After several minutes of standing around while she concentrates on whatever skill lets her manipulate matter, I realize that I will be unable to tolerate sitting around idle for however long the process takes her. I had thought I’d be able to talk to her or something, so I figured I’d sacrifice the time to get to know her better, but she doesn’t respond in the slightest when she’s using her skill. Ugh. Wait, Rav’s book!

After supporting her next fixture, I run and grab it from Zathis chamber. Now this I can get behind: magic.

I flip to the first page… to find it’s nearly blank. There is a small scribble, no larger than a quarter, and one word: ‘Light’. The next page is similar, with a different scribble, and the word ‘form’, followed by ‘sharp’, ‘dark’, ‘blunt’, ‘mana’, and ‘self’. Every one has its own unique scribble above it. Are these… the runes Rav was talking about? They all seem like they can be created without ever picking up the pen, or formed by one continuous line. I really wish there was more- wait, there is! A small excerpt on the last page.

Mana must be used to create these shapes before a spell may be cast. Great care must be taken to ensure the correct shape is held, lest the spell misfire.

Hmm. Well, I don’t have any Mana, and I won’t until we get a village to heal my ‘Seared Channels’, but at least I can practice visualizing them. Maybe forming Mana is similar to moving Energy? It’ll be good practice anyway.

The Light rune looks a lot like someone drew the number ‘4’, but backwards, with a circle around it. I spend a few minutes staring at the image, trying to ingrain it in my memory, but that’s more force of habit than actual necessity. My Intelligence skill is high enough that I have a near perfect recollection of the rune after a few moments. The warning at the end of the book unnerves me, however, so the extra time serves the secondary purpose of making me feel safer. I remember the way it felt to have Mana raging through my body unchecked, and it is far from a pleasant memory.

After once again moving to hold some sticks in a new position, I enter my Energy view and start trying to arrange my Energy to match the symbol of Light.

Several minutes of concerted effort offer one conclusion: no. It’s impossible to hold the Energy in an exact shape. It’s like… a living thing, for lack of a better alternative. It doesn’t stay still even when commanded to do so. It wiggles, undulates slightly, wavers, whatever. On top of that, trying to maintain even the rough shape proves incredibly difficult, like trying to actively heal multiple areas of my body simultaneously. I usually focus on just one place, but have some Energy ready at other problem locations so I can quickly jump around, but I’ve never tried doing it simultaneously… and the lack of practice shows clearly here.

Even moving as fast as I can, the general shape persists for only a moment before deteriorating into an unorganized mess. A huff of frustration must have gotten out, because I’m distracted from my efforts by Marie.

=”I know, I know. It’s boring to just stand there, but hey! We’re almost done! And look at what you’ve helped build!” She spreads her arms wide before the beginnings of an actually nice looking, fortified raised platform. Lynn, Rav, or both at the same time would be able to shoot way over the heads of anyone below, and they’d be almost entirely safe from counterattack through the combined power of accessible cover and the illusion.

“No more worrying about getting shot in the back of the head.”

=”I know, right!” Her blunt nature is amusing, and I smile at her, but there’s no real happiness behind it. I’m too caught up in my own thoughts about what I can do to make the Energy more stable… maybe place Power in the configuration I want? Or maybe the Fragments can corral some of it? I have a surplus of Power that I could experiment with, but I also have a pile of Fragments that have been taking up space for a while, so I opt to start experimenting with the more expendable resource. 70 Power is a lot short of 5000, I don’t have any to waste.

Fragments. I haven’t experimented with them to any large degree, just enough to know that I can move them around. They’re kinda like pieces of Energy, but they look and feel...different. Heavier, if that even means anything in terms of Energy. They’re slow to move, and I can’t control them directly. I can push them with my Energy, but it takes a fair amount of effort, and it’s a pretty slow process. Fortunately, I have time to spare, so I begin the laborious process.

The Fragments don’t move much once they don’t have Energy pushing them around, so they fit this purpose a lot better, even if they aren’t meant for it.

Marie finishes her work and starts checking to be sure the platform is stable long before I finish putting together the rune, but I’m too invested in this line of thought not to at least see it through.

At the end, the rune just sits there. It doesn’t disperse naturally, and as long as I don’t accidentally run Energy into it, the Fragments don’t move out of place.

It also doesn’t do anything, so there’s that.

I try lightly surrounding the symbol with Energy, but it doesn’t have much effect aside from lightly buffeting the Fragments. I try raising the pressure, pushing my Energy at the Fragments from all sides at once, but my pressure is far from equally distributed, so I only manage to mess up the rune more. Grumbling angrily, I shove the stupid thing back into place and stare at it.

I want to put my Energy in it, how do I do that. Wait. Fuck me I’m stupid.

I surround the fragment in Energy and focus on activating the Imbue Energy skill. The fragments shudder slightly, and the surrounding Energy suddenly glows much more brighter. It feels almost blinding, despite my perception of Energy being purely non-visual, and I can hardly make anything out as the intensity climbs ever higher.

[Rune Creation Detected… Error, unrecognized operation involved in rune creation. Denied.]

WHAT?! The system BLOCKED ME? You’ve got to be-

The light fades to nothing the moment the notification vanishes. The Energy that was being infused just… evaporated. Gone. I’ll regenerate it, but still… there was something there! Something was happening! I solved the puzzle only to have a fucking admin step in and say ‘no’. Fuck that, I refuse to accept it.

But the next attempt doesn’t change anything.

Nor the next. It fails the same way every time: system blocking.

Closing my eyes in frustration, I decide to look through the skill gains of the day.

I gained another partial boost to Perception, which turns into a whole stat gain, bringing me to 30 total (with the boost from Kaythe). I also gain a ‘plus’ for Strength and Endurance, from swinging a sword a lot and pushing myself physically respectively. For Secondary Skills, I got: Transfuse Energy +1 (10), Imbue Energy +1 (7), Fortify +1 (3), and Tamer +1 (4). Overall, a fair amount of balanced gains. Fortify seems pretty hard to level, and Tamer… there’s not much I can do to speed it up. I think if I tried to Dominate more creatures, it would level faster, but… well, I wouldn’t have even attempted it before I had the orange Energy, and since then I haven’t gotten the chance. This level, like usual, came with a note:

[Your understanding of the ties that bind you has grown to where you can experience the senses of your bonded allies.] [Domination progress milestone reached! Cathid 75% dominated]

I look at Kaythe, who has been patiently sitting on my back. Nothing. He just stares back at me. Well, the bonds use Energy, so maybe reaching out with that? His Energy looks the same as always, but as I move my awareness into his body space, I feel my senses expand and… change. I feel slightly hungry all of a sudden, and my perspective suddenly shifts to a still frame of my face. Everything seems more vivid, colorful, and there are tinges of another color, something I’ve never seen before. The air past the outside of the cave is speckled with transient rays of a very light purple. I can see every rock and crevice in the cave entrance with impeccable detail. Even the structure Marie is building looks different, with certain pieces of wood darker or lighter than I remember them. The color isn’t uniform either… but it looks like it might have something to do with ‘load bearing’? Supports under stress seem to be a darker color than their unstressed counterparts. I take all this in with more than a hint of wonder, until the moment Kaythe moves slightly, and my physical body almost falls over. I snap back to my own senses just in time to feel a wave of nausea.

Oof. I hadn’t realized how important it was for sight to know when it was going to change. Trying to make sense of the inbetween images messed with me really badly. It might take some getting used to, but this is a big fucking deal. I have a scout that I can use literally as a second pair of eyes. Well, another eye, anyway. This skill really deserves the rarity it has.