Thirty-Six

Heat suffused him, filling him and threatened to burst free of his skin. Kon twisted as he drifted in between consciousness and unconsciousness. Eyes flickered back and forth between tightly clenched eyelids as his chest rose and fell in fast, shallow breaths. Sweat popped free of his body, oily and filled with impurities as his body thrashed on the cold floor.

Kon felt all of that from a distance, disconnected from his body as he felt the pain and heat. It was as if he was observing it from a distance, a memory that wracked him with pain but was far enough away that he wasn't consumed by it. Memories started to trickle through his mind as he burned up from the inside out.

A cold bitter wind chapped his lips as he looked up and across the barren fields. Hydroponic tanks were nestled in the earth, the glass covers hardly coming up and over the flat ground. The distant walls of the colony were lit with bursts of light and animalistic screams hardly reached him.

"Kon, move it! We have to leave!" The voice was distant, thin and weak, not at all like it was in reality. Father's voice was like a drum, a deep bellow that always pounded on one's ears.

Kon turned and ran, legs pumping as puffs of dust rose to coat his pants. His shadow lengthened against the gray-blue dust as the red lights of the auto-cannons continued to pulse. Ahead of him a shuttle whined as its engines began to power up. Father was nowhere to be seen, only the long stretch of ground between him and safety while the howls of the rift beasts chased him.

Diur pulled an eyelid back and hissed. Kon vaguely recognized what she was doing as she pulled him out of his soaked leathers and let his inflamed skin rest on the cool stone. Her aura billowed out around her thicker than he had ever seen. Then he was sliding back into the burning dreams.

The tightly packed cargo hold stunk. Human refuse had begun to overflow as the overworked recycling center had jammed. Acrid smell of burnt insulation intermingled with sweat and body odor. Mother's hand was already starting to feel small as she clung to his shoulder. Their family had carved out a small niche to the side of the packed throng.

His family's faces were blurred as were the rest of those who clustered around them. Kon struggled to break free of the fever dream, of the feelings crushing him down. Of his helplessness, the weakness that had plagued him. It was to no avail.

"That's all there is, I'm sorry, baby," Mother sobbed, it was so quiet that it was lost in the constant murmur of the crowd. Kon's baby sister cried loudly as she curled up and over herself, thin fingers clutching at her stomach. Father was a shell, crumpled up in the corner with more blurry siblings attached to him as they stifled their own hungry cries.

Quiet descended suddenly in a wave, rippling through them until he could hear a pin drop. A voice boomed out, words indecipherable. A stir started in the crowd, young people trickling forth. Kon slowly rolled his shoulder, shedding Mom's small hand. He placed the roll of hard bread in those delicate fingers and turned and walked forward. The cries of his siblings increased, his father's now weak voice attempted to hold him. Mom's words pushed him further towards the armored giants in their gleaming armor who stood in front of the crowd.

"Forgive us."

Kon woke for a moment, aware of the slick feel that coated his body. Of the stale air that caressed every part of his body. Even his boots had been pulled off. He choked and turned to the side and threw up, bile burning as hacked over and over again. Diur's strong hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away from his own refuse.

"Kon. You must direct the energy. It's burning you up. You need to direct it!" Diur yelled inches from his face, but he was already being dragged back into the memories.

"RECRUITS! Down! Up! Down! Up!" the words were a cadence as Kon struggled to rise off the cold deck. Pain radiated throughout his body as he struggled to get up and off the deck. The instructor stopped their marching and stopped, black books stopping in front of his face.

"Recruit! Did I give you permission to rest?!" Spittle flecked across Kon's face as he tried as hard as he could to push himself off the deck. His arms failed him, leaving him there as the instructor spent the next few minutes screaming at him, reminding him how useless he was before moving off.

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"Pathetic," the recruit next to him whispered. Kon turned to look at the athletic boy. He was pale as milk, the look of someone who never had felt the warmth of a sun. A true son of the fleet. The boy was mechanical as he rose up and down off the deck, sweat slicked face sneering as he continued to do press ups. Kon cried out in a mix of pain and rage and slowly his arms started to push him up. Halfway up they failed and he slammed back into the deck as the muted sounds of dark laughter filled his ears.

"Kon focus! Move the energy, let it fill your body, but spread it out!" Diur's voice was frantic. Kon could feel the ball of energy pusling in his core, his node working overtime to redirect the energy, but failing. It was easy for him to reach inward and grab that pulsing mass of incandescent energy and start pushing it around. In his mind's eye it was a star and he ripped it apart until it formed rivers of plasma, connecting his nodes clearly as all three of them drank deeply.

It wasn't enough. The star was still too big and burning too brightly, the three nodes did little but alleviate the pain for a few moments. He grabbed more of the energy and started to push it around his body. There were paths of least resistance that the energy flowed through, filling and burning as he sketched out a skeletal outline of his body.

A scream of pain ripped its way out of him as his body involuntarily bowed, feet and head rising while his hips tried to punch through the stone floor. Every one of his bones burned like phosphorous and his scream faded away as he fell unconscious again.

A pillar of violet fire filled the hallway as klaxons screamed. He lay there, weak and desperate as the fire raced forth to stop the blue wave that threatened to sweep them away. The pistol's grip was small and pathetic in his hand as he aimed down the sights. Frustration welled as the blue flame filled the room, threatening to overwhelm the violet.

Rage and fear mingled together and he screamed as he fired. The blue flame flinched and then the violet was there, overwhelming it, pushing it back and then subduing it. Smothering and consuming it in a blast of power that left the hallway darkened and burned. The flame was hardly more than a flicker and then it was gone and he was starring at Alice Roose's face. Her arm lay on the ground, separated from her body.

To the side was the crushed Lupine warrior. Its head was nothing more than a mangled ruin embedded in the side of the bulkhead. She was trying to stand but failing and all Kon did was stand there, stupid and weak.

"No. No, that's not what happened," Kon groaned through gritted teeth as he woke again. White hot pain wanted to drag him back under into the sea of memories and he had no doubt if he went back under he'd continue to be assaulted by the feelings of weakness. Of being powerless as everything around him threw him about.

"Stay awake. You're doing good, but you need to continue to move the energy!" Diur whispered in his ear. Her fingers clenched his head tightly, holding him still even as the rest of his body thrashed. Every limb was moving on their accord, lashing the air and impacting the ground with bruising force. Kon closed his eyes and dove back inside to look at his metaphysical body.

Every time he did this, it got easier. He could see his body like it was an anatomical display, his body broken into a layered display that he could pull apart with a thought. Right now there was a double fist sized star trying to go supernova in his gut. His nodes were screaming, stretched beyond what they had been designed to handle. A sense of foreboding hit him, if he didn't fix this and do it soon, those runes would melt away under the power in his body.

A flex of his willpower started those streams of energy moving again, breaking through the containment of his nodes and into the rest of his body. He had already fed his skeleton plenty of energy, the bones had a golden hue to them now, and he wanted to push the rest of the power into his musculature.

It was trying and painful. A torture beyond anything he'd felt so far as raw power scoured him. Every muscle fiber absorbed as much energy as they could then they broke apart only to be forced back together by his node which was continuously trying to repair the damage.

Time stretched out and became meaningless as he struggled until every inch of his body below the neck was glowing. Kon had hoped that it would be enough, that the dense knot of power would be weak enough that he could finish without pushing it into his head. Now that he had suffused himself there was nowhere else for the knot of power to go beside his head.

Kon felt wrung out, his mind frayed to the point of being ready to break. Diur's calm and steady presence was a distant feeling, her cool fingers gripped his sweated head in an iron grip that kept him steady. He took a deep breath and then started to push that last nugget of energy through his body and toward his head.

As it pushed through his neck he screamed. Both in the metaphysical world and reality. It was raw, primal, something that transcended civilization as the last trickles of power entered his brain and began to sink into the folds.

"You're doing good, Kon. So good. It's almost over," Diur whispered to him and he grit his teeth and continued to move that energy about till there was nothing left. His entire metaphysical body was coated in golden, glowing energy. Then it began to sink in, drawn deep and away as the glow faded away. With it the pain left.

The sudden absence of pain was so startling that Kon nearly cried in relief and sorrow. It had become for a brief moment, a companion. Something to hold at bay the crushing exhaustion that now sank its claws deep into his mind. He fell back into a slumber as the fever broke and he stopped his thrashing.

"Monster," the word was so soft that he hardly heard it as he fell asleep.

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