On the Shoulders of Titans

by Andrew Rowe

  “Oh, you wouldn’t.”

  Derek waved as he dashed out the door. Patrick walked over to Sera before leaving, giving her a brief hug and some presumably comforting words before disappearing and closing the door behind him.

  “Goddess, you’re all building this up too much. This isn’t a funeral.” Sheridan shook their head. “Sera, are you ready?”

  Sera nodded.

  I was thinking about whether or not I had any final questions when Sheridan snapped their fingers in front of Sera’s face.

  Sera’s eyes slammed shut, and I felt a wave of drowsiness and vertigo. I tipped backward, but Sheridan caught me before I fell backward.

  “Sleep spell. Wasn’t expecting to catch you with it, but physical contact must have passed a bit through.”

  I raised a hand to pinch myself in the arm, trying to shake off the sensation. “Ugh. Could have warned us?”

  “Nonsense. If she was ready for it, she’d have braced her mental defenses, even unconsciously. The spell probably still would have taken hold, but I wasn’t going to take the risk. Steady yourself.”

  I did my best. I’d read a little bit on how to defend myself against mental magic after seeing what had happened to Derek, and that little bit had taught me something important. Since I had an attunement with mental mana, that would give me a degree of resistance, even if mine wasn’t built for casting mind-influencing spells — and I could actively resist mental magic by converting more of the mana in my body into mental mana. By cycling that fresh mental mana through my body, I could burn away the spell.

  So, I started doing that.

  It wasn’t fast.

  I was so distracted with trying to break the spell that I scarcely noticed when Sheridan started the procedure in earnest. Sheridan pressed their hand against Sera’s neck, frowned, and shook their head. “More severe than I expected, but still workable. Let me see the attunement.”

  Sheridan flipped Sera over and pressed a hand against the modified attunement mark over her lungs. “Remarkable. I’ve never seen anything quite like this. I can sense the damage, but I’m not sure how much I can treat. The throat will come first, and then I’ll see if I can handle making any improvements here.”

  I nodded weakly, still focusing on cleansing my mind of the sleep effect. It wasn’t as easy as when we’d practiced, presumably because I wasn’t ready for it. Also, potentially because Sheridan’s spell was more powerful than the ones we’d used in training.

  That...seemed odd, though. “How’d you do a sleep spell? Aren’t you a necromancer? That doesn’t sound like a sleep magic type.”

  “Obviously that wasn’t my first attunement, darling, just like Arbiter wasn’t your own first attunement. Restricted attunements are almost never given to people without a previous attunement.” Sheridan flipped Sera over again, then pressed a hand against Sera’s neck and closed their eyes. “I’m going to need you to come up here and hold Sera still.”

  I stood, stumbled, and steadied myself. “Okay.”

  “Sit behind her.”

  Sheridan sat Sera up with surprising ease. I pulled my hand out of Sera’s grip, which was harder than it sounded, and then sat behind her. “What do I do?”

  “You need to make sure her head is facing downward, but support her neck so that it doesn’t have too much stress.”

  “Shouldn’t we just lie her facing down?”

  “I need to be able to access the entire front of her neck.”

  I nodded, taking the position behind Sera. I essentially was using myself as the back of a chair, which led to another question. “Shouldn’t we just use a chair, then?”

  “She’d just fall out of one. Hold her still.”

  I held her still, at least as well as I could. My mind was definitely clearing up, even though I was too focused on Sera now to actively try to convert my own mana and fight the effects.

  “Now we begin.” Sheridan tapped Sera’s neck and their fingers began to glow.

  Sera’s body jerked, and she almost fell off the table immediately. I held her as steady as I could, but she continued to tremble.

  Sheridan backed off after a few moments, the glow fading from their finger.

  Sera coughed, and that cough produced more blood than I was comfortable with.

  “What—”

  “Relax, Corin. The blood is supposed to be there. Let her cough.”

  There was a surprising surge of anger while Sera continued to cough messily onto the floor. She didn’t wake up in the process, which seemed miraculous, but that sleep spell must have been stronger than I’d expected.

  “We’re moving her to a chair now,” Sheridan explained.

  Of course we are.

  I helped Sheridan move Sera to the closest chair. It was, as I’d expected, much easier to hold her in place that way. “You sure you’ve done this before?”

  “Of course. I’ve just never done it outside of a hospital.”

  I...didn’t know how to respond to that, but there was definitely some anger involved.

  Derek presumably knew.

  Sera might have known as well.

  But operating on someone outside of a hospital without any prior experience sounded like a terrible risk to me.

  Maybe that was why they didn’t tell me.

  Once Sera was secure in the chair and her coughing had died down, Sheridan reached forward and touched Sera’s neck again. The glowing reappeared around Sheridan’s fingers, but Sera didn’t spasm this time.

  Not until Sheridan’s fingers began to move further down her neck.

  I held Sera as steady as I could, grinding my jaw in a mixture of fear and frustration.

  Minutes passed. Apparently, the damage went all the way down Sera’s esophagus, which was why she was having such difficulty with speaking.

  More time passed. More coughing from Sera. More blood.

  I’d expected that removing the physical scar tissue would be some sort of surgical process; it wasn’t. At least, not in this case.

  Sheridan was transforming it. Partially liquefying it, if I wasn’t mistaken.

  Thus the coughing, the blood, and everything else she was coughing up.

  This was feeling more and more awful the more I thought about it.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll make Derek clean it up.” Sheridan gave me a knowing look.

  That was not what I was worrying about at all.

  Sheridan began tracing their fingers back upward, the glow shifting in color to a bright green. Healing, I realized.

  I wished I had trained with life mana more. If I had, maybe I would have been able to sense what Sheridan was doing a little better, or even helped. As it was, I had only the barest comprehension of how healing magic worked, and I certainly wasn’t ready to attempt it. That was the kind of thing to practice on scratches, not on internal injuries.

  I’d definitely start studying it soon, though. My attunement wasn’t strictly made for healing, but just having life mana meant I could do a bit of it, even if I wasn’t ever going to be an expert.

  It only took another minute before Sheridan finished the process of moving up Sera’s body, then back down without any visible glow on their hand, presumably to double check the work.

  “Throat and esophagus are done to the best of my ability. Even with my healing, however, the recovery time will be significant — and she may never regain the full use of her voice. There was simply too much damage. She should be able to whisper almost immediately, but she shouldn’t. Tell her to restrain herself from trying.”

  “For how long?”

  “At least a few days.”

  I nodded. “Would it be safe to give her a regeneration item to speed up the healing, or would that make more scarring?”

  “Regeneration items should be fine, but it’s not going to help that much. I’ve already healed most of what can be fixed with healing — her body needs to acclimate to the change. But no, it wouldn’t hurt to give her an item if you have one. And she
still shouldn’t be trying to talk.”

  That was all good to know. “Even being able to whisper in a few days would be a huge improvement. When do you expect her to be able to talk at normal volume, if at all? And what about her attunement?”

  “Months, probably, if she recovers that much at all. As for the attunement, I’ll need to use a different technique for that. Mana scars aren’t quite the same as traditional scar tissue. They’re more like clusters...she’s waking up.” Sheridan snapped her fingers, and Sera slumped down again.

  I didn’t feel the effects this time, so presumably Sheridan was a bit more careful.

  “Now, then. The mana scars are different. I can’t extract them entirely; I need to change them back down into a usable form. Given how severe her scars are, this will likely take several treatments, but we can do the first one today. Let’s lay her back down on the table.”

  We did so, placing her face down. Sheridan put their fingers on Sera’s attunement again, then closed their own eyes. “Don’t say anything. Be silent and still.”

  I complied.

  Sheridan’s fingers began to glow again, but not with a solid color. This time, I could see tiny runes — the size of handwriting, maybe smaller - tracing across Sheridan’s fingers and wrist. I’d never seen anything quite like it.

  Then the tiny runes flowed off their hand, into the attunement mark.

  Sera twitched once, then let out a sound like a hiss. Then she settled again.

  “Done.” Sheridan pronounced. “At least for now. This is not a complete fix — in fact, it may not do anything at all on its own. Make sure to tell her what I told you, and also, tell her not to even try to use her attunement for a few days.”

  “You don’t want to explain yourself?”

  “Obviously not. Talking to people is awful, and I’ve done more than my tolerance for the day. She’ll wake up in a half hour or so. I’ll be long gone by then.”

  “You’re not going to stay and see if she has any side-effects? Complaints?”

  “I’ll do another diagnosis spell on her before I leave.” Sheirdan tapped their fingers on Sera. “There. All done. She’s fine. I’m leaving.”

  I sighed. “And if she needs to find you for a second treatment...?”

  “I’ll contact her directly. Her little mark has gained my interest, so you can be certain I’ll try to follow up. I’m not sure I can fix damage this extensive, but I enjoy a challenge.” Sheridan turned and headed toward the door. “Now, if you need anything else...” They smirked. “I suppose you’ll just have to track me down.”

  “And how would I do that?” I asked.

  Sheridan reached into a bag at their side and retrieved a business card.

  It read:

  Sheridan Theas — Professional Necromancer

  Raising the Dead, Not Prices*

  For Inquiries, Contact House Theas

  *Not actually raising the dead, either

  There was no address, just a single glowing rune below the text.

  I recognized it as a form of targeting rune. In this case, a type designed for a non-enchanter to store a bit of their mana. This type was usually used to identify the owner of an item so that it could not be used by anyone else. In this case, though, I got the impression that it was more like a signature.

  When I looked up after reading the card, Sheridan was gone.

  I had the distinct feeling I’d just been flirted with.

  Maybe.

  That was strange on a number of levels, not the least of which was my half-dressed and unconscious sister being next to me.

  The pools of blood on the floor weren’t helping the atmosphere, either.

  And I still wasn’t quite sure where I stood on the idea of flirting or relationships in general.

  I tried not to think about it. Instead, I slipped the bracer of regeneration out of my bag and slipped it on Sera’s wrist. Unlike the ring, I could activate the bracer myself, so I turned it on.

  I hoped it would help.

  After that, I pretty much just stared blankly at the doorway for a while.

  I did hold Sera’s hand again, though.

  I held it until she woke up.

  It was silly. I didn’t know if she could even tell.

  But she’d done the same for me when I’d been hurt, so the idea of it clearly meant something to her.

  After a while, it barely bothered me at all.

  Chapter IX – Rest and Recovery

  I ended up doing the bulk of the cleaning. In spite of Sheridan’s joking about making Derek do the work, I owed him a great deal for both housing us and letting us make a mess in his lab.

  I helped put his equipment back, too.

  Sera wrote that she felt miserable in the aftermath, but she seemed stable. She coughed a bit more here and there, but there was a minimal amount of blood, and fortunately, no more of the liquefied scar tissue.

  More importantly?

  She already could whisper again.

  It just provoked a series of terrible coughs every time she did.

  I reminded her every time that Sheridan had told her not to try to talk for a few days, but Sera was just so happy to be able to communicate verbally at all, she couldn’t stop herself.

  She gave me a few more hugs, too, in the direct aftermath. I braced myself for them as best I could. I knew she was just excited.

  The most common thing she tried to whisper was some variation on “thank you” for helping her.

  That mostly made me feel more awful.

  I still felt like the whole thing was my fault on some level, since I’d given her that potion. The whole “it was what let us survive” thing was great, but I had a hard time internalizing that and pushing the self-recrimination out of the way.

  It helped that we’d made some progress, though, and I was determined to do more.

  Sheridan had given us some hope that Sera’s condition was fixable, even if Sheridan wasn’t certain they could fix it entirely through this method.

  If a cure existed, I’d find it.

  But for the moment, I had a more pressing priority.

  The next dueling exam was coming up, and I didn’t feel even close to ready. I was probably one of the strongest general duelists in my own class, but there were still types of attunements that I didn’t have a good way of countering.

  Especially Shapers.

  I had plenty of practice “training” against my father, but I still didn’t have any effective means of countering his attunement. The tiles seemed like my best bet, but a skilled Shaper could still shield themselves from the effects of stepping on one.

  I spent some time putting together ideas on how to handle each attunement, making some notes. It comforted me to get into that familiar mode, almost like I was preparing for my Judgment again.

  But I was still nervous.

  I made another mana watch to help diminish my anxiety. I tried to convince myself that I was working on ways to improve my original design, but I knew the truth. I’d grown completely reliant on the mana measurements. I didn’t know if I could function without them.

  I felt a little better when it was done. I’d built in one extra function; the new device stored and displayed the last two measurements, rather than just one. It was an incremental improvement, but the bit of progress made me feel less guilty about spending my time on the watch.

  The watch was simple enough that it didn’t take long to make, even with the improvements, but at that point the pain had finally gotten to the point where it wasn’t manageable.

  If I’d been a more social person, maybe I would have spent the few remaining hours of the night checking in to see how Sera was doing or visiting Marissa or Patrick.

  But that wasn’t me.

  I spent the rest of the night reading instead.

  I still had so many things I needed to learn. I had a bad habit of realizing I was behind on a subject and ignoring it in favor of something that felt more urgent.

  I ne
eded to work on breaking that habit, and I was going to start with something that I was interested in studying.

  Foreign attunements were a tempting prospect, but I decided to research something a little bit more immediately relevant — tracking magic.

  Even if the spire was sealed, there was still a good chance I’d need to track my brother down soon. To do that, I’d need to have at least a basic understanding of the types of tracking magic that were available.

  I didn’t have any specific books on the subject, but Derek had a library, and I was able to find a general book on Divination. I paged through it, stopping at a section that caught my eye.

  One of the traditional uses of Divination in noble households is paternity testing. In older houses where the retaining purity of a bloodline is of paramount importance, such spells are often used prior to the declaration that a child of questionable birth is an authentic family member.

  Similarly, when a “family member” disappears for a long time — say, during war — and later returns, similar spells are often used to verify the person’s identity.

  In cases where an entire family is believed to have been wiped out during an event, authentication spells can be used to compare the bloodline of a claimant to a stored blood sample — or even a relic that had been exposed to an ancient family member — to determine if an ancestral connection exists. This practice is somewhat controversial, as seen in the case of the Errant Prince of Valia in the third century...

  I shut the book for a moment, considering.

  Given how flexible these spells seem to be, I could almost definitely get a Diviner to test if Sera and I are really related — and if so, I could probably even get more specific details.

  But do I really care?

  If the results told me we’re not related, would that change things for the better?

  Probably not.

  Father was presumably using the idea of Sera being my sibling as a way to try to create competition between us.

  If so, he had utterly failed in that regard.