Earth Awakened, page 2
Bliss.
Cup filled, she grabbed it carefully by the rim, carried it to a table about mid-way in, sat down, and let out a breath.
A PTSD episode wasn’t the greatest start to the day, but she’d had worse. At least she wasn’t actually getting bombed. And at least the cat inside hadn’t flared up.
Yet.
She slumped forward, feeling the built-up strain of the past year settle in on the front of her mind. Insomnia had dogged her nights. It had been hard to sleep in a war zone. For two full months, she’d been on her feet, scurrying from one location to another, always on the alert, never sleeping for more than a few hours at a time.
Now, she was on near-constant alert for the cat.
It had taken over a month to gain some semblance of control over her new powers, to have even a modicum of communication and defense with the spirit, and it’d still been causing the odd earthquakes when she’d walk. With the cat, they’d tested every ounce of warding Kjaran’s military training rooms had to offer, and they’d left cracks in the concrete. They had broken more guns and pipes and trees and sidewalks than she cared to count.
For a while, though, it felt like things had settled. That she and the cat could work together. Maybe not like Meese and her Firebird worked together, but enough that they wouldn’t have to live inside Mageguard warding for fear they’d crumble the building.
Now, though…
The cat kept having ‘flare-ups.’ McKay wasn’t sure why, but every now and then, out of the fucking blue, the cat would rise up in her mind and smash against her control.
According to Axariel, that was also a matter of the mind, just like her PTSD. She believed that something within McKay’s psyche was preventing true communication between her and the beast.
Where Meese could slip seemingly easily between herself and the Phoenix—could, quite literally, close her eyes and meditate herself into a chat with any crystal spirit she damn well pleased, including McKay’s cat—McKay’s attempts at communication were like shouting words at a brick wall.
It was… frustrating. Especially when she saw how young some of the students here were. And how easily other people like her, Meese and Kitty, who had both absorbed a crystal spirit of their own, worked with their powers.
God. I never asked for this.
But it had happened. And, come hell or high water, there was no undoing it.
They’d tried that in the second month.
She slumped further over her cup of coffee, waiting for the black liquid to cool. Her eyes had a raw, scratchy feeling to them, like they’d slept against wool.
Her brain simply felt like it had been wrung out and thwacked.
Maybe she should request another appointment with Axariel. Since Amerand’s assassination of much of the Council, the Light Mage had been splitting her time between Finnevar and St. Agostina’s, Mersetzdeitz’s largest hospital.
Last they’d spoken, McKay had suggested the use of a Psychic Mage to help with whatever mental communications roadblock was preventing her and the cat from working together, but the Light Mage had shut it down.
If she didn’t like McKay’s ideas, then perhaps Axariel could suggest a different approach.
The soft tap and squeak of sneakers sounded by the door. McKay, half-recognizing them, glanced up in time to watch Hannah, one of the regular early-morning students, walk in with her backpack slumped over her shoulders and a red-rimmed, groggy expression on her face.
She was one of the keener students. A Water Mage born in France to a mixed Terran-Lürian couple, she’d worked her ass off to win one of Finnevar’s foreign student scholarships and had kept working it off since she’d arrived. She’d finished her first semester in the top three of her honors classes and was gunning to improve that score for the second.
It didn’t matter what day of the week it was—she was always up at the crack of dawn and hoovering up information from the library’s databanks.
McKay checked the clock on her phone. “You’re a minute late.”
“Traffic,” Hannah grunted.
Like McKay, she also made a beeline for the coffee machine. And, like McKay, she also took it black.
“Do you ever take a break?” McKay asked when she’d finished. “I’m pretty sure that chair you’re always sitting in has a permanent imprint of your butt right now.”
“I want to practice level four spells by September. It…” Hannah paused, her accent making the sentence sound breathless as she searched for the words. “Takes time.”
Hmm. By her pause, there was a larger, more complicated explanation that she had decided to omit.
Whatever. Not like McKay would understand it, anyway. Her skills were limited to pointing and breaking.
Her teeth ground together. Fuck. If only that were the case. She could work with that. But these flare-ups…
She was like a caveman who couldn’t even hold a club.
“Seriously, though,” she said. “Burnout is real.”
“So is being an incomparable badass.” Hannah stifled a yawn with the back of her hand and plunked her backpack down on the seat opposite McKay, settling down beside it. The bottom of her cup made a quiet tock where it met the table. “I am actually not doing much. Memorizing the spells isn’t intensive with the labor. It is just… tedious.”
McKay gave the woman a flat look. “You spent fifteen hours in that library yesterday. On a Sunday. Don’t even deny it.”
Hannah took a moment to examine the edges of her fingernails. “It was a particularly long spell yesterday. Three parts, each of them with an… l’ascension. A rising up. After the previous part’s trigger. And they all move.”
“I thought all spells moved?”
“No. This one moves in a specific way.”
McKay stared at her.
Yep, this was definitely above her level. All of it was above her level.
She didn’t belong here. She’d signed up to be a soldier, not a Mage.
Her jaws tightened together, but she worked to keep the emotion from her face. “Sounds complicated.”
“It is.”
“Sounds like it should earn you a day off.”
“I don’t take days off.”
She laughed. “That doesn’t sound like any French person I know.”
Hannah gave her a small smile. “How many French people do you know?”
“Three.”
“That’s hardly a large pool.” Hannah hid her smile behind the rim of her cup as she took a sip, the skin around her eyes crinkling in amusement.
Then, she squinted as she stifled another yawn, almost choking on her drink.
McKay snorted. “Take a day off, Hannah.”
“I could say the same for you, too, McKay. Pardon my French, but you look like shit. Have you not been sleeping?”
“I slept,” she said, her words curt and clipped. “I slept for a full four hours.”
“You need help,” Hannah said. “That isn’t good for you.”
“Yeah, well, tell it to the PTSD. And the cat. And the—augh—”
All at once, pain flared up through her joints. The cat let out a low, warning rumble that rode through her mind like a hundred boulders crumbling down a mountainside. Power rushed through her with a crushing speed.
She gritted her teeth and braced against it, using every ounce of her will to block the cat’s power from leaking out.
The warding on the floor flared green, forming a circle around where she sat.
Fuck. She couldn’t even sit still and drink coffee these days.
Abruptly, she stood from her seat. The bench scraped back with a hollow sound.
“I’m going for a walk.”
Hannah gave her a pitying look. “May peace be on your journey.”
“Thanks. But I don’t think it will be, sadly.” She grunted, tensing her left hand into a tight fist as the cat flared up again. “Take care of yourself, Hannah.”
“See you later, McKay.”
Chapter 2
What the fuck was that?
McKay flexed her fingers as she walked up the outside hallway to the building’s exit, staring at the palm where her nails had scored four deep crescents into the flesh, her brows deeply furrowed.
That had been… abrupt. And, as far as she could tell, with no provocation.
Usually, she could pinpoint something that had set the cat off—a sudden noise, the use of magic, a piece of warding that had given it a funny look, the weird, inverted bends of a tree in a public garden…
But that?
She’d just been sitting there, drinking coffee, chatting with a student she’d chatted with nearly every morning this past month. Fuck, she hadn’t even had any PTSD going on. Not that the cat reacted to that anymore, thank Christ.
Fuck.
In her mind, the cat let out a low growl, like the thunder of falling rock.
Yeah, well, fuck you, too.
She let her hand fall and brought the rim of her cup to her lips. The familiar hot, bitter smell filled her nose, and she squinted as steam rose over her cheeks, taking a long sip. Then, she angled her right arm and shoulder to the door and clunked the touch bar that let her out.
On the other side, the darkness of a cloudy, pre-dawn sky swallowed her attention.
It rained a lot in Mersetzdeitz. In the past year, they had counted just two days where the sun had shone through the clouds, and one of those times may have been caused by a Lürian dragon goddess. Right now, it wasn’t raining, but a moist haze stuck to the atmosphere, amplifying the glow of the three towers’ lights and putting a fuzzy, insubstantial halo on every lantern in the garden and parking lot.
When the moisture touched her face, and she breathed in the deep, cool draught of the air, her shoulders relaxed down.
It was always easier being out in the open—for both of them.
For her, it felt like the times she used to visit her grandmother. There was no scent of sea salt to the air, but the moisture pressed in like she remembered.
For the cat, she suspected it felt similar to its old home, now lost forever.
Mersetzdeitz wasn’t a Lürian jungle, but it certainly tried to mimic a jungle’s water content.
There were a few more people out than there had been half an hour ago. She spotted two Mageguard on an upper, second floor walkway of Nepthe, Finnevar’s backmost tower and the one that contained the Council Chamber and faced the dorms, a pair of men who walked with long strides and didn’t talk much. Several cars dotted the parking lot, too. More than she would expect for such an early hour, but there was always something going on at Finnevar, and with the Council so devastated, more and more were working around the clock to fill in the gaps.
She glanced through the makes and models of the cars, searching for one she recognized—the little Priasta Axariel used, or the red Verdan Orrist was driving nowadays, though he usually parked it in the underground lot—but most of them were Mageguard-mobiles, the kind of all-black, suped-up SUVs and sporty sedan crossovers that clandestine government agencies typically used on television, albeit with magical warding and a golden trim.
She stopped where the garden began, bathed in the glow of the towers’ spotlighting—white, this time, for Light Magic—and stood there for a moment, just taking it all in.
The cat liked the garden, usually. So did she. It wasn’t as nice as the one inside, but Mersetzdeitz pulled from its European roots.
Where the plants inside were all Lürian, these ones were one hundred percent Terran.
The roses along one side of it reminded her of her grandmother’s old backyard, back in Seola. That, and the patches of mint and blackberries that kept cropping up, much to the Finnevar groundskeepers’ dismay. There was a thick tangle of the berries near the edge of the property, where the fields started bumping into the more-industrial applicants of the land, and where the forest of the Crown lands edged the fields.
Crown lands. Hah. As if the Crown had any power anymore. Last she’d heard, all members of the royal family were just regular citizens now—heirs in title only. Elite citizens, with money and power and education, but still mere citizens.
Which put them a step above her, at any rate. She, technically, was a refugee. And the residency card she’d received was temporary.
If she hadn’t absorbed the power of the cat, she doubted her application would have gone so well. More likely, she’d still be waiting. And having to somehow pay for her housing while unable to legally work.
Fuck.
If they’d been able to extract the cat, they would have just chucked me aside, and I’d be mooching off of someone else’s coattails.
It was true. She was a pain in the ass to all involved. And it was a shitty situation.
Had her partnership with the cat worked out as it had with Meese or Kitty, it would have been fine.
But it hadn’t. And, likely, it wouldn’t.
She grimaced, dropping her gaze down to the sidewalk at her feet, toeing the soil at the edge of the garden and taking advantage of the darkness to bare her teeth.
Fuck. She could really use a cigarette right now.
But she’d quit three months ago. Plus, she didn’t really have any money to spare for a pack. And the closest store was around the front of the main building in the gift shop, which wasn’t currently open.
She flexed her free hand again and chewed her tongue.
Maybe she should go for a walk. She didn’t really feel like being near lights, anyway. And the forest was nearby. Deep in the trees, away from people and in the thick of their Element, they could both relax.
It might be a bit weird to fuck off into a dark forest before dawn, but she had four hours to kill before she had to be anywhere, and her new Earth Element senses meant she could just walk blindly into a forest—the Element would guide her along the path.
The forest was the one area where they both felt sane, in mind and Element.
As she followed the garden walkway around the side of the building, pondering the darkness of the woods, the coffee an easy warmth in her hand, a flash of movement snatched her attention to the side.
Flashlights, inside the building.
She frowned, watching the light flick around on the other side of the darkened glass. With the tint on the window, she couldn’t see who was perusing the library at this early hour—probably a Mageguard patrol, or the unlucky staff members who had drawn the short straws of a six-a.m. opening shift.
If she had full access to her Earth Element, she could have identified them by gait alone.
But that was just one more thing she wasn’t getting due to her shitty inability to communicate with the cat. So far, she could use the most minor of Earth Elemental abilities on her own, or do the equivalent of grunt and point with the cat for any object she wanted crushed.
But the rest—the finesse that Earth Mages were known for—was beyond her.
The same went for spell work. As far as they’d seen, the only runes she could produce were created by the cat, and only at the cat’s choosing.
So, when she suddenly got a flash of awareness, and a sudden, deep connection with the ground below her, she knew the cat was acting up.
She gritted her teeth and drew her mind inward, bracing against its power.
No. Everything is fine. You do not need to protect anything.
A low growl met her thoughts, the cat voicing its disagreement.
Then, the cat retreated.
Not fully—McKay could still feel its claws in her psyche—but enough that she could turn her mind elsewhere.
Yes. The forest was a good idea. Maybe she could give it a four-hour walk and make it happy for a day. Then she wouldn’t have to deal with its bullshit.
Footsteps approached from her back. Light and fluid, despite the heavy jogging shoes they wore. Female, young, mid-twenties, about a hundred and twenty pounds.
Shit. If she was getting that much, then the cat hadn’t retreated as far as she’d thought it had.
She swiveled just as an image of the woman popped into her mind, along with a scent—the cat’s way of making an identification.
Rosie Alonso, one of the rare Terran Elementals that had been popping up more and more lately.
Lürians weren’t the only ones with magic. According to them and the scans their Lost Technology devices had made, Terra had its own magical fields—they’d just never had any cause to evolve them. Unlike on Lür, where magic had developed hand in hand with their civilization, Terra’s had died off and gone inactive.
Now that the Lürians had arrived, that was changing. Regular Terrans like Meese and Roger and Ketan were ‘waking’ to their magic.
So far, it had mimicked the Mage’s Elemental magic system. Both Roger and Ketan had awoken to their Water and Fire Elements, respectively.
People like Meese were oddities.
And then there was McKay, whose Element had been shoehorned into her, along with the connection to her new brain housemate, the cat.
Rosie had ‘woken’ to her Fire Element about two years ago. Now, like McKay, she was hanging out at Finnevar, getting used to the schedules, resources, and facilities while awaiting placement in the next semester.
The woman paused when she saw her—given the patch of shadow McKay had stopped in, the double take was normal. “McKay? Is that you?”
Inside, the cat tensed up.
McKay clenched her fist, forced the cat back down, and shot what she hoped was a disarming grin Rosie’s way, stepping forward so that her face was in one of the lights. “Yeah, it’s me. Who else would be stalking the garden at the ass-crack of dawn?”
She didn’t know Rosie very well. Dark hair, hazel eyes, she couldn’t be more than twenty. They’d sat down in the same group for lunch or dinner a couple of times when they happened to be in the cafeteria at the same time, but they’d gotten along well enough.
Plus, she was Westran, like McKay. That automatically put McKay in her corner.
The war might be over, but the comradery wasn’t.
To her surprise, Rosie didn’t answer immediately. Instead, the Elemental had a look of careful caution on her features.
