Chapter 20 – Revelations

Toe-high water swished around my shoes as I walked through darkness, heading to the black and violet pillar of lightning thorns. The sound of swishing water and humming energy was oddly calming, and the reflected purple light felt… welcoming. I made my way to the pillar, an odd sense of nostalgia mingled with comfort washing over me. There was something else under it though, a sharp, pining feeling of… shame? Guilt? Fear? A mixture of the emotions, maybe, honed into a knife stuck inside the depths of my heart.

I swallowed, trying to ignore the feeling as I reached the thorns, marveling once again at the unnatural darkness that made up the core of the lightning, its violet outline glowing in a beautiful accent. A gentle hum emanated from the electricity, soothing the needles of anxiety in my lungs.

Once I reached within touching distance, the thorns crackled, shifting to open up a window, revealing a familiar looking girl covered only by stray strands of the dark and amethyst thorns. She looked up at me, scarlet and azure eyes peering at me with a pleading expression.

“Why?” she whispered, her voice soft with an undercurrent of regret.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, looking away. I wasn’t sure how, just that for some reason, I knew I’d done something bad. Something I shouldn’t have. The answer to what she was asking tickled at the back of my mind, teasing me with answers that I couldn’t quite grasp.

“I don’t understand,” I finally told her, and she gave me a sad smile.

“Why?” she repeated. “Why didn’t you wait?”

Memories flashed through my mind in a whirlwind of razor blades. Vines, a bloodshot eyeball, the pain. I recoiled, jerking my gaze to my left arm only to find it gone starting just above my elbow. A panicked cry escaped me as I went to grab my stump, stopping short as I tried to process, to understand. My hand began trembling as I felt myself begin to hyperventilate.

My arm.

It was gone.

I cut it off.

It had looked so odd, detached and lying on the ground.

It was part of me.

Now it wasn’t.

I… I-

“Shh,” the girl shushed me in a soothing, empathetic voice. “It’s going to be alright. Like Selene said, it isn’t permanent, so just… breathe.”

Her words wrapped around me like a blanket, and suddenly the panic didn’t seem important anymore. It was still there, but it wasn’t overwhelming, its talons no longer clawing into my heart. The horror and panic became far away things, something I could still think through. I took the opportunity, falling into my familiar method of calming down.

I focused on my heart first, willing it to slow down to a normal pace. I let my racing thoughts melt away, imagining the still water of a pond.

Slowly, I began to feel myself relax, my muscles unclenching as my breathing returned to a normal rhythm.

“Good. Just like we’ve done a thousand times before… But I still need to know… Why didn’t you wait?”

I looked back into her eyes and felt them bore into me. It felt like she already knew, that this wasn’t really a question, but I knew that only meant answering her correctly was that much more important. It always was when the person wasn’t really asking.

“I…” I swallowed. “I thought it would be safe. That it was smart.”

“But why?” she asked, voice trembling. “Why did you think it would be safe?”

“Error Machina told me it would be. Selene agreed with him.”

“You trusted them,” she said with a sad smile, pausing for a moment to tilt her head. “Why?”

I opened my mouth to answer, only to find myself without words.

Why wouldn’t I have trusted them? They had no reason to betray me, and Selene had always been right before.

But I’d still gotten hurt, and that was her point, wasn’t it? They had seemed so sure I would be safe on the way back that I’d just… trusted them to be right.

I assumed and trusted, and now I was missing my arm.

“You understand, don’t you?” the girl closed her eyes. “Sometimes, it isn’t about betrayal. Sometimes, being wrong is enough. But you know this very well already. You just forgot, didn’t you?”

My mouth felt dry, and I settled for just nodding in response.

“There’s more, though, isn’t there?” she asked, giving me another searching look. “There has to be. Why else didn’t you wait?”

As I thought about it, I found myself slowly clenching my teeth, embarrassment and anger burning at my cheeks.

“I was overconfident,” I whispered. “Everything was going so well, and all this Magical Girl stuff, points and stats, it’s like a game. I… stopped thinking about this like real life. I stopped thinking about what losing would actually mean.”

“Overconfidence…,” the girl murmured. “Perhaps. Waiting to manifest Selene would have prevented this, but at the risk of others endangering themselves. Spending your points to renew your mana faster would have fixed things, but at the cost of your future. All for a safety net you shouldn’t have needed.”

“I still shouldn’t have treated this like a game,” I said through clenched teeth. “It was stupid.”

“On the contrary, it was right.”

I looked up in surprise only to see her looking back at me with big eyes. There was still pain and sadness in them, but beneath it all was something desperate.

“You don’t understand yet, but you will. Soon, I think. You should have been right. Safe. You never should have lost that arm. Caught, but not mutilated. Embarrassed, not sundered.”

I stared at the girl, her words pulling at something at the back of my mind, but whenever I tried to catch the stray thought, it retreated further away.

“I don’t understand,” I finally shook my head.

“You do, just not yet. All the pieces, but no frame to put them in. It’s okay. You made assumptions on fragments, thinking they were the whole picture. You’ll see. The missing links are all there. Life has just been a little too busy for you to think about it, that’s all.”

The desperate intensity began to drain from her expression, her eyelids drooping as she resumed her sad, almost sleepy expression. She tilted her head, and her smile suddenly became strained.

“And what’s the final reason you rushed into it?” her voice cracked as she asked. “The important one you told Selene, the lie that has the painful truth hiding behind it?”

Her words hit me like a hammer, a wave of pain pulsing through my chest. I didn’t want to say the words, to admit it aloud. Yet, somehow, I felt like I owed it to her.

“I wanted to save Lily… and everyone else in the shelter. I just… wanted everyone to be safe, and if we waited and the officers came looking for me… they might have gotten hurt. I couldn’t risk that. It didn’t matter if…”

“If you were safe,” she finished for me. “If you got hurt. If you died. You never even stopped to really consider those things. Because it didn’t matter. It never does.”

I bit down on the inside of my lip, my hand clenching into a fist. I knew she was right, but she didn’t know, didn’t understand. There was more, so much more to everything than just some stupidly simplistic reason. She didn’t know me.

“Shh, it’s okay,” she hushed me, her voice growing more tired. “I just wanted to make sure you understand, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with putting others first, even to that extent, not so long as that’s what you really want. What does it matter, getting hurt, if it’s the path to your happiness? So long as you understand, we can bear it, just like we always have.”

I looked up at her in confusion. Her eyes were drooping lower, words coming out even more slowly as she seemed to draw closer to falling asleep. Her body sagged against her bonds, the thorns giving an electric crackle as they pulled tightly against her body.

“It’s almost time for you to wake up,” she whispered, and I blinked.

Wake up?

I looked around, suddenly aware of where I was.

Or, more accurately, that I had no idea where I was, or why I was talking to a girl that looked just like me. A girl who was held by solidified lightning in impossible colors. A girl who seemed to know things about me that nobody could.

“What are you?” I asked, my heartbeat picking up as a sense of wrongness swept through me.

The girl’s eyes fluttered open, locking onto me with renewed vigor. A gentle, regretful smile stretched across her lips, and her next words reverberated through my bones with power.

“I’m the painful truths you don’t want to accept, bound by the lies we spin together to keep you safe. I’m the ever present thorns imprisoning your heart and the shelter from all the pains you can’t bear. I’m the reflection of something shattered and beautiful, something perfect in its brokenness. So breathe, Mai, and let me shoulder a share of your burdens, just like I always have. Let me help, and forget, because it’s not over yet, and you’re running out of time.”

Before I could ask what she was talking about, the world blurred as a sound filled the space and pushed me out.

[Mai?]

I opened my eyes and gasped, lifting myself up as information overloaded me. It was bright, and I was lying down somewhere. As I tried to push myself up into a sitting position, my left arm failed to find purchase, and I fell back onto my back.

[Easy, Mai, easy!] Selene’s voice washed over me. [You’re safe! You’ve been asleep for a little less than two hours, but you are still far from recovered. Take your time waking up.]

I groaned, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I looked around. I was in the shelter’s infirmary, on one of the beds. An IV was stuck into my right arm, a red liquid flowing through it. The sight sent a flash of memories through my head, and my eyes widened as I whipped my head to look at my left arm.

It was a stump, ending just above my elbow.

I swallowed, a jittery hysteria bubbling up inside me. I took a deep breath, looking around widely only to find Selene sitting on a table next to me. I mentally latched onto her comforting, plushie-like appearance, and I felt myself calming down as I took her in. Her tails were raised but drooped at the ends, her head bowed towards me. She looked worried, and maybe… guilty?

“My arm…” I whispered hoarsely, coughing at the dryness in my throat.

[How much do you remember?] Selene asked.

Images flashed through my head, and I felt the horror in my chest try to boil over. To my surprise, it didn’t. The emotion felt oddly distant, like I was remembering a nightmare I’d already had time to distance myself from.

Or, more accurately, it was like one of the bad memories that I’d had time to push so far away that it took effort to make myself think about it. What I felt was just an echo of the true emotions the experience contained, as if time had blunted its edges. It still hurt, but it was a bitter wave instead of the sharp knife I would have expected.

I wasn’t sure why the fact I’d just lost my arm felt so watered down. Was it because I lost it fighting the Anathema, trying to do the right thing? Had I really subconsciously understood that being maimed as a Magical Girl was a possibility? Or had I finally reached the point where this was just another drop in the ocean, another bad memory that barely made a ripple in how numb I’d become?

Or maybe it was some other reason…

Besides, Selene said it isn’t permanent, so just… breathe.

The thought felt oddly out of place, and yet I still found myself calming down with a deep, shuddering breath. That was right. Selene had said that. I was a Magical Girl, a fighter on the frontline of humanity’s endless war. I was already acutely aware that healing magic and magitech were things, and it was hard to imagine I wouldn’t be able to reattach my limb with both at my disposal.

If only that healing technology wasn’t so rare…

A deeper pang of guilt, shame, and loneliness pulsed through me, and I quickly worked to answer Selene’s question before I could fall into that particular line of thought.

“I remember,” I rasped, accepting a cup of water that Selene handed to me with her tails before I continued. “It’s… blurry, but I remember getting back to the shelter and then passing out.”

[Good,] Selene nodded, her body relaxing. [Though it seems you don’t quite remember everything. The officers were unsure what aid to render, and you woke briefly to tell them to just give you a bed and leave you alone. You were fairly out of it at that point, and were only really repeating what I was telling you. When you had enough mana, I manifested and instructed them to give you a blood transfusion to aid in your recovery. I also informed them of everything that happened.]

“Oh,” I said, looking away from Selene. “I see.”

Silence stretched between us as I stared at nothing in particular.

[Mai…] I heard Selene shift around nervously. [What happened-]

“Was my fault,” I interrupted her. “I was careless. Everything had been going so well, and I just… stopped being careful. I should have just spent my points.”

[Maybe… but at the time, I even agreed with your decision. It was a mistake, Mai, but it was not yours alone. None of this should ever have happened.]

I shrugged, the motion making me acutely aware of the weight now missing from my left shoulder. The sensation sent a shiver through me, and my throat tightened.

“Is, um… is my arm…”

[What I said was not merely meant to calm you down,] Selene answered, and I turned to face her. [Losing your arm is not permanent. Fighting the Anathema is dangerous, and losing limbs happens. Thankfully, there are a few answers. Anything from buying a lifelike prosthetic from a Vault to using high level healing magic to regrow the appendage is possible. None of that will be required for you, however, as we were able to safely retain your arm. Even a relatively low level Magical Girl will be able to assist you in reattaching it. Honestly, even a normal surgeon with the aid of some Zenith technology would be able to do the procedure.]

I felt myself relaxing more at Selene’s words. Shock and fear still clawed at the insides of my chest, but some of the edge disappeared.

“The container I bought cost zero points,” I noted almost absently, glancing at my stump before looking away.

[The bio-safe, yes. There are some items the Zenith deemed too important to the survival or well-being of Magical Girls to put a price on. One of those is a bio-safe capable of keeping any lost appendages in perfect condition. The case is enchanted with a spell of Gentle Repose, preventing any degradation or decay. It can last for three days unpowered, has a tracker inside it, and can be plugged into any electrical outlet to extend its running life. The case is also armored to keep Anathema from opening or destroying it. With your arm being kept in pristine condition while inside, the effort needed to reattach and fix it will be greatly reduced.]

I shivered, a tingling feeling washing over me as Selene said “Gentle Repose.” I wasn’t sure how, but I could tell those words held power in them. It raised new questions, but none felt really appropriate for the moment, so I filed it away for later.

“Okay,” I said, more to reorient myself than anything else. “So… what happened? Why was that Anathema there, and why did the lights come back on?”

Selene shifted uneasily, tails twitching.

[The full explanation is best given in the control room, perhaps while talking to Error Machina. I woke you up because there are some time-sensitive complications we need to discuss with him. Before we leave to do so, I want to ask… did you happen to have a dream while you were asleep?]

“A dream?” I asked frowning. “I don’t think-”

Black and violet lightning shaped like thorns.

Water tickling against my toes.

A familiar looking girl with a sad smile.

Scarlet and azure eyes.

Images burst through my skull like an ice pick stabbing into my brain. I winced, raising my hand to my head. What… Did I have a dream? It felt like I did, but trying to latch onto the memories only sent them retreating further away.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“I… maybe?” I said. “I think so, but I don’t remember it… why?”

[Not quite yet, then,] Selene gave a relieved sigh, her tails relaxing. [You just seemed restless as you slept. Anyway, the reason I woke you up… Well, Ji-woo wanted you to get as much rest as reasonably possible before we talked, something I agreed with. I can go get Ji-woo now so we can have a discussion, but perhaps you would like to take a shower before you leave. Ji-woo laid out some extra clothes on the nearby bed for you.]

It only then really hit me I was still in my sweaty clothes, my jeans soaked with blood. I stifled the disgust that rolled through me, forcing myself to shake my head.

“No… I want answers first. I’ll change my clothes, but the shower can wait.”

[Very well,] Selene gave me a nod. [I will go get Ji-woo while you change. Allow me to remove your IV for you first.]

I nodded, and Selene’s tails quickly wrapped around the line before removing it with a quick pull. It was more of a weird feeling than a painful one, a sharp pressure disappearing from beneath my skin I hadn’t registered before. I got to my feet slowly, heading over to the pile of clothes even as Selene hopped away. Closing the dividing curtains around the bed, I went to work.

My eyepatch was resting on top of the pile even though my backpack was nowhere in sight, and I quickly pulled it on. Changing the rest of my clothes with one hand was… difficult. I ignored the clenching feeling in my chest as I focused on my task. With a little creativity, I was able to finish dressing in the gray sweats just as the door to the medical room opened. The last thing I did was roll up my left sleeve so it bunched up at the point where my arm ended. Then I quickly threw my other clothes into a semi-respectable pile before I opened the curtains and stepped out.

Ji-woo stood before me, her eyes slightly sunken. She gave me a ghost of a smile, her eyes flicking down to my stump before returning to my face.

“Hey there…” she said softly, her voice soft. “How are you doing?”

Unease washed through me, and I shifted uncomfortably.

“Okay,” I responded. “I, um… It’s not as bad as it looks.”

Ji-woo flinched at that but quickly nodded.

“No, no, of course not,” she agreed. “I mean, with healing magic you should be right as rain. Still… it must have been… hard. You should really talk to someone about it when this is all over. Get things sorted. I know a few therapists or even groups if you ever need anything. Just let me know, okay?”

I nodded at her, but the thought of talking to someone about what happened practically made me want to vomit. I didn’t want to think about it, let alone relive it. It was better staying buried, and I had plenty of practice in doing just that.

I cleared my throat. “Selene said there was something we needed to talk about?”