Chapter 13
Early cybernetics required batteries that needed replacing every few weeks, then every few months, then every few years. The current power designs for cybernetics draw directly from the body’s Mystwell—a stable, constant draw that doesn’t threaten the user’s life, only reduces the maximum capacity of their well.
Day 30, Quenchenday
The day after meeting Nennel was Quenchenday, the day of rest. I was lounging in the woods that encircled the academy grounds, my back propped against a red-leafed elm. My body still ached from the beating I had taken, but this was a pain I found a level of pride in. While I had done little more than piss off a batch of thugs, I had stood against them of my own free will and in defense of someone else. I felt good. Useful. The very girl I had saved now sat perched in an oak tree across from me, swinging her legs in lazy arcs as she methodically plucked and shredded leaves. The woods were thick with the scents of fresh soil, wet grass, and damp bark.
We had spent the whole day together, talking about class, hobbies, and other light topics. Neither of us asked about the other’s past. The companionship didn't feel romantic; rather, I felt like I had found someone I could be myself around. This was an unfamiliar experience. Everyone in my life until that point had held something over me. My father, while loving, was harsh. Any children I had ever met had been aggressive. Thallos was harsh in his own way, and even the instructors who didn’t want me dead still held the power of authority. Around Nennel, it just felt natural to relax.
“Say, Nennel, you happen to have any talent for martial combat?” I asked, plucking at the grass beside me.
“Iver, you can just call me Nel.”
“Oh, uh, sure thing, Nel,” I spoke tentatively, testing the name.
Nel hooked her legs around the branch she perched on and fell backward, her arms spread to either side. She hung upside down. “But to answer your question,” she let go, turning over in the air to land on her feet at the base of the tree in a T-pose, “Yeah, I guess. Because of my body, I’m quick and have good balance. I’m not bad. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that it takes more than speed and balance to make a good warrior.” She honestly believed she was nothing special.
“Are you kidding me, Nel?” I said with a confused grin, pulling myself to my feet in a manner that seemed crude compared to her elegant landing.
She looked at me with a cocked brow. “What do you mean?”
“You do realize most people can’t just do what you did?”
“Get out of a tree?” She looked back at the tree as if to check.
“That was not just ‘getting out of a tree’,” I said, emphasizing her words. “Nel, that was backflipping out of a tree. I can’t even do a standing backflip. With dexterity like that, I don’t know what would make a real warrior if you aren’t one already.”
She looked at her feet and gave a shy smile. “Thanks, but you need to realize I’m only good at avoiding attacks. I have none of the technique or physical strength that would make me a real threat.”
“Well, I’m not even good at avoiding blows,” I said, gesturing to my bruised body. “As my display yesterday proved beyond a doubt.”
“If it hurts so bad, then why don’t you go see a healer?” she prodded. A scheming, tiny, knowing smirk grew on her face. “Is it because you’re trying to impress me?” Her words rang with teasing mirth.
“What?” I looked at her in sheer confusion. “No, I’m not trying to be tough.”
“Good,” she said with a playful jab to my ribs that drew a wince from me. “Because I’d tell you to stop being a damn idiot and get mended.”
“No, it’s just…” It was my turn to look at my feet, afraid to speak the truth.
“It’s just what?” She leaned forward and tipped her head to look into my eyes. She laid a hand gently on my shoulder. “Iver, what’s wrong? You look scared.”
For a long moment, I didn’t look at her, stubbornly staring at my feet. It was a challenge to meet her eyes, but when I did, they spoke for her. She was truly worried.
“Do you promise not to make fun of me?” I asked, my words a low murmur.
“I promise,” she said with a tiny smile.
“You mean it? You promise you won’t even joke about this?”
“I swear on my father’s ashes, I won’t say anything rude or hurtful.” Her words were serious as she straightened and drew an X over where her heart should be.
She lost her father, too? Maybe I could trust her.
“I-I’m—I don’t want to have healing magic used on me.” My words rushed out. I clamped my eyes shut, clenching my body as I waited for the mocking. When nothing came, I timidly opened one eye to find her looking at me with worry and confusion.
She put her free hand on my other shoulder. “Let’s sit down and relax.” As I lay my back against the tree again, Nel took a seat beside me, her knees held loosely in the crook of each arm. After a long moment, she spoke, her tone uninhibited. “You know, I’m positively terrified of gremlins.” She lay back and idly kicked her feet.
I looked at her, waiting for this to be some joke. “Gremlins? The little Fae critters that steal or break everything?”
She physically shivered. “When I was little, I saw a show where they stole a man’s cybernetic arm. A whole pack of them. They broke it down piece by piece, and then they were gone. For weeks, I had a nightmare of a swarm of them taking me apart. To this day, any time I see one, I panic.”
I watched her for a tense few moments. I saw the visible discomfort in her gaze. I let out a sigh of relief. “Hey, in your case, it’s a valid fear, unlike mine. If I had a body that was seventy or eighty percent mechanical, of course I’d be terrified of them.”
Nel gave an amused snort. “Yeah, I can see your point.”
It was then I had a thought. “M-mind if I ask what fleshy parts you still have left?” I asked timidly.
“What?” she asked in surprise.
“I’m sorry!” I blurted out, recoiling. But when no strike came, I looked up to find her looking at me in confusion. I sat back up. “I-I was just wondering how much of you is still organic. You know, s-squishy bits.”
“Why?” was all she said.
“Well, I remember seeing Master Mystagogue Mallock poking around your chest cavity. I saw nothing that looked organic.”
She blushed and made to cover her chest. “Now, that is a very personal thing to ask a girl.”
On reflex, my eyes shot back to the ground as I muttered a hurried apology.
“Well, I’ll tell you what, Iver. I’ll answer that IF you answer mine after. It’s only fair,” she bartered. I felt like I had been played, but I gave a small nod.
“If you must know, the only ‘fleshy parts’ I have left are my brain, most of my skull and face, and a bit of spine,” she listed off like a grocery list.
More questions popped into my mind, but before I could ask, she leaned in. “Okay, my turn. I want to know what scares you so much about healing magic.”
I squirmed. “You promise not to make fun of me?”
“I already promised, didn’t I, moron? I’m not going to make fun of you.”
I took a deep breath and explained how Mallrimor and his thugs had beaten me and what Dr. Brooksheen had told me about using healing magic on an unconscious patient.
“Okay, yeah, I totally understand your fear. Getting a wound healed just to wake up with cancer, that’s terrifying. Lucky for me, I’m more likely to need a mechanic than Life Myst. But what are you going to do when you break a leg? There’s no way the instructors will let you sit out for months.”
I winced at the thought. “Well, then, I guess I’ll just have to stay awake through every moment of the pain.” We both knew that was crap, but she didn’t push it.
“Earlier… you swore on your dad’s ashes,” I brought up, worried I was about to cross a line.
“Yeah, what of it?”
I draped my arms over my legs. “Mine too,” I muttered. “My dad, I mean. He’s dead.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Losing my dad was hard. But it was harder on my mom.”
I gave a sad half-grin. “I don’t even have a mom.”
“She died too? Was there an accident?”
“What? No. I never knew my mom. Hells, my father wasn’t even my biological father.”
“What do you mean?” Nel asked. I wanted to tell her. To tell someone everything I had been through.
And so I told her. My mother abandoning me, my father’s harsh love, his murder, his dying words about a box, how I was spared, how I was homeless for months until Thallos found me.
“What does Mallrimor have against you?” she asked, clearly offended for me.
I gave a grunt of amusement. “Up until you, it was just how everyone treated me. I’m a Darkling. That’s all anyone needs to treat me like trash. I’ve picked up a lot of nicknames: freak, scum, hellspawn, demon semen, goat boy…”
“I’ve never met a Darkling, but my mom always said to judge someone based on how they treat others. But I’ve been meaning to ask, why is your skin like that?”
I closed my eyes and took another long breath. My skin had always been a sore subject. I opened my eyes and looked at my hands, perpetually tanned-looking and laced with webs of ivory white. “I don’t really know. It’s always been like this. I know neither my skin nor my eyes are normal for Darklings. But I can’t say for sure. I’ve never met another one.”
“Really? Wasn’t your adopted father at least a Darkling?”
“No. Fermose was a Wild Elf. Besides, if the holo-casts are to be believed, all Darklings are terrible people.”
Nel let out a cackling laugh. “If those shows were true, then Brightlings would be heroes toppling demon kings. Could you honestly see that prick Mallrimor doing anything like that?”
I let out an amused huff at the thought of Mallrimor quivering before a massive demon. “Yeah, I can’t. But why did he pick on you?”
Nel closed her eyes. There was a long silence. “He saw me in class, working on my arm. He knocked my tools from my hand and mocked me. Called me a robot girl. He’d been making snide remarks for weeks, but last class, he got physically aggressive. He thought I was a simple target. But you stood up for me. Think you can help me some more?”
“Of course, Nel.” After the words left my lips, I started thinking about getting beaten more by those thugs. “I’m more than happy to help,” I said. “But I feel like I need to ask, how did you end up like… this?” I gestured to her whole body.
Her scarred cheeks heated, turning a darker purple. “My dad crossed some unpleasant people. They lit our house on fire to ruin him since he worked out of the garage, but I was inside helping. I was trapped. The docs tried to save my body, but I was so badly burned they had to replace everything critical. And yeah, I was unconscious. They stopped the bleeding, but most of what was left was so deformed I was left with this.”
I gasped, covering my mouth. “By the gods, Nel, I’m so sorry.”
She shrugged. “The damage is done. Now I have to live with it. I need my body parts replaced every few months to keep up with the growth of my organic parts. As much as I would love to blame my dad… I just can’t. He was only trying to do right by us. He died in the garage anyway, so blaming him is pointless.”
I was speechless.
“Mom and my older brother spent every scrap of savings on getting me this body. ‘The best parts for my best girl,’ she said. But I’m here learning to fight while my brother is gods-know-where, trying to make ends meet.”
“How’d you get into the academy?” I asked.
“Well, you got creative with the rotting thing in the entry trial. I just snuck around. In my trial, it was a wolf. I skirted it until it noticed me, then I jumped over it and ran.”
“Does that mean you’re going to be a spy?”
She shrugged again. “I have no idea where I’m going. All I know is I need to be the best at whatever they put in front of me, or I go home to a burned shop.”
“I guess we are in the same boat,” I said with a half-smirk. “We have nowhere to go, but we need to pass no matter what. I need to be a warrior so I can find my father’s killer. But I have no doubt you’re a shoo-in for being a spy.”
“Well, it all depends on if I can hide my very noticeable body.”
“What about myst?” I asked.
“What about it?”
“I mean, what’s your Mystwell like? Your casting ability?”
She seemed to curl in on herself. “I have almost none.”
“What?”
“You heard me!” she snapped. “My cyberware takes up almost all of my well. I couldn’t cast a spell to save my life, even if I had an open channel. I’m as mundane as they come.”
I sat back, deep in thought. “Then I guess I will have to compensate for that.”
“What?”
“I will have to design tools for you to make up for your lack of magic. You will end up being a spy or a warrior, no question. Either way, I’m going to build tools to even the playing field.”
“How? Your last gadget got you beaten into a pulp.”
“Ah!” I exclaimed. “But it saved you. And I swear by the Nameless Goddess that I will make you tools just as effective as those I will use to make myself a warrior.”
