Brandon Sanderson - Firefight

He let go, bowed his head to me, and exploded into a flash of light and ceramic.

I blinked, then curled up on the floor and trembled. Sparks! Earlier the healing had happened so quickly that it had felt refreshing, like a cool breeze. Now it happened at the speed of a drop of rain rolling down a cold pane of glass.

It seemed like an eternity that I sat there suffering the pain, but it was probably only three or four minutes. Eventually the agony subsided and, groaning, I climbed to my feet. I flexed my fingers and squeezed them into fists. My hands worked, though my skin stung as if I had a bad sunburn. That didn’t seem to be going away. The blessing that Prof had given me was no more.

I stepped forward and kicked something with my foot. Obliteration’s sword. I picked it up, but all I found of Megan’s gun was a melted piece of slag.

She was going to kill me for that.

Well, Obliteration obviously had enough control over his powers to not melt objects he preferred to keep intact. I clutched the sword as I felt my way through the small dark room to a door. I opened it; beyond was a narrow wooden stairway, framed by banisters on both walls. From what light there was I could see that I’d been in some kind of small supply room. My clothes had basically been vaporized. All I had left was Abraham’s pendant, which still hung around my neck, one side of the chain melted. I pulled it off, worried that the melted chain would snap.

I found a length of cloth-it looked like it could have once been curtains-and wrapped it around myself. Then, holding the sword in one hand, pendant in the other, I climbed the stairs slowly, step after step. As I ascended the light grew brighter, and I began to make out odd decorations on the walls.

… Posters?

Yes, posters. Old ones, from the decades before Calamity. Bright, vibrant colors, women in ruffled skirts, sweaters that exposed a shoulder. Neon on black. The posters had faded over time, but I could see they’d been hung meticulously back in the day. I stopped beside one in that silent stairwell. It showed a pair of hands holding a glowing fruit, a band’s name emblazoned at the bottom.

Where was I?

I looked up toward the light at the top of the stairs. Sweating, I continued to climb until I came to the top and to a door with a chair next to it. The door was cracked open, and I pushed it farther, revealing a small, neat bedroom decorated like the stairwell with posters on the walls, proclaiming a glorified urban life.

Two hospital-style beds lay in the room, out of place, with steel frames and sterile white sheets. One held a sleeping man in his thirties or forties hooked up with all kinds of tubes and wires. The other held a small wizened woman with a tub of water next to her.

Another woman wearing medical scrubs stood over this patient. As soon as I entered, the doctor looked at me and gave a little start, then walked out the way I had come in. The only sounds were those of the heart rate monitors. I stepped forward, hesitant, feeling an uncanny, surreal sensation. The aged woman, obviously Regalia, was awake and staring at something on the wall. As I entered, I noted three very large television screens.

On the center one, Prof, Val, and Exel stood just inside a room glowing so brightly I could barely make them out.

“So,” Regalia said. “You’ve found me.”

I looked to the side. A figure of her as I knew her had appeared from the tub of water. I looked back at the woman in the bed. She was far, far older than her projected self. And far more sickly. The real Regalia there breathed in and out with the help of a respirator and didn’t say anything.

“How did you get here?” the projection asked.

“Obliteration,” I said quietly. “He located me too easily each time I hid from him. I realized that he had to teleport somewhere when he vanished. It stood to reason that he was coming to you and getting instructions on where to go. He can’t see everything in the city, but you can.” I looked at the television screens. “At least, everywhere with water.” She’d set these up so she could watch other places, obviously.

But why? What was going on in that room with Prof, Val, and Exel? I looked back at Regalia.

The projection glanced at the elderly figure in bed. “It is frustrating that we still age,” she said. “What is the point of divine power if your body gives out?” She shook her head as if disgusted at herself.

I slowly moved through the room, trying to figure out what to do next. I had her, right? Of course, she had that tub of water, so she wasn’t entirely defenseless.

I stopped next to the other bed, the one with the man I didn’t recognize. I glanced down at him and noted the blanket-like a child’s blanket-draped around his shoulders. It depicted fanciful trees and glowing fruit. “Dawnslight?” I asked Regalia.

“Why Calamity would choose a man in a coma to grant powers to, I have no idea,” Regalia said. “The Destroying Angel’s decisions often make so little sense to me.”

“He’s been like that for a long time, then?”

“Since his childhood,” Regalia said. “With his powers, he seems aware of the world around him at times. The rest of the time, he dreams. Trapped forever in his childhood some thirty years ago …”

“And this city becomes his dream,” I realized. “A city of bright colors, fanciful paints, of perpetual warmth and gardens inside buildings. A child’s wonder.” I thought quickly, trying to put the pieces together. Why? What did it mean? And how could I stop Regalia?

Did I need to? I looked at the aged figure, so frail. She barely seemed alive. “You’re dying,” I guessed.

“Cancer,” Regalia’s projection said with a nod. “I’ve got a few weeks left. If I’m lucky.”

“Why worry about Prof, then?” I asked, confused. “If you know you’re going to die, why go through so much effort to kill him?”

Regalia didn’t reply. While her real body rasped in the background, the projection folded her hands in front of herself and regarded the center screen. Prof stepped forward in the blaze of light. He too carried a sword, one of the types he fashioned for himself by using his tensor power. And he’d dared make fun of Obliteration for carrying one.

He strode through the light, holding a hand before himself like he was fighting against the flow of some powerful stream. What should I do? Regalia didn’t seem to care that I was here-Sparks, she probably didn’t care if I killed her or not. She was practically dead anyway.

Could I threaten her? Somehow force her not to harm Prof? The thought not only nauseated me, but looking at her frail body, I doubted I could so much as touch her without provoking some kind of terminal reaction.

The screen dimmed suddenly; the real Regalia was tapping something on her armrest, a control of some sort. It darkened the screen, adding some kind of filter to cut through the glare. It allowed me to see what Prof couldn’t, because the room he was in was so bright.

The source of the glow wasn’t a person as I had suspected. It was a box with wires coming from it.

What in the world? I was so confused I just stared at the screen.

“Did you know,” Regalia’s projection said, “that Jonathan is not so unique as he assumes? Yes, he can give away his powers. But every Epic can do that, under the right circumstances. All it takes is a bit of their DNA and the right machinery.”

They cut something outta him , Dawnslight had said. Obliteration, with bandages …

A bit of DNA and the right machinery …

A mounting horror grew within me. “You created a machine that replicates Obliteration’s powers. Like the spyril, only capable of blowing up cities! You used an Epic … to create a bomb .”