2 Memories of Pain

From amongst the poor, one day she'll rise

Of fire and fury, she'll comprise.

-prophecy of the duskbringer

Guppy awoke with tears in her eyes, the dream of a time before misery struck was a painful reminder of what she had lost.

"Two years already that you've been gone mamwe, and eight more since father left us. How did you do it?" she softly murmured to herself.

Her father Frank Bright had been a charismatic man with blond curly hair and deep brown eyes that always twinkled with mirth, he had been tall and well built from years of hard work in a manufactorium, a non-magical workshop. Such places were quite rare these days, but it was the only decent paying work he as a dull, a person with no magic talent or affinity, could reasonably find.

However when Guppy was 7 he died in a steam explosion when the workshop boiler ruptured, killing Frank and three others, and shutting the manufactorium down for good.

To make matters worse they were in debt. Frank had been an optimistic man with vision, he had been planning to take over the manufactorium and upgrade it greatly.

To make this happen, he borrowed a large sum of gold royals from the only people willing to deal with him, the Grakoan mafia. With his death, this debt fell to Guppy's mother, Esmeralda Bright.

Her mother had grieved and wept the whole night upon hearing of her husband's death.

Then in the morning, with the strength, and decisiveness that was so characteristic of her, Esmeralda sold their home in the respectable craftsman quarter, moved herself and her three children to a residence in the workers quarter, and took a job in one of the magitech core generation plants found there.

Officially, working in one of the plants was lucrative and perfectly safe, you just channeled your mana into a preset magic array, which then crystallized it for use as a power source for whatever magitech tool was desired. Your mana regenerated while you slept, and you would repeat this again the next day.

These 'artificial' crystals powered the vast array of magitech devices used in society, replacing the much rarer and expensive core crystals harvested from wild and dangerous magical beasts.

Before long crystal production had become a pillar of the economy and civilization.

For you see, magitech devices consisted of a magical array inscribed carefully upon a medium, usually brass. When the array was supplied with mana it produced a magical effect as dictated by the magic circuits in the array.

From lamps to magic cannons, simple fans to robotic mechs and airships, the spectrum of magic arrays researched and produced were vast.

However this magic array always required a power source to activate it, if you had the right affinity you could activate it yourself by channelling your mana, and some poorer people who could not afford the ever expending crystals did just this.

However except in some rare cases, most people were only born with one affinity, let alone all twelve. So most devices required an attributed crystal to be socketed as a power source.

However, unlike in the days of old, where a mage had to study for years to learn each array off by heart, and then how to draw the array and stabilize it in the air with mana in order for the magical effect to be produced, magitech tools brought versatility and ease of use, allowing anyone with the coin to spend to enjoy the many benefits of magic.

Esmeralda, as a rare dual fire and wind affinity, earned quite the premium for her lustrous crystals. For a time their family met the interest on the loan and even paid a good deal of the principal amount back. Life settled back down into a semblance of normalcy for the next 8 years.

It killed her. The draining sickness people in the slums call it. As Guppy watched on, over time her mother waned, she thinned to skin and bone, her once beautiful hair drying out and splitting.

Daily draining of her magic core took more out of her than simply expending magic, it slowly leached out her vitality as well.

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Yet it was the only conceivable way they could pay off the debt, short of selling themselves to the pink district, something Esmeralda adamantly refused to do as a loving widow and mother.

One evening, with a dry cracked throat and dull eyes she called her daughter over.

"Gupalagia Esme Bright, come talk with me for a moment."

Guppy knew it was important as her mother used her full name, she had only ever heard her use it a total of five times. Guppy slowly moved across the single shared bedroom and grasped her mother's frail hand.

She almost flinched when she felt how fragile those once strong hands were, and felt tears creep into her eyes.

"Yes, mamwe?", she sniffed "do you think you can manage some food tonight?"

Esmeralda smiled at her, and for a moment her previous beauty shone through the wreck of a body she currently held.

"Can you do me a favor Esme?" she softly whispered

"Of course mamwe, of course. What is it?" Guppy was sniffing more often now.

"Look after your sister and brother for me, there is nothing more precious in this world than your family. . ."

With that utterance Esmeralda fell asleep. The next morning she never woke up.

Guppy slapped her cheeks, shaking off the feelings of pain and loss that buffeted like waves and bringing her mind back to the present, one pain replacing another.

'Focus Guppy' she thought, 'focus on the living and not the dead'

Taking a deep breath she got up, and started her day.