3 TWLA 03

Jeremy only had less than a breath to curse his rotten luck in gibbering horror before the Monster Deer on the other side of the geode tried to forcefully break its way in. Looking back at the rift, he saw it grow dim and ethereal. The people on the other side were watching with some unknown method and had decided to cut off retreat.

Suddenly, he had a realization of just what he had been. He was the sacrificial pawn. Internally primed to go before being ready, they threw him out to help pave the way for others later. He didn't have time to scream his rage at them, the monster deer had fully cracked the side of the geode open like an egg.

Its own swinging wildness was the only thing that gave him a chance to run. In its rush to destroy the obstacle in its way, a large portion of the geode's side fell. And with some dust and falling debris cover, he darted around to the other side of the still standing part of the geode wall as the monster deer barged in.

Looking around, there were other lumpy protrusions but they didn't look the same as the one he had been in. They produced faint waves of black static wrongness. They were 'bad' geodes. With no other way to hide easily, he did something else instead. He climbed near to the top of the shell the monster deer was trying to sniff around in and kicked at a spreading crack. With the creature thrashing around within, it was enough to spread the crack a little more.

Two more kicks for all he was worth and the looming shelf of poorly supported geode top broke free to pummel the creature's oddly flat head. Wobbly and dazed, it staggered back out of the remaining geode structure. Jeremy looked at it in despair. His last desperate gamble hadn't done much more than give the thing a headache and a broken branch antler.

Glancing around, he saw a distant plateau in the lumpy but mostly flat waste of an area. With little else to try, he began running towards it for all he was worth. It didn't matter much. Coated in broken bits and dust from the geode, his fullness was reaching wrong feeling levels again. An unwillingness to die without doing everything he could to live was the only thing that kept his legs pumping.

A second smaller companion to the monster deer tackled him from the side. He hadn't even noticed it was there til it pinned him to the ground with the sound of breaking bones. At first he thought it had came from him. But, the bubble shelled ground beneath him cracked open. Accompanied by the deafening bray of the monster that had prepared to give him a violent end, the two creatures and Jeremy fell into the top of a fragile geode that hadn't pushed itself as far out of the ground as some of the others.

Battered, bruised and barely conscious, Jeremy found himself surrounded by life threatening radiation again. These crystals seemed to be shining through an oily filth to his static filled vision, however. He choked back a sob at the sheer hopelessness of it all.

Unable to move faster than a feeble crawl while the monster deer and it's smaller companion were shaking off the fall with a great deal more resilience, he knew he'd reached the end. Trying to give one last shout of outrage at everything, he couldn't even do that. The cloying dust filled his lungs and sent him into a coughing fit as he felt himself reach the very end of how 'full' he could be. Jeremy's world exploded in a flash of agony as something within ruptured.

***

"Easy does it. You just went through your flair out. An organ you didn't know you had just split and spilled all the magic stuffed into it. It's something all of us had to go through," A soothing girl's voice said.

A moment later, cool water dribbled past Jeremy's parched lips. Opening his eyes, he saw the conflicted dirty face of a hazel eyed, dark haired girl looking back down at him. Sitting up, he realized that there was another person laid out near him. Both the girl and the young man weren't wearing anything but were covered in a layer of moisture clung dust so thoroughly, it might as well have been a suit.

Around them, crystal veined rocks within the geode released sluggish pulses of 'rightness' that drove away the presence of the wrongness 'filth' in the air. With each staggered pulse, the girl would slightly flinch and the unconscious young man would tremble. It only made Jeremy feel a nearly unnoticeable bit better.

Seeing his curious eyes looking between the pulsing rocks and her, the girl said, "I'm not sure what that's about. The best I can guess is that whatever adaptation power you have, stuck to the magic stones when you flared out. They're really sensitive like that."

In a raspy voice roughed by dust dislodged coughs, Jeremy asked, "Where did the monsters go? Are we safe?"

The girl looked to the side with watery eyes.

In a voice barely over a whisper she said. "We nixed. That's what happens when you channel so much power for so long... Everything twists here. Everything becomes different, strange after awhile.

"I wasn't lost as long as King was. He nixed at least three rift drops ago from what I know. You're not really yourself after that happens and memory turns fuzzy pretty fast."

Jeremy's mind raced. "So, we're stuck here until we turn into monsters and that's it?"

She shook her head. "There's a purifier at the base camp. There's medicine they send too... I don't think it's always what they say it is...

"Lucky and Rose have powers that can help too. They- they'll only help the girls they like and their lackeys, though. Since King nixed, they've been in charge. Their power can hurt monsters and people who've changed too much. So, the people who don't like how they do things can't do much about it."

Jeremy wobbled up to his feet. "The drop!... I've got to get back there. Wait here with... King. As soon as I see whether those a**hats are a bunch of liars or not, I'll be back."

Seeing her face transform into a mask of panic filled anxiety, he said, "Hey, they didn't tell me where the camp, or whatever, was. If I don't come back, I won't know where to go."

She slowly nodded. "You'll still be raw inside. The magic crystals will sting but you don't have to worry about another flare out. There's nothing to hold magic in you anymore."

There was a sense of loss from hearing that. To find out that there was something special about him only after it was ruined seemed wrong.

As he made his way back to the wrecked geode holding the rift, he thought, "It hasn't been that long. There's still a chance, right? Maybe there's a way to fix it, like a surgery or something."

That hope didn't have much opportunity to take hold. As he cautiously made his way back into the dark recesses of the broken geode, he could feel the magic radiating off of the crystals flow through him like a breeze through a thousand tiny wind tunnels. There was no stinging sensation of irritated wounds or anything. He was, as far as he could tell, cleanly healed in an open state.

As a nurse hopeful, he knew that even an injury like a severed finger could be fixed to a certain degree if steps were taken and done fast enough. But, once the wound was healed over, it was way past the point of being fixed. While he added intentional crippling to the list of dirty deeds the strangers had done, he admitted that it wasn't a senseless choice.

Back on Earth, it would have been a devastating thing. Whatever the nature of 'magic' was, Earth didn't have or didn't have a lot of it. This place, however, was filled to the brim. It was poisoned but usable.

With an emerging smirk, he muttered, "If I can figure out a way to get the salt and other nasty out of it, who needs a water bottle? This whole 'sea' can be my water on tap."

Feeling a little unhinged, he started laughing manically.

"A bowl is most useful when it's empty. Well, I'm practically hollow, b*tches! How useful is that!?"

It was just bravado to help him cope. He knew that nature designed everything with purpose. It was what evolution was all about. The loss of anything, in and of itself, was never a good thing for the health and well being of a person. Sometimes, it was just necessary, a lesser evil for a greater good.

He doubted that was the motivation behind his new villain bosses' decision to pop their 'assets' magic bags but he trusted that they would do what was most beneficial to them. He believed that they would value assets to some degree and want them to be useful for as long as possible. It wasn't as if 'special' kids were that easy to come by if they had to set up 'things' like Mrs. Hurth to snag them.

He shook his head free of distractions as he approached the back of the oblong geode. The back end, some distance under the ground, had partially caved in. The place where the rift had been was covered but he could see a wood crate peeking out.

After some digging, he found two others. But, after a few more feet of stamina wasted effort with only some poor kid's uncovered hand to show for it, he stopped. There might have been more still buried but he was starting to feel fatigued.

"It's mostly dehydrated food and other consumables. There's a few canisters with weird code names on them but I have a feeling they belong to someone... It's not like the rest is going to grow legs and walk away... I hope... Let's just remember where it is. It'll be easier to return with some help later."

Seeing that the exposed crystals were taking on some of the taint from the air, he wrapped up some cleaner ones in the back and made his way to where the girl and young man were. Dropping down with his retrieved goodies, he started pawing through them and threw some rations to the girl.

"I noticed that they didn't send any water or much that could be drank. There doesn't look like there's any sources of water around anywhere either. How do people not die of thirst?"

As she summoned some water into a repurposed ration bag, she said, "Every group has someone like me. Knowing our backgrounds and with the right conditioning, the operators can somewhat control what kind of talents we start off with. Over time, they twist and warp like everything else but..."

Looking thoughtful and a bit sorry he was making her uncomfortable, he said, "Sorry, I'm not asking for pure curiosity... How do they do that?"

"For me?... They didn't give me any water. They poured it around me, over me, but they didn't give me any. Not until I started adapting, anyway," she said.

He was no stranger to the haunted look in her eyes. There weren't many kids in the system that didn't have one version of it or another. She probably had a lot more to tell but he didn't see any need for it. At least, not for what it would cost her to tell it.