(TPOR) Chapter 142: Awakening Cocoon. (Patreon)

No one said anything. They all stood, patient, waiting for what would happen next. Zed’s intrigued smile never left his face.

“I’m just saying,” he said. “It’s kinda odd seeing an Awakened among the Olympians. You guys strike me as badasses.”

Trevor shrugged, unconcerned. He was clearly used to people being surprised by his rank or lack there of if the right people were asked.

“Is it an attribute thing?” Zed asked, pondering on the concept. There was a part of his mind that urged him to discard the notion, a piece of it that believed attributes weren’t that difficult to grow. “No,” he finally said, answering himself. “I don’t think that’s it. Are you an attribute mage?”

Trevor nodded slowly. Now he was smiling something amused.

Zed’s lips puckered in thought. “Difficult attribute?”

Trevor’s smile didn’t falter even as he shook his head, the action slow. He was like someone teasing another with the truth.

“That leaves only one answer,” Zed said. “You just haven’t put in the effort to grow.’

“Well, I can argue I’ve been growing quite well.”

“But not as a mage?” Oliver asked, confused. His confusion was understandable. With what the world now was it was practically ludicrous not to get stronger in magic or attributes as a mage. It baffled him, baffled Ash too, if the look on her face was anything to go by.

“I guess I’m just not cut out for that life?”

“For that life?” Ash asked, her voice a tad too hard for someone merely curious. “You think this life is a choice?”

Trevor’s inability to care never left his face, however, the smile was gone. It disappeared, intentionally taken away not to draw anyone’s ire. For all the safety of being within an Olympian vessel, it was clear he wasn’t stupid. Then again, he had always spoken with them with caution.

“I can’t entirely say it’s not a choice,” he said cautiously. “It’s like the world before the second awakening. Everyone was capable of violence in some way or the other, but we had soldiers and,” he gestured to himself, “doctors. Unfortunately, for some reason, mana has decided that it will only grow through constant use.”

Zed nodded along as Trevor spoke. He understood the man. He might not have been awake to see the actual devastation the second awakening had brought with it, but the world right now, from the little he knew, didn’t require every one to risk their lives. Heimdall had created such a world back in town.

Thinking about it, Zed was sure there were a considerable number of Awakened mages back in town.

Ash, however, remained stumped.

“So you’re okay with being weak?” she asked. The hardness that had once touched her voice was gone, replaced only by confused curiosity. It was as if he’d just told her he was color blind and she was asking what it was like.

“Weak is a harsh word,” Trevor answered. “But I understand what you mean. So yes, I’m okay with it. I’m useful in my own ways. For example, I can—”

Something flickered through the air, disturbed it. It wasn’t anything alarming, to Zed it was like accidentally catching a whiff of a smell, a very weak smell. It was so insignificant to his senses that he almost ignored it if not for Trevor’s response to it.

Trevor’s head snapped to the side abruptly, reacting to the change in the air. A touch of worry slipped into him, it was in the alertness in his shoulders, the stiffening of his muscles.

Zed was more concerned by the fact that he could notice them beneath the man’s lab coat. Still, if it was making the doctor react in such a way, then it had to be something.

“What’s wrong?” Zed asked, seeing everyone else pay some form of attention.

Ash and Oliver were merely aware. There was neither panic nor alarm in their countenance. In fact, for the first time since waking up, Zed caught Ash smiling. It was warm and brightened her face so much that she looked as young as she was supposed to be.

“Am I missing something?” he asked.

Trevor made his way back into the door and the others followed. They were silent, Ash’s soft smile the only thing that let Zed know whatever was happening wasn’t dire or negative. He followed after them, last in a line of four. Each person left the door open, granted unhindered entrance to the person after them.

When Zed was inside, he checked behind him, saw no one—not that there had ever been—then closed the door.

Zed was introduced to a room of soft blue-white light. It cast the room in a soft glow that gave a calming effect. Its floors, like the rest of the aircraft, was made of metal quartered by lines that left them looking like blue tiled floor. Zed did not look at any of it as he walked in, instead, he looked at something that held him enamored. It left him with a mix of relief birthed from a hope he had been holding in for so long—longer than he had thought,

The room contained ten hospital beds, eighteen at the most. It reminded Zed of the emergency room in a proper hospital. Having never seen a proper hospital or its likes since waking up, it took him a moment to realize that the memory actually belonged to him. Not one of the multiple minds that plagued him—side effects of a dreamscape imposed upon him—but his very own. He had been to an emergency room as a child as the patient, and while he didn’t remember what had sent him there, he remembered very clearly how painful it had been. The beds were covered in blue and white sheets, each one wide enough to house a single adult, two if they were children. There were drip stands. Only two of the many stands held up drip bags. One was channeled through a transparent tube now mint green from the liquid running through it until it found its way into the patient laying in its bed.

Chris looked so peaceful in her unconsciousness. Zed found he liked her this way: silent.

Still, none of this held his attention. Instead, he watched the events happening a few paces in front of them. Like Oliver and the others, he too had stopped, standing still as if the slightest movement would affect the current events.

At the end of the room, above one of the hospital bed, a young lady hovered in the air, cast above by the ambient mana now a warm hue of red, tainted with touches of blue too weak to survive the encounter. Her eyes remained closed but beneath it she was held in the throes of REM, pupils darting about beneath eye lids softly held shut. Her back was arced, bowed so strongly that it looked like it was supposed to hurt. The drip that had once been in her arm undulated in the air about her, spilling colorless fluid.

The ambient mana was gathering to her.

Zed stared, watched for tangible harm.

“I’ll take an uneducated guess and say she’s awakening,” he said to no one in particular. “Is it usually this violent?”

“No,” Oliver said. “We weren’t even supposed to feel it from where we were.”

Zed rubbed a thoughtful hand along his jaw. “Mine was quite chaotic, though. I think it was…” his voice trailed of at a look from Oliver even as he remembered he wasn’t necessarily present for his awakening, only his rise to Beta.

“That bad?” Oliver asked, somehow treating the chaos of a levitating girl reminiscent of a still being possessed child as if it was unimportant.

Zed shrugged. “But is that normal?” he asked, pointing at Shanine’s floating body.

“No.”

It was Trevor that answered.

“In fact,” he continued, looking at the watch on his wrist, “Awakenings aren’t supposed to last longer than a few seconds. The longest recorded under VHF attention was six seconds.”

“I guess we can comfortably say you guys have a new record on your hand.”

Zed looked around as they spoke, eyes panned about them, focused on the ceiling. When he found what he was looking for, he pointed.

“Do those work?”

Trevor’s gaze flickered from Shanine’s body to what Zed was pointing at. The movement was quick, as if he didn’t want to risk missing a moment of Shanine’s awakening.

“All the cameras here work,” Trevor answered, a mild skepticism slipping into his tone. “Why do you ask?”

“Well…” Zed’s words paused in the moment he took to tilt his head to the side. A scalpel blitzed past him. “Is it just me or is it getting kinda dangerous now?” he asked, instead of what he had intended on saying.

Oliver’s hand moved in a blur and he caught something Zed didn’t see just in front of his face.

“I think we best get everything dangerous from around her,” he said.

Zed agreed, already on the move. The chaos of ambient mana around her was darkening. The red grew redder, almost crimson. It began blotting her out of sight, enveloping her in a cocoon of crimson mana.

The closer Zed got to her, the stronger the ambient mana resisted him. In truth, the strength was only noticeable by comparison. If he was being honest, it was like being attacked with stacks of cobwebs abounding on each other, heavier than the last with each layer but never truly a hindrance. He walked through it without panic, either for himself or Shanine.

He paused when only a few steps separated him from Shanine’s body, now fully cocooned in a ball of crimson mana too thick to see through. He dodged another flying object he failed to see, and looked back.

“Why am I the one doing this again?” he asked.

Oliver shrugged. “’Cause she’s your friend?”

Zed thougth about it, then shrugged as well. “Arguable point, but a good one.”

He raised his hand and pointed it at the orb of crimson mana. He moved his hand, adjusted his aim. If he was going to do what he wanted to do, he had to make sure Shanine was going to come out of it in one piece.

Where was she again? He thought as the wind frazzled his hair.

“Does the nature of the ambient mana around a person when they are awakening impact what kind of mage they will be?” he asked, his mind wondering how far away from the center of the orb he could go to have enough effect to disrupt the orb but not affect Shanine.

“It has been theorized,” Trevor answered, his voice slightly strained. “Some mages in the VHF think it might. There was a mage who awakened with a burst of fire. He’s one of the VHF’s strongest fire mages.”

Zed gave it a little more thought. He’d awakened within the mana surge and there were way too many variables, if he was to go by the notifications he had read to know what the outcome had been. For one, he hadn’t even had a functioning body when he’d awakened, thus, his mind had been what had awakened, not his body. The body had come after.

“Just out of curiosity,” he said, “are there any restrooms around here?”

“What for?” Oliver asked, voice suspicious.

Zed made a sound that could’ve meant anything before answering. “No reason. Was just checking something. Anyway, let’s have a go at this?”

“What’s he doing?” Ash asked suddenly, as if she had not been present for the entire thing.

Zed shook his head humorously and let out a soft chuckle.

“Waking a mage up.”

· You have cast basic rune [Force]

· Basic rune [Force] has applied effect [Kickback] on [Awakening Cocoon].