Chapter 27: 3-7 Charmed

Charmed 3.7

2000, July 12: Phoenix, AZ, USA

Honestly, I thought she'd ask for something smaller and leaner, a stiletto maybe. She wasn't the sort to actually get into a frontal fight with anyone so I expected her to want something she could hide in a discrete pocket, maybe even a ring with a collapsible blade she could drag over someone's throat when they weren't paying attention.

Instead, she asked for something with far more substance. I suspected that this overlarge kitchen knife would either be a gift for her dear Veronica or a way to arm Freeform further. Or perhaps a bribe for someone else? Who knew with her?

Regardless, I finished the knife in two days, though it looked more like a shortsword than a knife in my diminutive hands. It was as long as my thigh, a tad less than twelve inches, five inches of hilt and seven of blade. It was a sleek, double-edged thing made for thrusting, with a nice, sturdy spine that did not fold. The hilt was wrapped walnut and colored with a smoky, dark lacquer that contrasted nicely with the almost pearlescent-white Petricite alloy. All told, it was a beautiful piece, both functional and elegant.

'Leave it to Inspiration to make sure I give it my all.'

And true to her word, Camille had delivered on her side of the deal. The very evening I gave her the knife, she gave me an extremely pricey tea set, the sort used in Shinto and Buddhist tea ceremonies. It was the single most expensive thing I'd ever owned in either of my lives, not counting my car or similar major purchase. Just the tea set, cups and pot, cost over seven hundred dollars, with the incense burner and complementary supplies adding up to an additional four hundred. For a boy who'd been born to immigrant parents in both lives, a thousand one hundred dollars was an absolutely staggering price tag for some leisure items.

"This is the kind of money a Crip exec can throw around," she said with her characteristic seductive smile. "You could have this kind of luxury too," she implied.

It was early in the morning, hours before daybreak. I took a sip of the Oracle's Elixir on my nightstand and made sure Lawless was still asleep before I shuffled out of bed and got to work. It wasn't the expensive tea cups I was interested in. Rather, it was the chamomile.

It was no coincidence that I'd asked for it, buried as one of many requests addressing my personal cravings. Fun fact: Chamomile was a type of daisy, but that wasn't important by its lonesome. Good chamomile was characterized by its mild flavor and fragrance and only the flower heads were used to brew the tea. The tea was most commonly known for being a home remedy for insomnia.

A flower associated with a good night's sleep.

A flower associated with good dreams.

Perfect.

In the main office, I gently cupped a handful of dried flowers and poured mana into them, focusing earnestly on my need. A hauntingly beautiful blue light shone from the flowers as they were remade into something different, something that didn't exist on this world. A set of six half-bloomed buds sat where the chamomile daisies were moments ago.

The dream blossoms were flowers with five large petals, blue on the inside and royal-purple on the exterior. They were creations of magic and spirit as much as standard matter and seemed to glow with an inner light, thankfully not too bright in the darkness.

I took a whiff of the flowers. Their smell was impossible to describe, a fragrance that reminded me of tranquil nights and childhood bedtime stories. It reminded me of my father in my past life, who decorated the ceiling of my childhood room with glow in the dark stars because I was afraid of the dark.

But there was danger there too, a hint of bitterness and something briny. It smelled of the ocean and I was briefly taken back to Busan. Salt on my tongue. Shouting. Feeling so small as I sank, paralyzed by the cold. White hot pain in my eyes.

I reeled back as though struck. Too much was definitely a bad thing. It was a warning, like ominous stormclouds in the distance.

Nightmares were dreams too.

I stood and immediately staggered a bit, feeling drowsy. I frowned. It was as I thought: Just as I wasn't automatically immune to any poisons I could make, I wasn't immune to the dream blossom's effects either. Still, this was a solid proof of concept. I could control this, my first foray into the higher magics of the First Lands.

I spent as much time as I dared pouring mana into the dream blossoms then pressed the flowers inside my pillowcase until they lied flat and hidden. Lillia cultivated them, but they also naturally nourished themselves off of the dreams of mortals; it was what had gotten Lillia so fascinated with humanity in the first place. By leaving them inside my pillow, I was both hiding them and giving them the chance to absorb my own dreams.

Soon, the blossoms would bloom in full and I'd be able to make my escape.

X

I went to sleep and found myself within the temple of my soul once more. The Rune of Inspiration swirled before me, three Keystones surrounded by nine lesser runes in an ever expanding orbit. It took my breath away, every time like the first time.

I was familiar by now. I knew what had happened; the dream blossoms had been enough to propel my progress. It wasn't too much of a surprise. One of the lesser runes ignited after I built my relic pistol, but I hadn't received anything from making the Petricite Elixir, the Tear of the Goddess, or the Control Wards. I was very close anyway.

With eager hands trembling, I stepped towards the altar and beckoned a star down.

I'd never been happier to receive one of these before. Every one of them was unique in their own way, each a fragment of eternity, but there was an undeniable urgency that accompanied this one.

Help, it promised. More and more, I was realizing that the World Rune had a mind of its own.

"Hextech Flashtraption." I recognized the rune with ease.

I looked down as power filled me. Heat coursed through my body and condensed itself onto my hand, forming yet another tattoo just behind the three bullets of the Minion Dematerializer. It looked like a swirl of energy overlaid atop some complex gear.

'No, not energy,' I realized, 'a portal.'

As the power settled, its properties engraved themselves in my soul and I knew that nothing in existence could separate it from me.

Once per day, I could overcharge this fragment of the World Rune, allowing me to channel for three seconds then teleport to anywhere within my field of perception. I got the sense that this could improve, if only I could grasp a complete understanding of the magics that governed space and time. The obvious solution would be to simply increase my range of perception.

"Can I make binoculars for the Oracle's?" I wondered to myself.

I shook my head. That was stupid…

"But… maybe not?"

What were Master Yi's goggles if not overlarge binoculars? The Seven Lenses of Insight, they were called. They were unique, crafted by none less than the Revered Inventor who was so impressed by the blademaster's martial prowess that he gave them to him as a gift. They were synchronized to Yi's own magical resonance and could change their settings through thoughts alone.

That certainly gave me some ideas…

I laughed. I laughed and laughed and had I been anywhere else but the confines of my own soul, would no doubt have been committed to an asylum. Here I was wracking my brain for a way out and one possible avenue dropped into my lap. I hadn't truly counted on it either; the growth of my personal power thanks to the World Rune seemed so very unreliable.

"But maybe," I said aloud, "unreliable is the way to go. Lawless can't hear anything if I don't know what I want either."

I could leave right now. Rouse myself, pack up what I could, then teleport away. Fifty meters, or a hundred-sixty-four feet wasn't a great distance, but it could be a good head start, right? They were all asleep anyway…

Then, like an icy deluge, reality reasserted itself into my life.

"No," I denied myself. Flash was not a quiet spell, nor a lightless one. Half the warehouse would be looking for me the moment I left.

At the end of the day, I still had no idea where I was. Even if I left, if Red Sands was located on the outskirts of town, I'd have to travel far on my stubby little legs to reach home, assuming I could figure out where that was. I could try to arm myself, I knew Camille kept the Petricite dagger and relic pistol in her nightstand, but trying to sneak into her room like that without the aid of the blossoms might get me caught.

And if I went to a cop… I knew for a fact that Lawless had cops on retainer; he certainly bragged about it enough. Phoenix wasn't Brockton Bay, but it wasn't exactly the safest city in the world either. I had no idea who could be trusted. There was a good chance that the first cop I met wouldn't be corrupt, but by putting myself into the system, I'd alert my pursuers of my location sooner than not. There were even odds of me having an "accident" as the PRT picking me up.

Worse, that would be plenty of time for them to take my mother hostage.

The same went for the PRT, but for different reasons. There could be moles, but… maybe not? My best bet would be to steal a phone and try to contact them, hoping that they could reach me before I was discovered, if they were in any position to come at all. Did the bombings happen or was it one more lie? They would have reorganized with reinforcements from other departments by now, right? Did mom get scooped up into protective custody? Or did she fall between the cracks amidst the chaos?

The appalling truth was that right now, I had no idea how solvent the local PRT was and the uncertainty weighed on me like heavy chains.

"They need to die," I realized.

I had similar thoughts during the day of course. When Lawless not so subtly threatened my mother. When he dropped racial slurs at me or told me about all the "fun" he'd had with this or that woman. When Camille hurled into the toilet after a night "convincing" Freeform.

But this, this was an epiphany. It wasn't a moment of passion or some dark thoughts sprouted in irritation. No. They needed to die because my circumstances would not change without their deaths. My physical escape would get me away from Camille, but it would put them on high alert and force them to retaliate in a way I found unacceptable. I knew their faces and names. If I wasn't theirs, I couldn't be allowed to live; La Torcha made that abundantly clear.

A wave of nausea filled me at the thought of harming Camille. It told me how deeply she'd already wormed herself into my head. I hardened my heart and decided on the only course I had left, the only course there could be since my kidnapping:

"So be it," I resolved myself. "There needs to be a precedent for the unwritten rules, right? Fine. Let's set a goddamn precedent."

X

The past few days had seen me make some progress on the EMP generator. It was Blitzcrank's, scaled down to be roughly the size of a basketball and only slightly south of twenty pounds, light compared to the behemoth that was the Great Steam Golem.

Blitzcrank didn't pop up in Zaun out of nothing; he was made by Viktor when the mad scientist was mostly sane. Viktor had wanted to eliminate human error from dangerous jobs like sump-diving, construction, and mining. When there was a massive chemical spill in Zaun, he created Blitzcrank to rescue and protect Zaun's denizens. If he hadn't, if his intentions had been to conquer or destroy rather than to save and defend, I suspected I would have had a much harder time isolating and adapting Blitzcrank's generator design into something completely nonlethal and human-friendly.

Still, this was my first foray into hextech, that mysterious and at times utterly paradoxical branch of science which sought to quantify and industrialize magic.

It wasn't easy.

Like any creation of Viktor, I needed a Hex Core. Or, an early-gen prototype of one that didn't require a Brackern's Namestone.

The real Hex Core that was embedded in Viktor's staff was a fully functioning artificial intelligence in its own right, capable of adapting and streamlining its systems on its own prerogative to better assist its master. That was how Viktor could use a single power source to power everything from an electromagnetic force field to a gravity field, thermal laser, and even a fully unrestrained mana storm… that could be remote-controlled somehow because genius and sociopath were often synonyms.

Blitzcrank's version was nowhere near that adaptable, but that was fine. I didn't need it to be. I just needed it to power a static discharge.

It took some carefully worded maneuvering, but I got everything I needed to build one from two car batteries and ten Mana Crystals. Or technically, six car batteries, seven portable generators used by campers, and a box of transformers. I had my fair share of failures.

No lie, I felt a bit like Tony Stark as I put the finishing touches on my prototype. Hell, it even looked a bit like an arc reactor, cylindrical and glowing with the blue light of mana. I wanted to turn it into a bomb. It wouldn't be too difficult to destabi-

The moment I thought that, the core was taken from my hands.

"No. No bombs, kid," Lawless said.

"I wasn't going to."

"I know. You got it good here. You ain't about to make shit worse for yourself. This an EMP?"

"Ha! No. That's the battery."

"You spent three days… making a battery?" he said, face carefully neutral.

"It's a bit more complicated than that, but sure. You know how a battery loses its capacity over time?" He stared at me blankly. "Well it does. That one doesn't. It's clean, light, and will last damn near forever. It also has a high enough capacity to shut down an entire city block."

"It need to be in an EMP?"

"That one? Yes."

And it was even true. I would love to explore the possibilities that a Hex Core represented, but right now? In their captivity? Not a chance in hell. "That thing can do a lot, but it also needs a lot of juice to get started. Kind of like how a boulder rolling down the hill has loads of energy, but you need something strong enough to shove the boulder off that ledge in the first place." I preempted his next question with a carefree shrug. "And no, you can't just hook it up to a car battery. It specifically needs to be steam. Don't ask me why, but my tech wants to be a hodgepodge of magic bullshit and steampunk."

"You made an infinite battery that only responds to… steam?"

"Not infinite. Nothing's infinite. Sure, it'll last for decades, maybe even centuries, but it'll still deteriorate eventually. But yes. Steam."

He looked at the first-gen Hex Core for a moment and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. He grabbed me by the arm and started dragging me out of the lab. "You know what? I don't give a damn. You can tell me what you need for the rest of this over lunch."

"Peruvian chicken?"

"Sure, kid. Where does a chink even get a taste for Peruvian chicken?"

I let the casual racism slide off me like water off a duck's back. It was practically second nature now. "What can I say? I'm a cosmopolitan."

Author's Note

Ugh… Not happy with this, but ehh. I think it's a decent attempt at getting Andy to build something more than potions and vague enchanted things.