What The Hell Is It This Time?

Staring up in a slack-jawed stupor, John tracked his mother’s footsteps as they crept across the ceiling. Each dull thump sent a fresh wave of panic crashing through him.

John looked down to his trembling arms, and biomantic magic erupted from his subconscious, bombarding him with frenzied speculation. His head throbbed with each errant thought. Pressure built behind his eyes and made them feel like they had swollen too large for their sockets. Amidst the chaos was the clear refrain, ‘The magic isn’t fading.’

He couldn’t let his mother see him like this. On the line between card trick and fireball, this had to fall squarely on the smiting end.

John leapt to his feet and threw a fist in the air, ready to vanish into an illusion barrier, but he hesitated, his thoughts racing. He couldn’t just disappear. She was bound to come looking for him. If he didn’t respond, she might panic, might call around looking for him, might call the police when no one had seen him all day. And what was he supposed to do when the lights finally faded? Would he reappear out of thin air, in the middle of the livingroom, right in front of his mother and who knows who else? That had to be just as smite worthy as this.

Dropping his arm, he hurriedly tiptoed towards his bedroom. If he could reach it and lock himself in before she left her room, everything would be fine. He’d need some excuse for not coming down for dinner, but he could manage that. Trying to focus on a particularly tough assignment would do the job.

Just as he reached the base of the stairs, the metallic squeal of an under-oiled hinge peeled from above. Light flooded the dark hallway above as his mother’s bedroom door slowly swung open.

‘Shit! Back to plan B.’ John threw a fist in the air. As he gently pressed on his mana, his arm began to throb. Pin pricks climbed up from his shoulder, and the strange warmth in those bones grew painfully hot. The muscles cramped, slowly contracting his arm as if pushed by some invisible ****.

“Ow. Ow! What the fu-” His freed hand clamped over his mouth.

Releasing his mana freed his arm, but unleashed waves of numbing pricks and searing heat to ripple out over his body. In their wake, muscle swelled and deflated in rapid undulations.

John stumbled away from the stairs and frantically searched for somewhere to hide. The laundry room didn’t lock. The garage did, but from the wrong side. He shambled down the entryway, to the small half bath just below the stairs, then locked himself in. Immediately, he pressed his ear against the door and listened intently for his mother’s footsteps. Thumps transformed into a chorus of wooden groans as his mother slowly descended the stairs then fell totally silent.

A few agonizing moments later his mother called out, “John?” She sounded exhausted.

He didn’t respond.

“John, are you here?” she called again.

Trying to **** his voice to sound as flat and bored as possible, he called back, “In the bathroom.”

“Did you hear that bang?”

“Uh… I heard something. It kinda sounded like a moving truck going by.”

“Really? I could have sworn…” She sighed. “Did you order dinner already?”

“Yeah, I ordered the usual from Royal Taj. It should be here in a half hour or so.” A small fib. By now, it should only be ten or fifteen minutes away. “So, you have some time to get some more rest, if you want. I’ll come get you when it gets here.”

“It’s fine,” she mumbled, and began to shuffle away from the stairs. “If I go back to bed now, I won’t be able to sleep tonight. I’ll just wait down here with you.”

‘No!’ John screamed internally. ‘Can’t I go fifteen minutes without trapping myself in something!’

He tracked her footsteps into the living room until they culminated in the short squeal of flexing springs beneath couch cushions. If she took her usual place on the couch, she’d have her back to the stairs. If he was careful, he might be able to slip past her, but if those steps creaked and she turned around, there would be nowhere left to hide. For now, all he could do was wait for the magic to run its course.

Stepping away from the door, John looked down to his light streaked arms. From his fingertips, he tracked the lights until they disappeared beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt. Biomantic understanding, still frenzied but calmer now, struggled to make sense of what it saw. The streams of silver light, his mana pathways, squirmed unnaturally. Aberrant colors waxed and waned within the silver flow.

Stripping off his shirt, John turned to the mirror and followed the streams flowing up his extremities, pulsing and squirming, growing brighter as they wrapped around his
shoulders and flanks, converging into twisting chromatic bands running the length of his spine. Thinner streams flowed out from them. He followed some that climbed up his neck, across his face, and dove into his eyes. A nexus of vibrant colors twisted and sparked within his pupils.

His subconscious shrieked and recoiled at the sight. The world listed as vertigo and nausea struck. He tore his eyes from his reflection and gripped the sink to steady himself. A scarlet drop splashed against the porcelain. Then another. Shielding his eyes from view, he examined his reflection and found two fresh streams of blood flowing from his nose.

'What the fuck is it doing to me?’

Biomancy remained quiet.

Legs buckling, John slumped to the floor, retrieved his phone and Daryl’s number, and frantically composed a text to his new guide to the Abyss. The rambling screed laid out in tedious detail the series of mistakes that led to his entrapment in the tiny bathroom and practically begged for any insight into the affliction that he’d brought upon himself.

When it was finally complete, he couldn’t bring himself to hit send. It was a humiliating admission. Less than an hour after Rooster had chided him for bumbling through the Abyss, he had proven him right.

John examined his hands again. The silver veins had retreated past the first set of knuckles in the time he had been sitting there. Whatever they were doing, it didn’t seem like they’d be doing it much longer, at least, not long enough for his new guildmate to intervene.

He took a deep breath, held it a moment, then exhaled. Deleting the message, he instead sent the short question.

John: What do you know about Thaumic Stars?

With nothing else to do but wait, he closed his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall. There, in the darkness behind his eyelids, was that nexus of colors. They were dimmer now, and the discomfort they inflicted was milder, even tolerable.

A while later, the doorbell rang. John opened one eye to check the time and the progress of the lights. After twenty-three minutes, the lights had nearly disappeared. His arms were bare, and what faint lines remained could have easily been hidden under his shirt. Unfortunately, the sparking in his eyes remained, evidenced by a dizzying glance in the mirror.

‘What I wouldn’t do for some sunglasses right now.’

Again, the doorbell rang.

“John,” his mother called from the living room, “can you get the door?”

“Still in the bathroom.”

John listened to the faint sounds of movement as his mother rose to answer the door. At least that problem dealt with itself.

There was a knock on the bathroom door. “Sweetie, are you feeling ok? You’ve been in there a while.”

“I’m fine. I just… I made the mistake of getting a gas station hotdog on the way home, and it isn’t agreeing with me.”

“Do you need me to get you some medicine?”

“No, I'm fine. I’ll be out soon.”

“Ok, well, just shout if you need anything.”

After nearly half an hour, the lights across his body and colors behind his eyelids disappeared, and an orange notification appeared.

New Skill Obtained: Thaumaturgy lvl 3

‘Three levels?’

‘Oh, great, that explains absolutely nothing.’

John rose from the floor and carefully inspected himself in the mirror. The lights across his body had disappeared without a trace. His eyes had returned to their usual hazel hue. Something about the figure reflected back at him seemed off, but he couldn’t quite place the cause. Mostly satisfied that nothing was amiss, he washed the blood from his lip, donned his shirt, and exited the bathroom to face his mother.