Chapter 1.19

17th day of the 5th month of the year 50143.

Efi looked at the wall clocks. It showed the beginning of two o'clock. Mike had been gone for two days.

"So where is he gone?" She voiced her thoughts.

Flying up to the pentagram, she concentrated on her connection to Mike. Quite easily she sensed him.

"At least he's alive," she said and then turned toward the table near the wall.

A translucent eye followed her at head level. It was another project of hers that Mike didn't know about. Some time ago, Efi had wanted to be able to observe remotely and possibly use some magic in some way. And so, the idea of the "glass eye," as she called it, was born.

The one flying beside her now was the fourth version of the eye. The first eye was a single piece of monocrystal. It had taken her almost a year to grow it. It was the size of a large apple. Everything about it seemed perfect at first - the huge amount of energy, the compact size, and the large number of spells stored inside. Two problems came out with it, however. It was heavy and had to use fairly strong air magic spells to levitate freely. And they ate energy really, really fast, and they created a lot of airflow around the eye. The air currents, as well as the energy consumption, were very eye-catching. It couldn't fly for more than a month. So, she had to give up the first version.

Not completely abandoned, of course. The eye was still in use now, but as a stationary tracking device and for practicing spells on it. It was hidden in the hall with the pentagram, enough so that Mike wouldn't notice it.

Efi decided to lighten the second eye, drastically. It took less time considerably to make, less than a month. For the same size, the inside of the eye was hollow with very thin walls. With the significant weight reduction, both energy consumption and airflow were reduced. The amount of energy stored inside was also reduced, but it was bearable, considering that the flight time remained the same.

With this version, Efi had been already able to work freely. And she enthusiastically began to stuff her eye with various spells and algorithms, and then practice them in action.

Her happiness did not last long, only a month. While practicing aerial maneuvering, the eye accidentally scratched a wall and shattered...With fireworks and a rather large hole appeared in the wall. She was lucky that the eye wasn't fully charged with magical energy. Efi urgently had to fix the hole. She then even avoided thinking about the project for a month. But in the end, she gave up and sat down to rework the project.

It took half a year to redesign. And it took another three months to grow the third version of the "glass eye". The structure of the eye was significantly redesigned. Now it looked more like a sponge than an egg shell. The mass, too, had increased, but only slightly. Efi began to feed the eye with spells and algorithms again. There were a few glitches. And the closer to the completion of the "glass eye", the more serious and long glitches occurred.

It took her almost six months to perfect it. She even grew two more copies of the eye beforehand. Just in case. The almost finished version allowed her to see with night vision, thermal vision, and magic vision, and then save pictures with it. The eye could also record sound. Not for long and of poor quality, though. Efi also added passive absorption of magical energy from her surroundings. A sort of recharge in case the energy supply was about to run out. All she had to do was set up a remote image transfer from her "glass eye" to the tablet. She had already perfected the control from the tablet.

That day she practiced transmitting pictures from eye to tablet in the central hallway with the pentagram. One moment everything was going well, and the next moment the "glass eye" froze. It hanged both literally and figuratively. The eye hung low to the floor and did not move. Commands came to him from the tablet, but there was no reaction to them. After more than half an hour without any effect, Efi got angry and kicked the eye in the heat of the moment.

It flew off to the side, and a miracle happened, it came back to life. However, Efi's joy was fleeting. The eye became completely uncontrollable and executed chaotic commands flying around the hall in random directions until it crashed into the edge of the pentagram.

She crouched down in fright, though it was unnecessary for a noncorporeal being. A thunderous explosion followed, which shook the entire lab. Some of the emergency systems went on. And Efi felt what it was like to be in the midst of a magical explosion with her whole body. A mortal of flesh and blood would not have survived, but she only got away with fright.

The damage was quite extensive. The magic circle with the pentagram was badly damaged in particular. The entire hallway was also damaged. Mike was out of town at the time, and there was plenty of time to fix everything. But she couldn't hide what had happened, and she didn't have time to repair the pentagram. It was up to Mike to finish it. He yelled at her a lot and was angry for a long time afterward.

After that, it was decided to conduct all experiments solely in the training room. To avoid a repeat of what had happened. Efi didn't give up her attempts, especially since everything was almost finished.

Thus, the current fourth version was born. The design remained the same, but all the spells and algorithms were reworked. This time the long and monotonous work went on for almost a year. Just when Mike was away for a long time.

As a result, the fourth version has been already able to transfer pictures to the tablet without hang-ups. In addition, the "glass eye" received a cloaking for stealth in the optical spectrum and a little in the magical. However, she had to sacrifice the operating time, which was now ten days with the possibility of passive charging for almost a year. It also got an "autopilot" mode, where it automatically followed its mistress and periodically recorded her actions.

Just like now.

On the table where she flew up were two round plates, twenty centimeters in diameter. One of them had a round recess in the center for the "glass eye".

This was another of Efi's projects, one that was related to the "glass eye" and the connection to Mike. It was relatively simple and was meant to enhance Efi's connection to the surface. Two crystal plates were to serve as a bridge and, at the very least, to allow control of the "glass eye" through the portal. The principle of operation was based on the imitation of a spiritual master-family connection.

Tests showed fully stable operation and Efi was now planning the first full test through the portal.

Taking both plates, she returned to the pentagram and placed the top plate with the recess in the center of the pentagram. Flying outside the circle, she then activated the transfer of the plate.

To her delight, the transfer happened without any problems. Now she placed a second plate in the center of the pentagram. Then she began activating the pentagram.

"Protective field," Efi said aloud, the outer built-in crystals began to glow faintly one by one. Then a shimmering protective field appeared around the pentagram.

"Connection," an energy surge, and the inner crystals under the plate began to glow in turn. A few seconds passed, and all the crystals continued to glow.

"There's a connection," Efi said with relief.

Without disconnecting the pentagram, Effie took the tablet and began to check the connection to the plates. The connection to the plate in front of her was stable and worked both ways. Now she began to check the connection to the second top plate. To her great relief, the connection was there, albeit weak. Commands went both ways, but with a delay of a couple of seconds.

Now she had a long and complicated process ahead of her. She turned off the pentagram and removed the lower plate. Then she turned the pentagram back on, but this time for the inverse transfer. Ordinary pentagrams couldn't do that. Usually, whoever activated it moved to another side. But this pentagram was bidirectional, and it didn't need anyone on the other side to transfer something to her.

When she finished transferring, in the center, on the floor, there was an upper plate with a recess. Taking both plates, she checked the reserve of magical energy in each, 98 percent. A cost of two percent in ten minutes.

"Not bad," the result was acceptable. The plates could run for almost eight hours before they were fully discharged.

Now she had her next step. She placed the top plate with the recess in the center of the pentagram. In the recess she placed the "glass eye", deactivating it for a short time beforehand.

Then she repeated the entire process of transferring the upper plate with the eye and then the partial activation with the lower plate.

"The connection is there," she said with a smile.

Efi began checking the connection to the plates again. As last time there was a connection, but a weak one. Now a "glass eye" check was coming. She sent a command through the tablet. After about five seconds a reply came. Efi smiled. Now she sent a command to record and transmit a picture of the hallway in the house.

This time the wait was incredibly long. It took almost an hour to transmit one picture. Sighing, she took one last look at the picture of the hall on the tablet. It was taken in the night vision. In the picture was an empty night hall.

Efi sent a series of commands to the eye - take off for half a meter, take a picture in each sector, and then land back down. It took another quarter of an hour to do this. Once the response came back that all the commands were done and the eye was on the plate, she repeated the entire inverse transfer procedure.

She checked the magical energy reserves in the plates at 81% and 77%.

"As expected," Efi said.

From the "glass eye," she transferred the pictures to her plate. There were eight in total, one for each sector, all successful without any problem in the night vision.

After collecting all her toys, Efi went down to the lower technical floor, where the reactor and the seven crystal growth chambers were located. The chambers were arranged in a circle around the reactor. Each chamber occupied a different sector. Two chambers grew tablets and three chambers grew regular crystals, and two more chambers Mike gave to Efi's complete disposal.

Efi checked the chambers twice a day. If there were ready crystals or tablets, she would take them away and prepare to grow new ones. This time only six regular crystals were ready, which she took away.

She went on to her first chamber. Where the monocrystalline thread was being grown. Since her last check, the growth has been 20 centimeters. Carefully recording all the data in a little journal and duplicating it to her tablet, she went to the last chamber. Here she had already begun preparations for her next project. Making sure that the first layers of monocrystal were already growing, she smiled cheerfully. This would be her most ambitious project yet. It would take her ten years to grow all the pieces. But that didn't make her sad. She had plenty of time.

Efi went back upstairs to the hall with the pentagram and looked at the clock. It was almost three in the morning. Taking the tablet, she looked through the series of pictures once more. In one, she spotted a comfortable spot above the window in the hall. Efi decided to send the "glass eye" to spy upstairs in the hall. After doing some not-sophisticated calculations, she realized that it would be a little more complicated than she had originally thought. She wasn't sure if the eye would stop in the right place with enough accuracy.

It was necessary to conduct a series of small experiments. Having constructed something similar to a landing site on the table. She began a series of tests. She moved the eye ten meters away and placed it on the floor. Calculating the necessary commands, she sent them to the glass eye. It flew up to a meter and a half, turned toward the table, and slowly flew toward it. It hovered over the right spot, turned in the right direction, and slowly lowered. Efi smiled; the error was one centimeter. After making the adjustments, she halved it.

She walked over to the pentagram and repeated the entire process of sending the "glass eye". Successful, she now sent a new series of commands. After a couple of minutes, she received a reply, and the series of commands was completed. She sent a command to record and transmit a picture of the hallway in the house. The wait was long, as it had been before, almost an hour. Finally, she had a picture on her tablet. She smiled broadly. It had worked.