John tapped his foot anxiously. Case and Jen didn’t have much time to get up and make it to the meeting on time. His watch said they had two minutes left on the clock. John thought about shaking them to try and get them up but assumed it wouldn’t work. When he fixed his heart, he had no idea someone touched him until he saw the saturated tissue in his heart compress. Case and Jen wouldn’t have any tissue like that, so John was shit out of luck.
John sat back and sighed. He’d just have to wait and hope the discovery covered their asses when they were late for the briefing. In the meantime, John thought about what the hell to call the space with the mana reserves and saturated tissue. Clearly, it was the space inside his body, but what should he call it at the briefing? Calling it the ‘internal space’ is corny as hell, but that’s exactly what it is. Hmm. Maybe ‘mage space?’ No, that’s worse. Gahhh! Whatever, we’ll figure it out.
As John weighed the virtues of possible name choices, he noticed Case’s eyelids twitch. John stood up and moved to Case’s side, ready to assist if something went wrong.
John poked his friend in the shoulder, “Case, buddy, you awake?”
Case sat bolt upright. John swayed out of the wary, wary of a broken nose.
Case shook his head, “That was fucking sick! Mana behaves so much differently in there!”
John laughed, “It’s neat, isn’t it? You feel steady?”
Case nodded, “Yeah, I’m good to go. I didn’t try and put mana into my body, unlike you.”
John socked him in the arm, “Funny. Now we have to wait for Jen to wake up.”
Case had his phone out, jotting down notes. He looked at John quizzically, “Did you pay any attention to how we felt while we were out? Magically, I mean.”
“Nope, not really. Jen’s right there though,” John gestured down at their sleeping friend, “I hope she comes too soon, we really need to get going.”
Case checked his watch, “Oh, crap. I guess I lost track of time in there.”
“Don’t sweat it, I don’t think our perception of time is the same when we’re messing around in ‘there.’ By the way, do you have any ideas for a better name?”
Case screwed his face up, “Well, it’s the interior of a mage’s body, so maybe ‘inner something?’ Maybe ‘inner space’ or ‘inner system?”
John sighed, “Yeah, I got stuck on ‘inner space’ too. Sounds dumb though, hopefully Jen will have a better idea.”
John’s phone dinged. He fished it out of his pocket and read the text out loud, “Brisal, where the hell are you? Signed, Col. McGuire.”
Case gulped, “Shit. I guess we better get going, then. What should we do about Jen?”
“We’ll just bring her with us, no big deal.”
“Sweet, you want to carry her or should I?”
“I got her. Can you get our packs?”
While Case picked up their luggage, John hoisted Jen into a fireman’s carry and found she was disturbingly limp. As John adjusted Jen on his shoulders, his hat fell off. He swore.
“Case, can you get that for me?”
Case nodded, “I got it!”
Case’s eyes lit up blue, and John’s hat floated up, dragged by the metal clasp on the band. Case’s magic tugged it back onto his head and they set off.
As always, people gave them weird looks as they moved through the building, but nobody stopped then. John was getting used to everyone staring at him, but it made him uncomfortable. They turned the corner into the hallway with the briefing room and saw two armed national guardsmen situated outside the door.
“Looks like we found the spot,” John said.
“Yeah, hopefully they aren’t mad. Sorry I slept in,” Case’s shoulders hunched when he apologized.
John laughed, “It’s fine. We’ve still got to get sleepyhead here into a desk.”
Case looked at Jen, “She is still breathing, right?”
John nodded, “Yeah, she’s fine. Calm down.”
The guards stopped John and Case before the door of the briefing room.
John greeted them, “John Brisal and Case Henderson, reporting for the briefing!”
The guard on the left grunted, “Who’s the chick? And why’s she passed out?
“Mage stuff. Her name’s Jennifer Reeves, she should be on the list too,” John said bluntly.
Case cut in front of John, “Look, can you just go talk to the Colonel? I know we’re late, but we’ve got something important to show and I don’t want to hold this up any longer.”
The lead guard waved to his companion, who ducked into the briefing room. John nodded at him in thanks. John was privately astonished that “mage stuff” worked as an excuse for hauling around an unconscious young woman, and a sidelong glance at Case suggested he was surprised too. John moved onto waking Jen up. She was still out cold, and John really wondered what the hell she could be up to in there.
John grabbed one of Jen’s hands and waved it around. Maybe she’d notice the boundaries of her body moving and realize she needed to get up. He thought about pushing some of his mana into Jen to try and shock her awake. Something about the idea repulsed John. Nah, I shouldn’t do that. It’d be a violation.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
John bounced a couple ideas off Case as they waited, but they arrived at the same conclusion. Anything they could do magically would be a violation. If their magic instinctively repulsed incursion attempts by foreign mana, then they’d treat it as a bad thing. Case made a note to test the method later, just to establish if it worked. John figured they could use it to signal each other to wake up in the future.
When the guard returned and let them in, John had a bit of trouble fitting Jen through the door. It was a rather thin doorway, and John had to turn sideways to squeeze through with Jen on his shoulders. Case went ahead to find a seat where they could deposit her. Jen’s boot caught on the frame of the doorway, a harrowing moment as she almost fell off John’s shoulders. John recovered and got her into the room.
Several muted conversations came to an abrupt halt as John careened through the door. Four rows of long desks faced a projection screen on the wall furthest from the door. Various police officers, national guardsmen, and civilian mages filled the seats. The room was absolutely rife with mage auras, which made John feel a bit embarrassed, having missed all the auras. John saw Debbie, Officer Moorehead, and that guy with ursine magic from the meeting. The rest of the room, barring Colonel McGuire and Commissioner DeFranco, were new to him. There were too many mages for John to discern the exact count, but it had to be north of fifteen people with magic in the room. Not quite half the room’s occupants, but damn close.
Case had pulled a chair out from the closest desk and ushered John in to get Jen settled in. It turned out letting someone down from your shoulders was harder getting them up there in the first place. Case and John managed it, barely, but Jen’s elbow whacked the desk as her weight settled into the chair.
Jen spasmed and sat straight up and gasped, “What the hell?!”
John moved to soothe her, “Sorry Jen, we decided to carry you to the briefing, you were out way too long. Your arm hit the table just now, you alright?”
“I’m fine, but it smarts something fierce,” Jen grumbled as she rubbed her arm.
Colonel McGuire’s voice cut through the susurrus of their surrounding crowd, “If y’all are all done, can we begin?”
Jen abruptly noticed all the eyes on them and flushed, “Sorry ma’am, we’re ready.”
John pulled a notepad out of his cargo pocket and jotted a note to Jen, “need to discuss etiquette for waking each other up … and what to call that whole process.”
Jen chuckled and wrote back, “gotcha. I’ll think about it.”
Up front, the projector hummed to life. Colonel McGuire stood to the side, bracketed by the commissioner and a different staff officer. John was very glad that lieutenant Long wasn’t around. Corporal Gunn sat front and center, but his posture was different from earlier. John figured that meant the Groupmind wasn’t in his head at the moment, but who knew? John tried to survey the various auras around him, hoping to figure out what types of magic people had. Beside him, Case’s head swiveled, looking at everyone in the room and puzzling out had powers or not.
As John scanned the room with his eyes and his newer, weirder magical sense, he had a hard time making out anything distinct. His magical sense didn’t give a very refined impression of distance. John could tell there were other mages in the room, but he’d be damned if he could say who they were.
When it came to identifying types of magic, it was a similar situation. John could pick out the tarry impression he associated with Debbie, the sunny feeling rolling off Officer Moorehead, but he could barely pick out anything else. He got flashes of heat, a vague impression of some sort of metal, something that felt like a butterfly sneezing, the sensation of a blindfold slipping over his eyes, and bizarrely, fingernails. Everything else muddled into a kaleidoscopic morass of sensory feedback that John couldn’t handle. He felt a headache coming on and backed off to focus on the briefing.
The staff officer was fooling with the projector hookup for his laptop, but eventually a standardized title slide with the National Guard insignia appeared on the projector screen. John sat back, unsure of his role.
Colonel McGuire cleared her throat and began, “Afternoon, everyone. We’re going to go over the plan for our operation to get the critically wounded out to Methodist General Hospital and secure a corridor there for future transport. This will serve as a sort of trial run to work out how to incorporate mages into our existing procedures for urban law enforcement and riot suppression.”
John nodded, this was in line with what he’d expected. Most of the people around the room did the same.
The Colonel continued, “Basically, we’re going to sandwich the ambulances between squad cars and APCs, with an APC every three ambulances or patient transports. Mages will be divided evenly, aside from those of y’all with established working relationships. APCs will trail the main convoy and work to secure the corridor to the hospital.”
The slideshow progressed to show the planned layout of their convoy. John figured they were pulling from
The commissioner stepped forward, “That brings us to personnel selection. Some of you mages may be wondering why you were brought here, or why your fellows were selected for this mission. The short version is that every mage in this room has been victorious in combat against other mages at least once before. There aren’t doctrines for this kind of thing, so we’re throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. So far, y’all have worked out.”
The people in the room shifted. John felt conspicuously young compared to everyone else in the room, but figured it’d work out. They’d have to go up and present their findings anyways, so who cared?
The Colonel moved to the next slide, “Now, it’s time for y’all to share what you know. The groupmind is busy right now, otherwise they’d be leading this, and the info packets aren’t ready yet. Instead, the mages are going to spend some time discussing their capabilities, seminar style. This slide has everything our intelligence suggests you can all do. Raise your hand if there’s anything missing or something you can’t do.”
Debbie interjected before anyone could read the slide, “Why can’t the groupmind explain? Surely they have a bigger dataset than we do.”
Corporal Gunn stood and turned to address the room, “You’re right that the groupmind has access to a bigger dataset. Unfortunately, there’s only so much attention the collective can give to each node, or person in the collective. I’m operating as an individual right now. I can press a panic button if I get in a fight I can’t handle, but most of the collective is trying to prevent various humanitarian crises springing up in the Northeast. Furthermore, the collective’s knowledge is siloed away from individuals, to prevent bad actors leaking all of our findings. I’m sorry.”
John filed that information away for later. It was a little concerning that they couldn’t rely on Corporal Gunn to relay solutions, but probably for the best. John scanned the slide. Manipulating ordinary matter with mana, check. Projecting mana out of body for various effects, check. Empower his body with mana, check. Generate runes, … not so much. In parenthesis, the slide acknowledged that most mages wouldn’t see runes, so John figured it was fine.
Case poked John and whispered in his ear, “There’s a gaping hole here that I can’t help but notice.”
John nodded, “Yeah, you’re right. I’ll point it out.”
They’d planned to share their discovery at this briefing, but John noticed his chest getting tight when faced with the reality of getting up in front of everyone in the room. He and Case were the youngest in the room, and now he had to present something that could be vital. John took some deep breaths and raised his hand.
Colonel McGuire noticed and called him out, “Mr. Brisal, what’s this new development?”
John gulped. Colonel McGuire wasn’t dumb. She’d seen him perform each applicable point on the checklist when he’d put the beatdown on her lieutenant earlier. It was an easy step to derive that John had something new to share.
John steeled himself, stood, and addressed the room, “Well, ma’am. My friends and I,” he gestured to Case and Jen, “found something really important. We’ve figured out how to observe the reservoir of mana in our bodies directly and discovered evidence that our mana is directly changing our physiology as we use it.”
Corporal Gunn stiffened like he’d been shot. When he turned around to look at John, two bright purple sparks occupied his pupils. It seemed the Groupmind wanted to hear what John had to say.
