Gamers and Gods: AES

by Matthew Kennedy

With Darla's help he had been able to ritualize his 'targeted heal' activation gesture. All he had to do was imagine he was reaching across the distance with an imaginary arm and putting his hand on the target. That was easy. But how to do the same for a self-heal? It would be like trying to tickle yourself.

  Yet there must be a way. As a mortal physician Aes had focused on the welfare and health of his patients. He had sought knowledge of ways to cure others, not himself. Now he needed a way to turn the spell inside-out so that he was the recipient *and* the healer.

  But how? He had always been the physician, never his own patient. He needed a way to shift his perspective, to be looking at himself instead of from himself. Then maybe he could empathize with himself instead of a targeted-heal recipient.

  “Try zooming out,” Darla suggested.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You know, move your viewpoint outward so that you see more around you and you look smaller. The opposite of zooming in to look at something more closely.”

  “I am not familiar with either term,” he told her. “Is it something to do with 'roleplay' or is it something else?”

  “It's something to do with surviving,” she retorted. “It's all very well that you can keep me alive in a fight. But who's going to heal you and keep you alive so that you can keep me alive?”

  “You have a point, but I still do not understand zooming.”

  “Imagine that you are outside yourself,” she said, “looking down on this mountain from so far above it that you cannot see things as small as people. Close your eyes and see Mt. Pelion and the sea beside it.”

  Aes tried to do as she suggested. He tried to picture the blue was beneath him, and he was flying down into it toward a dot that was growing into a mountain with that distinctive fish hook-shaped bay.

  “Now,” her voice in his ears continued. “Let two dots appear on the mountain that will be the tops of our heads. Let them grow in your vision until you can see which one is you. When you are ready, reach out and heal him.”

  Aes gazed out with his mind's eye, seeing Pelion grow as if he were flying toward it from a great distance. A little more than mid-way up its slopes he could make out the cave of Cheiron. In his imagination he let two dots appear near the cave as if they had already been there. Flying ever closer, he let the mountain and the cave grow and the dots become a woman in chiton and pampla and a man in a rough chiton with curly black hair.

  The more he looked, the clearer the scene became. Aes wondered how real it could get. Would he fall out of the sky? If he cried out would the other him hear and answer?

  But it was all imaginary. Aes reached out mentally to the image of himself and clasped his shoulder. “Να επουλωθεί,” he said.

  A rushing wave of emerald fire streamed down his arm at this tiny figure of himself, but with no result. Glancing at the team roster, he realized the problem: he had been at full health already.

  He let the inner scene fade. “That almost worked,” he said, “except that there was no healing to do, since I wasn't hurt.” Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward, and placed his right foot into the campfire.

  He had forgotten to clench his jaw. The pain was immediate and so intense that he cried out despite himself as he hopped back.

  Darla tilted her head, regarding his display. “There's no need for theatrics,” she said.

  Aes let himself drop to a seated position on the grass and stared at her. Theatrics? “Look at my foot,” he advised, lifting it for her inspection. The skin was seared and reddened, with the inevitable blisters already forming.

  She stared as if she had never seen a burned foot before. “I see it but I don't believe it,” she said slowly. “That is impossible. No one gets blisters here.”

  “I do,” he said grimly. Concentrating through the throbbing agony, he let his mind's eye conjure the sense of externally targeting himself again. Once more, he stretched out his hand mentally and said “Be healed.”

  Green fire enclosed him without burning. The blisters seemed to fade away as the skin on his foot itched furiously and repaired itself.

  “And there's your self-heal,” said Darla. “From here on in it's just a matter of practice. Let's go start a fight.”

  Chapter 22: Darla: “this a private fight, or can anyone join?”