Danny walked out into the hallway of the sanctuary to see it had taken on a similar appearance to the bridge. Gone was the familiar tall rectangular shaped hallways and in its place was a pentagon with an elongated top.
Danny couldn't help but ask, "Are all the rooms sci-fi themed as well? What's up with that?"
Cranny slowed down and pondered this for a moment before replying, "Yes, the rest of the rooms have taken on this similar appearance, accept the library. Just the wooden paneled walls of the library now have a crystal pattern inlayed. I can only guess that this look is a combination of our interpretation of our upgrade and our overall desire to see our previous technologically inclined world. I believe the technical term is overcompensation."
Danny nodded to this as they reached the door to the mana room. The door here was not the two panels that separated affair, like the one to the bridge, instead it was in the shape of a pentagon that opened like an iris.
Walking through they entered a small entry room with another pentagon shaped door on the other side. To the left was a holoscreen with a plaque above it that simply read, "Runic Lexicon (6)".
Cranny pointed at it and explained, "This is how your runic language skill is represented. Tell the screen what you are looking for and the appropriate runes will appear. I suspect we will need to find more of these at some point. I am surprised we were not given more by the order, but I suspect that was a test of some sort. Stupid of them if you ask me."
Moving to the other door in the room Cranny paused before entering. The expanding iris doorway revealed a spherical room with large pentagons all over it like a soccer ball. The doorway was situated in a way that it looked lightly down into the room. In the center was a massive hovering crystal structure that fluctuated between all the colors of the rainbow. Along the walls, a ring of pentagons halfway up the sphere appeared to contain different people.
Cranny jumped into the room and, to Danny surprise, floated to the crystal in the center. Gesturing for Danny to follow, Cranny waited until Danny had made it safely across.
Cranny patted the glowing crystal and explained, "This center crystal represents your mastery of mana manipulation."
Danny's eyes couldn't have opened any further, as Cranny continued, "It is without a doubt an effect of the change you underwent. While I would call this a serious cheat, the path to getting this was not one I would care to repeat. I haven't yet had a chance to determine what this mastery means." Cranny gestured to the ring of pentagon "cells". These are your magic affinities. Come with me so you can meet them."
Floating across the room, they stopped themselves in front of the cell labeled, "Fire Affinity (6)". Inside the cell was another Danny, in his appearance as it was on this new world. Flames poured from black flesh of the lower half of his body and from half way down his arms to his hands. The top of his head was black as well, with flame like hair lifted up in the air similar to a candle’s flame. The rest of his flesh had a red tinge to it and his eyes glowed with a soft red light. Danny couldn't help but imagine the destruction he could wreck if he could take on this form. The fire-Danny turned to him with a feral grin and reached out a hand as if welcoming him. Danny was surprised as he had assumed these were immobile apparitions, symbolic Danny manikins that showed the different affinities like the latest fashions.
Cranny led him around the rest of the center circle. Each affinity’s version of himself was different and seemed to display a different personality. Cranny could not elaborate any on what this could mean. The degree at which each version of himself was altered depended on his affinity level. While earth, water, and nature affinities matched fire affinity’s level of change, storm, lava, and cold affinities only showed changes to the hands and lower legs. Air affinity was now level eight and his entire semitransparent body seemed to be surrounded by a layer of swirling air.
Nature affinity was the oddity by having two versions of himself. One was covered in the bark of a tree while the other version looked almost like Phantom.
Once they finished with the center, Cranny gestured upwards. Above them, the uppermost pentagons were all a bright white with a crystal pattern inlayed. The topmost pentagon was a pure white cell. As they neared, Danny could see a version of himself whose skin barely looked any different than his current self, except it had a crystal pattern faintly glowing across it. The only other differences were that his eyes glowed white as an aura of pure light emitted from his body. The cell was labeled "Harmony Affinity (7)". Danny looked to Cranny in confusion.
If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
"I sort of changed the name myself. This used to be life affinity until we received access to its opposite, the newest affinity. Thinking about what the two truly meant resulted in the change," Cranny explained.
Danny looked around, not seeing what he was looking for, asked, "What are you talking about? There are not any other affinities."
Cranny pointed at the crystal in the center, "I spent some time in here before you woke up. I realized that any affinities that are polar opposites are separated by line of sight here.
Drifting towards the bottom, they rounded the center crystal to see a swirling mass of darkness. Danny recognized different sized pieces of the pentagon walls swirling and breaking apart. Danny paused before gliding towards the cell at the bottom. This was his sanctuary, it couldn’t hurt him, could it? He started to panic when he realized that the cell in the middle of the dark whirlpool was hard to discern, and feared he would be swallowed into the nothingness. His body bounced lightly off a wall of pure blackness. Nothing could be seen below him.
Danny was about to turn around to question Cranny, when a pale ghost of a face quickly rushed from the void to stop before him. The face had a grin that caused Danny's skin to crawl and pure black eyes that proclaimed the insanity that was barely kept inside. Danny unconsciously pushed away and drifted back towards the center crystal. As he drifted, Danny noticed dark veins ran jaggedly through sickly and pale flesh, appearing like dark cracks in neglected porcelain.
Danny didn't breathe again until he had touched the crystal, and snakingly whispered, "Wha... what the hell is that!"
Cranny seemed to look everywhere but down at what Danny was referring to. Cranny shrugged uncomfortably, "When we disrupted the goblin shaman circle from casting the massive dark spell that would have assuredly destroyed the caravan, I think we took in a bit of that mana into ourselves and gained an affinity for it."
Danny shook his head, "Can we get rid of it? What is it exactly?"
Cranny looked increasing uncomfortable, "I do not think we can rid ourselves of it. When I saw how it changed you into… Danny Freako…, and then how the goblins used it, a name appeared in bright letters before fading into nothingness... 'Entropy'."
Gesturing to the top and bottom of the room, Cranny continued, "While one fortifies and brings things back as they should be, the other corrupts and tears them apart into nothingness."
Danny looked confused for a second, "Was there a number next to the name?"
Cranny shook his head, "No, there wasn't. I can only come up with two theories on why. Either the Magi who created these sanctuaries didn't know about this affinity, or they purposely avoided rewarding anyone from gaining skill and understanding in its use… Based on his appearance compared to the others, our affinity is pretty high."
Danny shuddered, but had nothing to say to this and stared blankly at a far wall.
"Common Danny, let’s go look in the entrance room. “
The entrance room had once looked like a large study, long bookshelves held all his accumulated knowledge and skills not associated with magic. A desk once set to one side with a triangle within a triangle above it. Now, the room was another white sphere of hexagons, except this on was traversable by a metal walkway that stretched across the room. On the other side of the room, the walkway ended in a large circular metal ring. What could only be described as a wormhole funneled away from the metal circle far into the distance.
Cranny took Danny to the center of the room where the walkway bulged around a circular work station. Out of the top of the workstation rose three clear tubes towards the ceiling. The first tube was was labeled “Strength”, and a copper looking liquid could barely be seen bubbling up from the bottom. The second tube was labeled “Agility”, and the copper liquid almost reached halfway up it. The last tube, “Intelligence”, was twice as tall as the others. The bottom half of this tube was filled with copper and it glowed brightly as energy raced through it. The top half of this tube was filled over half way with an iron liquid. The glowing effect of the bottom half did not extend to that of the top half.
Danny nodded at the tubes but then looked around in confusion, “Where did all the skill books go?”
Cranny typed into the console and video images of his different skills displayed on the hexagon sections of the rooms wall. Skill names and their levels displayed below them. Each hexagon cycled through different skills. “Nothing really new, just presented in a different way.”
Danny watched this a while before he turned and walked up to the wormhole and asked, “Why even have an exit when I can come in and leave from wherever I want?”
Cranny walked over next to him, “Danny, before you go back I have one last thing to tell you. Something I figured out during your upgrade.”
Danny glanced over at him, “Hmmm?”
“Your sanctuary isn't in your mind, it's with me in the source.”
Danny looked over at him in shock, right before Cranny pushed him through the wormhole.