Mitch took the stylus back to his kitchen table and set it with the other items for a moment and sat back to think. The beam from the stylus had been the same pale orange color that he always saw in his channels instead of the whitish color of the mists. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that might mean that it had been using energy from him as the power source. The issue was that he needed a way to be sure.

The stylus wasn’t big enough to hold one of the stones he had gotten from Kanshou, but who’s to say that they couldn’t make those things in different sizes and shapes like people did with batteries here on earth?

He picked the stylus back up and turned it around in his hands inspecting it more closely. He was looking for anything that resembled a switch or compartment of any kind. He didn’t find that, but he did see, hidden among the natural grains of the wood, one tiny line that traveled around the entire outside of the stylus. It looked very much like a seam. Mitch grabbed a steak knife and a spoon from his drawer and carefully placed the edge of the blade against the seam and started trying to work it in between the halves. Several slips and a few close calls for his fingers later he finally managed to get them to split. Grabbing the spoon, he used the end of the handle as a spudger and slowly began separating the two sides the rest of the way down. Doing so was more difficult than he expected as the sides kept wanting to pull back together like opposing magnets. He ended up needing to use q-tips from the bathroom to shove in as spacers.

When he finally had them all the way apart, he lay them side by side. The most interesting part was an elliptical void in the center that spanned the distance between either tip with only about one-half of an inch of solid material at either end. The most intriguing part of this cavity, however, was that it seemed to have writing etched all around it from stem to stern. He couldn’t read the script at all, and it didn’t even look like any language that he was familiar with. Granted, he wasn’t precisely a polyglot, but he still had the feeling that this might be the language of Kanshou’s realm. If that was the case, then he had no reference to what any of the symbols might mean. Unless Kanshou were willing to teach it to him, which he doubted, he would at best be able to replicate this; which meant whatever it did now was all it would ever do.

If all he could do with this was send out a wide beam to cover a broad area then even if this worked he was going to need something else to supplement it, perhaps several things. Miniguns are great, but they don’t work in every situation, and this was the same concept. Sometimes it’s precision that counts, as with a sniper or hunting rifle. Sometimes you need something in the middle as well, like some SMG or carbine.

Well, there went his hope for an easy answer.

He would need to keep studying this thing to see if he could find any more hints about how it worked that he could perhaps apply to other styles. He took a picture of each of the two halves with his phone and then looked at it again searching for anything noteworthy. There was no sign of any stone or anything that looked like any sort of energy storage that he could find. The only other thing he noticed was two lines toward the front of the stylus that ran from either point on the chisel back to connect to the cavity.

Putting the thing back together was the most straightforward part of the whole affair. As soon as Mitch got the two halves close enough to each other, they snapped back together without his intervention. Mitch looked it over again once it was reassembled, and with the exception of a few marks left by his impromptu tools, no one would ever know that it had been taken apart in the first place. Now to figure out how to use the damn thing reliably. It would do him no good to make a bunch of gear that he couldn’t even use.

He picked up his tongs again and grabbed one of the stones. He lifted the stylus and gingerly moved the stone within about three inches. He held it there for a minute waiting for some kind of reaction, but nothing happened. He pushed it about an inch closer and waited again: nothing. He did that again and again, moving it closer and closer until it finally touched the stylus; still nothing. Mitch was starting to get frustrated but persevered.

Next, he started moving the stone up and down to different spots on the stylus, and when he reached the place where it had grooves for the grip, he was finally rewarded. The stylus shot out another beam, this time white instead of orange. The way he was holding the stylus the beam shot down into his table. Then it shot through the table into his floor. Mitch quickly tried to pull them apart, but they were stuck together somehow. Getting a bit panicked now he started yanking at the stylus forcefully sending the beam sweeping all across the room wreaking havoc everywhere it went. Mitch was getting ready to step on the thing and heave the stone away from it when the beam started to fluctuate, then sputter, and then it died.

Mitch sighed in relief as the stone and stylus finally came apart, and he set them down on opposite ends of the table. Then he stood and started looking around the room at the damage. Everything within about three to five feet had a deep gouge or a hole in it, everything beyond that looked like it had been sanded down to varying degrees. At least there were no smoke or flames, and nothing seemed burnt or scorched this time.

Then he saw the other two stones still sitting on the table: two rather deep divots within an inch of them. It was only by fate or fortune that he hadn’t hit one of those in his panic. He had no desire to consider what that would have done.

Mitch slumped back into his chair resignedly.

“Fuck! There goes my deposit.”

He cheered himself up by imagining kicking Kanshou in the nuts a few times and then went back to examining the destruction. Cautiously he used the tip of one finger to touch one of the marks yanking his hand away almost as soon as it made contact. When nothing exploded, he felt the mark again. It was smooth and glossy, as though it had been polished to a sheen. It was still jagged from all his jerking around, but every surface felt as smooth as glass. There was no discoloration as there had been when he managed to make the stylus work last time, it was as though whatever had been there had just stopped being there.

Next, he looked at the stylus. There was a small mark on the grip where the stone had made contact, but otherwise, it appeared undamaged. He touched the tip to the table again, the thing was already practically destroyed so why not, but got no response. Put moderately at ease he moved to phase two and started pulling the two halves apart again. It went much quicker this time, and after just a few moments he was able to lay the two halves out on the table.

The cavity was utterly destroyed. The writing was gone it was almost double the size that it had been. The insides had that same glassy finish as everything else the beam from this thing had touched. The only use left for this thing would be as the world’s least comfortable chopsticks. He tossed the halves down on the table in disgust. The bounced a few times, clattering about before the open faces got close again and they snapped together.

Taking a deep breath, he once again picked up the stone he had used moments ago to redecorate his place and examined it from all sides. It seemed completely undamaged. Except… was it smaller? He placed it down next to the other stones and compared their sizes. Before, they had all been roughly the same size, but now the one he had used with the stylus was noticeably smaller. Not a tremendous amount, it was maybe one fifth smaller than the others, but it put his mind back in turmoil. He had been counting on these to fuel his survival, but they were expendable. When Kanshou had said batteries, he had been thinking modern lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, but these were more like solid rocket fuel: once they were used up, they would be gone.

He slumped until his forehead clunked into the table, which the dregs of his headache reminded him forcefully was not a good idea. Groaning, he sat up enough to put his head in his hands. He needed to find, or make, a new power source as well.

Suddenly there was a massive bang and Mitch had just enough time to turn and see the remains of his aluminum and styrofoam front door shoot by, crumpled like a piece of paper, and an enraged Kanshou storming into his apartment before a mental roar of “YOU DARE?” from Kanshou that sounded like a hundred Formula One cars revving up caused him to blackout.