Home is not a place. Home is people. Without people a building is just a building, but with them a tent can feel like a castle.
Old Imperial proverb
REPLACE WITH LINE BREAK p^o^q REPLACE WITH LINE BREAK
Marcus strained against mental exhaustion as he scraped the last few drops of magic from his reserves, space twisting and depositing their small group up the hill. The Eastfort spread out before them, finally visible even though they'd been 'close' for three hours now, and he'd never been more happy to see the sprawling fortress.
He felt a bit bad about leading a massive horde to it, even if said horde was only a quarter of the size it had been, but honestly he was too tired to care.
There was no time for proper rest, not with four wounded with them. Even if there had been, the illusions keeping them safe only worked properly if the enemy didn't know you were there. And oh boy did the enemy know he was there after they'd killed a Calamity.
The Eastfort's main gate opened and a group of mounted Royal Guards exited, which he intended to meet halfway yet found himself unable to.
Huh. He was actually out of magic. It explained the massive migraine he was currently undergoing, and it had been a while since he went this far. And it had also been a while since they'd drunk their last painkiller potion, so he was very much looking forward to a few of those.
Elly turned to him when they failed to move, smiling widely and gesturing to the fort. "Shall I carry you the rest of the way, husband?"
"You're an insult to human limits," he replied, groaning. It seemed the sight of home, however temporary it was, had signaled to his body that they were done. Over. Officially out of energy. "I mean, you haven't slept in two days and you look fine."
She hummed. "I'm not fine, and did you really just complain about human limits? You, Marcus I-like-to-violate-space-on-a-whim Lannoy? You dare complain to me about human limits?"
"Pretty much. Now please hush, I need to conserve my non-existent energy so as to not make a fool out of myself when we're paraded into the fort as conquering heroes."
The next hour went by in a blur, Marcus not really paying attention to much but old decorum lessons. Head held high, expression carefully neutral, nodding to random people but never singling someone out. It almost seemed like the whole damn fort had come out to gawk, but he didn't deny them the small spectacle.
They'd be fighting again soon enough.
It was just him and Elly, by the end. Everyone else had been taken away for healing and rest, something he was looking forward to himself. He lost a bit of time after that, seeming to skip forward until he was in his room again, and Marcus blinked at the team of healers crowded around them.
Elly was essentially being drowned in general, low-level healing. The kind that didn't target a specific issue and was often wasteful because of it, but for her type of injury it worked fine. Better than fine, really. Fixing every bone, muscle and joint one at the time was tedious at best.
Marcus himself was checked over and offered a selection of arms, which he blinked at. Arms? Why would he need-
Ah, right. "No replacement."
He wanted to try his hand at regrowing one, which was going to take days but would be good practice, and yet the healers hesitated. One even picked up an arm anyway, and though Marcus wasn't sure if the woman was going to force it on him or just trying to show the thing off, it earned her a glare.
Which made her flinch, so it had probably been too much, but whatever. He was too tired for this. "I can do the rest myself. Go help with the battle."
More hesitation, though this time Elly got them moving by slapping her hands together. Rather dramatic, especially by how loud it was, but fine. Whatever. He needed-
What did he need? Sleep. Right. Just half an hour, then he'd go help with the defense.
He leaned back, and consciousness fled before he'd even fully closed his eyes.
A flicker of a man appeared and vanished, old but hale. Power blazed behind bored eyes, and while his feet didn't take a single step, space blurred. Four younger people were with him, three men and a woman, while an entire army was arranged at his back. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers, thousands of mages, and with a flick of the old man's wrist, a port-
A sun spluttered and died, its hue growing from yellow to red, as its mass contracted towards the core. The edges exploded outwards, the aging of a celestial body going unobserved.
A dense cloud of gas and dust collapsed under its own weight, gravity compressing all matter into a new star. But mass increased gravity, drawing more matter into its center, until even light itself couldn't escape its grasp. Its endless hunger devoured entire galaxies, silent as the grave.
Something poked him and Marcus snapped back to wakefulness, adrenaline surging. A shape loomed over him, the spatial arc weaved and sliced— No.
He pulled back at the last moment, Elly's face jerking backwards. She glared at him reproachfully. "You'll just have to heal what you damage, you know that right?"
"Sorry," he groaned, heaving himself up. "Bad dream. Good dream? It sure was one of my dreams of all time. Shit, the attack."
Marcus shot up, but Elly waved her hand. "It finished up about an hour ago. It was a hard fight, not going to lie, but actual casualties were fairly low. General Pator ordered the mine perimeter to be extended by three miles, which wiped out a great number of Hounds, and my Mirranian Life Enhancement recruits got a little eager and slaughtered a few hundred Champions. What remained was taken care of by the rank and file."
He slowly leaned back in his chair, waving his hand and frowning when nothing happened. Ah, yes. Losing a limb. And then refusing a replacement, at that. Strange how easily that could slip one's mind.
She tilted her head when he didn't respond. "Are you alright?"
"I'm just missing a limb," he dismissed, turning to her fully. "You, on the other hand, quite possibly have brain damage. What did the healers say?"
Elly shrugged. "No headache, no dizziness, no internal bleeding. They couldn't fix my eye, and apparently they're 'unable' to fix my injuries more directly, but otherwise I'm good. Aside from my foot, which hurts but is otherwise doing its job."
"I'm shocked." Marcus rolled his eyes. "And if it hurts it isn't healed. Come here."
She moved closer, offering her hand and looking away shyly. Or what she imagined shyly to look like, anyway, since he doubted she'd ever felt a moment of shyness in her life. Awareness unfolded in his mind, and he decided he didn't feel like being clever.
Elly gasped as he dumped a fifth tier's worth of healing into her body, all but sweeping aside her own Life energy. It drained the reserves he'd recovered during his nap, and intensified his headache, but her look of startled stupor was worth it.
…he was also being impulsive, which he was definitely going to blame on the trauma of losing an arm.
She belatedly jerked her hand away, glaring. "That was rude."
"It was," he agreed easily. "Feel better?"
Elly huffed. "I feel like I was dumped into an ice bath, you wasteful creature, but yes."
"Meh," he intoned. "Efficiency is for after breakfast. Or lunch. What time is it?"
"See if I feed you anything after this vile betrayal, husband. I have half a mind to put-"
She cut herself off, clearing her throat awkwardly. Marcus hummed. "To put poison in it? Smooth."
"Yes, well," Elly cleared her throat again. "I thought better of it, didn't I? Now stop showing off how mature and over your food phobia you are and give me a new eye."
Marcus shrugged, rising to better inspect it. The organ—which it technically was—looked fine, but he doubted Elly would ask for a new one if the healers had managed to fix it. He peered deeper, not catching how Elly squirmed for a long second before stilling herself, and he spoke after some thirty seconds of inspection.
"The healers keep some replacements in store. A permanent replacement will need Margaret, but our dear senior healer is back in Redwater, building her core of dedicated medico. Congratulations, you get to try out a few eye colors."
Elly smiled, Marcus frowning at its somewhat shaky nature, but it was gone a moment later. He shrugged internally, lamenting the fact Margaret couldn't be here. She could have fixed them both up like that, but alas, no amount of power was a substitute for skill.
Marcus took her to the medical—and spatially enlarged—center, which was full but not critically so, and politely asked the clerk for their preserved eyes. The poor kid almost fell over himself to fetch someone who could approve that, a much older woman unlocking the cabinet before promptly leaving them be, and he pointed to a chair as he went through the options.
Elly sat, picked out her new eye, he scooped out her old one after numbing the area, and it took only a whisper of reserves to implant the new one. Not permanently, but it would last longer than his had.
One dark green and one light blue eye stared back at him, Elly shaking her head a few times and blinking rapidly. "This is weird. Really weird."
"That will pass," he assured. "Try not to strain too hard."
Elly promptly stopped straining, making him grin, and with her eye replaced the only real injury that still needed tending to was his arm. Or the lack of one, as it was. Healing that, with him not having done it before, was actually going to take some experimentation.
Experimentation took magic, unfortunately, and he was running on empty again. Which basically necessitated him to spend the entire day relaxing, though he made sure to show his face every few hours. Even helped heal some of the wounded, actually making proper small-scale but critical fixes instead of just dumping a lot of energy into their veins.
It was rather pleasant after hunting the Calamity. Elly spent time with her general, probably going over the time she'd lost, and in the evening he reviewed the progress made by Barcus and Donna. His apprentices had almost mastered the spatial arc now, though it was rather taxing for them.
By early morning he'd recovered enough to actually attempt some initial progress, absentmindedly eating his breakfast as Elly played with her new toys.
He didn't see the humor in rolling two fist-sized gems over the table, not even if their translucent nature and black core sparkled when touched by light, but to each their own.
Growing an arm was, in essence, simple. Not easy, but simple. Embryos did it all the time, though those abilities vanished once the person grew up. In some animals they never did, and he fondly remembered a weekend of watching a salamander regrow its arm.
He'd been young, then. Alone and not sure why that bothered him, let alone how to fix it. Marcus shook the memory off, cycling a third-tier healing matrix through his stump.
So, awaken dormant growth genes, substitute the energy requirement with magic, then keep an eye on it to ensure the rapid growth didn't introduce cancer. Simple. And yet not easy, because the first attempt at awakening one of his growth genes ended in failure.
He knew how to do it, technically. Read all about the procedure. But actually doing it was like trying to hold water in his fist, watching with growing annoyance as it leaked between the seams.
Marcus ate as he worked, absentmindedly picking at some eggs with telekinesis when he grew bored of failure, and Elly left soon after. More recruits had arrived from Mirrania, news about the nobles finally 'being economically capable' of raising their armies had arrived with them, and more something else he'd already forgotten about.
Eh, probably not important. Marcus moved to a much more comfortable chair and kept working, stubbornness setting in even as progress reluctantly reared its head, and by the early afternoon he was sending small clusters of special blood towards his stump. He had a small proto-arm dangling from it by dinner, at which point he was so mentally exhausted he barely noticed Elly walking inside.
Shit, he'd spent the whole day on this? That was kind of sad.
Marcus waved with his new arm, which did nothing but kind of flop around, and Elly actually shuddered. He raised an eyebrow and suppressed a smirk. "Something wrong?"
"Why would something be wrong?" she countered, charging forwards. "Not like I came inside to see someone having stitched a baby's arm onto a grown adult. That would just be weird."
"Well, I can't just wave my hand and go 'poof', can I? The human body is incredibly complex, and flexing its limits is how healers trick it into healing things it isn't evolved to do."
Elly hummed. "Yeah, good point. It'd be almost like magic, otherwise."
"Shut up."
She grinned, shaking her head and poking the arm. Marcus shuddered, which made her grin wider, and he dodged a second attempt. Then had to double-step away from her, which of course meant she enhanced her speed to catch up, and the next minute grew increasingly frantic as he tried to dodge away from her in the limited space of their room.
It ended with him cornered and her hand tightening on his shoulder, a mocking grin on her face, so he deposited her to the other side of the room. Then again when she moved to close the distance, her smile melting away into a pout.
"You're a child," he condemned, taking his seat with as much dignity as he could. "Now sit before you almost knock over the table again."
Elly did, tone just whiny enough to grate on his nerves. Curse her. "But I had to be professional all day. Impressing the troops, lessons with my newly overconfident pupils, hour long strategy meetings. Do you know how boring that was? And now I find my husband growing baby arms and refusing to play with me. I get bored, you know? Do you want me to be bored?"
No. The answer to that was definitely no. But he couldn't exactly tell her that, not without sacrificing what little of his dignity he still cared about. Ah, now there was an idea.
"You're bored?" Marcus inquired, doing his best to sound casual. He could see the caution descending over her like a blanket. "Well, I could always use some more meditation practice. Alternate realities don't conquer themselves, do they?"
He'd meant it as a joke, but a memory surfaced anyway. A memory of a man appearing and vanishing, old but hale, with bored eyes that blazed with power.
Marcus shrugged it off as Elly answered, her tone reluctant. "I was thinking maybe a spar, or something?"
"You'd fight a cripple?" he asked. She nodded happily, making him sigh. "Of course you would. I shall be the adult you clearly are incapable of being and remind you that we're both still injured, and that repeatedly dancing with death does require rest to recuperate from."
Elly groaned, sagging against his shoulder. "Fiiine. But we're sparring tomorrow. I want to make you bleed."
By the silent Gods, she was going to be the death of him. He patted her head awkwardly, not entirely sure how to interpret the pleased smile she sent him in reply, and extracted himself to sit on the couch.
Meditation while sitting cross-legged on the floor, or even better on some remote viewpoint, was dramatic and traditional and all that, but he was done being miserable for the day.
Elly joined him after dragging over a chair, facing him and losing her last spark of bored playfulness. He felt a pang of regret at making her stop being—and this pained him to admit even in the privacy of his own mind—adorable, but they were still at war.
Another Calamity would come soon enough, and he was going to be ready.
Marcus slipped into meditation easily enough, though Life was as unresponsive as ever, and for a while he was just breathing. Calming his mind, working towards a state of non-thought that could come so easily yet was impossible to force. Elly's core pulsed in soothing patterns as he did, an anchor and guide both. A literal wave of calming energy, her very presence soothing the air.
This would be the, what? Sixteenth time they'd tried this? None had led to a visit to the Mirror Dimension, none had succeeded in any meaningful way, and yet… and yet.
And yet he was here. Trying because it was better than giving up. Trying because there was no other choice, and there was-
"What in the name of the Senseless are you doing, boy?"
Marcus snapped his eyes open, a dark pool of nothing spreading out in all directions. Elly was gone, but the couch wasn't. Neither was the room, though the walls stretched and vanished without ever forming a proper cube.
He looked at the one who had spoken, and an old man greeted him with a scowl. A moment of fear shot through him before he realized this was someone else than the one who he'd dreamed about.
There wasn't much difference, in truth. A scar here and not on the other. They way they held themselves. But still, it meant the dream had been about him, or at least one of him. A Marcus, not the Marcus.
"Pay attention," the old man barked, tapping his cane against the wooden floor. He continued in a mutter, though Marcus still caught it. "The younger ones keep getting more and more stupid, I swear. Tighten your focus, boy, before this shoddy construct vanishes."
Marcus rose, turning to the old him fully. "I am not your boy."
"A spine," the man gasped, one hand coming to his chest. It dropped after a moment, the scowl returning. "At least you got that. Infinity means there are those of us who are cowards, who are vile and greedy and vain. Remember that. Now picture whatever room this is, and focus."
Marcus did, though he never took his eyes off the stranger. Himself, technically, but so far diverged he felt little kinship. The room solidified, the corners tightening and a roof appearing, while the old man sat gingerly into the chair Elly had once occupied.
The cane tapped against the floor again, and Marcus suppressed the irrational urge to snap it in half. "I found you drifting in the void, boy, and be glad I did. Navigating through this place is not without its dangers. And now you will ask for my help, no doubt."
"A collaboration," Marcus offered, tone forcefully even. "I need to learn about portals, and-"
The man cut him off, spitting on the floor and rising not a minute after having sat down. "Portals? You haven't mastered portals? Senseless take me, I thought you might actually be interesting. Away, boy. Away before I cast you back to whatever shithole you crawled out of."
"A collaboration," Marcus repeated, almost biting the word. He took a breath. "You are older, it's natural you would be more experienced. Help me with this, and-"
"And what? You will teach me some paltry trick I care nothing for? No. Power doesn't come through collaboration. Power comes from will. From the desire to act! Fate, Gods, all can be made to bow if you'd only willed it. Bah."
The man spat on the floor again, turning away and walking towards the wall. Marcus felt a pressure expand from him, calling on his own power, but the room vanished before he could do more than begin to resist. Then the old him was gone, his not-concentration broke, and Marcus opened his eyes with a scowl of his own.
Marcus groaned, rubbing his head. "I'm an asshole."
"Well, I hadn't wanted to say anything, butttt," Elly replied, opening her own eyes. Her grin died when she looked at him. "Everything alright?"
He rose, turning towards the small side room where he'd been keeping his books. His proto-arm twitched as he did, something he ignored. "Fine. I need to check something."
Marcus set off, leaving a bewildered Elly behind and pushing open the door.
Power comes from the desire to act.