Summer Garden

Trei

His head hurt. That was the first sensation that came back to him. The beating of his heart pumping pain through the edges of his skull. Pounding away.

He went to lift his arms to his face, but as lightning stabbed through him, he decided that had been a terrible idea.

He tried not to flinch as the pain slowly poured over him like molten metal entering into a mould, moving from his brain towards his toes.

His brain was waking up slowly, still trying to piece things together. Clearly something had gone badly wrong. Really badly.

He tried to open his eyes but flinched as the light blazed down. Apparently he wasn't ready for that yet.

What had he been doing?

As he reached for his memories they seemed to evaporate like smoke. Fragments were all that were left. An image of a stone well, drifting like a leaf caught in a breeze. He didn't recognise it, or where it was from. It just seemed to be somewhat random. He couldn't remember why he might have walked by a well. The thing had been old too - but he lived in one of the most modern cities in the world.

Calis. A city founded to be free of politics, to focus solely on the improvement of the world. It wasn't entirely successful, but the Science Council did manage to be fairly even-handed. Creating a technological utopia, of sorts, where research and the freedom to explore new ideas was the core ideal.

He wasn't much of an inventor himself, just a drone slowly fulfilling the repetitive and mind-numbing work that those kinds of projects inevitably needed. Cutting stones for alchemists, to the various specifications of wildly varying detail. Going into the mines day after day, searching for the coal and minerals. Grindstone spinning to sharpen the seventy-fifth dagger of the day.

The face of a girl swam into his mind for a moment. A customer. She'd come in asking for runestone preparation. Break down the blade into the core components, clean each up to an incredibly high standard, and then reassemble. One of the most painstaking and boring jobs he could possibly do. She was cute though, and wanted to sit and watch, so he'd been talking to her. Or rather, he'd been attempting. She'd laughed at him a few times. Not with. It was just his kind of luck.

He opened his eyes slowly, glaring blearily at the sun overhead in the sky. He couldn't see anything else, just a cloudless blue sky and an extremely bright yellow ball of flame.

What had happened after the girl? He'd handed her the dagger, all ready for runestone application... And then something had happened. Something important. He winced, his headache driving painfully sharp blades into his skull. This was important, he had to remember. It was urgent. Life or death.

His eyes widened. A thief stealing the blade. The girl turning in surprise as he'd dashed off after them trying to impress her. A yelled phrase, and then a blast of incredibly hot wind. He crashed into the thief, swept off his feet.

He ignored the pain, holding up his hands and wincing as he saw blistered skin. Someone had tossed a fireball through him into the thief.

Magic wasn't unheard of, but it was rare. Most magic users were conscripted into the King's Army and turned into weapons of war. They were placed on the front-lines of the battlefield, fighting until they lost all humanity and either committed suicide or let themselves be destroyed. There was no soul in the veterans of the front-lines. If returned, they were unable to live in society. That was the brutality that lead to the formation of Calis. Trying to escape the politicians turning amazing discoveries into bloody meat grinders.

A magic user had attacked him.

He rolled over with effort, landing face-first in some grass, wincing as he felt a blade flicked a piece of skin from his face. The grass was vibrantly green, the contrast stark as a droplet of blood fell from his face and moved down it slowly. It was healthy, and well-tended. He had to be in a garden of some sort. Maybe he'd landed in someone's backyard? The street had been nothing but dust and mud.

He shuffled his knees painfully, and pushed himself upright. He shivered, his arms holding himself as he realised he wasn't wearing any clothes. Maybe the sun being overhead wasn't too bad. It was keeping him relatively warm at least.

He stared in surprise, seeing the old well in front of him. So he'd remembered passing out here, then. It really was old. The mortar was crumbling, and white. Most wells today used a kind of tar mixed with small stones. It set black, and lasted for years. It had been invented by one of the more eccentric creators of the city, a man who'd been placed on permanent house arrest after attempting to kill the president at his own medal ceremony. The inventions had kept coming though. The wonders of Vinadras.

"Oh. It's awake."

He turned his head, wincing as the headache made the world spin for a moment. He stared in surprise as the double vision faded. The voice had been of a woman, not one he'd met. She was a redhead, a complete rarity in the city. She was sitting on a wall nearby, cross-legged, sipping tea from a gold-edged cup.

His jaw dropped as a flash of movement caught his eye. On her back, were two nearly-transparent purple wings. They were about half her height, but spread out would be much wider than she was tall.

He swallowed nervously, "You're... Fae." His voice was surprisingly raspy, as if he wasn't used to speaking. It had emerged in croaks and grunts that seemed to offend the picturesque place he was in, an affront to the beautiful and incredibly rare creature in front of him. In fact, he hadn't believed the Fae were real. The original founders of the world, according to some myths. They were the ones who had first taught man to use magic, and taught them that the natural world could be controlled. Adapted to create cures for disease. They had taught humanity the first principles of natural philosophy. The myths never explained why the Fae had vanished, or why no one had ever found a corpse or fossil of this radically different race.

The woman nodded her head politely, "And I assume you think you're human, then?"

He frowned, his head still foggy and struggling to make sense of what she'd said, "... Yes?"

"You're not." The woman replied flatly, and then sipped her tea.

He swallowed nervously, "I'm... Not?"

She sighed with frustration and put down her tea, "Waking up is always the most annoying part. Look, you died. You got toasted by a mage. She murdered your ass because you were in an inconvenient location."

He nodded slowly, "... A she?"

"The girl you were irritating." The woman replied.

He blinked slowly, "Oh. The customer."

She nodded curtly, "Correct. So, you got killed. Then they dumped your body in the Pit. No one paid for a funeral. No one cared."

The Pit. A place where organic matter was disposed of. Animals turned inside out by experiments, the remains of organ donors, and the poor. It was a horrifying, perpetually burning pile of rotting flesh kept on the edge of town, as far from the rich as it could get. Couldn't have the smell distracting their brilliant minds.

He looked at her in surprise, "So how am I here?"

"My fault." The woman shrugged, "I sneezed over the Pit. I was supposed to just be passing through."

He shook his head slowly, "Nope. Not getting it."

She sighed heavily, "Recently dead you got a face full of fairy dust. You know, the root of all magic?"

He scratched his head, "Dust? How is dust the root of magic?"

She stared at him in surprise, "Aw hell. You aren't a magic user, are you?"

He shrugged, "Second one I met killed me. First one conscripted me."

The Fae looked surprised, "There aren't many magic users in your world?"

"They get turned into soldiers." He said sadly, and then looked at her, "You really are a Fae, aren't you?"

She sighed and stood up, smoothing her dress, "Well, that's enough of all that. So, I brought you back. You're... Kinda tied to me now. But, you get a second life. So... What's your name?"

"Trei." He replied, forcing himself to stand up, before falling over, unable to keep his balance.

"Well, Trei." The Fae began as she walked towards him, "You're a Ghoul now. Not quite human, not quite dead. Immortal, but your body will never heal. So, take care of it. The body is still dead, its just had a soul rammed back inside it."

He looked up at her, "And your name?"

"Summer." She replied, tiredly, "Can you work out how to stand yet?"

He shook his head, "It feels... Weird."

"Well, I've got things to do. I'll be back. If you manage to stand, there's a house. Wait inside." Then she turned and Trei's jaw dropped as the air in front of her seemed to ripple for a moment, like the surface of a lake, and then she was gone.

She'd just left him alone in who-knows-where, too weak to stand.

He sighed.