Reality Fracture | #189: Episode 10 – Happy Birthday

Dominick Rabrun (0:00)

Reality Fracture, Episode 10, Happy Birthday.

Written by Alison Lührs.

Vraska holds the body of her beloved and weeps. She watches his eyes fix, feels the pulse at his neck cease. Thanks to her, his death is quick, his suffering minimal.

She tugs him close, and only notices at the periphery of her senses as the others join her. Chandra and Ajani embrace her. Garak remains far away. She pays them no attention. Her world is in her arms, and it is still warm from life. Vraska allows herself permission to mourn. Grief wells up as an endless wave.

Then, impossibly, she feels Liliana next to her. The Necromancer kneels, laying her hands on his body. There is no magic. There is no malice. Vraska sees tears on her cheeks, watches the tremble in her lips.

It is so much more, Liliana says, too quietly for it to be a conversation. Vraska isn't certain what she means until she remembers. She remembers what Jace shared of Liliana on that riverbed all those years ago. Will you be sad when I die?

How callous she had been in response.

Liliana hangs her head close to Jace's chest, unaware that Vraska knows the context. She watches the other woman shake with grief, and Vraska places a hand on her shoulder. Liliana's gloved hand covers Vraska's, and for a moment, they weep.

We must find a way to resolve the overlay, Ajani reminds them with gentle urgency. He said we need to find Damm.

No.

Liliana's voice rings with absolute anger. Vraska blinks, trying to see through her grief. Liliana's eyes are fixed on Jace's chest. She follows her gaze and sees it. A blur, a strange blue glow.

No! Liliana yells, and the subject of her fury grows brighter. It is brilliant cerulean, a searing star, a cluster of blinding light rising from his chest. Liliana leans close, tears streaking down her cheeks. She seems to know what it means. Vraska does not. She has killed beyond count, but none of them did this when they died. Is that his spark? Vraska guesses aloud. She reaches out to touch it, fingers grazing the edge. But instead of the heat she expects, she feels a wave of deep curiosity. The scent of rain, the chill of a deep lake. She hears distantly in her own mind the alarm sounding from behind Lilliana's eyes. She jolts her hand back, and the spark continues its climb up, out of his chest, up into the air between him. Do we stop it? Chandra cries. Leave it, Ajani roars. It's his. But Lilliana and Vraska remain squarely focused on the light, the Gorgon much more controlled than the Necromancer.

What did you do, Bularan? Lilliana yells at the spark as it shoots through an open window. What did you do?

The crowd of Hexhaven cadets and Strixhaven students thickens around her, and Tam is carried into it like a river. She screws her eyes shut as she rides its wave, jostling shoulder to shoulder, thinking through every theorem she's ever learned, trying to find a solution to reverse the overlay, and feeling small and stupid. She isn't enough. She isn't enough. Time feels sluggish. She turns to follow the next scream, but the world quiets as the crowd around her pauses to look at something high above. When Tam glances up, what she sees is different from any rubble. It looks like a star. Blue and blazing, it tears through the sky from somewhere high in the tower. It falls like a meteor, and she realizes too late the trajectory veers toward her. The crowd of students and cadets parts, running for cover, but Tam stays put. The pressure of duty snaps her back to the task at hand. Instinctively, she tries to alter the star's path. She flings paradoxical magic at it to turn it away. But onward the star burns, growing larger by the second, unavoidable, unmissable. She panics, runs, leaps over rubble, and dodges the cadets and students in her way. But down and down the star falls, closer and closer it follows. It hits her in the chest, and she gasps. Energy pummels her, as if she's standing at the base of a waterfall. Tam cries out in response, falls to her knees, the pressure and potency of magic overwhelming her, filling her. Her heart feels like it's burst open, and all her insides are a modest cup doused with the water of a vast lake. The onslaught eases from a torrent to a stream to a drip. Her ears pop. She flexes all ten of her toes. She lets out a breath that's halfway to a shocked laugh. What was that? She panics. Was that an attack? Then it hits her. A rolling wave of emotion, of feeling. She inhales sharply and it turns into a sob. Tam frowns, alarmed. She should do something. Is she dying? Is she injured? Wait. There was something she was going to do. Right, she remembers. I must ask for help.