Chapter 139: Toilet Break

"You're running on fumes."

Irene's voice sounded like it was coming from a million miles away. A million-mile echo traveling down a million-mile tunnel. Which admittedly came off as a bit peculiar to me considering the fact that she was severely literally merely a hair's breadth away from my face.

So close that I could see the individual strands of her long eyelashes fluttering away, see the micro twitches in her cheek muscles… things I never cared to notice, but now I did, immensely, because if I didn't, I fear I might slip away again.

Needed something to focus on, and Irene's face just fits the bill perfect. This wasn't me being creepy, this was me trying not to faceplant onto the hard porcelain floor.

It barely helped though. When anyone spoke, when she spoke… there was almost like a delay, her lips would move, her mouth would open, but it would be like full two seconds later before her voice would actually reach my ears.

"It's not fatigue, it's not exhaustion you're feeling," spoke Irene's two-second echo. "it's deprivation. Understand me? You've depleted your magic, it's gone… and that's dangerous."

It's such a strange sensation. One moment my stomach was flying with the butterflies comprehending the gravity of the statement, and then the moment after, I needed to resist the urge to burst into laughter right at her because it just sounded so amusing to me.

I could feel my lips smiling, but inside I was dying. Tried to speak out, and it was such a dissonance to hear my voice sound so amused even though I knew I wasn't.

"Dangerous how?"

"Your mental physique deteriorates… you'll start entering a state of delirium, and I think you've entered that point already."

Couldn't help it, my lips were so straining so bad… it sounded so stupid, but she looked so serious. I don't know why that was so funny to me. Why was I trying not to laugh, just laugh.

Ha. Ha. Ha.

So simple a deranged lunatic could do it. 

Do it.

"It's treatable," I gritted my teeth, grinding tooth against tooth. "Say it's treatable."

Eyelids batting. Muscles twitching. A voice speaking from already closed lips.

"It's treatable."

I blanked. I guess the relief from hearing her say that was too much of an overload for my pathetic state of mind. It was a minute, maybe two minutes, three - I don't know.

The infinite darkness of semi-consciousness wasn't really the best place to be keeping track of the time. There was buzzing… that was all I could feel… a whirring… some vibration…

The Magus' presence?

But it was too close for comfort, like they were kicking at my thighs, it couldn't be the Magus.

What is this feeling, then?

"Master!"

Pain. Instantaneous swelling, and suddenly I was staring down at my legs sprawled out against the floor, lifting my head to find myself leaning up against the wall. Didn't take too long to realize that I was sitting, slumping at one end of the bathroom. 

And that pain? Well, I found the source of that too… tried to move my face, and I felt my left cheek stinging and searing… felt a little numb too. That pain in the left, turned me to my left, which led me to the culprit behind it.

Ash kneeling on bended knees was watching over me with eyes wide and alert, I could see the tension oozing from her face, feel the warmth of her breath through her little sigh of relief.

"You've awoken," She said, mustering a faint smile. "Thank the Gods."

Everything still felt a bit droopy, everything still looked a bit hazy, but there was no denying that everything wasn't as bad as before. Didn't feel like bursting into laughter at a moment's notice, so that's a good sign.

Cheek still hurt though. 

"Slapped awake," I asked, blinking myself back into cognizance. "Ouch."

Ash gave a little apologetic bow. "Necessary."

"I know," I said. "Thank you."

"You gave us a little fright for a moment."

Her voice reached my ears the moment she spoke. No delays, no million-mile echoes. Am I better?

"Don't try to get up yet," came a sharp voice from high above. 

The clack of boots against the white tiles brought Irene back into full view, looming above me in her usual stance, her usual glance - crossed arms, and distant eyes.

Somehow I get the feeling she was more annoyed than glad seeing me lay here staring up at her.

"I just want you to know, you are very high-maintenance," She said, shaking her head. "Couldn't have picked a better time to have a manic episode? Did it really have to be now?"

Finding the perfects words proved a little difficult. An apology seemed like it'd just aggravate her more, answering back something witty would probably earn me a stinging in my other cheek… in the end, I elected to keep my silence. Don't think she'd accept anything I'd have to say either way.

"This can't happen again," Irene walked closer. "Depleting all of your magic is nothing to glaze over. It's a high-risk thing, you must not let it happen at all cost. It's the same thing as losing blood for us fantasy folks, you'll die without it."

"Yeah, I figured as much," I said, straightening up my hunch posture. "So what the hell just happened to me?"

"No, that's our question," Irene said. "Just what were you doing to be able to lose so much of your magic?"

I raised my arms, nearly backhanding Ash in the process had she narrowly avoided in time. "I wasn't do anything - oh, sorry, Ash."

"No harm done, Master."

"Ah man," sighed the Detective, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Don't pull a Howard, please?"

"Irene, if I planned on killing myself - trust me, you'd be one of the first to know. Really, I don't know what happened to me." 

"Master, magic depletion could only be accomplished through self-infliction," Ash said gently. "You had to have been doing something, anything… practicing?"

Found myself turning left again, eyebrows furrowed, with a very prominent frown. "Nothing came of it - Irene you would have seen, all I did was try to subjugate the weather, and I couldn't do that."

Irene silently lowered herself down to eye-level, a suspicious gaze in a half-glance, "Or maybe you were doing something that you thought was nothing… what are the basics Adalia taught you?"

"Focus, Determination - "

"Intent, okay, whatever," She waved an arm. "What else?"

I blinked. Then I blinked again. That split-second into darkness, the whirrings and the winds…

"Sensing other people's magic."

The moment the words left my lips, the both of them started to look as if they finally had the final puzzle piece fitted exactly perfectly into the board. 

"How many times just today did you use the ability?" Irene asked.

"Couldn't have at least been more than five times…" I said, hearing in the confusion in my own voice. "Adalia never mention I could waste magic by doing that."

"Because normally it doesn't," She said. "So long as that's all you were doing, anyway…"

I'm not understanding… was I doing something wrong? Did I somehow mess up the one thing I thought I actually got right?

Ash shifted closer to me. "Master, how… were you merely sensing magic, or were you - how to say - able to somehow feel it too?" 

"Feel it how?"

"In any way at all," Her ears twitched, lips narrowing. "Perhaps… as a grating whisper in the ears… a sensation in the tongue tasting bitter, sweet..."

"A howling like a wind?" I suggested.

"Yes, exactly," Ash nodded. "I fear, without knowing, you were doing much more than you thought."

Doing what though? I thought that's just how everybody fantasy-wise is able to sense each other. Is that… really not the case after all?

I am so beyond lost right now. This pasta magic talk is doing things to my head I never thought possible. What a total inverse of positions this was, before I used to be the explainer, not the explainee… never thought there may come a day that I'd find myself on the otherside of the table.

And yet here I was, sitting upright next to a toilet cubicle, in a crowd of two hunched over me, warning me about the dangers and risk of magic I never even knew I had.

Thought I might have understood one aspect of it yesterday, but apparently I didn't… which begs the question -

"So just what was I doing different?"

Irene, our Pasta-to-English interpreter, did her best to shape out an explanation that even a five-year-old would be able to comprehend.

"What you did was more than just sense the magic in others, you might have thought that was it, but it wasn't - I don't think Adalia realized it either when she taught you… she should have asked you what you felt, if she did, she'd tell you you were doing it wrong too."

Irene paused, tapping fingers against the tile, brewing ideas or an explanation I didn't know, but the moment passed as soon as it happened.

"You went beyond sensing magic - you were, in simple terms, comprehending the magic in others, you can feel them inside you in a way - I don't mean this light when I say it's not something we fantasy folks typically are able to do ourselves."

"Comprehending?"

"It's the only way I'm able to put it," She continued. "What you did, what you're able to do… I've never done it myself, and I doubt any one of us here is able to either besides you."

"Callus Sempra," Ash said, "A phenomenon when one is able to attune with the magic in others - thus gaining an understanding of magic beyond a user's nature or capabilities. Needless to say, usage of such an ability had expended you of everything you had."

Here we go with trying to understand things that were beyond my comprehension - gone through it once, did it twice… at this point, I'm not even fazed by it anymore.

I just needed to know, wanted to know.

How else was I ever going to learn.

Time to play student again.

"Keep going."