The Edifice

47. Brotherhood

"You didn't raise me-" Zagan begins to object before he's forced to drop to the floor as I send a foot-long shard of ice straight at his head.

It's a feint, of course. I swore I'd never arm a living thing and he's not worth breaking that vow for. That doesn't mean he can tell the difference though. I've never so much as deflected one of his curses before.

Released, Lee collapses the concrete floor and convulses for air. Olivia rushes to his side, bent at the ready for first aid.

Zagan sears the second icicle I send to steam mid-air, stepping through the flames. He stifles a coughing fit as he does so, emerging with a grin half devilish and half admiration. "Really? Really, Otis?"

"I told Mom, you know," I warn him as he approaches. "When I couldn't find you at home. That's how I knew you were all out here, she gave me your location. Who do you think she'd rather have back home?"

"Always so fucking naive, Otysses. I'm not coming home," Zagan growls. He laughs, gesturing down at himself and tugs down the collar of his hoody. I see it then. The rot. It had been noticeable on his fists around Lee's neck, but now the creeping black in his veins seeps up his throat, engulf his eyes and lips. "There's your answer. I'm still not dying to the likes of them though. If I go... Well..."

My brother sways slightly, catches himself. Wordlessly his hands move, drawling thin lines of blood and shadow between them in slow circles. The air shivers with energy as though he's drawing from the pain and magic that already infects this place. My aura tenses involuntarily with the pure malevolence of the spell, I begin to draw up the characters of a deflection.

Zagan's eyes never leave mine as he casts the final spell. Not as they succumb to the rot and all the life begins to flicker away in them. All that's left is the same expression he's always worn. Anger and victory. Anger at the injustice of the world, the circumstances our parents have subjected him to since the moment he was born and victory at one last defeat. Victory at his own cunning as I pull my power into a shield around myself while he splays his hands at the huddled forms of Lee and Olivia.

-

Olivia vanishes from the air, taking Levi with her. My heart lurches momentarily until I see the curse shatter against the concrete they just vacated in a gory mess of blood and darkness and the two reappear outside the warehouse to my right. Levi doubles over, throwing up with the nausea of teleporting unprepared.

I don't spare them a second glance to celebrate my relief however.

I manage to reach Zagan before he hits the ground. His breath slips through his lips in a whispers, not even responding to fight me off as I finally embrace him. His once blistering skin is now tepid against my cheek.

"Zagan? Zagan?" I try to rock the life back into him, all coherence shattering as my thoughts split into shattered glass. He's not even empty. His body is less than empty. The spellrot saps at my own aura, strong enough that not even my brother's soul can feed it. Black creeps beneath my fingernails.

A pair of hands tear me away from him.

Olivia wrenches Zagan out of my hands and pushes me back without so much as a backwards look at him. I try to fight her, to reach my brother through clawed hands and burning magic but she positions her back to me as she rolls him over to face the stars above. Two hands cupped over his chest, she thrusts down of his sternum. Once, twice, again and again in quick succession.

"Check his pulse," she snaps. "Lee, slap Otis out of it and get his pulse. Otis, where is Zagan's heart? Same place as humans? Centre of the chest?"

"I-I..." I don't know. There's so much noise around us. The creaking of the damaged iron, Lee's groans of pain as he ignores the both of us, Olivia's flustered pants. Its takes far too many second for me to tune it out enough to hear the slow, faint thuds beneath her compressions. "His heart's still going, yes. Under your hands."

"Call an ambulance, then. Now."

Thinking is hard, lost in the vastness of my shrieking emotions, but following Olivia's orders is easy. I snatch Zagan's phone from his pocket, switch on the emergency alert our parent's have installed and leave the rest to Creed Development. At least I can trust our parents to go further to protect and investment than any hospital would to save a life.

"He's- urgh," Olivia recoils her hands as if stung, the rot already coating her arms to the elbow. The skin clings to bare bone as though it's sucked the very meat from her hands.Stifling a cry of pain and horror, she pulls away from Zagan. "Otis, he's contagious."

The electricity in Zagan's body immediately slows at Olivia's retreat, a million nerve endings fizzling out. I throw myself back to him, try to beat on his chest. "Don't stop- it's helping, Liv. How did you do whatever that was?"

"CPR?" Olivia asks in confusion. She cradles her injured hands close to her chest, but manages to shift over to my side, forehead pressed against my shoulder. "You don't know-? OK, you need to go faster, Otis and keep it even. Your hands are good but press harder, even if you break something. You're fighting against his ribcage here. Good."

She starts a rapid count of beats for me to follow. The spellrot leeches at my hands as I thump Zagan's chest. I flare my aura back at it, pushing magic back into the gaping vacuum that draws from my fingers. Eventually the swirls of black begin to withdraw from my one hand and then the other, sated by the near-limitless surge of power I throw at it.

I chase it's retreat back into Zagan's own hollow body. With each thrust of my cupped hands I push my magic after the spellrot. To my surprise, it begins to work. Fire bursts across the skin of Zagan's chest, a section of vacant aura reigniting where it collides with mine. Good. Good. I have plenty of magic to spare.

I empty my soul into my dying brother, watching as icy and air turns to fire and stone and something made of neither. A not-quite-sunlight that disappears into his bones and breathes life back to his lungs.

In the room where I was born, I prove to the both of us that even if what I am is enough to destroy a child, it's also enough to save one.

Lethargy creeps into my veins where my magic leaves it. I force myself to coalesce enough to keep my hands solid. I build the blood and muscles to pump it just so I can stay alive long enough to finish the job of filling the vacuum of my brother's tainted soul.

I stretch a hand back to Olivia and touch her spell-rot riddled fingers, doing the same. If spellrot is the void left by cruel and wicked magic, it only magic sense that magic fuelled by compassion can fill it.

Tears falls and the world blurs. The warehouse around us grows quiet and calm until even Zagan's breathing grows distant. Olivia's sudden words of concern are muffled into incoherency. My tears drip down onto Zagan's glowing cheek beneath me and sizzle against the erupted heat. Still he doesn't move as I give up the last shred of magic I can spare.

Everything pitches forwards, air rushing weakly against my skin. All I know is the warmth of my brother's inert body under me and Olivia's freshly healed hands around my chest.

"I'm sorry."

-