Biomancy

by Desdemona Gunn

  “Yeah, my dad was a Nojerna.”

  “Ooohhhh, is that why your eyes are all starry?”

  “I think so.”

  “Yeah, that’s why you only got two of ‘em and no horns. And your skin’s all dark. And you talk all funny.”

  “Huh? I don’t talk funny.”

  “Yeah you do. You pronounce all your R’s, like a doggy or somethin.’ Arrrrrr,” she rolled the R, sounding like a puppy fighting to steal a bone from its owner. “It’s also all lilty, like you’re always singin’.”

  “Well... your voice sounds silly to me. Like Mr. Albreight, it’s all smooth and you forget a lot of your Rs.”

  “Nuh uh. You talk funny.”

  Rhia sighed.

  “No, but it’s cool! You’re all... different and stuff! My name’s Illune. Illune Nara Serria. But you can call me Illy.”

  “I’m Rhia.” She held out a hand, but Illy opted for a hug instead. “So... are we friends now?”

  “Yeah! I get to be friends with the cool space girl!” She pumped her fist and grabbed Rhia’s hand. “Come on. Teacher’s gonna kill us. We’re so late.”

  Chapter 7: Down the Rabbit Hole

  Greater Voorhaven Township, Fellblade Prefecture

  All right, little lady. Let’s see if this does the trick. Three turns. Three long, arduous, tedious turns. Three turns of studying, note-taking, theoretics, and feeding. Her body had given up long ago, but by sheer force of will, she kept to her work. When exhaustion caught up, she’d lose consciousness face-first into a tome, only to wake a few short cents later.

  Her sister had been bringing her food, thankfully. As focused as she was, she made sure to take the time when Ani came in to thank her and ask how the outside world was. She didn’t really care, thus why her study was windowless. Mostly, she just wanted to seem friendly and appreciative for her sister’s work.

  The rabbit looked ahead, nose quivering nervously. Three turns with her little lady had given her an emotional connection to her. She liked to think she could read her nose twitches at this point. Amber had been prepping for her treatment for a while now, and Lea was finally going to deliver.

  “All right, Amber. Ready?”

  The rabbit stared dead forward, twitching her nose anxiously. She took that as a yes.

  Reaching to a rack of vials next to her, she lifted two half-empty ones, and quickly downed both of them. She put her hands just over the rabbit and waited. After about fifty seconds, she looked down at her hands, flipped her palms up, and stared at her wrists. Before the words “Oh come on” reached her lips, her veins suddenly pulsed with light, then again. They bulged out of her arms as runes began to carve themselves onto her palms, green on her right and white on the left.

  Her hands quickly flipped atop the rabbit as they were gently laid upon her back. Her arms, painfully skinny and frail, began shaking violently. The rabbit, loyal and stalwart, stayed where she sat, waiting patiently, hoping the shaking would end soon. The runes on her hands glowed bright against Amber’s soft white fur as thin strands of pure arcane energy gracefully drifted out of her palms and weaved through her fur.

  The arcane wisps floated under the hairs and against her skin, slowly wafting down to her back legs. As the thin tendrils reached their destination, they gently wrapped around her legs, enveloped, and constricted. Muscles tightened, bones popped and snapped, nerves shot pain throughout her body, and the arcane threads seeped through the skin.

  The white threads wrapped around the raw bones and set them. While some slipped into the marrow and began connecting and repairing the bones, others grabbed tendons and muscles and worked, pumped, and mended them. All the while, green whisps saturated her body, soaking into every piece of her legs.

  Lea’s muscles relaxed, the veins loosened, the runes disappeared, and she nearly collapsed. Her elbows swung onto the desk as her hands caught her head by the temples. Her lungs pumped hard, causing quick ragged breaths to escape her gaping mouth. The faint glow in her eyes dissipated as she stared at the rabbit who was twitching uncomfortably. Had she been a person, Lea was sure she’d be grabbing her hand and grunting in pain. Being a rabbit, she stared sadly unsure of how to comfort her.

  After ten agonizing minutes, physically for Amber, empathetically for Lea, the strands released, satisfied with a job well done, and dissipated from the material plane. She looked at her expectantly. “Well?”

  Amber looked at her with a similar look, emoting, surprisingly well for a rabbit, an expectant, ‘What now?’ She gently picked her up, turned her chair, and leaned over to put her on the ground. Amber looked about tentatively, wondering if it was safe. The magic was obvious in its effects, and her legs felt far more stable than she ever remembered. Hesitantly, she tightened her muscles, prepared herself, and hopped without fail.

  Excitement filled her tiny rabbit mind as she hopped again and again, bouncing around the office. Lea smiled widely, bearing her teeth in sheer glee for the first time within her own memory. I did it. I fucking did it.

  She stood up, grabbing her crutches as she stood, and hobbled excitedly out of her office as Amber eagerly followed. She burst into the living room where Anixemeter was lazily leafing through a leather bound tome with gold lettering embossed on the cover reading, Terror on the High Seas: An Autobiographical Chronicle of the Pirate Lord Cyrio Viaxy.

  “Ani! Ani!!”

  Startled, Ani jumped a bit and looked up. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “No! It worked!”

  At this point, Ani noticed the excited bunny running circles around her sister, doing repeated figure eights about her legs and crutches. She stared at her, stunned. “By the gods. You did it.”

  “Yes! I did it! Her legs grew broken, and I fucking fixed them!”

  Ani got up and embraced her sister. “I can’t believe it! This— Gods, this moment could go down in history!”

  Lea chuckled raspily as she returned the hug. “When I’m fixed, we’ll have history. This is a checkpoint.”

  “A pretty goddamn big one, though!” Lea simply responded with a laugh and a slightly tighter hug. “Well, you healed her legs. That means you’re basically there, right?”

  She gave Ani a sarcastically exasperated look. “Rabbits are tiny. Small bones, small muscles, different structure. Very different.” She broke the look and grinned widely. “But I’m closer.”

  Anixemeter smiled, having not seen such rampant, unadulterated glee on her sister’s face in tens of turns. “I’m proud of you, girlie. And I’m betting the little one appreciates it.” Amber was now animatedly bounding around the room, seeking out areas previously unexplorable.

  Lea smiled. I have taken the first step. I have conquered the physical body. I have done the impossible. I have discovered an unknown magic. No. I have invented an unknown magic. I am the mother of a new school of the arcane. Nay, not a new school; a revolutionary meeting of the sciences and the arcane arts. Books will be written about me generations from now. I’ll be world renowned, the champion of mankind. Conqueror of Deformity. Subjugator of Disease. Vanquisher of Mortality.

  She almost jumped as she felt a soft head rub against her foot. She looked down at the rabbit sitting at her feet, relaxing comfortably, wiggling her nose in contented approval. Curiously, she pondered the maximum capacity of a rabbit’s brain. She noted the tomes she would study later, and sat in a chair, Amber resting on her feet. Head leaned back, she smiled and closed her eyes.

  Chapter 8: On the Roof Again

  The Town of Marath, Fellblade Prefecture

  Elon sat on the roof of a building of minor import. He had been sleeping here the past few turns, as the residents rarely ventured to the roof, and if they did, the stairs creaked a loud warning. They kept storage on the roof, and nearly nothing else. Crates littered the area, all either empty or full of
junk. He drew from a stolen pipe, taking in the smooth tobacco as he sat on the edge of the building, kicking his feet on the wall below. At that moment, his worry of discovery was minimal as the entire building was off for the weekend. He stayed alert during most of the week, but sunrise, sunset, high noon, and midnight were all clear.

  The sky was a brilliant orange with stretches of black creeping in as the darkness that is winter threatened the last remnants of sun-warmed summer air. The view was gorgeous as he sat four stories up, above every other building in town save for the cathedral. His visibility stretched across most of the city and to the mountains to the northeast. He swore if he could sit at the church steeple’s pinnacle, he could see the coast. He had yet to test this theory.

  An empty plate formerly holding sausage and cheese sat on a chest beside him. His money from the jewelry was beginning to run low, as he lived a bit more... extravagantly than necessary the turns following the heist. Now, he slept on a roof.

  The ornate screaming dagger had been his plaything as of late. He’d toss it at garbage and crates, and it always found its way into the target perfectly and cleanly before obliterating the object with an otherworldly screech. He found that if he thought about it first, it would return to him. Otherwise, it seemed to fly off into a random direction and clatter against the rooftop. With discipline, he’d learned to throw it, let it sink into and explode the target, then, with a flex of his hand, it’d return hilt-first to him, straight into his hand. At the same time, he’d found that whilst forcing a return, a fluorescent white symbol would inscribe into his hand, painlessly carving into the palm, and glow a white light until the dagger returned. All the while, the blade shined its usual shiny white until it shrieked, in which it radiated a brilliant blue, then returned to white.

  Tonight, however, he reflected upon the spell he’d cast turns back onto the homeowner. Pulling it from the book, he had thrown the magic at the man with ease, but he remembered the power of the violet magic that flowed through him. He pondered on that, reaching into the deepest depths of memory to remember specific runes, but failing. One thing clear in his memory was way the magic felt. It was quite different from the dagger’s, it felt more personal, more internal.

  Elon pulled from the physical memory and tugged hard at an unknown force, willing it to exist. Something twitched deep inside him and he felt a small steady stream open up somewhere inside, as though he were an empty shell and a trickle of water began to drip from inside. His veins puffed up like an allergic reaction, and the blood within them glowed that same royal purple he remembered. His biceps twitched furiously, tightening and shuddering, making his arms shake. He held up an arm towards a crate across the roof, and a violet rune etched into his palm just out of sight.

  He took a knee as his sense of balance began to fade. His eyes glossed over completely with a dark purple hue, barely affecting his vision. Soon, practically every vein near the surface of his skin was swelled and shining a harsh violet radiance. His face was twisted in concentration and exhaustion as a purple vein on his forehead throbbed. His eyes flared as they narrowed, glaring at the box.

  As the energies within him began to peak, just short of where he needed them to be, he brought both hands hand back to his ribs, just centimeters from each other, now both pulsing and glowing. His hands seemed to grasp an invisible ball as tiny purple strands began to escape from each symbol, catching each other forming a swirling orb of violet threads.

  The strands compounded on each other until it was near the size of a tennis ball, at which point Elon dug his fingers into them as though giving a massage. They danced over the swirling mass, glancing over certain bits, kneading into other parts, smearing the threads together and forming the ball until he held a spinning purple orb, smooth as silk, emanating an eerie violet.

  He drew his left hand away and lobbed the ball underhanded towards the crate. It fell just off of target. He clenched his fists tight in frustration, causing the orb to violently implode, breaking the crate to pieces and sucking in every bit it could. As it pulled, his hands clenched tight, knuckles turning white and fingernails digging into his palms as the arcane character glowed fiercely within the fists.

  Ten nearby crates flew at the point of implosion, crumbling over top of the first box’s remains just off the ground. Other nearby crates began to creep towards it as the roof suddenly cracked and heaved, pieces of rock flying at the vacuum.

  In a mild panic, he relaxed his hands, opening them both and spreading their fingers. As his fists flew open, the wind ceased to roar, and a mass of super-compressed wood and rock fell to the roof with a resounding thud.

  Elon collapsed, one hand on his upright knee, the other on the ground, panting for breath. His arms were still surging with energy, throbbing angrily. He put a hand over his face to wipe the sweat, noticing the glow of his eyes shining cleanly on his hands. He was coated in sweat and felt like he had sprinted across the city. With ragged breaths and a heaving chest, he sat down and tried to recover for what felt like an eternity. His throat was raw, every breath passing through it like sandpaper. He begged the gods for water.

  As he recovered, he stared at a nearly perfect orb roughly the color of wood about the size of an orange. Straining to rise, he plodded over to it, grabbed it, and attempted to lift. His muscles strained for a second before completely giving up. Elon simply looked at the deceptively heavy ball for a few seconds before a voice from behind him cut off his thought process.

  “Impressive. Where’d you learn that?”

  He whirled around blearily, his etched knife suddenly in hand and pointing at the voice’s owner. The man before him, wrapped in a trench coat with a silver cane, fancy shoes, and shaded goggles, laughed. His skin was a dark brown, his hair slicked back and black as obsidian. “What are you gonna do?” He reached up with his cane and lowered Elon’s hand for him.

  “Wha—What?”

  “I asked who taught you that spell.” His voice was straight, concise, to-the-point. He figured an agent of the Queen.

  “No one. I just... It came to me, so I did it.”

  For a long time, the man stared at him, at least Elon assumed as much. His glasses made his gaze impossible to follow. “What do you mean you ‘just did it?’” The man’s voice was thick with incredulity.

  “What do you think I mean? I just did what felt right.”

  “Elaborate.”

  Elon clenched his teeth. “I found a spellbook a while back, cast a spell out of it. I wanted to do it again, so I did it again without the book.”

  The man exhaled sharply through his nostrils, somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. “You ever heard of the Arcane Institute of Bargatha?”

  Of course I’ve heard of the AIB. What do you think I am, an uncultured street rat? “Yeah. Why?”

  “I’m a representative. Your activity has caught our eye. I extend to you an invitation to apply.”

  An invitation to apply? Truly it is a great honor to have permission to be considered. Oh, what a privilege to be looked at twice by your league of esteemed gentlemen. “Oh really?”

  “If you wish to accept, I shall take you.”

  “Take me?”

  “Do you accept?”

  “I—Fuck, why not?” The agent grabbed his arm and they both disappeared as an impossibly fast collection of cobalt vines enveloped the two, and compressed rapidly.

  The roof sat empty, chilly in the open air, void of any inhabitants. A compressed ball of wood sat, putting obscene amounts of stress on exactly the wrong structural areas. Unable to support such weight between beams, the ball crashed down, collapsing the two meters of roof around it.

  It proceeded to barrel through the next four floors like a cannonball before coming to a stop on the stone floor of the basement, leaving behind two shattered desks, three more damaged, four busted chairs, and three boxe
s of bureaucratically-indispensable records mangled beyond repair. It sat in a crater, waiting patiently for the poor soul who would find it after their long weekend ended.

  A woman sat alone behind a desk in a posh chair. The office was fine, complete with a finished cedar desk, clean walls decorated with credentials and awards, a full bookshelf of various non-fiction works, and three chairs, one behind the desk, two in front of it. Each one was fairly plush.

  She ruffled through a folder of papers. Frowning, she closed it and resorted it among a legion of similar files. Fingers flew as she flicked through them, stopping on one labeled ‘Arroway, Elon Leoward.’

  As the folder hit the desk, opening to reveal pages of information, a cobalt rune inscribed on her floor in the center of her office. Shortly after, deep blue threads appeared from the inscription forming a dome. The vines loosened and turned to ash floating in the still air to reveal one of her recruiters and a peeved-looking young man standing atop a rapidly fading inscription. They’d ported to a small tower, through a portal, then he’d grabbed his shoulder and ported them again into this office. His head swam, not particularly happy with the serial arcane jumps.

  The agent motioned to a chair as Elon glared at him, and promptly took a seat; the agent sat in the other available chair. He looked up to see a woman in a similar suit to the man sporting a black pixie cut with skin just a shade lighter than the agent’s. Her face was perfectly angular, ending in a sharp chin that suited her face, demeanor, and look. He thought to describe her as handsome long before pretty.

  “So, Mister Arroway. It appears you’ve been quite busy since you found your way into our sights.” Her voice was soft, smooth, and practiced. It was fairly obvious her job was talking to new recruits, as her voice was almost alluring, as though her mere tone made him want to relax and consider this establishment as his new home. Dangerous.