“Have you learned any real magic at all?”
“… I don’t think so?” Mark said.
The sun slanted in from the giant windows of the archmage’s superhero-like suite, at the top of his tower, located in the city of Enchanting. Various plants abounded in planters here and there, and some of them looked like cleaner plants to Mark, but he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t really studied the plants at all.
Mark sat on one side of a grey marble dining room table and Archmage Steve Blackthorn sat on the other side. In the kitchen, blueberry pancakes made themselves, the archmage’s magic spell working even when the archmage wasn’t paying attention, which seemed like something the archmage didn’t do a whole lot. Pay attention, that was.
Mark wore nice clothes; professional. The archmage wore a bathrobe and boxers, his chest showing between the flaps of fabric. He seemed like a rather non-serious person, but Mark was probably wrong about that… a little. Addashield had been about as laid-back as Blackthorn appeared to be, but Addashield had never truly been laid back at all. Blackthorn was currently high, though, and Mark was pretty sure that Addashield had never gotten high on the job… or at least not when he was around Mark.
Archmage Steve Blackthorn hummed, and then he waved a hand in the air and flew some blueberry pancakes over to the table. Syrup, plates, forks, and knives soon followed. With a flick of his hand Mark’s latte refilled, and three homemade pancakes sat before Mark, while Blackthorn got five.
With a knife in one hand and fork in the other, Blackthorn started cutting into his pancakes, saying, “Have some. They’re pretty good! I don’t adulterate food unless it’s clearly marked as such, so there’s no enhancers in these.”
“… I could eat,” Mark said, as he looked down at the food. He picked up a fork. “Thank you for the meal.”
Blackthorn grinned. And then he started chowing down.
Mark soon followed.
Neither of them spoke, though Mark kept expecting Blackthorn to start talking between bites, or something like that.
They were really good pancakes. The blueberries were a little tart and the syrup was the good stuff, and Mark relaxed as he ate. Blackthorn smiled as he watched Mark eat, and then he smiled wider halfway through eating, savoring the flavor in his mouth, his eyes closing in an almost rapturous way. He looked truly happy.
The meal passed quickly, and Mark felt better with a full stomach.
Two new nude girls and a third one, the same one Mark had seen before, and also a nude dude, got some pancakes for themselves, chatting a little as they got their food. They shushed each other and giggled, though, so they were ‘trying to keep it quiet’. They were doing a terrible job of keeping quiet, which Mark assumed was the point. The girls winked at Mark and grinned a lot, and the guy grabbed one of the girls’ asses while he winked at Mark. Soon, the four of them took their pancakes back into another room.
Blackthorn grinned a little as Mark watched the people walk away, but he said nothing.
As Blackthorn was finishing off the last of his stack of pancakes, he started talking, “So I’m not sure how much magical education you’ve gotten at all, but you say you’ve never heard anything, which is pretty true for almost all people. Noble kids from Daihoon and those who have been raised around mages usually pick up one or two things. I’m pretty sure you don’t count as nobility yet, but it has been 6 months since your Tutorial, or something like that. And you’ve been around Addavein?”
There were questions in there and a whole lot of statements, and it was a little difficult to parse what, exactly, Blackthorn was getting at.
Mark decided to respond with, “Well… Addavein gave me an archival-type of Shaper manual. Just some basic stuff to give to anyone who Awakened a Shaper Talent… Though it was probably something that would have been given to a noble’s kid, yeah. I don’t think I got much other magical training?”
Blackthorn nodded. “And the Color Drop and knowledge of Key Word alchemy.”
Mark frowned. “… Okay?”
Was Mark supposed to talk about absolutely everything that he had learned between then and now?
Because most of what he had learned was that ‘adults’ and ‘the people in charge’ were all muddling through life just like people half their ages, or less. That didn’t seem like magical knowledge at all, but it very well could be.
Blackthorn chuckled to see Mark’s expression. “A lot of stuff counts as magical training. A lot of people don’t think what they have seen is magical knowledge, but that stuff is everywhere, and it forms the basis of what sort of magical education is easiest for a person. Here’s the big secret to magic, Mark: Every single thing you learn, and are influenced by, forms the foundation for what you can become.”
Mark… nodded. “Okay?”
Was that supposed to be a big revelation?
… Maybe it was?
Blackthorn grinned. “It’s not a ground shaking revelation until it is.” He moved on. “I need you to imagine yourself as a house… or a pond, or a tool shack. A cave with a few crystals growing here and there. Whatever you want. Basically: what you are right now is a bare room with a few intractable pieces of furniture. The bed in the house, the lily in the pond, the chainsaw in the shack, the crystal growing in the corner of the cave. Those pieces of furniture came with your Awakening. You, my tri-Talent young man, have 3 pieces of furniture in your house right now.
“If you want to do more magic then you gotta add more furniture.”
Oh shit, they were talking about spellwork right now.
Mark sat straighter.
Blackthorn noticed. He grinned and continued, “The astral body can only be stretched so much, and yours is already very stretched since you have three whole Talents…” Blackthorn paused. “Okay. So. This gets complicated, but I’ll make it simple. You got the house analogy yet? Ask your questions. I want to make sure you understand that part.”
Mark had lots of questions about all that. From the nature of ‘space’ inside of a house, to the sudden question that maybe Mark’s ‘house’ was full already, since he already had three Talents. Did it work like that?
Mark asked, “Does having three Talents fill up my house already? No room for a flying spell?”
Blackthorn readily shook his head; he didn’t even need to think before he shook his head.
That made Mark feel a lot better about his prospects for other forms of power in the future.
Blackthorn said, “It doesn’t exactly work like that. That’s not something this conversation is about, but it does bear speaking upon, because a proper education starts from the ground up. To that end:
“You have room for an endless number of spells, but not really, because the spells you can learn and do well are limited and expanded by your starting Powers. In many situations, a person who starts off with a small Power, like a simple Knack or Knowing about something, is easier able to build and expand toward other magics. Someone with a Knack for growing plants will be able to expand their magics into other plant-based directions rather easily, but they won’t be able to do flight magics very well, not unless they take a bunch of other steps to get there. Someone with a Knowing about the weather might be able to fly a lot easier, eventually.
“It’s all about the base mana that the Tutorial or living life Awakens in a person.”
Mark’s eyebrows went up. “Like adamantium is a type of mana?”
“Exactly!” Blackthorn grinned. “Tell me: What are Powers?”
Mark had already heard this part from Addashield, almost 10 months ago, back before Mark was crashed into a coma by the combined magics of Addashield and Lola. Mark recalled most of those words from memory, but he had to fill in the blanks a little, as he said, “Powers are magic spells that never stop, that never weaken, that are granted by the Tutorial, which used to be called the Thresher. Everything else can weaken and fade, but Powers are eternal.”
Blackthorn breathed deep, looking like a conquering hero for a brief moment.
And then he said, “Exactly.”
Mark wasn’t sure how that related to him being able to produce adamantium on demand, but he was pretty sure Blackthorn was getting there, and Mark was intrigued anyway. This was real magical learning. Mark was absolutely sure that any baseline from Earth hearing this would spontaneously generate some sort of astral body. A ‘baseline’ from Daihoon probably grew up learning this stuff, though.
Blackthorn smirked, adding, “Powers can obviously weaken, though. But only temporarily. Like an overworked muscle. You can adamantiumkinesis all the time these days, but I bet if you strained yourself in battle and you didn’t have Union to support your Kinetics, then you would grow tired, yes?”
Mark nodded. That was a pretty normal limitation of Powers. Overuse always causes a weakening.
The archmage nodded, and then said, “Magics are twists in personal power, using the mana in a person and locking it down into limbs of our own making. When a mage overuses their magic, the tools break. The mage needs to reform the spellwork inside of their soul to use it again. This is why it takes years to learn how to make a spell, because not only do you have to learn how to make the spell, you have to make it perfectly, with all of the side-powers that a normal Power would have. Most every mage falls short in those side-power goals.
“For example, your Adamantiumkinesis allows you to be immune to all adamantium weapons. If someone shot you with an adamantium bullet, you would probably get knocked around some, but you’d be fine. Other people would splat. That is a side-power to your main Power. Some would call ‘immunity to adamantium weaponry’ a Power all on its own. A brawny not breaking their body when they try to lift something too heavy is another side-power. A witch being immune to the toxins of the spells she makes is a side-power. All of those side-powers are what costs a mage endless headache when they build their spells. A true Power is anywhere from a single great strength to a thousand smaller ones, like facets to a grand gem.
“And when a Powered individual overuses their Power, the ‘limb’ merely falls asleep. It will wake up just fine when it is given time to rest.
“All of that and more are the main differences between a mage using spellwork and a Powered person using a Power.”
Mark blinked. That was… surprising, and not too surprising at all.
Blackthorn waited.
Mark said, “I never heard it like that, but it makes sense?”
“Good! It should, because that is how it works.
“Now that the basic stuff is out of the way, I can tell you this: Your ‘house’ is made out of adamantium. That’s what it means to be adamantium blooded. That is why you are able to produce more adamantium, even at a slow rate.
“Every living thing produces mana of various kinds. Most Adamantiumkinetics actually use unaspected mana that has been aspected in the act of gaining Adamantiumkinesis.
“You do not use generic mana at all.
“You produce and use adamantium mana.
“As you live, as your ‘house’ settles in this way and that, your mana crystallizes in your body. This happens to everyone. Usually the mana simply flows away, or it never settles in the first place. Sometimes people have to clean out their mana channels or else they risk having issues with spellcastings later, and that’s an ordeal, but Powers don’t have that issue. You don’t have that issue, either, but your specific mana is adamantium, and adamantium is solid. It does not flow away at all. To say it another way: What you are doing when you make more adamantium, is that your uncontrolled mana, outside of your active use of your Powers, is turning solid, and being deposited inside of your body in your bones, instead of astrally, in your astral body, where it could cause problems.
“The safe deposition of adamantium in your body is another side-power of your Adamantiumkinesis.”
Blackthorn let that sink in.
Mark’s mind rapidly flashed around as half-understood implications abounded. As he realized what was being said, Mark frowned. He asked, “There’s no way to actively cause this process? It’ll always be a ‘side effect’ of… of what? A natural cycle process?”
The idea that the body made mana was not a new one to Mark, but hearing it laid out like that cleared up a bunch of questions that Mark wasn’t even aware he had.
Blackthorn grinned. “Affecting the natural cycle is an easy thing to do, because the goal here, specifically for you, Mark, is to grow your house. The more house you have, the more deposits you can make.
“That’s what we’re going to do.
“Astral body stretches, primarily, and condensation focusing on adamantium creation, as a side effect. These are the things I will tell you about, and which you will follow through on your own, later.
“Usually mages do something like stretches all the time because they want more mana, too. Everyone’s mana is different, though, so everyone has different techniques. Every skilled mage I know crystallizes their own excess mana on their days off so that they can spend that mana on big spells later. Usually they crystallize that mana in their astral bodies, ‘storing it away’ properly, like a piece of furniture in their house, so that they can use it later. Improper storage leads to problems, though. That sort of storage is an application of this technique we will not be going over. That lesson is outside of the scope of this lesson, because you don’t need that lesson.
“The primary lesson is you, manifesting your mana, as adamantium.
“Most mages start off manifesting personal mana crystals, and then they figure out how to make them ephemeral so that they don’t have to carry around the crystals. Mostly, though, crystallized mana is useless to people other than the creator, so most mages try to transition into ephemeral mana crystals in the astral body as fast as they can.
“All of the magical biometals are mostly usable in their manifested form, though.”
Mark was absolutely sure that he was missing a lot of vital nuances to Blackthorn’s words, but he was getting most of it. Enough to understand.
And it all felt too simple.
Were these basic magic lessons? Perhaps very basic, actually. ‘Making a resource to use later’ seemed like magery 101…
Or maybe not?
Mark found himself scrunching his face in annoyance as he asked, “Is this basic magery? Like one of the very first lessons a person would learn in the process of becoming a mage?”
“More like second year arcanaeum stuff. It’s stuff that almost every mage eventually learns, though. For you, and for other biometallic people, adamantium blooded or otherwise, it’s the first and pretty much only lesson that they’re taught. It’s my understanding that making ephemeral adamantium for use in the soul is nearly impossible, and the base mana is more useful as a metal, anyway.” Blackthorn said, “I’m throwing a lot at you, I know. It’s not important for you to know all of this, but I want to give you a taste of what lessons with me will look like. I imagine you will research all of this later.”
“… Oh.”
So he was giving more than necessary, huh?
That was… That was good, right?
The part about ‘the only lesson they needed to know’ was concerning, though. Mark imagined that the powers-that-be of the Old World of Daihoon would find adamantium blooded people and train them to make adamantium, and nothing else, as they locked them into a menagerie to farm them for their metal. The exact nature of that… sort of thing, was probably both better and worse than Mark imagined.
Blackthorn continued, “When we broke those people out of captivity in the Reveal, this general lesson spilled out into the greater world. A lot of mages got a lot better at being mages back then, now that they had the resources to actually do big magics all on their own. It won’t be a magic resource for you, though.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Mark nodded a little. He wasn’t sure what he’d do with mana anyway. He had no spells to cast, right?
… None of this entire talk had been about actual spellwork at all, had it? Nope. No magic here. Just basic stretching exercises.
Huh.
Mark wondered if Mom and Dad did this sort of thing.
Blackthorn kept going, “Basically: I’m gonna tell you how to grow the house of your astral body, which is made entirely out of adamantium mana. In doing so, you will have a larger range, and a greater ability to use the various tools inside of your house to induce your Healthy Body to start growing adamantium with both Union and Adamantiumkinesis. It’s a bit complicated to actually do that process, but not overly so.” Blackthorn asked, “Understand everything so far?”
“I make adamantium mana and I use it in every part of my Power. I can induce growth… somehow. By stretching?”
“Correct. Now, all of that? That’s just the base idea, and we’ll go over how you do that in a bit. This next part is the real secret; the one that they don’t usually tell the biometallics.” Blackthorn said, “You need to get some pellets of osmium, gold, and platinum, in roughly equal quantities, and you need to eat them. Just a small amount. Not much at all, really.”
Whatever Mark had expected Blackthorn to say, it had not been that.
Mark... nodded a little. “Okay?”
“Once you have eaten the metals, you will focus on Union and Adamantiumkinesis and expand yourself as far as you can go, while also focusing on various goals in life. That will be enough to start the condensation of adamantium in your body.
“Adamantium is manifested purpose, Mark, but the ephemeral mana can achieve a physical grounding in gold, platinum, and osmium. Mostly osmium.
“Once you do that, then growing mana deposits in your body, for you, is specifically the process of focusing on one goal, and then focusing on another, while stretching your astral body wide. This goal switching and stretching causes your mana to condense around those metals. If someone had a fire-aspected soul, then they’d focus on flames and on different sorts of crystallization techniques. If they had a dark-aspected soul, then they’d go hide out and grow their mana in a dark cave. You just need to focus on your goals that make you adamant about something. Anything at all, really.
“So to grow adamant mana, you must mentally pick up a goal, put it down, pick up another one, and cycle your focus.
“I imagine that Union and Healthy Body will be a great help in bridging a lot of gaps in your understanding of what will happen when you line up all of these little exercises. With Healthy Body, you might be able to direct where the adamantium manifests, instead of just gathering like tumors in your gut, or wherever. A lot of people in those adamantium zoos grew adamantium in their guts, but some people replaced their nails and hair with adamantium growths. Addavein grows it out of his spine spikes, for instance.”
Blackthorn went silent, looking at Mark.
And Mark’s mind raced. The part about eating metals was… completely unexpected. How would anyone even figure that out?
Mark asked, “I suppose the adamantium needs a starter seed, or whatever it is called, to start crystallizing? And that’s what the heavy metals do? Why those metals? Does it have to be those metals?”
“Who knows! Probably demons?” Blackthorn said, though it was kind of a question. He shrugged. “That’s just how it is. All the biometals use those three elements. Adamantium is mostly osmium-derived. Mithril is mostly platinum-derived. Orichalcum is mostly gold-derived. Alchemical silver is a process that takes place in a flask and which uses silver, so that’s not the same as the Big Three... and that’s a complicated topic with a lot more to it than that. Alchemical silver doesn’t last very long because it’s a treatment that tries to mimic the true nature of biometals, but fails because most people making the stuff are just following a recipe and they have no idea what they’re actually doing.”
So that was interesting.
Mark nodded. “Okay, sure.” Mark thought. He asked, “And all I have to do is eat some… toxic metals?”
“They won’t be toxic in the quantities you will eat. It’s five grams of each of all three metals. That’ll last you a decade…” Blackthorn paused. And then he said, “Do you know who did your Color Drop treatment?”
Mark blanked at the change in topic. “Not at all? I assumed it was some big time alchemist in Aluatha. Maybe in Crytalis? Addashield was based out of there…” Mark thought. “I don’t know anything other than that?”
Where was Blackthorn going with that?
Blackthorn looked deep in thought.
Mark waited.
Blackthorn put on a smile. “Eh! No matter!” He said to Mark, “So that’s the whole thing. Now you know about the nature of your mana as adamantium, how it relates to your Powers, and to gold, platinum, and osmium, and how to get more adamantium. All that’s left is for you to go out and buy some osmium, gold, and platinum, eat it, and figure out the rest. I suggest pellets. Not powders. Your astral body will absorb them so you won’t poop them out, but, if they need to come out, or if they’re not what you need them to be, then you can remove pellets a lot easier than you can powders. Osmium is pretty hard to get, and most of what you get out there might be fake.
“One warning, though. When you start making adamantium it might come out of weird places. Keep in mind where it comes out and don’t force it to come out beyond a normal rate. It’s probably gonna be painful if you start growing metal in your veins, and you’ll need to rethink everything before you continue. If you start growing adamantium in your guts then you just poop it out.” Blackthorn stood, saying, “Figure out a question for next time, and then come with a kilo of adamantium as payment.”
… That was it?
That was it, Mark supposed.
Mark knew a dismissal when he saw one. He stood, and said, “Thank you for the lesson, and the food.”
Blackthorn looked ready to say something… but he paused.
Mark decided to wait.
A moment stretched—
Blackthorn grunted a little, then began, “When you get to be in my position, Mark, you see a lot of plots that don’t involve you. I see one right now. Whoever made your Color Drop did so knowing you were adamantium blooded. Maybe Addashield told them, or not. Maybe Addashield was surprised that he had managed to make an adamantium blooded boy, and that he was going to take advantage of all the metal you could make in the future. Or maybe some other party knew what they were doing when they helped make you.
“Or maybe not.
“I don’t know your whole story beyond what the public and a few other sources know, and I like it that way.
“So I’m just going to give you a professional warning: Someone could dose you with platinum, gold, and osmium, and you’d never have known it, but you also never would have dosed yourself. Osmium in particular is very hard to source. You really don’t have to eat much of the metals for a long-time benefit, either. 5 grams of each would last you 10 years.
“From that first dosage, you’d start producing adamantium at 100-times your current rate. For you, with Union and Healthy Body, too? A thousand grams every 6 months, instead of 10; no problem. That is well worth a Color Drop treatment. Whoever is behind the plot probably would have shown up and tried to get on your good side beforehand, and then you’d just ‘coincidentally’ start making more adamantium due to whatever shit they told you, or whatever. And then they’d sweep in and tell you how to make even more and they’d turn you into an adamantium farm and… and I’m not sure what their goal was, or is. Maybe they just wanted an adamantium producer for the benefit of the world, but then Addavein happened and all the expected plots were ruined.
“Anyway.
“It’s a plot,” Blackthorn said, “Keep an eye on it.”
Mark felt a certain kind of weight upon hearing all of that. A tension. He had no idea what to make of Blackthorn’s words, but they seemed to be a reasonable extrapolation of circumstances… Human experimentation was pretty much what had been done to Mark, anyway.
But no one had shown up to take advantage of Mark... except for Blackthorn himself, right here and now…?
Hmm.
No.
That’s crazy. Blackthorn wasn’t plotting around Mark except for the normal amount.
Mark relaxed. Mark said, “Thank you for the warning.”
Blackthorn looked at Mark. He seemed questioning, in some sort of way. And then he nodded. He lifted a hand and a shiny black bag floated out of a pantry, near the kitchen. “I’d give you some metals, but I don’t have them. I have this instead. Have fun!” He handed the bag over, saying, “It was nice to meet you again, Mark. I have an open door policy to all superheros and supervillains to come on by when they want to get fucked, and get fucked up. I invite you over, whenever you want. The door is open!”
Mark held the black bag and kinda froze, but a chuckle escaped him.
Blackthorn grinned.
… He was waiting for an answer.
Mark said, “No thank you.”
Blackthorn smirked. “Hey now! The last meeting went horribly, but this one went a lot better, and the next one will be even better. Just make sure that you have a good question to ask, and that you come with a kilo of adamantium.” He patted Mark on the shoulder. “There’s not much off the table when it comes to a trade like that.”
Blackthorn turned and went into his house, toward the hallway where the other people in the back were making certain noises, all their vectors were tangled upon each other. The archmage’s robe fell off, along with his boxers—
And that was all Mark needed to see.
He got out of there.
On the ride down the elevator, Mark thought a lot about what he had just learned.
It wasn’t until he was in his car that he looked inside the black bag.
It was full of drugs, mostly pot-derived, though there was a small jar of white powder with a warning on it about consuming too much. Mark closed the bag, sat for a while, and then looked up at the tower. Was Blackthorn looking his way right now? Probably. The drugs were going in the can as soon as he got out of the archmage’s presence. Maybe 20 miles away?
Nah.
He probably had far-sight magics.
The drugs were still going in the can sooner, rather than later.
Mark turned on the car and soon pulled out of the parking lot.
- - - -
Steve stood by the window, smoke drifting around him as he watched Mark drive away.
Planty was there. Steve’s demon was always there.
She curled in the smoke, in the shadows just outside of sight, in the way light played upon the leaves of plants, and in the whorls of wood. When Steve was absolutely wasted, she was here, in the full flesh, and Steve liked it when she was here in the full flesh. But right now she was just in the smoke.
And on Steve’s flesh, like a gentle warmth. Like the smoke caressing his own body.
She ran her smoky fingers through Blackthorn’s hair and brushed under his robe, tangling her fingers in the fur of his chest. And then she was a flesh and blood woman, before becoming a wash of colors that only Steve could see, her voice a sultry whisper,
“I will try to protect you, but I can’t protect you from Addavein, Love. Not if he gets serious.”
Steve easily said, “It’s enough that you’ll try.”
“Getting too involved with that boy will spell your doom and I’m not ready to stop my vacation yet, so you must be careful.”
Steve redirected the conversation, “There’s going to be a lot more opportunities for fun when we can pop back and forth between Daihoon and Earth without having to rip the Veil ourselves.” He caressed Planty’s colors, smirking as he said, “I hear the plays of Western Okuana are wondrous, and I’ve never been there before.”
It had been Planty who had told him about those plays.
Planty grinned. With a trilling laugh, she asked, “You wish to leave the house? The city?”
Steve chuckled. “Not too far, you know. I’m not getting involved in any plots unless they are small.” And then he smirked, adding the words that he had shared and been shared by Planty at least once a month, “You’re on vacation, after all.”
Planty turned into soft golden woods and clear water with green emeralds for eyes and rubies for lips. She became color as she moved to stand on Steve’s other side, a playful finger or a warm hand never leaving his flesh, her voice a soft thing as she hummed, saying, “We could get involved in a small plot… if a really good one comes around. Something small. Since you’re already breaking your son’s decrees and gifting spellwork lessons to others once again… Maybe it’s time for some superheroes to expand their capabilities?” She waggled an eyebrow. “We could set out some tomes and let some mischief commence?” She demurely added, “Nothing to actually upset your son, of course. No Curtain Breaking.”
Steve liked a little bit of good mischief. “What spells were you thinking?”
“These ones,” Planty said, pulling leather-bound tomes of magic out of the air, making them real in that action. She floated them in front of Steve, asking, “I could go deeper, but each of these would be beneficial for Memphi.”
Twist The Veil.
Atomic Knife.
Dragonwreck.
Steve looked at the three of them, and thought all of them too strong, but all of them were also too useful. “You pick.”
Twist the Veil and Dragonwreck vanished, which was for the best. Both of them were spells far beyond the level of most people, and would have long lasting complications upon the fabric of Memphi’s society. Twist the Veil was going to be disseminated anyway, as these things often were, when one major magic went from being outlawed to regulated. They were planning on Memphi becoming a Twin City, like Tokyo, after all.
Dragonwreck was a much simpler issue. It was simply too dangerous to put out there. It was putting a target on someone’s back. The dragons didn’t like mortals to have Dragonwreck. The dragons didn’t like a lot of things, though, so fuck them.
Still better to not have that plot happening.
This happening with Mark and thus Addavein was going to take up enough of Steve’s capacity to care as it was.
The Book of Atomic Knife settled fully into reality, into Steve’s hands.
Planty said, “There was this girl and her adopted father who tried to see you before Mark showed up. They had an appointment, but it didn’t happen.”
Planty implied that she wanted the girl to have it, but not directly.
Steve knew enough to say, “I’ll hang on to it and see where it goes.”
Planty grinned, and then she said, “I do love small surprises.” And then she asked, “Do you think Mark will tell people about crystal cultivation?”
“… Ah. I didn’t directly tell him not to… Oh well. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Planty was a wash of watercolors in the air, and then she was back to being smoke, curling up from Steve’s pipe.
Steve stared out the window at the skyline of Enchanting, and of Memphi in the distance. With a bit of focus, he watched as Mark turned on to the street outside of his house, over in Shady Acres. He was almost home, but he had also dumped his goodie bag off in some trash somewhere, which was something of a disappointment. Oh well. Steve mentally marked down ‘don’t give drugs to Mark; he will waste them’. It was a marking he needed to make for a lot of people, so Steve wasn’t too offended.
Soon, Mark turned onto the driveway of his house, passing through an anti-scrying barrier set up by Eliot Cybersong. The boy vanished beyond that obscuring. Steve could have penetrated those defenses and looked inside, all without alerting the Cybersong boy about the intrusion, but that was unnecessary.
Steve went on with his day.