Ever have a friend who takes things a bit too… Personally?
You know, that really intense one, with a lot of feelings, and they’re fantastic in so many ways but you say something you think is an offhand comment and next week there’s a little folder with several research papers and citations and really well-laid-out arguments about why you’re wrong, and you know you have to read the whole thing because they’ll ask you about it later.
That friend. The one you kinda felt sorry for in any social situation but god damn did they get paid well.
Kesh was that kind of friend. She wasn’t really shy -she would tell you what she thought. Problem is it took her a while to get all her thoughts lined up. That’s why she was great at the practicals -highest score since Inrin the Mighty, because I do all her bragging for her -but failed every single timed test.
Kesh was a rare bird. One of those dual-specialty types. Me, I like a good fireballing more than the next kid, and couldn’t remember the difference between a ligament and a tendon if you held me at wandpoint, so into the front lines went I.
Kesh was a give’n’take. She could melt the faces off a hundred soldiers with one hand and sooth their burning skin with the other. The Academy wanted her front lines too -but she faints at the sight of blood.
Well, I suppose the whole thing is my fault, in the end. I was the one who took her out for drinks, and I was the one she got into a flaming row with over whether healing or battle magics were the more powerful. I suppose there was the weather witch who got into it a bit, but I told her to bug out, so she did. I was the one she had to prove it to.
Well, it took her some time, but prove it she did. She’d always been good enough to brink -you know, they’re seeing the light, calling for mommy, she puts some manna in and they’re ready to fight for the glory of the State -but going past that? Nobody. Nobody had the power.
Well, telling Kesh she was wrong was the best way to get the impossible to happen. She gave me the notes, I gave it to my girlfriend at the time, and she brought a broke-necked sparrow back. Her theories were sound, and the practice… well, the sparrow sang for itself.
It’s hard to fight an army that stands back up, no matter the cost. It’s even harder to see your own solders get back up and turn on you. The War of Infinity was made finite. Empire soldiers and mages alike lay down their arms rather than face her. The other healers could do it if the body was still warm, but Kesh -Kesh could walk onto a battlefield three days cold and wake them from the deepest sleep.
It felt too good to be true. Healing beyond the grave. You ever have that feeling that you’re missing something? Like that trick where somebody gives you a list of ingredients for a cake and it turns out the third step in is mixing baking soda and vinegar and instead of cake you’ve got an unholy mess to clean up. I felt like I had read the recipe, but I didn’t know all the ingredients. Magic comes at a cost; the Academy taught me nothing but that. Battle magic costs your sanity; healing costs your strength; weather costs your life. To heal the dead, over and over, Kesh’s body should have been sagging. She should have had to crawl to bed at the end of every day.
But she was limitless.
It was that limitlessness that made me watch her. As Academy friends, and well respected mages of the State, we were afforded more freedom than the rank and file. Wine at dinner, that sort of thing.
She didn’t eat any more. She didn’t sleep, either, not that I could see at least. She had always been intense, but as the war came to a close, her gaze could cut you to the bone.
Of course, the history books will note the Kensing Massacre. Two full companies, one Empire, converged on a neutral territory and wiped out the inhabitants in their desperation to slaughter each other. Both sides sustained casualties of 75% or higher. The city that formed their battleground was… God. It hurts to remember. The battle magics used weren’t legal, and their healers had run out of strength even before half their number were dead.
Kesh wailed when she saw. Her orders were to revive State soldiers first, of course, but she disobeyed. Neutral ground, drenched in blood, was her first priority.
The soldiers she raised pledged fealty to her. They always did.
Perhaps it was because I had to go to the bushes and retch while she was raising the city this time, so I wasn’t in the center of it all; perhaps I just finally noticed what had been there all along. But it was the massacre that showed me where it all came from.
The neutral territory was deep in the farmlands. Armies marching through are hardly conducive to crops. But what I saw went beyond the usual crushing or petty thievery. As they walked, a cloud of dead vegetation expanded around us. Birds fell from the skies. She was, I think, in control enough not to harm the livestock she saw, but she didn’t see the child hiding in the barn until it was too late.
We had a long talk, Kesh and I. I suggested that, with the war finally winding down, she might suggest to the higher ups that her infinite power source was, like the Infinite war, in fact rather finite and should be used sparingly. She nodded along.
But in the end, she believed with a passion that she was right and I was wrong, and as Kesh did, she had to prove it.
So. Now you know. The reason you’ve been asked to do the impossible, and stand against the God-Queen’s army?
It’s me.
Reading Cactus 