Misfit Mage

by Michael Taggart

  My throne room still looked like it was for a small kingdom, but it looked like it was loved now. There were tapestries on the wall, and they didn’t look faded and falling apart. One tapestry was dedicated to my fight with the first golem. I was running away and the golem was chasing me. It was covered in flying miners and ass blaster 2000s and a trail of rock was streaming out behind it.

  Running away wasn’t the most heroic view of the fight, but I’d won in the end and all of its magic was now healing me. The other tapestries were just patterns and colors I liked. Would they fill in with scenes as I progressed? I hoped so. That seemed like a neat idea.

  The cot was still there, though. That’s all I needed for sleeping and it was already comfortable. I snuggled up and went to sleep.

  I woke up what seemed like a long time later. I was so used to checking the clock to see how I was doing. I was very grateful for my magic sight, but it does have some limitations. It’s great at seeing shapes and I can see anything magical in color. Anything non-magical, though, I don’t get any color at all. Most importantly I can’t see screens. I have an alarm clock by my bed, but it uses LEDs to show the time. I can’t see color so it just looks like a blank screen to me. Since I can’t see color, I also can’t tell if the sun is shining in the window.

  Without sight or real communication, I kind of felt like I was in a giant dream. If it wasn’t for the pain of my breaks and bruises, I’d be wondering if any of this was real.

  Speaking of pain, I was feeling a lot better. I could breathe easily now that my ribs were healed. I checked my left arm and it was almost completely recovered. My legs and back were doing better, but not as much as I’d hoped. I think it was because there was a lot more room to cover. A break is very traumatic, but it’s mostly confined to a small area. A muscle and its tendons, on the other hand, cover a lot more real estate.

  I knew I should be working on my face, but I was scared to start. I was scared to get a good view of just how bad it was. Instead I procrastinated and worked on my legs and back. I awakened more than 50 more spots in my muscles and tendons before taking a break. It had taken hours, but I still wasn’t ready to face my own face.

  Instead I started pulling in more magic from Penny. I was curious to see just how much magic I could store now that I had my new matrix. I was used to just how much magic it took to fill me up when my magic felt like mist, so I pulled that and stopped. I still felt good, so I pulled that amount again. It seemed a bit harder to pull this time but there was still room left.

  I zoomed into Penny to get a view of what was happening on the cellular level. I pulled a bit of magic. It appeared thick, like syrup, but white. Once it hit my system, the matrix pulled it apart into spheres. The white color gradually changed into either green or blue. The matrix shifted slightly and the new magic was now integrated. The matrix was stable, but elastic. When the magic twinkled into a new cell the matrix just shifted a bit and kept its general shape.

  I did notice the distance between the green spheres was less than when I’d started the matrix. I could feel the pressure there. It was like a bunch of magnets that repelled each other were being pushed together. Or maybe it was like winding up an old watch. The more you wound it, the harder it was to turn.

  I pulled more magic and kept on pulling. It was fascinating watching the matrix form and the balls change color. I pulled some of the new magic deeper inside me and the color changed a lot faster. It was also fascinating just how much magic I could hold. I pulled about ten times as much magic as my max was before.

  The matrix was visibly compressed from when I’d started, but it still seemed like I could hold more. More magic meant more healing so I kept pulling. I was at fifteen times my regular max, and it was getting very hard to pull magic, when something wonderful happened.

  Penny woke up.

  I was so happy to feel her again. She trilled at me happily and flooded me with images. The last thing she really remembered was accepting all my little creations from the first golem. She was still happy about kicking its rocky ass. After she felt like she had fallen asleep. She remembered talking to me, but it was like it was all a dream.

  I wasn’t used to this form of communication, but I sent my own memories back. I told her about the attack of the remnant in the park and how this tiny kitten had scared away the giant ground hogs. I covered the method we had found to charge the charms and how we had ended up in the park again. She was very interested in how the charms had charged with her help. It all seemed so distant to her. I hadn’t seen much of the battle but I showed her what I could. Reliving the beat down Isobel had given me hurt.

  Penny wanted more detail but I told her it was just too fresh. I covered my recovery up to this point: how I’d awakened my cells, transformed my breaks, and created a matrix. I’d finally pulled enough magic from her to get her back to normal, and now here we are.

  Penny thought the human body was fascinating. I didn’t get any sympathy from her at all. She said metal was crushed and formed naturally, so this all seemed normal to her. I told her that as a living creature we didn’t like to get crushed. Too much crushing and we died.

  That seemed so strange to her. She asked why I didn’t just transform into whatever I wanted, like she did. I said I’d love to do that but I wasn’t at that magic level yet. Right now I was at the level of healing. That took time and patience and involved a lot of pain and recovery. I had some charms that were supposed to help but I wasn’t sure they were actually doing any good.

  She perked up at that. There was a magic charm that would fix me? She didn’t really understand, but she wanted me to be better. She could feel pain and injury from my thoughts, and that wasn’t anything she wanted for me.

  Penny unwound from my finger and wiggled up my arm like a snake. It felt weird, but she was heading to the charm on my neck so I just kept still. When she got there, she wrapped around the charm and seemed to talk to it for a while. I could hear her making vibrating whistling noises. I also felt the presence of the House for a moment.

  I tried to understand what was going on, but the whole thing was outside my level. Maybe it was a type of charm speak. I’m not sure.

  It took several minutes, and then Penny sent me a feeling of happiness. She’d gotten whatever she was after. She left the charm and wiggled up to my head. Then she stretched around the bandages and covered my whole head, like a helmet.

  When she did, the pain stopped.

  It just stopped.

  My face was seventy percent of my remaining pain, so when it stopped, it was shocking. I’d been living with such agony for so long that it felt like normal. I’d learned to think and work and do magic in spite of how raw I felt.

  Now that it was gone, I felt so light, so free.

  I sent Penny feelings of happiness and joy. I also sent images of me doing a happy dance. She gave me a cheerful trill and said she was working on my face and to go and do something else.

  I wasn’t sure what that would be. I needed to get my jaw working again. Would she mind if I helped with that? I asked and she said she was working on my face. If I could start on my jaw then go for it.

  It didn’t take much zooming to see my jaw was broken and the place it connected to my skull was all messed up. Again, I was surprised at how my jaw bone actually looked. I thought it swiveled like a pair of scissors. It actually looks more like a ladle, and connects farther back on my skull than I thought it should.

  I knew how to fix bones so I got started. My jaw had several cracks in it and was completely broken on the right side. I awakened cells in all the cracks and both sides of the break. I wasn’t sure how to handle the sockets, so I just awakened as much as I could.

  After all that I took a break to have some kitty time with Bermuda. He purred up a storm and licked my fingers a bit. He was growing up so fast. Already he seemed a little less kitten and a little more grown up than he had when he first found me. He wanted to play, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. I made my
little Dot again, filled him with magic and sent him off zooming around the room. I gave him strict instructions not to come around me, though. I didn’t need a cat jumping on my ruined face.

  I did give instruction to stay around John, though, who was sitting with me. Those little kitten claws can sting. That was a bit of payback for the whole naked shaman thing. Bermuda went ape shit over the light. He had energy to burn and he climbed John like a tree. John squealed like a little girl and jumped up. That didn’t stop Bermuda or Dot at all. My bedroom was a lively place for a while.

  In the middle of all that, I went to my throne room and crashed out.

  It took two more days until I was good enough to move. John helped me into the bathroom and showered with me. I was so weak I could barely stand up. When I got back Sandy had changed out all my sheets and pillows. I was clean and I slept in a clean bed for the first time in a very long time. It was like heaven.

  A few days after that my jaw finally recovered enough for me to say my first words. Not long after that I had a few spoonfuls of chicken broth. It hurt too much to actually chew, but having something with calories and flavor was the best meal in the world.

  My face was wrecked even more than what I’d feared it was. Penny moved all the little pieces of bone back into position and I awaked bone cells to fuse it into place. It was like solving a 3D puzzle as we gradually rebuilt my cheekbones and eye sockets.

  My teeth were also a big problem. All of my front teeth were missing, both top and bottom and some of my back teeth were cracked. Healing a cracked tooth was just like healing a bone so that wasn’t a long-term problem.

  The missing teeth were more of an issue until Tyler gave me an unusual gift. He presented me with a little cardboard box. I opened it up, and nesting on a bed of tissue, were my missing teeth. I’d never been gifted my own teeth before. What kind of thank you card do you send for that?

  So long and thanks for all the teeth? I was feeling long in the tooth until you showed up? I was laughing and sort of crying when he gave them to me. It was so tragic and so sweet at the same time. He said he’d had his teeth knocked out many times before. It’s much easier to heal them back into place rather than regrow new ones.

  Penny made a special grill with some of her metal to hold them in place while I worked on awakening the cells. John made gangster jokes for days. Said he had diamonds for my grill. He made up bad rhymes for my rap album and suggested rapper names. It hurt to laugh but I did it anyway.

  Sandy got in on the fun too, but she wasn’t as good as John. Annabeth scolded them both, but she was laughing too.

  Eight days after my jaw was fixed, Penny left my head and wrapped around my finger again. Sandy unwrapped the bandages around my head and I opened my eyes for the first time since the accident.

  I couldn’t see.

  I thought my vision might be blurry or something like that. I thought maybe I’d be sensitive to the light after so long in the dark. I had never occurred to me at all that I wouldn’t be able to see again.

  That was my reality, though. I was pretty sure it didn’t mean that I wouldn’t be able to see forever, just that I couldn’t see right now. At some point I’d be able to transform myself, like Tyler.

  Until then I had my magic sight. My bones were healed. My teeth were back. I wasn’t in pain. I was still weak but some of Sandy’s cooking would take care of that.

  I wasn’t perfect, but life was good. Really good.

  21 Celebration

  We had a celebration dinner that night. Tyler had cleared out another remnant. Three down and one to go. The last one was going to be the hardest. Still, it was nice to celebrate some progress.

  We were also celebrating the fact that I was mostly healed. It felt so good to be up and moving around again. It seemed like everything felt new. Breathing through my nose felt new. Talking felt new. Chewing solid food felt new.

  It was a whole new world. I guess you don’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone.

  The only things not healed yet were my eyes. I knew they would heal eventually. At least I had my magic sight so I wasn’t bumping into things.

  I still wanted to be careful, though. I’d only been eating solid food for a few days. That’s why I took a pass on the large pints of IPA that John started handing out. Instead, I put a little bit of his brew in a cup and sipped on it.

  The last thing I needed was to get hammered, fall over, and knock out my teeth again. Or break my arm. I wanted to stay pain and injury free for as long as possible.

  The party was in Sandy’s kitchen/living room, of course, and it featured chicken pot pie, one of my all-time favorites. I tried not to eat too much, but I still ended up with two bowls of it. The pastry was the right amount of flakey and the creamy filling was divine.

  After dinner I told my recovery story in full. I’d already told parts of my story to them individually, but this was the first time to cover everything with everyone.

  When I got to Tyler’s part of the story, I thanked him truly and deeply. His idea to find the balance in any situation really kept me going and helped me keep my sanity. His talk about transforming, not healing, was also pivotal to my recovery. That was what got me to start awakening my cells in the first place.

  I was halfway through his example when he cut his skin and transformed it, when it occurred to me this might be something he wanted to keep quiet. He was already several pints into John’s brew so he was feeling good. He just waved me on and I finished the story. Then everyone wanted a demo, so he cut himself and then transformed it into smooth skin again. It was just as magical to see it the second time.

  That was fascinating for Sandy and Annabeth. They wanted to figure out how to flood an area with magic and replicate the effect. John was the most thoughtful, however. He was a natural and he might have enough internal magic to pull it off as well. He didn’t say much, but I had a feeling he was going to be experimenting later.

  I continued my story with Annabeth’s pep talk about acceptance. I thanked her deeply as well. That had been a pivotal moment that allowed me to find my throne room and get some sleep for the first time.

  Sandy thought it was hysterical that I’d used my throne room to get some rest. Finding your seat of power was different for everyone and was usually something that took a lot of searching and practice. It was a master level skill that was then used for research or casting high level spells. I’d used it for sleeping.

  Sandy said that was like finding the Holy Grail, and then using it as a coffee cup.

  Sleep was what I’d really needed, though, and my throne room had come through for me. Sandy said your seat of power appeared differently for everyone. Her center was a tree stump in a vast meadow filled with wild flowers. It had beautiful sunlight, cool breezes, birds that sang, and distant mountains. I thought it sounded wonderful.

  John said that even naturals had centers of power. His was a combination cave and forge. He had all kinds of metals and everything he needed to heat and shape them. The cave was well lit and just about every surface was decorated with etching. It was less a damp dark cave and more like the dwarven treasure room from the Lord of the Rings movies. I thought that sounded pretty fantastic too.

  I continued my story with Bermuda arriving and pulling my magic. I stopped at that point to thank Sandy for taking care of my kitten. Bermuda had been playing with Snowy but he came over when we started talking about him. I picked him up and started loving on him in my lap. He purred and looked as cute as a button. I was so grateful that she had taken him to the vet and made sure he got the attention he needed. I didn’t want to imagine a life without him.

  I wanted to pay her back for her expenses, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She said that figuring out how to charge their charms was thanks enough. If I still felt like I owed her anything then I could help her accomplish some of my new discoveries for herself. She was especially interested in my magic matrix. She’s been following my progress as it had grown.

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nbsp; I talked about Bermuda and how he had folded my magic and made it stable and dense. Then how I had figured out how to do it for myself.

  Sandy was interested in how the magic matrix compared to her spinning cores. As far as she knew, spinning up magic cores was the only way the House residents knew to progress in magic. It took a lot of attention and constant work. There wasn’t anything stable about it.

  John and Tyler didn’t care about magic cores so they started telling each other tall tales and getting down to some serious drinking. I think they were trying to see who passed out first. Since they were both powerful naturals with lots of healing I wasn’t sure who was going to win. I do know they were way out of my league. I was perfectly happy to stay mostly sober and talk magic with Sandy and Annabeth.

  One thing I did find out, Tyler has a door that takes him home. That’s why he isn’t around all the time. I’m glad he is helping me, but I’m also glad he can go home and be happy too.

  I didn’t think I could see inside someone else, but Sandy made it happen. It was almost like a formal contract. She took my hand and said “I swear on my magic to be open to you. You can see my magic like your magic, my body like your body, my power like your power. So long as you do no harm to me, you have this clarity until midnight tonight.”

  After that, I could see her magic and her cells just like mine. We also got a lecture on swearing on our magic. We could force it to do certain things, but it was binding on us. We should always put a time limit on it and it should be contingent on the other person doing no harm.