Mists swirled, parting to reveal… darkness. That would normally not prevent me from seeing to some extent, but it appeared to be murky depths. I held onto the image, trying to wait for something to change. For movement. Rotating the view gave a different angle of murky water. But after time passed, there was nothing.

“What does that mean?” Calculator asked. “Is Deimos dead?”

“Dead?” I shook my head. “No, that shouldn’t be the case. If he was, then I should uh…” I didn’t actually know. “... Either see his body, or get nothing at all. In this case, I felt a strange resistance. Not like normal, where it fails. Nor was it violent like Gloom,” I shuddered as I thought of the shadowy villain. “If I had to guess, it was redirected somehow.”

“Is that possible?”

“Everything is possible, I think,” I shrugged. “I’d presume some sort of spatial distortion or something? Handface has had enough experience being scryed on that he could have come up with some sort of counter.”

Calculator nodded, “Distance manipulation, maybe. We’ll have to test at different times to see if the location moves.”

“He could also be invisible in the water,” I noted.

“Wouldn’t that leave some visible signs?” Calculator asked. “Like a distortion?”

“It might, but not if it’s magic. At least, not something my eyes could pick out. That’s not really my area of expertise.”

“I see. Well, that should be enough for today, though we do have plans for something more. Given what happened with Gloom, we are leery of having you attempt to scry powerful figures, but the particular powers at hand are quite different. So I have some preliminary questions,” he held up his tablet and read from it. “Do you think it would be dangerous to scry Doctor Doomsday, based on what you know of him?”

“Uh, I’m not really sure. I suppose it could be. Does he have resistance to mental abilities?”

“Yes, but not in the same way as Gloom. Is Scrying… mental?” He shook his head. “I suppose it must be, based on what happened with that.”

“That’s right,” I nodded. “At least in part, it relies on the connection to a person’s self. Knowing their name, having met them, having things they owned or part of them… it at least requires a mental component, which is why it can be resisted. And given what I’ve seen here, I wouldn’t doubt that Doctor Doomsday could do something about it… if he knew it was coming.”

“He doesn’t usually have any sort of mental retaliation, so the most we could expect would be failure… but we’ll be holding off on making any attempts for the moment. Perhaps if you gain more proficiency?”

I nodded. That involved both actual practice and spending points to increase its power. I technically had points available, but I wasn’t going to spend half of my recent level- technically more than half- for an upgrade that wouldn’t help in the way I wanted at the moment. That was, as always, fighting to get more experience and thus more points to spend.

Turlough (No surname)

Level: 20

Experience: 1076

Storage +1

Firebolt +2

Shocking Grasp +3

Grease +2

Force Armor +6

Mage's Reach +1

Translation +1

Haste +4

Disguise

Familiar Bond +1

Enlarge

Energy Ward

Sonic Lance +1

Scrying

Shield +1

Stoneskin

Remaining Points: 20

Mana Crystal Deposition

“Are you okay?”

“Hmm?” I saw Calculator looking at me.

“Your eye twitched.”

“Oh, well, I saw something… unexpected.”

“Is it a problem?”

“I don’t think so.”

It was just concerning to see another section of my status. And containing a word I wasn’t familiar with. A quick search on my phone made me briefly more confused. I was quite certain I hadn’t been involved in removing anyone from office, and that didn’t fit with Mana Crystals. Shouldn’t it be called Mana Crystal Formation?

Ah, there it was. Turning from a gas directly to a solid, the opposite of sublimation. That was… accurate enough, at least. Mana probably wasn’t a gas, but it also wasn’t not a gas.

So now there was just this thing about having a spell I hadn’t paid for or heard of that also wasn’t in the same section as spells belonged, but in one of its own. It was a spell, right? There wasn’t really another thing mages got. And it used mana, but so did skills from different classes.

It was time to look into this more. “Anything else?” I asked Calculator.

“No, we’re done for the moment. If you come up with additional concerns or perhaps something helpful on the potential matter with Doctor Doomsday, please keep me informed. And of course we’ll be meeting again tomorrow for more Scrying attempts.”

-----

I was usually pretty consistent with going to training, but I bowed out for the sake of interacting with my new skill more. I’d been quite out of it when I began the process, repeatedly incapacitating myself by using up all my mana forming the crystals. I hadn’t really tested if they were useful for anything. Not thoroughly, anyway.

Unless things were extremely confused I could absorb them to refill my mana. I started by creating a small one. Using a single point of mana- or something close to that- I formed a spiky little crystal about an inch tall. Then I tried to absorb it. It took a few tries before anything happened. It quite stubbornly held onto its form, but eventually I discovered that a little bit of a yank on the mana in it while I simultaneously squeezed it in my grip caused it to shatter and then disappear from vision, but I definitely felt mana in the air and pulled it into me.

It took about a minute to fully absorb it, but I was fairly certain I absorbed all of the mana I had put into it. That was great! I repeated the process for the next twenty minutes just to be sure, and though there would have been some natural regeneration at the time it should have been at least ninety percent efficient.

Everything seemed great until I made bigger ones. Spending two mana, I got a crystal… about an inch and a half in size. Maybe a little less? Interestingly enough, it took the same amount of time to absorb. I didn’t have a timer going, so I prepared one of each crystal and a timer on my phone. The results?

A splitting headache. At first things seemed to be going fine. I started the timer and crushed both at once. I felt the mana pouring into me… but some sort of pressure built up in my head, and when I sensed pain I instinctively pushed back. Ultimately I lost more mana than I gained, and my head hurt. It was worse than mana exhaustion because I wasn’t unconscious and I couldn’t just wait for my mana to fill up to a threshold because it was basically eighty percent full.

Ugh, was that really my limit? A two mana crystal?

Not willing to let my theory go untested- and having found nothing about mana crystals in the book from Master Uvithar despite having read it from cover to cover three times- I formed another one. This one made using three mana.

It was… less than two inches long, and didn’t appear particularly larger in other dimensions to make up for it. It certainly wasn’t as much as three of the single mana crystals put together. With my headache receding I popped the crystal and… absorbed the mana.

It quite easily flowed into me, once again taking close to a minute. And I forgot to time it again. So I repeated it- this time with four mana. It took one minute, within a small margin of error.

Five mana, six, and seven were all the same. It was maybe a couple seconds longer, or maybe not. But that was where I made a mistake. At eight, I passed out.

-----

“Mana exhaustion?” Doctor Martinez asked.

“Mana exhaustion,” I nodded.

“We found this crystal on the ground next to you,” he gestured to the bedside table.

Ah right. I hadn’t gotten to absorb that one, because I was out of mana. That was what I got for not thinking. Clearly, the efficiency of the larger crystals was… not the same.

As for the crystal, it was a bit smaller than my finger. I thought about absorbing it, but I decided it was better to be conservative. And I didn’t have any of the smaller ones left with me- the ones I made today were all used up, and the others were at home… or in storage. Which would take about as much mana to retrieve something from as I would get.

That might actually be worth investing more in. The efficiency wouldn’t increase that much, but the total I could have inside would. There was also something in Uvithar’s book about retrieving or storing multiple objects with a single use. It made sense, but I hadn’t really tested it. It was just a cool spell I had picked up with my first point, and without upgrades wasn’t really better than just carrying something. Except if it needed to be hidden, which was not often for me.

“Are you sure there are no long term side effects of this?” Doctor Martinez questioned.

“Did you find anything?” I asked. “My knowledge and experience says no, but…”

Doctor Martinez shook his head, “My scans didn’t pick up any damage.”

“Then as long as I don’t bump into anything when I go down, I believe it should continue to be safe. Of course, I would avoid it during battle if at all possible.”

Before I could forget I wrote down some numbers for later verification. There was some uncertainty about where my mana had been when I started the process, but passing out at the eight mark meant something. If nothing else, it meant the recover was far from ninety percent for larger crystals.

-----

When Midnight and I returned home that evening, we ran into Jim nearby. “Hey Jim, how’s it going?”

“It is going quite well, thank you,” he said. He reached out an ‘arm’ to bar my path, “However, I would advise you to not continue forward as you are.”

“What do you mean?” I tilted my head.

“I’m sure you recall the recent incident in the alley. Individuals similar in description to the ‘thugs’ are standing around the front of the apartment. They cannot easily gain entrance, but nothing legally forbids them from standing on public sidewalks.”

“Okay, so?”

“So if you go they will attack you.”

“Yep.”

“And that would be bad.”

“... Why? I can beat up a bunch of guys like that. Especially with Midnight here.”

Jim managed something like a sigh. Considering I wasn’t sure if he actually had lungs, I was pretty sure I only recognized it due to the helpful effects of Translation. “Turlough, not everything is best solved by violence.”

“But people attacking me is,” I pointed out. I should note that he didn’t actually use my name. After all, we weren’t speaking in a language normal people could produce or comprehend. He really just said ‘Instigator-as-a-name’ and it resolved into my name.

“Even if you flawlessly defeat them, things will not go your way beyond that point. I suggest carefully scouting them out, and thinking long and hard about what sort of future trouble you will be getting into. And I advise you to make prior preparations should you chose to go that route, instead of improvising.”

“Oh, I see. They might have supers with them this time. Or… real supers. Since they’re fake ones.” At least, I presumed if these were the same or similar thugs, they might also have something akin to paladin abilities. “Fine, I’ll be subtle.” I looked over at Midnight. “I’m going to have to carry you.”

-----

The group stood around watching for their target. All of them could be recognized by various paraphernalia with Shooting Star on it.

The first thing they saw was a writhing mass of tentacles walking along. The only thing that prevented them from panicking and immediately attacking the monster was the casual way it walked along, as well as the fact that it was stuffed into a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. It also carried a handbag, out of which it pulled something.

It shouldn’t specifically be after them, but that didn’t stop them from backing away as it approached. They weren’t here to get entangled with a monster.

The thing it pulled out was some sort of card which was swiped at the gate, and then it walked inside.

“... That thing lives here?” one of them said after it was inside the building.

“Apparently.”

“Think it’s an alien?”

“I’d bet on extradimensional. That’s where you get the real freaks.”

“It’s crazy that things like that actually exist.”

“Come on, just get back into position.”

They moved back to both sides of the gate, leaving room on the sidewalk for people to pass and not blocking the entrance. That would be the quickest way to get in trouble. Sure, once they actually did what they were here for there would be trouble, but they wouldn’t have to deal with that kid with swords this time, and they were prepared to run. All they had to do was find an orc.

“Excuse me,” said a woman carrying her baby as she stepped up to the apartment, holding it in one arm to get out her card.

“... How does she even feel safe in there?” another asked.

“No idea.”

A few minutes passed. Then the gate opened from inside. “Ahem.”

They all turned to look at a man in a nice shirt and slacks, the only thing odd about him being a third eye in the middle of his forehead. “Yeah, whaddya want?

“I would like you to move away. You’re bothering the residents.”

“We’re not blocking anything. The sidewalk is public property.”

“I see. Well, I suppose you could tell that to the police when they arrive. I’m sure they’d be interested to hear about your… baseball and plumbing related business.”

The group exchanged looks. “Uh, that won’t be necessary. We’ll leave.”