensation that nestled in the back of her head. Here in her palm were freaking purple orbital fireballs created with minimum effort.

“Good, now stop,” Izusa said.

“Stop?” The flames went from a circular path to an elliptical one. Nan lifted her chin, the air around her took on the pleasant chill of peppermint. “How do I stop?”

One flame escaped its orbit, then the others. They burst against the ground, the wall and Izusa’s face, each with a sharp crack that made Nan cringe.

She shut her eyes. Izusa was dead. After being shown nothing but kindness, she burned her to a crisp without so much as a moment to scream in agony. The fire would spread, it would kill her. It’d probably kill a lot of people in the building, too. In what twisted circle of hell was it okay to let people experiment with magic? Why did she let herself do it? ‘Nan, what have you done?!’

A hand, surprisingly uncharred, found its way to Nan’s shoulder.

“Don’t fret. Control comes with practice.”

Nan’s lips felt like gelatin. “B-b-but, the fire! It was everywhere! I hit you in the face!”

“You were going to commit arson and manslaughter with your invocation sigil?”

“Wuah?”

“You can’t do anything by just expelling whym, silly!”

Izusa had one of those snorting laughs just like her friend, Gina. It managed to be annoying and endearing at the same time. When was the last time she saw Gina? Right before she woke up?

Odd. Gina was the forgetful one, not her. Why was it so hard recall the last few hours? There was the trip back the dorms. Gina dropped some pinned insects on the road and scrambled to retrieve them. Nan remembered pushing her back on the sidewalk. Bugs were creepy, anyways. Definitely not worth being hit by car for.

Warm.

Wet.

Her leg muscles twitched, only to invite the sensation of broken bones sliding against one another.

Warm.

Wet.

She couldn’t see. Couldn’t let out anything more than a wordless gurgle. Pain and sheer incomprehension dawned in equal measure.

Warm.

Wet.

Shattered ribs flailed against the ruins of her chest cavity. It was her blood! Her own blood soaking through her clothes! Her own blood drowning her!

“Are you with us?” Izusa pawed at Nan’s cheek. Her voice was just audible above her own heartbeat. “Does anything hurt?”

The gig was up, the illusion lifted, the reality that resembled the strangest of delusions thrust into plain sight, as irrevocable as the store of whym that continued to swell within her.

“I should be dead.”

Author’s note: The initial version of this chapter was ugly beyond belief, and thus, saw many editing passes. My apologies to whoever had to shift through it.

If you missed the atrocity and feel the need to whet your curiosity, you can find it here

I’ll comb over the other chapters momentarily, then upload the newer ones.

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