1st EVOLUTION ” The birth of a High-Hybrid “

Part Thirty — What Was Left

The binding broke sometime near dawn.

　I don't know why.

　I don't know if it simply expired, or if whoever had cast it no longer had reason to maintain it――and I've never let myself sit too long with what that second possibility actually implies.

　I came back into my own body all at once, gasping, every muscle screaming from hours held rigid against its will.

　The clearing around me was silent in a way that had nothing peaceful left in it.

Doran.

Fenrik.

Say something.

Either of you.

Please.

　Nobody said anything.

　I found Doran first.

　I'm not going to describe all of it.

　I've tried, since, to find words that do it justice without turning it into something I'd never want anyone else to have to picture as clearly as I still can, and I've never managed it.

　I'm not going to try again here.

　What I'll say is this:

　Whoever did this had been thorough.

　Efficient.

　The kind of violence that isn't rage, just work――finished cleanly and left behind without a second thought for what it meant to the people who'd find it afterward.

　His eyes were open.

　I closed them myself, hands shaking too badly to manage it on the first try.

You told me I wouldn't be facing whatever came, alone.

You promised that.

On a rooftop, under more stars than I'd ever seen.

You lied.

Or the world made a liar out of you.

I don't know which is worse.

　Fenrik was a few feet further away.

　And looking at the ground between them, I understood.

　He'd been trying to reach Doran when it happened.

　Trying to get to him.

　Whatever this was, at the very end, they'd both been thinking about each other and not themselves.

The ocean.

We only got one trip to the ocean.

You had a whole list left.

I promised you a whole list left.

　I don't remember deciding to kneel.

　I don't remember how long I stayed there, one hand on each of them, saying nothing.

　Because nothing I had left in me qualified as words anymore.

This can't be it.

This can't actually be it.

Six years.

Six years and a whole life built out of nothing, and it just――ends here.

On a Tuesday.

On ground I don't even know the name of.

Why.

WHY.

What did I do?

What did I ever actually do to deserve losing everyone I let myself love, twice now, in two different lives, on two different worlds that apparently agreed on exactly one thing about me――

　Something shifted.

　Somewhere under my ribs.

　In the same place it had shifted once before, in a different clearing, years and a lifetime ago.

　I felt it before I understood it.

　A pressure building behind my own eyes.

　Sharp.

　Cold.

　Entirely unfamiliar.

　Nothing like the anti-mana I'd spent six years learning to hold with careful, deliberate control.

　This wasn't careful.

　This wasn't mine to hold at all.

What――

　I caught my own reflection, distorted, in the flat of Doran's fallen blade lying just beside his hand.

　Something was moving across my eyes.

　Writing.

　Or something that wanted to be writing.

　Symbols I didn't recognize and somehow already understood anyway, flowing and reforming like a spell rebuilding itself from the inside out――using my own body as the page it was written on.

This isn't the same as the clearing with the slavers.

This is something else.

Something bigger.

Something that isn't asking my permission.

　I tried to stand.

　My legs answered.

　But not like my own legs.

　Steady.

　Deliberate.

　Moving with a certainty I hadn't given them.

I don't think I'm the one driving anymore.

　The last thing I remember clearly, before whatever was happening finished taking the wheel entirely, was going very still.

　Very calm.

　Standing over the two people I'd have given anything to protect...

　...and utterly, completely failed to save.

　Somewhere distant, through the haze, I heard voices approaching from beyond the treeline.

　New ones.

　Unfamiliar.

　Careless in the particular way people are careless when they don't yet know what they're walking into.

　I didn't turn to look at them.

　I didn't need to.

　Whatever I'd become in that moment already knew exactly what it was going to do next.