You know we're really put-on by our folks, right? Gotta make up for Mother's mistake in falling in love with a human, gotta prove that the daemon blood is still strong, gotta prove the Maker family's still the best out there. So they sent us to mage-school, right? An' once we were there, they're all over us to "do well", "be the best", "make them proud". So how's it any surprise to anyone that we wanted to try to do just that? Prove that we could do some really spectacular stuff?

But we didn't wanna do normal spectacular stuff, no way. It had to be the best, weirdest, most spectacular spell we could find, one that nobody else would ever even consider. Nobody'd ever give us trouble then, oh no, we'd be the best mages Maker clan ever raised, human blood or no human blood. Maybe then they'd leave us alone, if we were just spectacular enough.

And we didn't wanna do our spectacular stuff alone, cuz even though I'm horrible at holding onto energy, and Ty's rotten at directing he, we're better'n most mages if we just work together. Add to that Ty's my best friend and always has been, an' that he trusts me to hold things together all the time, an' it's hardly surprising that we'd wanna do our magical masterpiece together.

I actually found the spell, myself, and showed it to 'im. He really liked the idea-- I don't know whether because I found it, because it was nothing like anything we'd done before, or just cuz it was spectacular. I just thought it would do good enough to scare the family into leaving us alone, so it was decided. We'd use this old spell, this "autokinesis", and make something look like it was alive, move around, all that. When Ty found that dusty old suit of armor, we were hooked: it had to be that, or nothing. Wouldn't making a big, moving, even fighting suit of armor be enough to prove to the whole world that we were powerful mages, when we worked together?

A bit more research, and I'd found all the information we needed to get the thing off the ground: the autokinesis spell, spells to hold the thing together, things to make energy stores in it-- you know, so it wouldn't need to eat or suck up energy constantly just to move around-- even figured out how to give the thing some kind of intelligence and personality, so that it would do more than just follow direct, explicit orders. We figured we'd wait on that, use it later on after we'd shown the whole family how clever we were.

Somehow or another, our mage-master, Sayn, never suspected we'd get ourself into such a big thing. I don't know how, I mean, we weren't exactly making a secret out of it, and that daemon doesn't miss anything. Eyes of a hawk, that woman. Gold and everything. But seriously, she misses nothing-- she just didn't expect we'd do something so incredibly stupid, I guess.

So Ty stored up as much power as he could, over the course of a couple days, while he and I scratched out runes into the armor. Mostly him, because he was so much smaller and could reach things better than I could. I memorized all the frameworks and steps and procedures-- all mental and energy, really; daemons don't hold with all that fancy spell-chanting and hand-waving. But I still had to memorize it. I still remember most of it, too.

We were so excited, I don't think Ty slept at all the whole night before. I did, but I guess that comes with being older and more disciplined. Either that or all that energy he'd stored up was making him hyper. He was a bouncy little kid, anyway, after all-- add being charged to the brim and anxious for morning to come, and you get a kid who's got no sleep. I'm just not like that, so all his "is it morning yet?"s and "Ki, are you still awake?"s were annoying, but I fell asleep eventually.

Ty will tell you he can still remember what he had for breakfast that morning. I don't, but then, it wasn't my last meal ever, so, you know, not much reason to remember it.

We got to work right after breakfast. It was an impressive piece of work, if I do say so myself. Even with the accident, I don't think I've done anything more complicated, and never anything more powerful, but still got such a good result. Even if things turned out the way they did, all of the framework is right, and it's a beautiful piece of work, too. Ty stays all together, doesn't need to keep sucking at his surroundings just to stay moving, and he never freezes or rusts! That was my own touch, I added that into the spell, myself. That all wasn't the stuff that went wrong.

What went wrong, I'm still not entirely sure. After we set up the framework-- well, after I set up the framework-- I had to tie Ty right into the spell. If I didn't, he'd have to keep actively pouring magic into it, and it would take worlds longer, be worlds harder, and might well be so much slower than a direct link that the spell would fail altogether, and ruin everything to the point that we'd never even be able to try it again. Don't ask how it could do that, it's complicated; has to do with how we'd set it up with the armor. But that's what I think went wrong, how I tied him in, either that or the spell was even more complicated than I thought, and I'd left out some key ingredient-- or that some sadist of a mage wrote the spell without warning just how much magic it took to power it. Who knows? But that's where something went wrong. And if it was the last one, I just wanna know who he is so I can strangle him.

The spell was set, the framework made, and Ty tied in... so I initiated it. And we got so much more trouble than we ever expected to get. I didn't even realize the problem at first, you know. I was just sitting there, sitting back to admire what we'd done and wait for the armor to come to life, just watching things fall into place like they were supposed to. But then... I don't know how to describe it. It's like the spell got darker, flickered a bit, and then Ty started shaking. He squeaked out, "Brother, it hurts!" and then screamed.

What happened, I figured out right about then, was that Ty didn't have enough power to fuel it, not even all that stuff he'd gathered up, and he was so panicked that he couldn't get more-- if there was even more to get at that point-- and I couldn't stop it. Gods know I tried. I tried everything I knew how to try, but it just wouldn't stop. I couldn't even disconnect him, it'd bound him up so tight. And he wouldn't stop screaming.

That's when Sayn showed up. I guess Ty screaming would have brought her running, even if she somehow missed the rather obvious senses that went with the spell going wrong. Sayn used to say things tasted wrong, or something.... I don't know whether to thank her or hate her, but she somehow did something that saved the day. I just wonder sometimes if she should have.

I wasn't wondering at the time, though. Neither of us knew what she did, not at first. Ty just kind of... slumped over. I dove for him, caught him before he hit the ground... he wasn't breathing. It was-- he-- looked dead. He was dead, and I....

.....

Well. The suit of armor sat up. First thing we figure... the spell worked. Against all odds, the stupid thing actually worked. All that, my brother dead, the spell all wrong-- Then it spoke. I hadn't given it that ability, and when what it said was "Brother?" and it sounded so much like Ty, well. We were, to say the least, stunned.

That was nothing to what poor Ty felt, when he saw I was holding-- well, him, only without him in it. He went nuts, for just a few seconds, but a few seconds was sure enough to wreck half the room before I could calm him down. Ty even says he doesn't remember it all, and I don't blame him. Was something of a blur to me, too, realizing what had to have happened, that he wasn't really dead-- or, some part of him wasn't, anyway.

Things after that changed, all right, but not in the ways we'd wanted them to. Sayn didn't really have the heart to punish us, of course. No point, we'd punished ourselves badly enough. But she was sure upset that we'd tried anything to stupid. The family was shocked, and it didn't take long for everyone to just stop talking to us, except to do the usual scolding and nagging-- but even that's mostly at me, as if nobody wants to be anywhere near Ty. It's horrible. See what I meant by not being able to make friends? His own family, who knows who and what he is, can hardly stand him-- how's some stranger gonna react to that?

So that's where we stand. That's what happened, that's where we are now. Somehow or another, Ty doesn't hate me, and I bear the brunt of the familial wrath while he's just always alone. Pretty rotten life, but he's still optimistic, sometimes. At least he's alive, right?

Yeah. Right....