Chapter 7 continues...

With her new reality warping powers, she sent Joram a message with a picture of the ID. 

Raz: “Officially awakened!”

Joram: “My sincere congratulations. Will you be returning for lunch?”

Raz: “Gonna head to New Europe for a the night. I wanna tell sibs in person.”

Joram: “Very well. Should you require assistance in familiarizing yourself with resonance, do not hesitate to ask. While our foci and aspects may differ, and my experience is humble compared to master Maroque’s, I may be able to aid with the initial hurdles.”

Raz: “:) thanks. Later. I wanna play around a bit first. Shoot… forgot to check aspects.”

Her heart leapt at a sudden worry.

Raz: “Can I still switch out? What if I engrave the phone aspect?”

It was sorta fun, and Magogram liked all Earth-related aspects so it should help her with getting into an academy. But, she’d rather have choices.

Joram: “There is no cause for alarm. Engraving will not come as a surprise, and the final step will not occur accidentally. Barring unusual circumstances.”

Raz: “What kind of circumstances?”

Joram: “:)”

“What? What do you mean ‘smiley face’?!” Raz typed furiously.

Raz: “I need to know. I don’t wanna engrave accidentally.”

Joram: “Enjoy your visit to New Europe.”

She did not manage to pry out answers. Luckily, arcnet existed. Except, Raz realized in belated horror, that with her magically messed up phone. She could not watch arctube for more than seven seconds at a time.

Raz spent much of the underail wait and ride trying desperately to unfuck her phone, without success. Not only was her resonance a couple seconds shorter than in the chamber, everything in her magesight was a touch fuzzier and stiffer to touch. While Raz was tempted to glance at nearby phones for a better grasp of her magesight, she refrained. Spying on the other passengers’ private stuff would’ve been creepy as heck.

What she could and did watch were the arcnet flakes, which stopped falling the moment they entered Un. It happened so abruptly Raz almost yelped. She didn’t see them again, until later, when they arrived at New Europe station. 

Arcnet architecture wasn’t something Raz had any interest in though. The mission here was to surprise the sibs.

Just imagining their faces made Raz a little giddy. She passed through the law wizard manned security check-point with a flash of her print-fresh ID, and set course for the sibs’ place.

While the years hadn’t changed the unstation’s grandiose arching halls or decorative pillars, everything under them had. Gone were the makeshift sleeping spots that had used to cluster against the walls. In their stead, a small city of shacks and tent buildings now choked the unstation’s halls into squiggly streets lit by salvaged lights and tele screens. The air was thick with the stench of garbage and loud with the midday crowds. Little kids sat at a dead-end alley ending in a window to the Un. All of them were altered. All of them staring out at the swirling shapes of non-existence.

Raz’s throat tightened a little. She waded through the former section-B of unstation that now identified itself by half-burnt flags of old Eurasian countries. She caught a few comments for her Magogram style pants and shoes, but simply speed walked past them and towards her destination.

Where the piers had once allowed for vessels to dock to section-B now began Earth. Old Earth. More specifically, a piece of a beautifully curvy and bright mediterranean coastal city spliced together with gray-washed concrete hellscape from eastern Finland. And a bit of a German industrial zone. And like two and a half London skyscrapers. And a hundred other isolas. Cement and construction magic stretched it all together, and a blanket of shacks covered the seams in cardboard and metal sheet. 

And above, between New Europe and Un stretched a matching mosaic patchwork of blues and blue-greens – a patchwork sky that the wizards had somehow salvaged. It was thin. You could see the spiraling shapes behind it if you knew where to stare, but even an illusion of reality beat living in the Un. 

“Traitor,” bubbled a voice from a vaguely human-shaped clump sitting before a tent.

Raz hastened her step and kept her eyes on the road to dodge over open sewers, rotten sludge, and bile. She also kept an eye on the people. Most minded their own business, but several fixed bitter eyes on her, glaring at the pesky human in a city for the altered.

Nothing much had changed since her last visit. At least, not for the better. Sad at the place mad Raz, she was relieved to finally have a way to get the sibs out of here. 

Her earlier cheer returned in bits as she approached the East East Nowhere housing block, a barrack-like maze of tarpaulin and corrugated steel sheets. The place sounded and smelled like a kindergarten. Kids of all ages ran underfoot and played at the tiny football field in the center. Some were too young to remember Earth.

“Hey, excuse me,” said Raz to a young south east asian man in a wheelchair. A mass of dry withered tendrils sprouted from beneath the blanket he wore on his lap.

He gave her a curious look, then a smile. “Looking for someone?”

“My siblings.”

“Hah! I knew it. Those leggings. The pattern is popular on the coasts of the Magogram empire, but your tan is light for a half Indian. Former Rudinia?”

“Castleyard.”

He made another victory gesture. “I knew it. Prefer to call it former Rudinia, to respect the native culture.”

Raz made a thoughtful nod. “They don’t actually mind.”

“They don’t?” he looked puzzled.

She shrugged. “It’s old news. Barely anyone alive from back then. Most locals my age are pretty much same as everywhere.”

The boy wiggled his lips in deep thought, slowly nodding. “Interesting. Interesting. Sorry! Who did you say you were looking for?”

“Allie and Faham.”

He stopped, stunned. Eyes roved Raz up and down, then up and down again. Not to leer, but to absorb bafflement. “You are Allie’s sister?”

“Yup.”

“You?”

Raz shifted on the balls of her feet. “Ayup.”

“But you seem like a normal person.”

She chuckled. “What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know. Not a normal person.” He shook his head, grabbed the wheels and started rolling. “This way.”

They chatted a bit about Castleyard culture while navigating the building complex. Raz tried to show him pictures, but realized her phone was borked and ended up describing them instead. Chao couldn’t believe she had never visited one. He didn’t think them being restricted military zones ruled the castles out from being a potential class trip destination.

Raz recognized Faham’s voice through the sound of stomps and huffs way before spotting him. She thanked Chao and snuck ahead to find her little brother sitting on the floor of a tiny room with a mattress, an ancient taped up laptop on a plastic table, and a bunch of old Earth anime and cartoon posters. He had a ragged backpack before him and a floor full of clothes, medicines, notebooks, and other possessions. Allie was on the small cloth-roofed dirt clearing in front of his room, sparring with a tall rock-skinned boy using knives. Real knives.

Metal struck sparks off of his skin and bit into hers before bouncing off. They went at it hard, feet skidding on the ground, bodies jerking in sharp lunges, backsteps, and dodges. The boy stabbed at Allie’s eye. She stepped into and under it into a spinning kneel and struck a tip into his guts, punching the boy off his feet.

Raz let out a confused yelp.

The boy groaned as he climbed up.

Allie shook her limbs as she bounced on her feet. She looked at Raz. “Wasn’t you supposed to come tomorrow?”

“You’re stabbing at each other?”

“Raz is here?!” Faham looked up, met Raz’s eyes and rushed up on his feet. He ran to her, arms wide. “Raz!”

“Bumbledork!” Raz caught him and picked up the short brother.

Little arms wrapped tight about her. He buzzed, antennae wiggling excitedly from beneath a baggy hoodie. After the customary huggy greetings, Raz corralled the two into Faham’s room for her big announcement. 

Allie kept giving her suspicious glances, while Faham tried to confirm if everything was ok after last night.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Raz assured. “Quite the opposite. You see your sis…” She pulled her phone out and spun it on her palm, then resonated. “...has awakened magic!”

Faham’s jaw parted into mandibles and his antennae tilted opposite directions. Allie took a deep breath, stepped up to Raz, and crushed her against her stiff plant muscles.

“Uurrgh!”

Allie gave Raz another crushing squeeze, then let her down. “Good sis.”

Faham re-assembled his jaw into a human one and started squealing, his antennae wiggling rapidly. “RazawakenedshesawizardnowohmygodRAZISAWIZARD!” He came up to them, hands on his mouth. “Raz is a wizard!”

Allie nodded.

“Nah, not yet,” said Raz. “But I will be.”

“Raz will be a wizard!” Faham made sounds of joy and paraded around Raz, grabbing at her hands to spin and dance around. After the initial burst came his questions, “What kinda wizard? Where’s the foci? What aspects?”

Raz introduced him to her magically fudged up phone.

“No way. That’s so cool! You can be like a technomancer. A wizard hacker.”

“Technomancer?” Raz asked.

Allie shrugged.

“They control technology. Plenty of fics have them. O-or variants. They can be sorta common in cyberpunk stuff and scifi. I found one recently with a paraplegic main character who zipped around in digital space in the archives. Helped organize the tags. It’s a really cool ability! How does yours work?”

“I’m just learning to resonate. Still getting a hang of magesight.”

“What do you see?”

“Like apps and stuff. Arcnet. It looks a bit like snow.”

“So cool!”

Raz grinned. “Wanna help me figure it out? I was planning on staying the night here and leaving with you tomorrow.”

“YES! YES!”

Ras laughed, infected by Faham’s exuberance. They started immediately, though the first couple hours were spent messing around with Faham’s joy as Razandra’s only goal. She showed off her amazing ability to send messages without opening the phone and chat-warping abilities.