Aidan’s smile was worth her heart. A sappy thought that plagued her often.

In the growing mire of concentrated fighting that was pulling toward them, his attention was all hers. He chose to spend his time, something he viewed as the most precious thing he possessed, on being with her.

Just listening to him laugh was nice.

He’d probably actually and try to cast lightning at the portal from here just to keep the joke alive. Amelia’s gaze slid to a B-3 that was trying to kill him. She clicked her tongue without meaning to, making a noise of disapproval. B-3 was being obvnoxious.

Then, as she had come to expect, Vienne intervened and smashed B-3. When she was down, Vienne continued with some necessary violence. They both disappeared again, to disappear and reappear again.

Amelia’s eyes widened as her hair slowly pulled across her cheeks toward Aidan. The barest hint of wind flowed across her skin. A flash of light to her right. B-3 was pushing toward her with that hand. If left undeterred it would spear her through the eyeball. Still, Amelia felt the urge to lean in, a sudden innocent curiosity overtaking her.

Her hair flowed back and away, the caress of air being pushed toward her by the fury of B-3s armspeed. Vienne intervened and cut B-3 in half. Both disappeared. The kiss of the wind as it pulled back toward where they’d been made her close her eyes. She almost felt the tug of the air greedily replacing the space they had been occupying a moment prior.

“Not exactly a domineering empty,” she whispered.

The flashes continued overhead, and she stared at the spot where they’d just vacated, trying to feel the air move. It was too far away, but she almost felt like she could reach out and touch it. She lifted her hand and spread her fingers out toward the spot, eyeballing it. She closed them, she lowered her gaze to her fingers for a moment and opened them and closed them a few times. It had been a flight of whimsy. She’d just been trying to grab the empty.

“Raven. How many times in your travels have you cast your overhand sword ability?”

Aidans words appeared in her head, mostly because for a brief moment she had reached out without thinking on a childish whim and had actually expected something to happen. She’d been about to chide herself but hesitated. She didn’t feel… wrong?

“Magic doesn’t work like that!” Rat blurted out.

“Why?” Aidan asked her. “It’s magic. It’s a little arrogant to tell anyone you understand all the rules on how an imaginary system works.”

If there was some big dumb secret to Order of the Black, Amelia was thoroughly fed up with being teased about it. Her brain couldn’t put it down. Just looping it over and over.

Domineering empty. Empty. The slight tone of fear.

But, Quark hadn’t … been… an Order of the Black.

What did they know about emptiness? Even the space that B-3 and Vienne occupied was never empty. Moment it was free of them all sorts of things rushed in to replace them.

“No half-answers. The spell is crafted using their internalized mana. Mana is everywhere, undirected and colorless. Only when a mage internalizes it and makes it their own can it be directed and shaped.”

“Yes , mimi.”

“[Everywhere At Once].” Vienne intoned.

Vienne wasn’t actually going everywhere at once. If you had the spoons for it you could really view the VR experience as happening in the same space all at once. It wasn’t a big deal for Vienne to step from one place to another because they were all in VR together.

Amelia’s brain started trying to do physics and gave up.

The second to last thought she had on the physics of it was that she could just as easily touch something twenty feet away in VR as she could right next to her. She was just sending electrical impulses from her brain through a piece of equipment that translated to the game. The difference between them was that Vienne had a skill to facilitate it and Amelia did not.

Don’t let go until you see it. Forsythe’s voice whispered.

Mana Regeneration Increases by 25% as the Influx of Energy Leaks From The Portal.

Amelia turned to look at the portal, trying to imagine what that was like. A vast and giant ocean of mana on the other side of that portal. So large that some of it was lost through the portal into their world simply because there was more space for it. Water leaking into a boat.

Mimi, where does that mana come from?

You have asked the right question.

Amelia began to smile, she’d just had a really interesting thought about mana.

Amelia started to look around in the sky, trying to find something. She had to find a spell. She had to find one this instant or she would lose her train of thought and she’d have to start all over.

Her eyes fell on an arrow of light that was splitting into several other arrows on their way to strike the dark hands that were still pushing forward into the square.

Light Arrow Base. Multiplication, figure it to be about Grandmaster rank.

She raised her hand and countered it without words. The spell immediately blinked out of existence. The arrows that had begun to split off also failed. A cry of frustration and anger from the archer in question. They were glaring around angrily, trying to figure out why their super impressive arrow spell had failed. They looked right passed her, mostly because she was onto other things in her mind and didn’t look like she was even paying attention to anything.

Amelia looked at her mana and muttered. She hadn’t burned enough mana. She needed to try again but…

Amelia turned around in a circle with both hands out, casting Aura as fast as she could. Normally she would have done it in a manner that used the aoe component, but now she was just trying to zero her mana pool so she cast it individually. Some people turned slightly giving her weird looks, including Aidan, Mordred, and Raven; but Amelia had no time for them right now.

Mana at 1%. Mana low.

Amelia started searching the area again.

Aquatic Shot. Final Form. Expert.

Amelia rised her hand and put her palm out following it’s path toward some of the fringe ground spawns. This time she decided to reflect it, thinking of another test she could run at the same time as this one.

Aquatic Shot reeled in the air, pausing and then slowing, as if it were being restrained by something. Amelia’s eyes narrowed as she looked at her mana bar. The bar shook for a moment. There wasn’t enough mana to perform the reflect naturally.

“Profoundly?” Perfidelia whispered.

The Aquatic Shot spell shook, expanded, and then started heading back to sender.

The mage who had fired it dropped his staff with a sheepish look. They seemed to think they were the one that messed up, somehow. She was too far to hear what he was saying but from the expression it was probably, ‘oh shit.’

Amelia continued following the progress of the spell as it bore back down on the originator and then thought about reflecting it upward. The Aquatic Shot once again slowed, but the change was much faster this time. Perhaps because she’d already converted the spell once? The Aquatic Shot grew very slightly larger and then shot upward.

True excitement started to bubble up in Amelia and she reached out, trying to grab it before it was too far away. Too far away?

“Pfft,” Amelia realized that there wasn’t anything that was too far away, not really.

Sadly her attention had shifted minimally and the profound reflect didn’t happen. Without a firm grip of the idea and no activation words she lost the spell and it soared off into the night, living it’s best life.

Amelia began looked around for other spells to counter.

Mana acted like other things. Things like air, or water, or even earth. Mana would fill an area with lesser mana. When a spell was countered profoundly the world expected the correct amount of mana and made space for it. If there wasn’t sufficient mana from the caster, it created a void where the expected mana was supposed to go. With nothing filling the area, mana from the surroundings bled into the spell.

Then the spell had sufficient mana for activation, and executed.

Magic within magic.

Amelia became increasingly frustrated when she couldn’t find a spell that looked like it had enough juice for her next question.

How long could she keep it up? Was there a limit?

Amelia’s eyes fell on Aidan. Perfect! She pointed off in a random direction. She turned toward the direction she pointed and shifted her feet a few times with excitement.

Nothing happened.

She turned back to find that he was squinting at her with a confused look.

She had been perfectly clear, but decided that she did love him so she’d just repeat herself. “Fire one off in that direction!”

“You just needed to say so--” He started.

“I did say so!” She snapped, completely unaware that she hadn’t said a word. “Hurry up, before I lose the feeling!”

“[One],” Aidan fired off the final form lightning slightly upward, his expression a little peeved.

Amelia turned toward One. It was perfect. It was a spell she knew almost better than Aidan. She’d seen it so many times. Admired it so many times. Now, it was hers.

They had spent the last few minutes watching Amelia quietly lose her mind.

She had been countering and reflecting spells from friendlies in the area. While no one had noticed it was her yet, it was only a matter of time before someone realized that the Empress of Elysium was personally ruining their game experience.

Mordred cleared his throat. “Does she… troll?”

Aidan was about to say no, not ever, but then Amelia whirled on him like she was about to reach out and grab him with both hands. She made an impatient stomping motion and then pointed off into the night sky. She nodded like ‘you know, do the thing, like we do’.

Aidan did not know what the thing was, but when she repeated it like he was the one that was at fault he felt a little bit irked.

“She trolls… so hard,” Aidan replied, earning a knowing look from Raven and a wide-eyed look from Mavis and Fanciful.