Wanna Be

You want to know what it's like to die?

I'm not speaking of near death experiences or seeing a bright light, nor the many ways and reasons death happens. I'm talking about what it's like when death is breathing down your neck and the tools life gave you kick in. If there was ever a meaner case of life needing an instruction manual, it's when you're about to die.

The simplified version of it is fight or flight. Some people also add 'freeze' in there. Basically, your normal ways of seeing the world go away. Your brain dumps a bunch of chemicals into the mix, and overrides several normal factors of day to day survival. It's great in theory, the artwork of nature and evolution. Then you live it.

Or often, you don't. It's a higher brain thing. Survival is a building block part of the mind, not a higher function part, and it will yank you right down from your higher perches of reason and assessment and generally just THINKING before you know it. It's like falling down a long flight of stairs and immediately getting into a fight at the bottom: not...fun. Or easy. Or for some people, doable. Studies have shown that it can even happen with near-human animals like leowolves, or wyrms. People just can't handle the sudden new influx of STUFF, and end up getting hurt or dying, stuck between thinking and surviving, unable to deal with getting information from both sides. You can try and train your brain to not do that, that's what most soldier training is, but when it comes down to it, it's either something you learn to handle by experiencing it, or you just have it.

Chris has it. Me...well, I guess I do too. Not like her, though. She's unflappable. Me...I'm just lucky.

Just my luck.

-------------------------

Falling to one's death. Never a fun enterprise. In an out of control tumble with a cloak wrapped around one's head, considerably less so. Fear. Panic. All options stripped away, which just reinforced the fear...

NONONONONONONO-

The cloak had to go first. Get it away from the face, had to see, had to SEE...but fear, confusion, can't see through eyes, can't see through actions, how else can one see?

Most can't.

Dummy.

Grabbing and yanking at the cloak should have been a lesson in futility: between the blindness, tumbling movement, and wind, pulling it in such a way to get it out of one's face in the timeframe Ash had might well have been impossible, or at least very unlikely.

Sometimes, though, it was better to be lucky than smart, as Ash paused in his flailing and then grabbed at the cloak, yanking it up and twisting his head at the precise angle for the wind to yank the cloak over his head, leaving him able to see again. It allowed him the delightful view of the ground rushing up to meet him, even as he began to tilt further backwards, his body still trapped in the spinning momentum of his rather unfortunate rock-mounting failing. It seemed not only was he going to crash land, he was going to do so roughly face first.

A genius probably could have worked out the precise geometry. Ash just clamped onto the roaring animal in his brain and threw it into his fuel cauldron, the feeling running down his arm like thousands of times before, a tingling intensity that bordered on pins and needles, willpower mixing with a world's power as he thrust out his hand.

The blast of force, in a vacuum, was terrible. It would have had little range and trouble hitting anything smaller than the average tree, let alone a man, and unless fired at point-blank range, probably would have done little more than knock them down. Fortunately, none of that mattered in this case. Ash just wanted to stop his forward-shifting momentum, and he succeeded. Two down in three seconds. Not bad.

Now the main problem. The ground was rapidly coming up, and Ash neither had the endurance to land without injury, nor the time to slow himself down via more T.A.N.G.L.Espam. No one was likely to catch him either, and he doubted gravity was going to cut him a break...

When the world won't cut you a break...

-------------------------------------


In a warfield, there are few things that will grab a soldier's attention, let alone a large group of them. A man falling out of the sky screaming was one of them, Ash's form plunging into their line of sight before he hit the ground.

"-HHHHHHHHH!"

THUD.

Mud sprayed into the sky from the impact, a few droplets obtaining enough momentum to splatter against the soldiers as they recoiled. The wetness of the clay-based ground that the fields of Darrow had turned into after their king had started this war insured there wasn't even a concealing dust cloud that dry ground might have provided.

Get up.

Pain. God, the pain. Ash had managed to get the Fordaring charm out, aimed, and fired off. He'd even managed a better result than last time; he'd wanted the fire turned back the way it had come from, not turned into ice that promptly hit him anyway. But between the timing and the somewhat-limited nature of the charm, Ash had managed to change his landing from 'splatter on the ground' to 'get smashed between the forces of gravity and the opposing force projected by the charm like two giant hands'. The upside to being 'clapped' was that a lot of the force was bled outwards (hence the mini-mud explosion), changing the landing from being fatal to just painful...but oh god it hurt...

GET. UP.

The soldiers stared at the mud-soaked form down on its knee,  a quivering hand rearing up and slamming into the ground, over and over, like Ash was trying to share his pain with the filth that coated his body, punching the mud and spraying it up. Maybe I SHOULD have landed on my back, my cloak might have taken it better, it HURTS...

They're not attacking. They can't see the fine details. You need to get up, you need to USE this. Come on Ash. Get up!

Ash swore his spine acted like a cartoon accordion as he forced himself to his feet, feeling every joint in his body pop loudly as they snapped back into place. It hurt...it hurt...

I know. GET UP. Come on...get up. Stand.

The pain...but he could deal with it. He had been hurt before, he had been hurt worse, he could stand up, he had to, mud dripping from his body. The soldiers were still staring. Still astonished.

"...it's him." One of them said.

They recognized him. That's why they weren't attacking.

They don't see how you're hurting. They didn't see the finer details. You know what they see. You KNOW.

"It's me." Ash said, one last popping noise echoing from his arm as he moved his hands together. Transfering the Fordaring charm to his left hand, before moving his right to his waist. To the blade sheathed there, ever stable among chaos.

Now STAND.

Fiction produced all sorts of misinformation about real life. One was that bladed weapons made a noise when they were drawn, like the world had to marvel at the weapon's sharpness in an audible fashion. For those fond of fiction, the best one could hope for would be a barely-heard whisper, or an unfortunate suckle-slurping noise that indicated the sheath was soaked in water, or like Ash's current case, mud. There was no bell tolling events to come...

In nearly all cases. But there were always exceptions to every rule, and the blade Ash drew was one of them. A sword unlike anything else in this world. A sword recognizable on sight. A sword that sang its intent as it was presented in dreams.

"...Who wants to try first?" Ash said, biting down on a cough just in time. The pain was fading. He was standing. raising his blade in his right hand, eyes flicking around, looking for crossbows and ambushes.

For a moment, Ash thought someone had come in from behind the soldiers grouped in front of him and they were turning to see who. After a few seconds, he realized it was the opposite. Someone had thrown down their weapon and was running.

Once the rest of the soldiers realized the same, he quickly had friends.

It was the weapon factor that really struck Ash. He could understand retreating in the face of a 'superior foe', but the fact that most of the soldiers dropped their weapons in the process was just...inexplicable. Was it so they could run faster? Was he THAT scary? A mud-covered creaky kid with a bubblegum sword? What would they do if Ash went after them? How would they defend themselves?

It didn't matter to them. Some did hold onto their weapons, but the retreat was nigh unimous, the soldiers breaking and scattering before Ash. Within seconds, there were just a few stragglers left. Two, to be precise, one face hidden behind a helmet. the other one lacking it...

He's younger than I am...

Two soldiers left, their heads snapping around as their companions fled and then back at Ash.

"...who wants to try first?" Ash said, his grip shifting around his sword as he gestured at the two remaining soldiers while echoing his original line.

Helmet broke, turning and fleeing, his sword splashing down into the mud. No Helmet's panicked face snapped around to follow, and then jerked back towards Ash.

Then he screamed and charged.

"Brave kid." Ash said, mud squelching beneath his boots as he shifted his hands, both hands moving to the hilt of his sword. Blind panicked charge, just one target...

Cake and pie.

No Helmet's metal blade slashed out, meeting a weapon that was something else entirely. The metal lost terribly, a low keening cry almost coming off No Helmet's weapon as it shattered, Ash's blade smashing through it like it was made of glass. The complete lack of a stopping momentum threw No Helmet off balance, his body stumbling forward, leaving the back of his head wide open for Ash to swing around and thump the lone remaining soldier with his sword. He hit the ground with a wet splash, down and out before some of the pieces of his destroyed weapon could finish reaching the ground themselves.

"Okay then." Ash said, his grip loosening and dropping his sword into the ground, freeing up his hand so he could try and wipe some of the mud off of his face, a task made harder by the fact that his hand was also mud-caked (again) and he didn't have an E-Hand to spare. That was a lesser concern though; what to do next? Was that enough of a disruption for enemy lines, or should he find another package of troops and scatter them as well, before doubling back towards the castle? Maybe he should gamble on it being enough, he was on a clock. One glance to see how his allied side was doing...

Ash's gaze revealed something else. He was too far away and the battlefield was too smokey in the distance where the two sides were actually clashing to tell who was winning, losing, or stalemating, but looking in that direction caused him to spare another glance at the lone soldier who had opposed him.

Also, the fact he'd fallen face first into a puddle. While unconscious.

"Fuck!"

Mud splashed up around Ash's already dirty cloak and boiled leather leggings, the blonde-haired man throwing himself down on the ground and pulling No Helmet out of the clutch of filthy water that part of the battlefield had perfectly structured its battered form to hold. Ash stared at the young man's face, his mind racing. How did CPR go again? Was that what you did, maybe you had to do...

Wait. He had a magic reversing charm.

"Kasta Om!"

This time, the silver-chained star did exactly what Ash wanted, the soldier violently ejecting dirty water and coughing loudly as his lungs cleared up. Ash glanced at the mechanism, grimacing: already nearly out of power. He'd get one more good use out of it and then-

For a moment, Ash though someone had poked him hard to get his attention.

Then two more crossbow bolts slammed into his back with more clarity, throwing Ash forward onto the soldier he'd just rescued. The broken line was back. With friends that had more ranged weapons and an opening.

And someone else carting around a flamethrower. Ash only managed to spy him before another crossbow bolt impaled into his shoulder, a second slamming into his torso like the firer had timed him turning around.

"GET HIM! KILL HIM!"

I'm right over one of your own...

...and I left my sword over there.

Oops.

The sound of incendiary chemicals catching alight, the virulent liquids and gasses turning into a bloom of roaring, expanding fire, made it crystal clear they didn't care.

"BURNNNNNNN!"

Ash did. His form vanished beneath the tide of fire, and to drive the point home even harder, a second heavy weapons soldier joined up with the group, unleashing his own fire and turning the area in front of them into an inferno, a slice of hell rising up onto the earth. The first one fired his weapon so long he almost caused it to suffer catastrophic failure, only one of his fellows slamming him over the head and telling him to stop keeping him from making such a deadly mistake.

"...We got him!"

Fear of death does such strange things. The soldiers who immediately began cheering and celebrating were not the first to come to such a conclusion, the second flamethrower wielder actually firing his weapon into the sky in triumph, the other soldiers slamming hands together and throwing taunts where their enemy had been...

Still was.

Still standing, Ash's shadowed form appearing for a moment amongst all the fire, smoke, and steam before he stepped out. Like a switch, the celebration stopped.

Ash took another step, the cloak on his back breaking apart more and more with every motion, the mud on his body dried and cracking off his scorched, smoking clothes like he was shedding his skin. The other soldier was unconscious, but Ash barely seemed to notice, carrying him over his shoulder, the part of his blackened mantle draped over him finally giving up the ghost and falling apart. Face blackened with soot, Ash's eyes blazed with their own fire, looking onto his ambushers, those who would kill their own without a second thought to get him.

The soldier was draped over Ash's left side, the blonde man's left arm wrapped around his waist, his right hand holding onto the wrist of the arm draped over Ash's shoulder. As the last of Ash's cloak fell apart, he released his right hand's grip, holding the man up solely with his left arm as his right hand fell back towards his waist.

His hand found the grip of the blade there. Ash said nothing, instead yanking his hand back up, just a bit.

The sound was like bones breaking, the blade not so much partially emerging from the sheath as uncoiling, whispery clinks of metal sounding off the draw. Ash continued to say nothing, his baleful gaze locked on the men before him.

The drops of liquid that began to fall from the partially exposed blade didn't so much hiss as they hit the ground as shriek, like the natural earth beneath their feet couldn't abide what emanated from the weapon.

Fear of death. Flight. Fight. Freeze.

"...who...wants...to...go...FIRST?"

This time, no soldier stayed behind. Ash drew in a long, vicious breath through his nose, his anger cooling back down as they broke and ran once more. Sliding the sword back into the sheath, one final metallic clinking and snapping coming from the motion as the blade locked itself back together, Ash kneeling down and laying the soldier he'd saved onto the ground.

"Sorry kid, I'm afraid my ambulance duties are done." Ash said, standing back up, grimacing as he stretched and popped a few joints one last time. Protecting himself and that soldier from the flamethrower blasts had totaled his cloak, though fortunately the enemy soldiers hadn't noticed that little detail and thought he was immune to fire. That was sadly not true, name or not. Between all he'd already endured, he probably shouldn't be blocking anything else with his chest or back.

At least they'd gotten the mud off him. Sort of. Ash wiped the fresh sweat from his face and looked at the castle in the distance. No more time to waste. He had to get in there and stop Incael, or being dropped out of the sky and then set on fire would be the least of his worries.

The sword remained where it had been dropped. The two flamethrower wielders (who had abandoned their weapons) had bathed it in fire along with Ash. It didn't look it, Ash jogging towards it and snatching it up as he went past.

Dummy.

"Let's burn." Ash said, bringing the blade in front of him and breaking out into a sprint, the castle looming ever larger before him as he headed for its master.

(Writer's Note: If you're about to point out that there is a plot hole and Ash drew two swords from the same sheath...this is not a plot hole, it is purposeful.)

Commercial Break

"So you're telling me this will reverse anything that I aim this thing at." Ash said, turning the star-shaped metal over in his hand, the small chains shifting and hanging from his grip as he did so, a glimmer of light catching one of the finger-rings.

It was sometimes hard to tell if Evangelina Stavros, or Angie as Ash knew her, was irritated or not: by nature her olive features and warm brown eyes presented such a kind, quiet, and semi-wise impression that unless she spoke in harsh or loud tones, it could be hard to judge her mood by facial features alone. The fact that nearly all trained thaumaturgists preferred hoods in their clothing that hid their faces (specifically their eyes: magic-based combat at the higher levels became considerably easier or harder if the wrong person looked into someone's eyes at the wrong time) made Evangelina's well-lit and displayed face all the more inscrutable. Only close friends and the highest practitioners of the art would probably grasp why Angie refused to hide her face; part of it was social, but the rest was a subtle indication of rank. She didn't care if you could see her eyes, because she would handle you anyway.

Fortunately, Ash was not her enemy. In fact, he was one of her closer friends, so she probably wasn't irritated with him. Probably. He'd become more sensitive over such things over the last few years, after all, and the events of the Blacklands didn't mean he shouldn't keep working on it.

"It's not a toy, Ash." She said, her voice warm, understanding. As usual. She had probably expected questions; any mage with any sense didn't hand over enchanted objects without planning for a bevy of them.

"I gathered, but considering you're giving this to ME instead of say, William..."

"It's not baby's first magic wand either. Put it on, you should be able to get an idea of its raw limits." Angie said, Ash slipping the rings over his fingers and letting the star settle on his palm, his face grimacing a bit as his brain got fed unconventional information. The mind could easily translate things like 'This is heavy' or 'This is cold'; information along the lines of 'You can affect X up to Y before this device fails' taxed the synapses more.

"...not bad."

"I should hope so." Angie said, her tone mixed with pride in her work and a faux-perturbed undertone.

"Headmaster Evangelina-Brand Blackbird Products. When the world won't cut you a break, break the world." Ash said, waving his hand around to add to his joking pitch for a moment, before he looked at the star-shaped charm again. "Not sure I understand this bit about unprotected projections of force..."

"That's advanced stuff. Has to do with thaumaturge combat, issues of will-protection, all sorts of things I can't really explain unless you want to start coming to my school for lessons, Ash."

"You know I can't, Angie."

"You're not like most people who don't have the gift, Ash. Between that and how you think, I think you could learn more than you give yourself credit for."

"I've got other things to do, Angie. You know that."

"Yeah. I do," Angie said, resisting the urge to pat her former charge on the wrist. A lot had changed since those days, and he might have taken it the wrong way. "Any other questions?"

"No battery?"

"Not something like this."

"So, it's just jewelry when it runs out of power?"

"Well, you COULD try and project Stream power through it, but since you're not a Blackbird, Ash, I wouldn't recommend it."

"In the sense I'd get lesser results, or in the sense my head would explode?"

"A little of both. Your head wouldn't EXPLODE, bui it'd feel like it was going to." Angie said. "Your range would be severely limited as well. Not recommended."

"So, besides that, aim and wish."

"Yessss...but do your best to focus. 'Reverse' is a wide-ranging term. If you just sort of wave it and go "I want this reversed!', you might not get the result you want."

"...what happens if I aim it at my head and ask for it to trigger?"

"It doesn't work that way. It needs two sets of intentions to fire off. Aim it at your head and try to commit suicide, it has nothing to bounce of and hence won't work. Though that applies if you try and turn someone's blood into steam, too."

"What if I told them I was trying to turn their blood into steam?"

The warmth left Angie's face, her open eyes going dark.

"In theory, that might work. MIGHT." Angie said, her tone low and dangerous, the unspoken warning being Ash's problem wouldn't be if it worked, but if he used her devices for such deeds.

"Okay, okay. I just want to know what would happen if someone stole it from me."

"It wouldn't work. I keyed it to you. It's not like something you'd buy in a roadside shop, Ash."

"I know...I just like to know everything."

"Maybe I should take you in for lessons whether you want to come or not."

"I think Christine might disapprove of that Angie."

"Ash..."

"I know, Angie. I KNOW. I'm not as stupid as I look. I'm not a sadist who tries to figure out loopholes in Blackbird-charmed items so I can pull someone's spine out through their nose. Hell, YOU should know that."

"...Things have changed though."

"Yeah, but the kid you knew? Who you stood by? That hasn't. Trust me Angie."

"I never stopped." Angie said. "Just don't go getting yourself killed."

"I don't need your help to do that."

"That's what worries me." Angie said. There was a pregnant pause, but the mage chose not to say more.

"Yeah. Though in all seriousness, the last person I want getting killed is me."

---------------

"-HHHHHHHHH!"

THUD.

Hamlet

Some battles faded into history, farms and towns and natural places reclaiming what had transpired there. Other battles scarred it, leaving only the wreckage and ruins of those who had bled and died there, forgotten weapons, a memory of suffering that could not be washed away.

"A pity this body is beyond any kind of recovery. Its powers would be useful." Alkyone said, the Haruspex crouched over an unmarked, pauper's grave, all that remained of a cold-hearted and cruel child who had misread the gravity of the situation and paid the price for it.

"I don't like this place, Mireya." Kaldri said, the younger Haruspex hiding her drawn features under a hood. "It's like legions of people died, and then their souls were...called back. That scale on that sort of resurrection is impossible, and yet I sense it. It makes my teeth ache, all the wasted energy on worthless souls. Like pouring good wine onto the ground."

"Fortunately for us, we are not here for those who died and then returned. They would serve no purpose anyway. Rabble, easily cut down by those star people. Those...Kobbers, and the people of our world who sided with them. We cannot swarm them with gnats and hope they are stung to death. If we are to survive, we must think larger. Look beyond the called-back, Kaldri. See what is still here."

"I will assume you don't mean these ruined constructs of metal..."

"Stop your roundabout challenges, Kaldri. It is tiresome." Alkyone said, drifting over from where she had studied the buried remains. "If you actually wish to prove something resembling worth, just tell us what you have found to begin with." 
 
"...the spark."

"Indeed. The spark." Mireya said, her face lighting up in brief pleasure. Now she didn't have to couch her two...'allies' into finding it so they could help her. That would go over badly no matter how well she did it, and she needed the three of them to stay on the same page, at least for now. "The pinnacle. The one who stood above them all."
  
"There's no body, Mireya. Revival requires a body."

"Not precisely."
  
"It's needed enough to make any other option pointless, Mireya. This land may bear a trace due to the nature of its death, but it's an echo, a pale shadow of what that...CREATURE was, what were they called, Augmented? Even IF we could revive it, it wouldn't stand against the Kobbers, and even IF we could revive it at full power, and we can't, you know what we've scryed of these events. The Kobbers would suspect further mind control immediately. So why is this not a waste of time?" 

"What did the first spells you learned at the hands of your teacher have in common, Alkyone?"

Silence descended on the night. Alkyone's dark brown eyes narrowed, clearly displeased at her lack of an immediate answer. When Kaldri's face lit up in realization, her face took on the expression of one who had tasted milk and found it sour. 

"...Yes, Of course. We can-!"

"Be careful, Kaldri. The direction you are going may not lead where you expect." 

"But what I can sense...we can draw it out, we can-!"

"They have fought numerous foes who brought all degrees of great force against them. It did not work, and we cannot make the same choices under the assumption they will work this time because of who we are." Mireya said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. She didn't want to be here. She wanted to do this by herself, but she couldn't. She wanted to go back to cursing this planet's peoples for their own sins and reaping the benefit of their hypocrisies, but she couldn't. But she seemed to be the only one here who recognized this: she'd already had to kill another Haruspex she'd attempted to work with because they'd immediately seen her choice of actions as weakness and tried to claim her powers for themselves. Kaldri and Alkyone were chomping at the bit to go back to mixing up the soul-curse known to the world as being a Therian, to try and ignore what the latest group of star people had brought. To ignore that the world had changed, and so they had to change. Personally, Mireya would have preferred if they'd gone and gotten themselves killed for their insistent pigheadedness, but she knew that if that happened, it'd be just a matter of time before the killers were knocking on her door as well. As a certain patriotic rock might have put it, they all had to hang together, or they would all hang separately. "This is not the answer. Rather, not the entire answer." 

"Then what is?"

Mireya told them.

It was rare for Haruspexes to wear expressions of shocked horror. In fact, Mireya suspected, she might be witnessing the first time such an expression had graced the features of her two companions in their entire 'adult' lives. 

"You're INSANE."

"I agree with Kaldri, as surprising as this is. This is madness. It will never work."

"If you have come up with another solution, I am quite willing to hear it."

Silence. Mireya counted off the seconds, suspecting ten or so would be enough to prove her point. She got it.

"This is not a path we cannot turn from once we start. At least not at first. And while this world is not under their accursed eye, we need to begin. Before what remains of that Augmented fades away completely." Mireya said. "Those that came before have left us the pieces. We extract them, we purify them, hone them to their finest edge...and then we use them. And the mongrel, and these Kobbers. And when it's done...they'll have done the work for us. Besides, Kaldri, Alkyone...

"Haven't you always wanted to shape better clay than the wastes of man?"

"We'll still need to bind it to those 'wastes'. It won't work otherwise."

"Not to worry." Mireya said, her voice liquid malice and without a trace of fear, the calm of the long-damned. "I have the perfect...shield for us."