When Mayana woke up, she immediately looked around in confusion until she saw Kiresula fast asleep next to her. She was confused for a bit why she felt so absent even though Mayana heard her breathing. That was when she realised that she could not feel Kiresula’s magic, like she could with every living being. Like she could before with Kiresula, even after she became glitched. She reached for her and felt her warmth, her pulse, her breath. Despite seeming inert to her sense of magic, she was alive. She was there, she was just asleep. She tried to recall if she noticed the other glitchlings to have innate magic. She seemed to think so, but was not sure. In retrospect, this was not something that she cared about back then. Only now did the absence seem strange and made her try to think about the matter at all. It reminded her of how she would normally not notice someone breathing.

She got up, washed herself and used the outhouse. When she got back to the bedroom, Kiresula just got up, seemingly completely unimpeded by her complete and utter lack of inherent magic. “Hello beautiful!” she greeted Mayana.

Mayana was not fully convinced that everything was actually okay: “Are you feeling good? Is everything okay?”

Kiresula nodded: “Yeah, I mean, I am still kinda in shock because of what I heard yesterday and I am still not certain if I fully coped with being a glitchling, but, I am not feeling bad or anything.”

Mayana was not relieved: “Are you certain about it?”

Kiresula looked into her eyes in acknowledgement of the unspoken message: “What happened? Did I scream in my sleep or something?”

Mayana shook her head: “I… don’t feel your magic anymore. My magic sense was never that well developed but I normally could feel you next to me even with my eyes closed… but now…”

Kiresula responded: “Oh yeah, I guess since you cast [Unrecovery] on me, I probably don’t show up anymore.”

Mayana looked like she had been hit: “What do you mean by that?”

Kiresula’s expression changed for a moment: “It was very easy for the spell to drain what little standard magic that I retained. And as a glitchling, I guess that I just don’t recover it.”

Mayana looked as if she had bit into something unpleasant: “I didn’t know that this would happen! I wouldn’t have cast it onto you if I knew!”

Kiresula made a vague gesture: “I didn’t know that this would happen either, but I don’t mind. I feel that casting had been a bit easier since then. And like I have a slight bit more available magic. I mean, yeah, I guess it’s weird that I am invisible to magic sense, but… I guess being a glitchling and thus using… broken magic is the reason. I mean, it’s the same for me. I no longer sense your magic, but can sense the magic of glitchlings.”

Mayana opened her eyes wide not only in shock but also in the casualness with which her wife handled this. “This does not concern you at all?”

Kiresula stopped in her movements for a moment: “Currently, it is not really relevant to me. I mean, I know that I am a glitchling, I no longer have usable stats, I lost my class, my skills, most of my system affiliation. The spells that I can cast have an out of class malus and I only recover magic under very specific circumstances, namely within broken magic. The church is making propaganda against the very species, that I now belong to. And I also don’t sense your magic anymore. I sense no standard magic anymore. So, yeah, this kinda feels peripheral to me, even though I am sad that I caused you discomfort with this.”

Mayana shook her head: “I am sorry. I was just… reminded of the dead, so this freaks me out, like, a lot.”

Kiresula smiled: “I can imagine that you must have been concerned. Maybe you can enchant an item to show a magical presence when near a heartbeat? Or maybe, you can train yourself to sense broken magic?”

Mayana shook her head: “No one can currently. So what makes you think that I can succeed?”

Kiresula mentioned an idea she had during the night: “So, you can make an item that is receptive to a spell and fires it under a certain condition. So, I can deposit a light spell into it and if the condition isn’t really present,... it would fire as soon as it has enough magic… but if it is one of my spells, it should use… broken magic, so maybe, you would be able to learn to see broken magic. And if not, at least detect its presence.”

Mayana looked at her: “I am not sure if your spells can be caught via my means, but I certainly can try.” Mayana thought about things which had no words, merely shapes, colours and movement. Sometimes, she murmured a few words, but those were merely interjections, or maybe a slow “maybe…”, which Kiresula understood as the working of a mind she deemed more clever than her own. She quietly got dressed and went downstairs, made food for her wife, her parents and Makit’s family. Father Kanvin came in attracted by the smells: “You’re up early, Kirey, what happened?”

“I accidentally scared my better half and her movements woke me up. She’s up right now, thinking. I plan to bring her breakfast to the study as I don’t expect her to come out today.” she said with a smile. They both knew how hard it was to get Mayana out of her thoughts.

Kanvin nodded: “She’s always like that, yeah. What caused it this time?”

“Interfacing an enchantment with broken magic.” Kiresula explained.

Kanvin shook his head: “Oh dear… I can totally see that catching her attention. Will she be around for dinner?”

Kiresula made a vague gesture: “She might eventually emerge to work on her commissions. But this might be huge. Like, getting into [System] records huge.”

Kanvin nodded: “So, it’s a problem many have failed at?”

Kiresula nodded: “I guess, yeah! But the idea is to use my assistance to help with the relevant components. As much as I can!”

Kanvin nodded: “I will ask my wife if we can prepare lots of stock for her special noodle soup. It sounds like a lot will be needed in the future.”

Kiresula understood what he expressed between the lines. Mayana absolutely craved Haditera’s noodle soup when she was feeling ill, mopey or disappointed. “I don’t think it is that bad. Especially as she has the kind of support that most people would not have. A glitchling who can help with the broken magic side of things.”

Kanvin looked at her in concern: “Don’t do anything the church would hate to see done!”

She nodded and went to the study.

Work was slow. The spells initially would not hold at all and instead just be cast normally. Mayana then tried to embed better protection into the material. There was lots of profanity. There were so many test casts that Kiresula easily went over the limit of 64, that her wife assume she had and slowly approached the actual limit of 320 and in this area with just about no broken magic, she had an effective recovery of zero. Finally, Mayana stopped and cursed. “I have no idea how this even works. I don’t get any feedback from your spells that makes sense.”

Kiresula nodded: “It’s a different thing, s… broken magic and regular one. And it probably has a different shape.”

Mayana nodded: “Yeah, but it’s like regular spells are like pebbles and yours like effing water! I cannot weave a wicker basket that holds water. And that is kinda how I see an enchantment.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

The glitchling agreed: “You need a bucket?”

Her wife shook her head: “I need something that follows the shape of broken magic. But that is hard when I don’t know what shape it has.”

Kiresula made a noise that was in agreement. “As broken magic cancels out regular one, can an inverted structure help?”

The enchanter sucked in air: “That sounds both completely insane and like it might work if I invent enchanting from scratch. If this works, we are doing something insane and all I learned about enchanting is wrong in a way I can barely express, if it doesn’t merely something ridiculous. I don’t know what I prefer.”

Of course, Kiresula understood: ”How about we do something else for a while? I could fancy a walk.”

Mayana raised an eyebrow: “Any particular reason?”

It seemed that her colours were a bit duller as Kiresula responded: “Magic recovery. I’m on my last leg.”

Looking at her notes in concern, Mayana responded: “I need some time to work on it, you should have enough time to… oh, right, you don’t recover around here, that’s the issue, right?”

The reaction as a an unhappy noise and the response: “I haven’t recovered a single point all day.”

To that, Mayana could only shake her head: “Your magic resources are something else. Have they increased when you became a glitchling?”

Feeling as if she was blushing, even though this was not really visible, Kiresula nodded: “A bit, yeah.” She didn’t want to expose everything, as her magic was a second system stat.

Mayana moved towards the door: “How long do you need to recover?”

Kiresula made some quick mental maths: “Base rate: About an hour. 54 minutes exactly.”

Mayana breathed in: “What the fuck happened to your base rate recovery? I thought you only recover in broken magic, but that seems like even then, you barely do.”

“I guess it just takes time. But I can try recovery techniques to speed it up.” Kiresula felt that her magic recovery was actually better, but with a higher capacity came still a higher recovery time.

“I guess that allows me a bit of time to sketch a bit, at least.” Mayana murmured and Kiresula left the study, and went for a walk.

With the lowered endurance of Kiresula, getting to the Rainbow House took a while. She felt the call of the synthic magic from a distance already. She wanted to immerse herself in it, recover her magic and slurp it up. It felt like a suppressed hunger that flared up when food was presented. As soon as she stepped into it, she used a recovery technique, to accelerate the accumulation. She controlled her breathing and synchronised her accumulation with her breath. The magic rushed into her as she used the so called Magical Updraft technique. Mayana stayed back both out of respect and out of fear of getting too deep into synthic magic and glitching herself. She drafted something onto her portable blackboard, sometimes mumbling a curse or an interjection.

Kiresula felt vaguely rushed, even though she knew that this probably was in her imagination as Mayana was clearly busy, and integrated just about every technique she could hold up at once to speed up recovery. She realised that not everything was fully transferable from regular to synthic magic and she had to adjust all techniques slightly to work more effectively. Or at all. She made mental notes about these. In contrast to her wife, she often thought in words, sentences, speech. So when she said things to memorise them, it was no secret what she was doing. The Rainbow House had no information on recovery techniques and she would plan to go to Sidik and the others to have these differences committed to wood for the benefit of all. With these techniques, she could more than halve her recovery time. Next time, she might be able to make recovery even faster. She relayed the techniques to the group, who were interested. Some, were previously class specific, but could now be used by all glitchlings and they seemed to work. She then excused herself to quickly return to her better half. The idea of add synthic magic to enchantments seemed interesting to them and a means to easily detect synthic magic without running things like storage stones low, they hoped these would help both sides.

Back home, Mayana immediately went to work, which was an elaborate interplay of magic, handiwork and bad language. According to Mayana, that last one was essential even though this was not officially documented anywhere. In the meanwhile, Kiresula had her own thoughts about the matter. She realised how the recovery techniques were only effective if they were adapted to synthic magic. What if that was also true for spells? She thought of the slight difference between regular and synthic magic in recovery and spellwork and, sketching on another portable blackboard, designed a more synthic version of the spell. When Mayana asked her to cast again, she offered to cast what she deemed an improvement. Mayana wanted to first test it, so Kiresula cast it.

The next thing she perceived was a scream. She realised that all she saw was a blinding light, it was like staring into the sun, only there was no way avert your gaze. She dispelled the effect and for a few seconds, saw after-effects in her vision. Mayana had one hand in front of her mouth and one on her heart. “Holy Tajagera… mother of the gods!” Mayana cursed, “when you said more effective, you meant it!”

Kiresula blushed: “I didn’t expect it to go like that. I need to tone it down a bit…” She blinked repeatedly to remove a certain stubborn green aftereffect from her vision until she realised it was a notification:

Spell learned: [Sunlight]

She once again thought, murmured and drew in order to make the light less like an inferno for the eyes and more like a candle, limiting the flows without wasting a single Microseren of magic. There were three more failed attempts, until the spell worked and provided a light akin to an oil lamp. Again, a message appeared:

Spell learned: [Illuminate]

As she dismissed the message, another one appeared:

Class options available: [Generalist Mage], [Light Mage], [Seferian Mage]

She asked her wife for a moment of time and checked the classes. Then, she took a notebook and wrote the class descriptions down. Generalist mages could learn most spells, but at a slightly elevated cost, offering high versatility in the kinds of spells that can be learned but due to the cost, were limited in the amount of spells that can be cast until running out of magic. Light mages had class specific spells around light and illumination, which was not a topic that held much interest for Kiresula. Seferian mages seemed to be a class somewhat akin to generalist mages with smaller spell lists and faster recovery. The spell list supposedly had certain class specific spells for travel and was designed for long travels in zones without synthic magic, expeditions and sojourns. Of all the classes, she had an option for, she felt that this was most relevant to her as she couldn’t always randomly leave to recover for half an hour. She chose that class without a second thought.

She felt a burst of an energy, that she couldn’t fully express, rising in her, then things settled slightly different than they used to. She had her new class.

Mayana looked at her concerned: “What happened? You looked like you gained a level or five.”

She had to shake her head: “This belongs to the things that I can't talk about, I am very sorry. But don’t worry, it’s not a bad thing.” It hurt her to say that to Mayana. She had even had issues keeping [System] Day Celebration presents secret from her. Mayana had always been the person she could bare her soul (and her body) to. She tried to distract herself from the pain in her metaphorical heart: “Let’s try the new spell.”

She cast this spell and felt it absorbed into the staff. Then, nothing happened. As there was no synthic magic around, that was expected.

Mayana looked at the staff and a subtle glow seemed to emerge from her for a second. She took the spell and poked Kiresula in the chest. On contact, the tip glowed brightly but not blindingly so. As soon as Mayana removed the tip, the light winked out. Mayana didn’t look happy though, instead, she looked utterly shocked.

Kiresula immediately hugged her: “What happened? You look as if you just seen a ghost!”

Mayana hugged her tightly: “It looked as if I gained a secondary class. And now my stat screen is strange.”

Kiresula pressed her closed to her: “What is the class?”

Mayana was speaking quietly, whispering into her wife’s ear: “[Synthic Enchanter]. And this class is green on the class screen. Not [System] blue”.

Kiresula held her closely to herself, feeling her hectic heartbeat on her chest: “Synthic magic is a term for broken magic.”

Mayana turned her head towards her: “Is that why my stat screen shows magic points twice? Blue and green?”

Kiresula admitted that she didn’t know: “I never heard of anyone not a glitchling gaining a green class. And I have only ever heard of one glitchling have a green class.”

Mayana gasped: “That’s scary! And awesome! Who has the other green class?”

Kiresula admitted: “Me. [Seferian Mage].” Now, that Mayana had a green class, there was no reason keeping things secret anymore.

Mayana asked: “When did you get that one?”

Kiresula admitted: “When you asked what happened, I had just gained it.”

They kept hugging each other wordlessly for a while. After they let go of each other, Kiresula suggested: “Let’s go to Rainbow House. I think we can all talk openly now.”