In the days after I lost Saber, my memories became muddled, frayed. I spent many hours flitting in and out of sleep, or at least I thought I did. The things I did while awake mixed with the things I did in dreams. In those days, I had vivid dreams. Hauntingly vivid. No one was left to tell me what was real and what wasn't. Perhaps I had cooked and eaten a meal. Perhaps I had only dreamed of doing so. Perhaps I had left the house and found a stranger picking apples from the yard across the street. Or maybe that never happened.

  I dreamed of high school, of the days before graduation. I couldn't remember much from that dream, other than that Hei and Saber were there. I think we were having lunch together inside the cafeteria. Ham and cheese sandwiches, with chocolate milk. We never had chocolate milk at school.

  When I woke up, I found myself crying.

  The only thing left that felt truly real was the radar, and the moments I spent with it in the garage that smelled of diesel and rust. When I took a picture of the parabolic dish, and when I modeled its shape on my laptop with mathematical functions – the various measurements, the equations to add and multiply – those were too technical, too complex to have been the product of dreams. I could never multiply while asleep. I'd spend hours at my makeshift workbench, half-aware and half-awake, laboring like an automaton under the light of the bare and humming bulb.

  In the days when I could no longer remember, in the days I could no longer smile, my radar was the only thing left.

  Every time I thought about that, it'd make me angry.

  Who knew how long I spent on it. Hours, certainly. But I couldn't tell how many days passed, or even weeks. In those days, the radar became everything I knew. I lived for it more than I lived for myself. With every last ounce of awareness I had left, I tweaked the parabolic dish, and I connected and disconnected and reconnected the sensor's circuitry. In the beginning, the metal detector only had a range of 50 meters. Bringing it up to 400 was challenging, but took mere hours. Going beyond that took much longer.

  I didn't know how long it took exactly, but I only stopped working on the detector when I ran out of food.

  The house had been large, with a well-stocked kitchen. But I had eaten everything, leaving only a mound of wrappers and trash in a corner of the living room.

  I wondered what was left for me. Except the metal-scanner on the railgun.

  My gun sat upon the workbench, half-dissected, its innards a mess of wires and tape. I had attached parts to the circuit that I no longer remembered. There must've been a couple capacitors added in, I'd wager. Screws and spare parts were littered around it. I picked up the pieces, examining and reassembling everything, hoping I could still remember how to piece it all back together.

  I seemed to have remembered enough. Once I was done, only two screws and a single metal ring were left unused. I doubted those mattered much anyways.

  I checked the stats on my reassembled gun.

  The range was massive, mathematically. It had increased beyond my expectations. I waited, internalizing the fact. I thought I'd feel surprise. Or accomplishment. Or closure. But I…I think I felt nothing.

  Now what?

  I held the gun up, as though it would give me an answer. When none came, I decided simply to use it. I pressed the button near its grip to activate the metal scanner.

  For a brief moment, I saw everything. Countless frames of buildings, countless lampposts and signs as far as the horizon could stretch. I saw several sets of weapons and armors that floated in the air, as though worn by humans. All manifesting as blueish lights, before fading away.

  Once the minute-long cooldown was off, I activated the radar again, this time in a different direction. I saw the same things as before, more or less. I then fired it a third, then a fourth time.

  The fourth time, I found a massive building, far away, with a crowd inside. Among the crowd was someone with a purse of coins, and the most ridiculously oversized sword I had ever seen.

  I could remember it, clear as day. That blade belonged to Cirrus. The man who took away Saber's sight. And I saw, too, the metal of his belt buckles and zippers and buttons. Just as I remembered.

  A thought crossed my mind.

  "Maw of Leviathan," I whispered to myself.

  I always thought the shape had to be a neat, equilateral octagon centered around me. But if I learned anything from working on the radar, it was that omnidirectional shapes were among the most inefficient.

  Never before had I realized that this ability had no maximum range. Only a maximum area.

  I knelt down and pressed my palm to the ground. I sent my mana beneath the earth, imagining a line connecting Cirrus and myself.

  Trails of light darted beneath me, leaving iridescent trajectories that intersected to form a magical diagram, a triangle.

  Three sides used. Five sides left.

  I visualized a second triangle around Cirrus, where I had seen him. Another three sides.

  And with the remaining two sides, I connected my triangle to his, with a thin, thin corridor. There I had it: an enclosed octagon.

  I clenched my fist, pulverizing whatever was inside the triangle on the other end.

  Something as durable as Cirrus would survive no doubt, but I bet he was in pain now. Perhaps a broken bone. Perhaps a bruised lung. Maybe a crushed eye, even. Hah.

  No matter. In just 10 minutes, I could cast the spell again. Even if he survived this one, he'd have to survive the next one too.

  And the next.

  And the next.