Waking up to yet another wild surge of mana that left my body suffused in pain, I fumbled around for in a moment of panic, my devastated form barely responding to my efforts. Then I felt a fleeting touch upon my cheek and the weight of my spectacles resting on my nose. Blinking a couple of times, I managed to focus my sight on Mary, sitting by my bedside, just as she had every night for the past months. The girl did not look a day older than fourteen, on objective terms, but utter lack of expression on her features somehow made the act of trying to quantify her age seem meaningless, just as I knew that it would be. That unnatural stillness, unnerving as it might have been to others, helped me calm down the overtaxed heart laboriously hammering in my chest, as it also evidenced no alarm. I nodded to her.
After helping, or rather lifting, my half paralyzed form onto a wheelchair, Mary took me through the corridors of my underground observatory right to the center of the anomaly. A glance at the readings on the magical sensors told me what I had already sensed myself. The surge of mana was likely be the last one that my broken body could take. By then the pain had receded to a dull throb, but I could still feel intensely every shift in the unnatural flow of mana all around us, not letting me forget the urgency of the situation. Fortunately everything was prepared for the next phase already. I had hesitated many times before, but I no longer had a choice.
"Mary, get the array ready for the hand over."
The uncharacteristic delay, before she nodded her understanding, caused a twinge of pain in my chest, altogether different and distinct from the physical agony I was overwhelmed with. I had explained many times the procedures and I was sure she knew what I intended. For my part I simply watched her work, setting the complex machinery, that I had been using to help in controlling the mana flow, to a new alignment that would help complete the next spell I would cast. I was no more eager than she, but it had been put off for too long already.
Not for the first time, I had the thought that it was all very unfair. What use was an unprecedented talent for magic, when I had to burn away physical form before I could even begin to explore my limits? I was called a genius, yet the best I had been able to manage was to use myself as a conduit, like a lightning rod to draw this erratic flow before it would tear a hole in our very reality. As I looked down at myself I saw a broken husk that weighed less than half of what it had just a few years ago.
Of course, I had looked for another way. I had poured every effort that I could spare from my task into a search for an alternative. Everywhere in the room I could see reminders of my efforts. Failed prototypes lined up from wall to wall, each fascinating in a theoretical sense, but amounting only to junk that Mary had to find her way around to get to the few pieces that had found a use. The use of machinery in the construction of complex magical arrays was what had I built my reputation on, but none of them offered a solution to the predicament that I was in. No matter how ingeniously built, a machine could never take the place of a living body as a magical conduit.
Only when I had accepted that I had run out of options, that it was in vain to hope to save myself, had I redirected my efforts to a field of study that had eventually born fruit. If a machine could not have the prerequisite potential for magic, and if a human body could not last as a conduit, then the solution could only be a being that transcended those limitations. If there was no way that I could live on whilst bearing that burden, then someone else would have to.
It had been something of a whim at first, to create her in the figure of a woman. There was no reason that the task should even have required a human form, except that it was certainly easier to use my own living essence as a base. But looking at Mary, as her small form performed all the necessary motions and slight adjustments that I was no longer capable of, I realized that there was a certain logic behind the choice. In some small way that form, of a young girl, might just create an impression of innocence to help offset the natural fear and distrust that she would have to bear. It might not make sense than those baseless fears, but such is the human condition.
I hadn't had much time to ponder such questions. I had been in too much of a rush to finish my replacement before I myself was done for. It was far from my field of expertise, but I couldn't afford the risks of looking for help, so I simply had to improvise. An artificial being, a life born through magic and machinery, she was the first. With so little time, as I had also had to spare the time to finish educating her before my body gave in, the result had been far from a complete success. In that sense again, it turned out well that I had cast her in the shape of a person. The possibility that she might yet bear children meant that there would yet remain the potential for improvement. Not because I intended to treat her as a mere prototype. I may have been playing god, but I had already placed all of my hopes in her.
I was undeniably proud of my achievement. I gave Mary a wan smile as she came over to help me onto the metal slab, made in the approximate shape of a bed, in the middle of the room. The cold seeping through the thin fabric of the robe, the only garment I was wearing, sent shivers through my aching body. My eyes followed as my assistant proceeded through the final set up, at the machine under me that constituted the center of the spell array together with me. Again she showed a hint of hesitation as she finished, before she looked up at me, something in her eyes undermining the absence of expression on her face.
"It is ready."
I took one more look around the unwelcoming chamber carved into rock, where I'd spent most of my last years, delaying one more time as I reached through my memories. I wasn't eager for what would come next. I lamented that the time had come so soon. Even if my body had shriveled like that of an old man, the truth was that I hadn't yet lived out my third decade. Certainly it was foolish to complain, I could reason, when so many don't live to see a second day. I was surely lucky to have been able to achieve so much in the time I have had, to have lived so well with what I was given, one could fairly say.
I had to give up such futile attempts to deceive myself when I began to let the mana flow through me at an increasing rate, the pain again flaring up as I felt the last of my life being shredded by the uncontrollable quantity of magic. An anxious gasp from my side drew eyes back to Mary again, who must have felt the change in the flow as I prepared to start the final spell to pass on the fulcrum of power within me to her. I didn't want to pass on that curse, the pain that came with it, but I knew that she would be able to bear it.
With so little time and resources to work with, I had still been able to witness her mind emerge like I had hoped, alive and aware. Even if she still acted like an obedient automaton most of the time, all the signs were there that she was conscious of her own self. And, though it was based on little more than a philosophical conviction of mine, I was sure that everything else would eventually follow from that. I had to believe that, for there was nothing more that I could do.
"Father, must you leave me?"
Her first words of unprompted question, of the smallest disobedience, took me by surprise. Her tone had only the barest hints of emotion, but of her own volition she had chosen to call me father. More than ever before I wished I had more time, enough to answer every question she could think of, to share even a bit more of what meager wisdom I had garnered in my short time. The precious child that I had brought into the world, she deserved so much more. Instead, I could only leave her with a burden. But I could not bear to let my last words be of regret. And so I smiled.
I distinctly the warmth when her small hands tightly grasped onto my thin fingers. As she let her tears run freely, it was truly the most miraculous and beautiful sight I had ever witnessed. Of course my heart wept with her, but as I continued to smile at her it was no lie. To finally see her show such an expression, I was relieved. Even I must leave her alone, I knew she would not remain so for long. She was a beautiful child, as human as any other, and as she was loved by me she would likewise be loved many by others. But I smiled knowing that these tears were for me alone.
Ah, what a selfish thought to pass away with.
I woke up again.
How?
My eyes shot open to see not a ceiling of rock, but rather an unfamiliar room. My mind was awhirl with confused thoughts. Was is not the cold of death that I had felt as my pain fell away? Had I just fallen asleep after all, embarrassingly miscalculating my life left in this world? For a brief moment it occurred to me that I might have been wrong about afterlife, that I would after all have a chance to look back at that embarrassing self-pity of mine from the other side.
There was no pain, I realized belatedly. Only the mildest form of discomfort from laying down fully clothed. It wasn't even comparable to the suffering that I was used to – no, merely familiar with. It seemed a little strange that I even felt compelled to alleviate such minor sensations. As if my body was capable of such. But it was, in actuality, I discovered as I sat up. It felt a little difficult, but hardly enough to be called a struggle for someone used to being largely paralyzed – which, confusingly enough, I wasn't any longer. Perhaps I had already forgotten how to move my body? Regardless, I was just dodging the paramount question before me.
I didn't really need the handheld mirror that I conveniently found on the bedside table – no, I didn't recognize either piece of furniture, much less the room – to know what had changed, but it did give a bit of perspective on just how much had. Looking in the mirror from an arm's length away, I was quite certain that what I saw wasn't the me that I knew. Not just because I wasn't a girl last I looked. No, really, there wasn't any need to focus on that. From the moment I woke up it had been quite easy to tell that my body was different, that, yes, it was quite clearly a female one.
There wasn't much to see with the layers of loose, and frankly rather boyish, clothes, but I didn't really need my eyes to be able to tell that there was a rather well developed body shape under all that. More so than the face, perhaps somewhere in the late teens, with a bit of acne and rather carelessly cut hair covering much of it, would have suggested. Whatever kinship I might have felt towards this individual, as someone who had never taken good care of their appearance, it didn't off-set the disorienting feeling from of seeing someone completely unfamiliar when looking in the mirror, that I simply couldn't match to my person.
At any rate, I reasoned that the greater change was that the person looking back at me was someone that looked young and in good health. Not that I'd quite yet quite had the time to forget what it was like to be healthy, and I had never technically had the time to grow old. The real issue was that it simply was not my body. I dismissed quickly the idea that the other changes had just come along with someone finding the means to repair my broken form. Compared to everything else, the completely distinct flow of mana, my perception of which is quite well tuned, within this form was what convinced me that it simply could not be my body.
Instead it appeared that somehow my person and consciousness, or what I recognized as such, had traversed into a completely separate organism without much of a disconnect. As far as I could tell at any rate, and not to assert that it was a particularly more believable explanation. Disregarding the philosophical challenges to such a notion, it was also fair to question if the transition had been quite as smooth as it appeared to be in the moment. Compared to a perception of consciousness, it was far more difficult to tell whether my memories of the transition, in their absence, and from before were actually intact.
Memories. Yeah, there were some that I couldn't recognize. No, that couldn't be correct, for I held that surely recognition should precede recollection. That was beside the point however, as these memories were out of place among the others, inevitably standing out and seemingly demanding my attention. Regardless of the absurdities of stating it, I was quite certain that these things that I could recall were simply not my memories.
Such a distinction became difficult to keep track of, as I vividly remembered walking down hallways that were familiar and yet not known to me, filled with emotions and anxiety that I wasn't able to comprehend in the moment of recollection. But the words that had then been spoken aloud, in a voice that I yet had no other impression of, helped me somewhat distinguish between myself and the speaker, who I assumed to be the original inhabitant of this body.
"Greetings, honored founder – ah piss, this is weird! I have no idea if this will work out like I intend."
As the words in the recollection halted, along with her steps, I knew exactly the uncertainty and confusion that she had experienced. It was only made more complicated as I tried to separate my thought process from the one that she'd engaged in then to formulate her following words. After taking a deep breath, she had continued walking and then spoken again.
"First of all, allow me to wish you good luck adjusting. And secondly, I'm sorry, I know I'm only making things more difficult in that regard. I'll have the rest of the crucial information prepared in a different format, so to speak. It should be easier for you to tackle that way. It's important that you'll be able to find it though, because it's not safe for me to keep on me. You should be able to figure out how to get here once you've been to the academy."
She had come to a halt before the door to a room that, I had the distinct impression, was an out of the way storage room in a much larger complex. How I knew that was something that I wasn't able to access any recollection of, but it might have been thanks to a part of her background thought process, that I tried to keep muted as I focused on her spoken words. Her eyes had focused on a small sign by the side of the door, with a four digit number, presumably my indication for where to look, before she had opened the door and stepped inside.
"It's about the Fae rift – the uh, magic anomaly that you were dealing with when you, well, passed. You should understand when you read all of it. Grandmother has the rift stabilized for now, and the family has been keeping an eye on it. We've all worked hard, you know, but even now no one really gets what you did, so I don't think there are any options left. You'll have to take a look at it yourself, and fix up the foundations of the spells before everything falls apart. I'm sorry. It's not right to leave this to you. But if grandmother is right about you, then I'm sure that you'll think of something."
The desperation and tentative hope that stood out from her tumultuous emotions were enough to confirm that she could only have been talking about the grave task I had left to Mary, though I had no idea what to make of the mentioned name, that evoked fantastical imaginations. Grandmother – though the reference to a prior recollection was brief, and she had aged some by then compared to when I'd last seen her, I didn't doubt for a moment whom the word referred to. I briefly mixed up the pride that she had felt as a grandchild and the pride that I felt at the knowledge that little Mary was a grandmother. Then I had to refocus, as she had stopped before a trove of research documents, that I then knew to have been the source of her own pride. Her answer to a duty, to a grim fate shared between her and I.
"And I'm sorry, great-grandfather, but I'll be a little selfish. I'll dispose of the rest of my memory to make room for you, but I just wanted to leave something of me behind, to live on, so I hope you'll continue to remember this. So yeah. It's nice to meet you. And goodbye."
It barely registered in my mind when the mirror that I'd still been holding shattered against the floor. I collapsed back onto the bed, no longer seeing the room that I was in, as I instead kept replaying that short memory in my mind. From the storm of her lingering emotions, it was her sheer determination that stuck out to me. It was the same will that had caused me to burn away my whole being in an unwinnable struggle. This self-professed great-grandchild of mine, how could it be that she took after me like that? Reminding me so of my own shortcomings, she'd just had to cause trouble for everyone until the last, to leaving behind a mess for others to fix. Self-sacrificing until the end.
I was no longer able to distinguish between the tears in the memory and the ones that flowed down my face in the present. They kept coming, but I knew there would not enough in a single body for the both of us. I don't know how long I laid there, trying to cling onto that vanishing moment we'd had together, before sleep finally began to overtake me, a sleep so much more fitful than that sweet instant when I had thought everything ended.
Why had she left me with such guilt? How could she do this to herself? How dare she so carelessly sever her own existence?
Why could she not have been just a little bit more selfish?
Truly sad, but a good opening