An Age of Mysterious Memories

B 2 C 13: Yes Really, A Lava Monster

I feel lost, adrift in an endless sea. The water is soothing, a neutral temperature, it almost robs me of all sensations. In fact, I don’t hear waves, the breeze, gulls, anything. All I see is a cool blue sky, or maybe that’s just more water. Somewhere, there’s another soul in this sea. Something I did hurt them, took them from their rightful place and put them here with me, earlier than their time. This must be the end of all things, I think some call it purgatory, but I don’t belong to this place yet. It lets me know that it’s not my time. Somewhere out there, in the distant future, a candle is snuffed out just a bit too early. This place somehow indicates it’s my fault. Something I did cost time, time that wasn’t mine to steal.

Blinking, I slowly awaken at the cliff’s edge of Fire Biome. What was I dreaming about? As I come to, I hear Lu speaking with concern, “Is Reggie okay? They told me they might not be okay when using it for the first time, oops, I mean, uh, just, they got the time skill in time, right?” My mind feels a tad discombobulated, so I rattle my skull. Did Luni say someone told her about me using a skill before I even activated it for the first time?

The last thing I remember, I was picturing losing Teuila over and over and over. I must have been having a horrible nightmare. Perhaps I passed out as Te was racing Lil to Fire Biome. Yes, it must have just been a horrible nightmare, there’s no way I have a skill that rewinds time.

Checking my skills page, my heart stops. My eyes shoot wide with terror. I can’t manage to suck down a single breath. There’s a time skill, it happened. I lost her, again and again and again. My stomach invents an acrobatics routine as my head lolls. My widened panicked eyes stop seeing anything, leaving me with a blank stare. As my jaw hangs slack, I’m fairly certain I drool.

Agonizingly slowly, I clutch at my chest, my heart, with one hand, then the other. Maybe, maybe if I go back far enough, I won’t even have to have seen this. I could practice, raising the skill until I can go back far enough to rescue everyone. We could see Penina again, Olioli, Atamai, Iakopo, Taito. Staff Ninja might not have to die.

Luni, riding my horrid thoughts telepathically, shouts, “No! You mustn’t! You can not use it again, you can’t practice with it, you have to promise me. You can’t practice with it until a certain event. You’ll know when. You want me to get you to promise, I mean I want to get you to promise me.” In my daze, I barely comprehend what Luni’s asking of me. Te and Lil are a bit startled at Lu’s assertion. What did I say before? Even if I don’t trust myself, I trust Luni.

Wait. She keeps saying I told her. Some future me reached out to her, told her what she needed to know, because I knew I would trust her before trusting myself. I put myself through that? Instead of just coming up with a way to prevent it entirely?

Lu shouts, again, “Don’t, don’t guess, stop guessing! Focus, um, please, please focus Reggie. The lava, Te and Lil said it chased you. Do you have a plan for that?” Lu tries to direct my thoughts, again, I have to trust her. I’m positive now that she’s the reason I have this skill, that somehow I acquired this skill, then spoke to her in the past, or sent her back in time. Right, right, stop guessing. I’ll probably rip a hole in the space-time continuum if I accidentally change the course of events. That’s probably why I trusted Luni with the information instead of myself.

Still, my head’s swimming, I swear I had some sort of nasty nightmare recently. If it wasn’t witnessing Teuila die over and over, what was it? Ugh, no time, gotta focus, no idea how long until that lava creature catches up to us.

Luni continues, shyly, "Um, so uh, guys. I won't have all of my powers for much longer, some stuff is going to happen. Reggie, you need to start learning how to use your magic defensively. Lil, I love you and your forms, but you're going to need to try to master it enough that you can change it. Te, uh, you keep doing you, honestly." Lu is once again playing with her index fingertips, speaking out the side of her mouth. The duality is almost impressive. Moments ago she was shouting assertively.

Curiously though, I query, “How would my magics be used defensively, especially if I’m not allowed to use the time skill? Also, yeah, I promise you Lu. You three mean everything to me, and if any of you need something from me, well, you know I’d go to the edge of death and beyond to try to do it for you.”

Lu shrugs, but takes a wild guess anyway, “I um, I have no idea. Maybe uh, well, getting yourself out of the way? Or, or, uh. When you, when you make copies of things, do they ever break? Do they ever move anywhere that you didn’t want them to?”

My jaw drops when Luni points out something that should have been patently obvious. My radiant copies have never broken. They’ve never been knocked aside or knocked back at me. I know that at one point during the Night of High Water, I actually copied fire as an explosion. The fire behaved exactly like I expected or imagined it to. My desires and imagination weren’t necessarily in line with physics. If I can do that with fire, can I do that with water? I’m not carrying around as much freshwater anymore though. So, first stop is to fill up.

I happily exclaim, “Lu, you’re a genius! You’re such a genius. I already learned the first one, it’s how I finally saved Te from that horrid, mortifying experience. The second though, you’re right. Lil, what’s the lowest setting you can breathe fire at? I need you to basically cook me as we walk.”

Lil dumbfoundedly replies, “You what.” No inflection of a question in their voice.

I answer anyway, “Preferably all three of us, for as long as Lu and Te can handle it. If they’re willing to join me.”

Lu and Te follow suit with Lil from a moment ago, “If we what.” At this point I can barely stifle a chuckle. It’s like they’re running a bit on me.

I start marching as I repeat my request, “So, yeah, Lil, start cooking. Please? Te, Lu, join me if you can, if you’re willing, but don’t stress yourselves out. Also, Lu you should probably stow your dress if you join. Lil, you can keep track of our thermal resists, when our resistance gains slow down, ratchet it up a notch, please?”

Luni and Teuila facepalm as Te resumes her Valkyrie form. I can see them rolling their eyes and wearing that one disdainful facial expression. The expression that looks like I offered them a melon when what they wanted was anything else. Still, Lil begins breathing flame at me, albeit worriedly.

“You’re going to have to go hotter Lil, sorry to ask this of you buddy. I think I’m going to need something around a thousand thermal resist before we run into that thing again. Even that isn’t going to protect any of us from being engulfed in lava.” I begin explaining my thought process to Lil. Continuing I state, “I know, I know, if it’s not going to save us, why am I asking? I’ve got this weird theory. Thermal activity is the kinetics of atomic movement. If we’re somehow learning to passively control the speed of our own atoms, we might just be able to manipulate those around us. Even if only slightly.”

As I’m explaining, a new skill enters my skill panel, thermokinesis. Lil, Lu, and Te hear my thoughts telepathically and check my skill panel to confirm. Their reactions are fairly mixed. Teuila immediately steps into the flames alongside me, and takes my hand. Lu’s astounded gaze flicks back and forth twixt Lil and myself. She strips from her lovely dress, donning just enough Valkyrie gear to help her be able to stand with us, then Lu joins us as well. Lil pauses for only a few moments before starting to gently blast us with fire again, ratcheting it up slowly.

Unfortunately, this new thermokinesis skill is at negative one. Similarly to my family’s carrying capacity. I believe that’s supposed to mean I can never earn even a single point, since I can’t engage it as a skill. I’m fairly confident though, that passively raising skills through other activities works. I might only be able to hit zero in the skill at a thousand resist, but I’ll figure that out when I get there. I dump all of my energy to perform a partially forced skill gain limit break. Once it’s engaged, my steps and breath falter for a moment, but my resistance climbs rapidly. I continue my march to the lake atop the cliffs in Fire Biome, letting my energy hang at zero the entire time, intentionally using up any that I regenerate.

Teuila wears a slightly grim smile that barely betrays her pride in me. Yet I feel that pride all the same. Lu and Te don’t seem to have a way to engage a skill based limit break, so their gains aren’t as rapid. But, if even one of us unlocks this skill, we can use it to protect the others. That’s my hope anyway.

Lil can’t manage to continuously exhale flame the entire time, even with the extra eleven hundred energy I’ve given them, so we do stop for breaks occasionally as we march. Also, while fire-breathing, Lil can’t talk, so we spend a lot of time in our thinkspace together. While we march only a few hours, we spend dozens of weeks telepathically bonding, laughing, sharing stories, moving forward with our lives and ourselves. I’ve neglected this for so long, and Teuila has wanted it for such a long time as well. I’ve got far less to share than the others, what with my shorter lifespan thus far, and the massive portion of that time that I’ve spent checked out. Even still, my inner circle is eager to hear my feedback, and tackle my needs. They know what topics to tread lightly around, and they're there for me through everything. It paints my past in a colorful light, helping fill my darkest moments with joy.

This, this is everything I could ever possibly have hoped for. A telepathic bond in which we all share so much love. Even Teuila can ride along into the shared thinkspace. My friends do have to spend quite a few weeks of our several months helping me face my own self-doubt, self-loathing, and sadness over my failures. Yet when it’s done, I feel the best I’ve ever felt, in so many ways. I’ve still got panic to deal with, but I forgive myself. I’ve still got my demons, but now I know, someday I’ll be strong enough to let them go. How amazing is that? With their love, I learned to forgive myself. Slightly anyway. It’ll be a lifelong project, but we have thousands of lifetimes together. Maybe if we’re really lucky, it will only take one lifetime to overcome.

As we reach the pond, my thermal resistance hits one thousand. Almost as if on cue, my thermokinesis hits zero. I’m probably wearing a fairly wicked grin right now, trying to not be boastful or prideful about the events. Luni and Teuila can’t keep up with Lil’s increasingly potent flames, but even though I’m a bit char-broiled, I keep requesting that Lil ramp it up. Lu and Te sit it out, taking a swim in the lake for fun to relax. Te drops her Valkyrie form, but mostly stays beneath the water, out of visual range, sparing me from the panic.

Through our practicing, we actually approach Lil’s old upper limit, and surpass it, as Lil gains more and more breath skill during our shenanigans.

It takes hours, but my thermokinesis skill hits one, and Lil taps out, desiring a break. I smile and confirm, “Of course buddy. You’re the best. Thank you so much for taking that burden and facing it. I unlocked the skill because of you.” Now, every bit of energy that I regenerate, while still riding out this skill gain limit break, I put into playing with thermokinesis.

As I’d feared, or expected, I can only slightly warm or cool my own body, and the air in direct contact with my body at first. After several more hours of play at the edges of the lake, with lava a scant few dozen meters away, I hit another breakthrough. I realize I can use thermokinesis on objects, material, and elemental forces contained in my inventory. First, I train myself to freeze the water in my inventory, then I begin claiming Lil’s flames when they’re willing to start up again. I nod when I’m finished. Now I’m practicing chilling Lil’s flames, when I get them below freezing temperatures, my nose begins to bleed from the extended skill limit break. Hm, it seems my ears are bleeding as well. I may have pushed a smidge too far. I teeter, stumble, then begin to topple forward.

Before I can even react, let alone reach the ground, there’s a blast of wind and dust. I find my face buried in a chestplate, and Valkyrie’s arms wrapped around my torso, under mine. Of course Teuila knew I was overdoing it. She trusted me, and let me continue, ready to swoop in and rescue me from myself at the last moment. Honestly, her speed is so blinding to have been able to react to my stumbling. She had to transform, and still move from beneath the waves on the far side of the lake straight to me in an instant. Yet, here she is, before I’ve even fallen at much of an angle. I need to finish this limit break, and hopefully I can do it in a useful fashion. Calling into our telepathic bond, I make sure that Lu is out of the lake, and beg Teuila to drag me to its edge.

Once at the edge, my hand droops barely into contact with the water. I smoothly exhale, engaging the finisher. First, ice spreads out from my hand, stretching across the lake almost instantly, leaving a small hole at its center. Secondly, I carefully evaporate the water beneath the layer of ice, forcing a cloud of steam to pour up and out through the hole in the ice. The steam continues to pour and pour and pour out of the hole in the ice. It eventually takes the form of rainclouds, showering us with beautiful rain, just in the nick of time.

I can sense movement beneath the rock within fifteen feet. Shoving Teuila away from me, though I’m loathe to do it, I yell, “Scatter!” Te virtually fumes at the order, but her trust wins out, and she leaps to Lu’s side to take Lu into the air. Lil transforms, and paces back and forth, unsure of what to do.

Thinking into our bond, I tell Lil to prepare to shatter this thing and spread out its pieces when they get the signal. “What signal?” Lil asks. Oh you’ll definitely understand this signal. When this thing cools into stone. Lava shoots forth from the earth right where Teuila was only an instant before. I thank my lucky stars that she trusts me as much as she does.

I haven’t recovered much energy since the limit break, but creating a small barrier of ultra-cold particles in patches near my body doesn’t take much. I can’t practice using my radiant inventory copies defensively at the moment, because of how little energy I have, so I’ll have to focus on thermokinesis instead. I try hard to fight the urge to smirk. No time to be prideful, this is still deadly dangerous. I draw in on myself as much as possible, making myself as small a target as I possibly can behind my shield. Thankfully this lava creature takes the bait, and tries to spread around the shield to engulf me. The rain sizzles and steams as it makes contact with the monster, and it has the desired effect, dissuading the lava beast from taking to the air. It probably doesn’t want to risk cooling in the atmosphere and then dropping like a rock. A literal rock, at that point.

Parts of the lava beast cool and crack as they come into contact with my cold-air-barrier, and it recoils. Learn to use my magic defensively, just like Luni said. I coat my fist in a layer of frigid air, and take a test swing at the beast. It tries to spread out, forming a hole where my hand punches, but it doesn’t yet understand that it’s the air around my hand that’s freezing it. I manage to freeze this brand new gap in the creature.

I think I’ve finally enraged it, because the lava begins to assume a humanoid shape, and health bars finally pop up. Bingo. Vesuviform huh? Well VF, not so pleased to meet you. Are those, are those red eyes? My confidence slips away as a lump catches in my throat, my breathing becomes ragged and my pulse races. This, this Vesuviform has the same eyes. Those same eyes as those monstrous Leviathans, the same eyes as the blue spheres. My vision narrows to a pinprick and I’m struck a massive blow from my unshielded side. Unable to react, unable to put up a barrier of cold air, the padding beneath my valkyrie armor burns away in an instant, and my skin sizzles and cracks. I’m knocked far into the air, far and away, though VF does at least give chase, thankfully.

Gritting my teeth, I try to calm my breathing. Nightmares tear through my mind, shunting my consciousness from the current moment, back to Day One. The day when I was without family, without memory, without love, or safety, or any of the memories or the kindness I’ve experienced since. Thinking about my family helps startle me from my panic episode. Not completely, but that’s to be expected. Trauma is malingering, it’s hard to beat. At least I can breathe. I clutch my chest, trying to drag away the icy grip of fear from my heart, but of course, I’m unsuccessful. Still, while my body doesn’t want to respond as it rides a wave of panic, my skills are willing to respond at least.

I may not get to practice icy wind pugilism, but I can at least do one thing. When I land, tumble, and skid away from the Vesuviform, it chases after me to finish me off. I know I’m about to cause a steam explosion. I hope I can weather such a force, as I once believed myself to be able to handle explosions way back in the swamp. At least, I was more confident I could survive a series of explosions than I could survive encountering Octorochi again back then. Hopefully that confidence wasn’t misplaced.

VF swings at me from both sides with massive arms of molten rock, and though my danger wraps warn me to move, I cannot. I still don’t have control of my body through the terror. Instead, I eject freezing water from my inventory in both directions, thousands of liters. The resulting contact instantly hardens VF’s arms, cooling them, and it has the other expected effect. While the water boils off instantly into steam, and that steam is superheated, it expands at too rapid a pace for the air pressure around it. I’m treated to two deafening cracks, and thunderous force from both directions as I’m centered between two massive explosions.

My left side is still shielded, protected by both my shield, and all of my armor and padding. My right side is completely bare due to the earlier blow. The force of the explosion feels as if it caves my right ribs into my lung, puncturing it. I gasp, and actually cough up blood. Immediately I can feel the concern of my inner circle. It’s okay guys, this fight is almost over. VF begins to grow new arms, and their health bars start to regenerate, but it’s too slow.

Gathering what little strength I have left, I momentarily fight through my panic. Leaping straight into VF’s chest, I coat myself in an icy wind. Once there, I summon the rest of the water from my inventory above both myself and VF. What must be a quarter of a nearly freezing lake cascades down. I can’t help but laugh that VF’s own body is protecting me like an armored shell of stone from this much larger explosion. Lil, this is your cue buddy. Te, if you think you can handle the heat of the steam, feel free to help out. I’m going to pass out now.

With that, I do exactly as I said I would. Consciousness fades from me as my muscles ache and blood drips from my mouth. Thankfully, functioning with one lung seems to be mostly fine in our world. I’m glad so many of my memories are wrong. An excruciating experience to be sure, but slumber still takes me nonetheless.