Chapter 41: The Gifts of Family

All the medicine had arrived without incident, but the Deathbane had arrived with instructions. Not a few lines on the side of a bottle, but multiple pages in a glossy booklet. Reading over it, Rick discovered that it was half warnings and half suggestions for how to get the most use out of such a medicine. Clearly, they understood their customers.

The suggestions included a large number of different exercises that would prepare a person to benefit from their near death experience. Some were too far on the mystical side for him to handle, dealing with abstract matters of lucrima that most modern lucrim-users ignored. Though he logged the exercises away for future reference, there simply wasn't time to learn such difficult exercises.

Many he had already mastered, however, so he repeated them a few times just to make sure he was fresh. That left a few that were within his ability but he hadn't done extensively, so he focused on those. If all went well, he should be in the state the instructions regarded as "optimally prepared."

One of those involved raw perception, extending his senses not inward, but outward. Such exercises had been about communing with the natural world in the old days, but there wasn't a lot of natural world around these days, not in a city. Instead he extended his focus outward, feeling the lucrima of the people in the apartments around him. It was a grim experience, repeated encounters with desperation and poverty, but he pressed on.

Strangely, there was a pulsating source of instability. When Rick focused on it exclusively, he discovered that it was closer than he had thought. He'd never felt anything quite like it and had to wonder if it could be a threat. Either a pending attack, or something left behind to track them.

Setting aside the exercise entirely, Rick devoted himself to tracking down the instability... and almost immediately found the source.

"Hmm?" Melissa looked up at him from her lotus position on the bed. "Something wrong?"

"Not unless that's unintentional. You're feeling okay?"

"Oh, this isn't my condition flaring up. I'm in control of it." She gave him a smile and cupped her hands in front of her stomach. Immediately he felt the instability again, though now he realized that it was a flickering... like a flame. Within her lucrima, yes, but also within her hands. "This is all I'm doing, see? Just something I'm trying for fun... unless you think I shouldn't?"

"With anyone else, I'd say it's a bad idea. But I think you know yourself better, and you still seem stable, so I have no problem with it."

"Thanks, Rick. My L.E. teacher is always getting after me for bad lucrima form, but this feels a lot more comfortable to me."

"Wait." Rick sat down on the bed beside her and locked her gaze with his. "Are you being completely honest with me, Melissa? If you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to, but I don't believe you're doing this randomly."

She stared back at him for a while, then sighed. "Yeah, sorry. It's not that I wanted to lie to you or that it's a big secret, just..." His sister lowered her head so that her hair partially covered her face. "When the Birthrighter attacked, I felt... I mean, it's not like I didn't know I was vulnerable. But I didn't like being in that position..."

Unable to find words to help her, Rick hesitantly touched her back. She didn't move away and instead shuffled over to lean against him, so he just rubbed her back.

"Honestly, it made me really angry. I know you're just going to fight Mike in a formal challenge, but I wish you could beat the shit out of all three of them. I wish I could. I know that it isn't possible to gain that much power that quickly, but... there are other assholes out there. I want to be ready."

Though the idea of his little sister fighting made him a bit uncomfortable, he couldn't deny the anger she felt. "I think I understand some of what you mean. If you want ideas about getting started with combat Lucores, I can make some suggestions."

"Thanks. Really, I mean it." Melissa let her body relax a little more, but still didn't look at him. "For now, I've been focusing on the void inside me. Letting the flame shrink and grow. At first it was simple tests, because I didn't want to accidentally hurt you or any of my friends. But now..." She finally looked up, eyes uncertain. "I want to hurt him. Is that wrong?"

"I don't think so." Rick was no moral exemplar and felt strange answering such a question. Who was he to give her an answer like that? But he saw the pain in her eyes and couldn't leave her question unanswered. "Can I see what you were doing before this?"

"Hmm? Oh, sure." A moment later, he felt her lucrima shift. He had become used to the feeling of an ether void within her, so it was surprising when it disappeared. No, it shrank to nearly nothing. When his eyes widened Melissa smiled and expanded the flame again.

"Wow. It really does seem like you have it under control."

"Before, it was always burning me. But thanks to what you taught me... well, I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I feel a lot better this way."

"And you were trying to find a way to weaponize it."

Melissa looked away shyly. "Yeah, I guess. I figured that if it could help your foundation, and if it hurt my classmate... maybe I can do even more with it."

"I think it would be good to talk to more experts," Rick said, "but I think it's fine. I've paid a lot of attention to your lucrima over the years and it feels healthier than it's ever been."

"If that's true... could you teach me how to use it more effectively?"

"I'm honestly not sure." Both if he had the knowledge to teach her and if it was a good idea. Now that he understood her intent, her technique actually tickled something in the back of his mind. Many elements were completely unfamiliar to him, but perhaps...

Before the conversation could go further, he heard a notification tone from his phone. Normally he would have ignored it, but they could both use a bit of a break. When he checked the notification, to his surprise it was from their uncle. Melissa noticed that it had drawn his full attention and perked up.

"What is it? Not something bad?"

"For once, no." He stood up and smiled. "It's Uncle Frank - he wants to video chat."

"Oh, great!" Melissa pushed past him to fire up their laptop.

Soon they were waiting for the program to load, crowding together so they would both be seen in the cheap webcam. The computer took longer than usual, as if taunting them for being eager, before everything loaded and the connection finally came through.

"Richard! Melissa!" Uncle Frank looked very glad to see them, pretending to hug the camera. When he sat back, he looked healthy but a bit worn. Not only had he clearly been working in dirty conditions, Rick thought that he might have a few recently healed injuries. "It's always wonderful to see the two of you. God, I know I always say this, but you're growing up so fast."

"What's the occasion, Uncle Frank?" Melissa leaned forward, peering at his image. "You're not getting into anything dangerous, are you?"

"No more than the job description, don't you worry. No, I actually wanted to call to apologize. It doesn't look like I'm going to get back to the States this year at all, which means I'm going to miss your graduation, Melissa."

"Oh, gosh, you don't need to apologize for that. It's not like it's that big a deal."

Their uncle shook his head. "It'd be better if you had family supporting you. I hate to say it, but you're not likely to get many people from your local family."

"I'll have one!" Melissa wrapped one arm around Rick's neck and shook him a bit. "Seriously, Uncle Frank, we're just glad to talk to you. You don't have to worry about being away with work."

Rick nodded in agreement. "You said you wouldn't get back this year - does that mean you might have a chance to visit next year?"

"That's right." Uncle Frank nodded, a big smile on his face. "We're getting close to a big discovery, I'm sure of it. After that, I'll definitely be due for some rest and relaxation. Can't think of any better way to spend it than with my favorite niece and nephew."

It would be a long time before he arrived, long enough that it would be completely irrelevant to all Rick's present problems, but he was still encouraged to hear the news. He was glad to hear that he'd get a chance to spend some time with his favorite uncle again and wondered how different things might be now that he was much more experienced with lucrima souls.

Well, unless the difference was that he was injured or dead.

That thought aside, they had a good time doing nothing but chatting and catching up on various events. Rick decided not to go into more detail about his problems than he already had: his uncle knew most of it and had given him enough advice. If Uncle Frank had been nearby, Rick definitely would have depended on him, but for now he didn't want to risk his uncle abandoning important work to come and deal with problems like his.

Eventually, with the sunlight ebbing on his end, Uncle Frank sighed. "As much fun as this has been, you two, I think I need to go soon."

"Thanks for taking the time, though!" Melissa beamed at him. "I'll consider this an early graduation present."

"That's very sweet, but your present should be the actual gift I sent." Abruptly their uncle's expression darkened. "You did receive it, didn't you? There was some money, a few things I thought Melissa would like, and some useful medication for you too, Rick. Did you get them?"

Rick and Melissa looked at each other. His sister was completely confused, but Rick was slowly coming to a painful realization. He swallowed and spoke. "When was it supposed to arrive?"

"Should have been around this time. I wanted to time it to be the same day that I called you, but the call got delayed by a couple days, so I assumed you already had the package. While I have internet I guess I should check the tracking again, because last I checked it was en route..."

"What address did you send it to?"

"I used the private family channel, since the contents were valuable..." There was a split second of their uncle cursing before he cut his mic. After venting his anger with several words Rick could almost lip-read, Uncle Frank turned the mic on again. "I'm guessing that one of my brothers changed the private channel to redirect to their address instead?"

"Most likely." Rick ran his hands through his hair in frustration, trying to think back over the documents he'd signed before the Birthright Cores. Had they talked about this? "Dammit, I should have checked for this... of course they'd be able to change it after our parents died..."

"No, don't blame yourself. These things happen."

Melissa did her best to smile, though he could see the anger in her eyes. "It's the thought that counts, Uncle Frank. Honestly, I'm really glad you were thinking of us."

"I wish I could be there more for both of you. But I'm proud of you - you've done so well despite facing so much."

They spoke for a little while longer, dragging out their goodbyes, but Rick had trouble focusing. The pleasant warmth of spending time with his favorite family members was gone now, and anger over what had happened rose within him.

As soon as the call was over, he was going to visit the rest of his family.