7. Incarnation

*Beep*

*Beep*

*Beep*

The rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor is the only sound in the room. Teiyu lay in a bed, attached to a number of sensors and with an oxygen mask on. It has been fourteen days since the 'accident', and she has yet to have any reaction to outside stimuli. It's roughly three AM at this point, and no one else is in or watching the dark room. Seemingly originating from no where, several small wisps of light start to appear all through the room, each one quickly converging towards the girl in the hospital bed.

After hundreds of wisps had been absorbed, Teiyu's soul had found itself newly transformed. In the fall, connections between the body and soul were damaged, resulting in the Coma. But as Cassandra's soul was reformed into a single unit by the transfer array, the damage to the body and soul was rapidly repaired. With the completion of the soul, a new phenomenon began, not seen yet in this world, a mana vortex. The mana in the air was frenziedly driving towards Teiyu's body, the suction **** expanding rapidly as the mana density of the air for miles around swiftly plummets.

Finally, once all the mana within a twenty kilometer radius was sucked dry, the mana vortex calmed down and the girl who was unknowingly at the center of this happening begins to shift slightly in her bed. Her heart rate slowly climbs, from the sleeping rate it was at to a waking one, as the beeps become more frequent. Suddenly, her eyes shoot open and she's awake. As a natural instinct, she sits up immediately and looks around at her surroundings. After all, she's not tired, her mind completely clear, so she knows this is no doubt the destination, but she couldn't know the conditions before hand. If for instance she suddenly 'zoned out' when Teiyu was in a fight, that could be bad.

As Cassandra looked around, she quickly realized she was in a hospital room, though certainly one that looked older than her first memories. It vaguely resembled some VR movies she watched, and based on that knowledge, she estimated 'this earth' to be about early 21st century. Fortunately, the external style of medical machinery hadn't changed much into the 22nd century, so everything on the monitors was clearly readable, even in the same format as her origin world.

'Okay... Heart rate monitor... Brain activity monitor... Both are giving proper readings... So why am I in the hospital?' She then starts examining her body physically. Everything appears undamaged, no apparent nerve damage, muscles still working. The only thing that could maybe be a concern to her health and wellness is the wet medical diaper she's wearing. 'Shit... I hope that's just because of being **** in a hospital... But really, what happened?'

Attempting to think back, she feels like a whole new world has suddenly revealed itself to her, the world of someone else's memories. While it doesn't feel as real to her as the memories of, from her perspective, the last eight to ten hours, it was definitely on par with her first memories in natural attachment. At first, the feeling was wonderful, like sudden enlightenment, but quickly a frown began to form on Cassandra's face. And soon, the frown gave way to fury. While the fall may have caused some damage to the physically stored memories, Cassandra had reabsorbed her soul fragment clone and was able to use the backups there to flesh out the memories properly, and unbridled fury was all that she could feel.

'I hadn't even entered this world, and yet someone has already tried to kill me? And what, because of their vanity and jealousy?' The sounds of grinding could be heard as she gnashed her teeth together, carefully going through all the memories she could attached to this event. After a moment, she begins to control her fury and calm herself down. Now cool, nearly emotionless even, she quickly comes up with how to deal with this.

Quite simply, she would just pretend that nothing happened and bide her time until she could safely 'dispose of' the trash. Unlike in her first life, she doesn't need 100% assurance of getting away with it; 90% is enough when you know you'll still have more chances after dying or screwing up royally. She would never seek to kill people to achieve her ends, but if someone attempts to kill her or hers, they better ensure she's completely dead.

As for going at her through proper channels, even if the girl were punished, it would never be an execution. It might not even be a real punishment, considering she's a Mage in training; her value as a weapon is too high. But the biggest problem is her backing; she's the youngest daughter of a six generational political dynasty in this Republic. Nothing would happen to her and Cassandra would more likely be punished or be reassigned if a complaint was made.

But of course, if you want to kill someone with backing, you need power. Money. Connections. Weapons. Even physical strength. But the option that's by far most appealing is Magic.

"Oh yeah, mana..." she quietly says to herself. Focusing on Teiyu's memory, she quickly got caught up on her life and aptitude. Upper tier intermediate mana aptitude from birth, but with a soul defect that left her numb to mana, despite her body being well tuned for mana. Therefore, Cassandra was now aware of at the first few magics that Teiyu had been taught, along with all the 'basics of mana'.

A look of concentration came over Cassandra's face, as she extended out her fingers. She could feel a cool sensation originating from within her chest, extending through her shoulder, into her arm, and finally to the tips of her finger. Soon, thin threads of icy blue light begin to bloom from her finger tips, the most basic form of unattributed manipulated mana. However, compared to Teiyu's dozen or so faint strands, barely able to be seen under the light of a mere full moon, Cassandra's managed to be thousands in number, and a bright blue, like arcs of electricity.

With Cassandra's intent, the tendrils soon begin to make up the spell circle. With such a simple spell and so many tendrils, they naturally began to entwine with one another, making a up a serious of geometric shapes all framed within a slowly rotating circle. As the form of the magic circle begins to finalize, the icy blue tendrils slowly lose their color, somehow appearing to be both invisible and giving off light, its shape only apparent through the halos around the lines of the spell circle; the expected phenomenon for air magic. Cassandra watches this happening, enraptured at the scene before her. However, the circle very quickly grows brighter and brighter, soon overwhelming Cassandra's eyes with the light.

'FUCK, WHY IS IT SO BRIGHT,' Cassandra screams in her head, as she abruptly pulls back her hands to shield her eyes.

As soon as she does, the tendrils of mana that were still feeding into the circle sever, even the control tendril being disconnected, causing the magic to automatically activate at full power. Within a fraction of a second, all the air in the room, and in fact the air in the connected hallway too, is forcibly sucked out of the window and pushed to who knows where. In the sudden near vacuum environment, Cassandra finds herself passing out as the door finally manages to slam. As her vision goes dark, she's barely aware of the disarray the room is now, or the fact that she's halfway on the floor as the heart monitor flat-lines from its sensors being disconnected.

*Beep*

*Beep*

*Beep*

"Urgh... So noisy..."

Once again, Cassandra wakes up in the hospital bed. This time, it's morning. Once again sitting up, more slowly than last night, she immediately winces at the headache she's currently experiencing.

'Fuuuu.... My Head fucking hurts... Ow... What did I do....' With a brief attempt at thinking about it, not helped by the throbbing of her head, she remembers the spell she cast last night. 'Shit... I don't remember... seeing anyone cast it like that... Ow, ow... Did I maybe overload it? Well, screw this shit, I'm done with being in... Ow... a hospital already.' Calming herself down by taking deep breaths, she waits several minutes of calm breathing for the pain to begin to subside. Which it doesn't really do. Getting frustrated at this bad headache, but stubborn enough to not want to ask someone for painkillers, she instead goes with a crazy idea; she starts gently circulating mana through her head. After all, she read it in some novel somewhere. Worst she could do was kill or cripple herself and have to leave this world.

Soon, the cool sensation of the mana began circulating from its nest in Cassandra's chest, passing through the meridians that are like a mana circulatory system. She can feel the comfortable sensation quickly climb up her neck and envelop her skull. With one circulation, the pain was already noticeably lesser. With another, it was at half its original. With a few more circulations of mana through her skull, the pain finally fades away completely. That's when she realizes something.

'Damned Heart Monitor, the throbbing of my head lines up with your damned beeps,' she grumbled, looking at the heart monitor with a fierce look and implied killing intent, before she couldn't maintain the expression any more and starts laughing out loud. Ah, the weird, self-entertaining humor of a shut-in.