The Awakening

What an odd sensation it was to wake up with an immense pain that hadn't been there before. It felt like every bone in my body had been thrown against a cliffside and put back inside me. I groaned loudly as I shifted, feeling some sort of scratchy sheet on my arms. I willed my eyes open, despite the feeling they were held down with weights, and I was greeted by a blinding white light.

A number of things occurred to me as my vision began to clear. One, there was this incessant and annoying sound in my left ear, a rhythmic tweet that I'd never heard before. The second, was the room still slowly coming into focus. It looked nothing like my room, nor any room I'd ever seen before. It felt cold, yet not in the way that my ice made a room cold. This felt impersonal, deliberately so.

I slowly turned my head to the side, my gaze falling first on a small window in this strange room, lined with thin white curtains. It wasn't the window itself that grabbed my attention, however.. outside, stood towering buildings of glass. Buildings I'd never seen before. Even worse than that, on a bench under the window, there was a woman curled up, apparently sleeping.

Rage and hatred boiled through my veins all at once. She did this. She was responsible for all of it. The rest of the room fell away from my awareness, my vision focused squarely on that hateful woman that kicked me out of my own home so she could get as high as she pleased without me there. I coughed and sputtered as I forced my body to begin moving, hardly noticing as a warm liquid trickled from my mouth.

Despite the screaming pain in my body as I stood, I stepped forward, paying no mind to something pulling out of my left arm. I had one, singular desire. I reached out to her, drops of crimson liquid falling from my mouth and landing on her face. The room pulsed around me, my ears roared, and that bird was tweeting louder and faster than it was before. She awoke, and in the instant she saw me she started to scream. I didn't let her finish. My bandaged hands wrapped around her throat and squeezed as tightly as they could.

She thrashed, kicked at my already beaten body. I didn't care. She had to pay for her actions. She stared into my eyes, and despite the tendrils of black curling at the edges of my vision I held her gaze. There was no way I'd be letting go now, no way that she would go unpunished for what she did to Marin all those years.

I heaved suddenly, my grip faltering as I wretched, blood pouring from my mouth. The rage still burned as hot as Anare's fire in my veins, and her struggles were slowing. I could feel her life leaving her body. I was so intensely focused on that feeling I didn't hear people shouting behind me. I screamed in hatred as my hands were torn away from her neck. I stared only at her, willing the blood in her body to freeze as I continued screaming. I was forced down onto the bed I had so desperately pushed myself from. That bird sounded as angry as I was now, its tweeting an incessant barrage. I watched through the red curtains of hair covering my eyes as those inky black tendrils swirled ever tighter, until I fell into the depths of their infinity.

I awoke in a cold sweat, with that feeling like I had just fallen back into my bed from somewhere. I was breathing heavily, like I'd just finished training with Anare, and my black hair was plastered over my face, obscuring my vision. I forced myself to sit up in my bed, my body shaking violently. Every part of me was on high alert. I nearly jumped out of my skin as Anare burst through my door, her flames raging behind her. They died the instant she saw me huddled on the bed, and she rushed to my side.

"What happened Marin?!" She asked in a panic, her hands checking over me for injuries. I shook my head, my dry throat barely managing to produce sound as I began to speak.

"N-Nothing I.. just a nightmare I think."

She calmed, but only a little. Concern was written across her face, and as I stared at her I couldn't help but laugh a little. It came out sounding nervous and slightly manic. I'd never met someone that expressed themselves so openly as Anare did. She watched as I forced myself to take in deep, controlled breaths, and my shaking began to slow.

"What kind of nightmare?" She asked softly, her hand still resting on one of my arms. I was thankful for the warmth, as the sweat I had awoken to was quickly cooling on my skin.

"I uh.. I really don't remember.." I responded. The only thing that lingered from the nightmare was this feeling of hatred, more pure than I had ever felt before. I leaned towards Anare, who shifted a bit to allow me to rest against her. I looked out the window; the sun still hadn't risen. Sleep was reluctant to loosen its grip on me, but there was no way I could go back to sleep after that.

We sat together for a time. I couldn't help feeling guilty about it. I genuinely enjoyed Anare's warmth, enjoyed feeling her against me, but regardless of that enjoyment, all I could think was this body wasn't mine. I had no right to enjoy the warmth of the person this body loved and adored. I curled up tighter, that internal battle between comfort and guilt raging through my head.

I knew Anare wouldn't force me off anytime soon, she could probably sit like this all day. My guilt won over, and I quickly righted myself and cleared my throat. "I.. need to get ready for the day."

She nodded, and gently brushed the hair from my forehead, then stood and left me alone in my room. I sighed heavily. I couldn't help thinking of what would happen when Mari woke up in that hospital. The panic she'd feel. How desperately she'd try to use her magic, or call for Anare. How much she would cry when she realized where she was, and who had done it to her..

That now familiar feeling of heat behind my eyes began to build up, and I blinked it away as I forced myself out of bed and into the bathroom. I needed a distraction. As I waited for the tub to fill I practiced ice magic, writing sigils on papers I'd left in the bathroom for morning practice, and pulling shards of ice from them one by one. I couldn't yet write them in the air like Mari, Anare and Faye could. It only made me feel more like an unwelcome stranger.

I soaked in the water for as long as I could that morning, before I dragged myself out to train. I had taken to skipping breakfast entirely. I couldn't bear sitting in the dining hall with Anare. She always tried to hide her own pain, but I could see it in every little look she gave me, like she somehow expected that she'd look away, and in that one moment, Mari would return.

I wanted that like nothing else. I wanted to fade back into the sidelines of Mari's consciousness, where it was quiet and dark. I didn't want to be out here anymore, I gave that up when I jumped. Fate had other plans, though. I stepped into the training hall, the doors rattling open to reveal a ground littered with boulders and craters.

I felt more capable with earth than I did with ice, but Anare was convinced my body still possessed affinity in both, so I was to train both. Mornings were dedicated to ice, with self enhancement being the primary focus. Faye telling me what happened had enlightened me, in some ways. Anare rarely used fire spells as it was, but in any sparring match she greatly preferred close combat with self-enhancement magic.

I closed my eyes and breathed deep, feeling the mana flowing in my veins flare slightly as my senses began to sharpen. Ice was primarily used for enhancing the speed my senses could process at. Earth enhanced the physical characteristics of my body; greater strength and durability. Honestly, it felt like a video game from back home, like I was a character in a fighting game.

When I opened my eyes again, Anare was standing before me, wearing her looser fitting training clothes. I gave a nod, and the sparring began. She had been teaching me a martial art of her own making, a mix of magically enhanced punches and kicks that in my world would have made you a god. Here, it was just another day. Block, counter, retreat, advance, block, counter, retreat, advance.. over and over the movements were drilled into me.

By the afternoon I'd break for lunch, and from there I would head to the academy for lessons with Faye. Where Anare taught me combat and control, Faye taught me the fundamentals of the magic I had been born to use. Every afternoon I drilled the basic sigils, writing them out again and again. They were close to perfect, but not quite there.

"You're an excellent student, Marin." Faye said suddenly. My brain skipped a little, and I looked up at her.

"What takes most students their first year, you've picked up in a month. I'm really quite impressed. Your fundamentals are solid, and your spellcrafting is improving by the day." She smiled. I knew she had more to say, but she was courteous enough to keep it to herself. I'd heard the whispers through the academy, outside Faye's doors. My sharpened hearing with ice let me hear nearly everything in the school if I focused.

There were rumours of a student that rivalled even Mari in capability, being trained in secret by Headmistress Gloaming. I knew what Faye wanted to say. That it reminded her of Mari's first year here, not least of which because it was her body that sat in this chair every afternoon.

Then, came the evening. I was left alone for the majority of it, allowed to eat quietly and finish the work Faye would assign me. Then, I'd check myself over in the mirror before bed. I had been noticing slight changes. Where Mari's hair was pitch black, there were streaks of red appearing since the day she vanished. The colour of my hair.. and where Mari's eyes were an icy blue, there were puddles of bright green forming at the bottoms of the irises. My eye colour.

I watched myself in the mirror every single night, expecting the changes to either fully take over, or reverse entirely as Mari returned to her body. Neither happened. Both hair colours existed simultaneously, my natural red and Mari's abyssal black. My bright green and Mari's icy blue, split across the middle. It was like a child had taken two of their toys and mixed and matched the pieces.

Maybe Mari was seeing the same thing in the mirror, with her blue appearing in the bottoms of my green eyes, and her black hair taking over my red..