The forest at night was a place of darkness broken only by small pools of light. Large clouds moving across the sky would only briefly allow the moonlight to shine down on them, causing the mind to see illusionary figures in the distance. The wind had picked up as a cold front had moved in.
Jade had finally released Danny and they slowly continued on their way. Jade refused to leave Danny's side. The two thin teenagers walked hand in hand, one supporting the other. When Danny had healed himself he had used a considerable amount of his body’s resources, but Jade's healing had really put a strain on her body. They agreed that it would be best for her to walk a while before Wizard Basalt would carry her again.
In the quiet of their march through the trees, Danny worried about where Phantom had gone. Wondering why she hadn't returned.
*Sorry, I don't remember seeing her get hurt by the zombie goblin but I couldn't see much from where we were laying on the ground.*
Danny would just have to hope she returned on her own, eventually.
*Hey, I am going to try and experiment while your mana is already low.*
Danny didn't dare reply with Jade practically leaning on him, and just nodded.
Danny could sense his mana being used without his conscious effort, like when Cranny would scan with air or earth.
*We can heal specific parts of your body now. It works using the crystals surrounding your cells. I didn't focus on the crystals but they contained the mana activated to the parts that needed healing. This used all the mana stored in those cells effected, but this is definitely an improvement.*
Danny nodded his head in agreement as Jade's mouth opened with a huge yawn.
Wizard Basalt walked up next to Jade and patted her on her shoulder. She looked over at her uncle and frowned, holding tightly to Danny's arm. Her uncle chuckled and picked the girl up before she could do anything. Danny looked over to see her pouting before the rocking of the wizards lumbering gate slowly rocked her to sleep.
By morning they still hadn't stopped and neither had the cold wind. Infrequent drops of rain could be felt whenever they were not directly under the canopy. The forest hadn't changed much in appearance and Danny wondered if the elves had made it safely back home.
Arya called for a halt and told everyone to put up their tents. Danny suggested making them a place in the trees and Arya said they wouldn't rest here for long. She did ask him to put up some cover around the location they had chosen. While the Basalt women took turns being on watch everyone else got into their tents to rest.
They put Jade in the tent with Danny and the girls. Ivy and Brooke placed their pallets next to hers to make sure she didn't get to cold. Danny was frustrated to find he wasn't tired at all. After half an hour he got up and left the tent. Maybe getting something warm to drink would help him sleep.
If it wasn't for his air scan he wouldn't have spotted Brianna Basalt, sitting on a large limb of a nearby tree. He waved to her and then realized they hadn't started a fire, since they wouldn't be staying long.
Brianna swung down from the tree and silently walked over to him, whispering, "You alright, Danny?"
Nodding, Danny replied, "Yeah, just not tired. Not even a little."
Brianna nodded, "It has been an eventful couple of days." She smiled, "I figured you would be in there snuggled up with my niece."
Danny smirked, "I would have if she had woken up before we put her down, but she slept through it all. Hey, if you want to go sleep, I can watch. We are breaking again at noon, right?"
Brianna hesitated, "I wouldn't mind that, but I don't want you missing sleep if you are tired. You did use a lot of mana yesterday. My husband always sleeps like a rock after he uses a lot of mana. Takes all three of us to get up the next day."
They shared a chuckle at that and then she went inside her tent after checking the area one more time.
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Danny climbed up to the branch Brianna had vacated. He had yet to reach the agility to match the ease that the woman had shown getting down. His weakened state obviously didn't help.
Danny asked barely under his breath, "Why am I not even the least bit tired?"
*Well, it looks like you don't need to sleep.*
Danny rolled his eyes, "Yes, thank you captain obvious."
*No, Danny, you don't understand. You probably will never need to sleep. Ever again. Well, maybe if you sustain some sort of brain damage and we don't heal it in time.*
Danny thought about this for a second, "Wait, can't I sleep if I wanted too?"
*Your mind was already enhanced by the intelligence attribute. Then your upgrade happened and now your whole body is more efficient than ever. As far as sleeping whenever you want to, have you ever been wide awake and still was able to go to sleep. I never did. Maybe if we used something from alchemy. Can you get addicted to potions? I wonder if there are health potion support groups?*
Danny ignored his last comment, "Well, I guess we can always train at night, and no one else would have to stand watch. I actually feel better with us using air scan than relying on someone else falling asleep or missing something in a blind spot."
*Yeah, I would have loved this ability back when some of my favorite videos games first came out.*
Danny nodded, "I miss those too. I wish we at least had more books to read. This whole, books costing a small fortune thing is killing me. Also, no one writes fiction here yet, or maybe the whole extreme cost of knowledge is suppressing that as well…"
*Oh, yeah. Since your upgrade I have started assigning a measurement to your mana regeneration. I still have no clue how much mana your body can hold, but based on gut feeling it is a ridiculous amount.*
"Alright, so give me the numbers we have then."
*I randomly assigned your mana regeneration four units of mana per minute. Remember that your body uses a quarter of that so you really have three mana per minute, so using four makes it easier. Based on how much it costs to use some of the spells we started with, or regeneration is slightly above the lowest wizard. I tried to factor in for our advanced affinities, so this is all purely conjecture.*
Danny grumbled, "We need to find a way to gain more mana. This is ridiculous. What is the use of all this storage we supposedly have if we can't gather enough mana to utilize it. My aura when using the harmony aspect was nothing compared to what it could be."
*True, but you are storing everything instead of your body’s storage filling and you wasting potential regeneration. By the way, your harmony affinity has increased to level eight when you were healing Jade.*
Danny smiled, "Well, not wasting regeneration is good. The new level helps a little. We are close to mastering that one."
*So it has been about ten hours since we used up most of your magic healing Jade. Let's see what you can do with a little over 1,000 mana you have accumulated.*
"Is that a lot or not?"
*It's about ten times as much as we could store previously, so as I said, your change isn't completely a lost cause. Don’t forget, there is still more room to store more.*
“Wait, shouldn't I have more mana than that?”
*Yes you should, but I have been using air and earth scan, and your body goes from using one mana to one and a third mana depending on how much you are physically exerting.*
“Oh…” Danny sat up, "Maybe this isn't so bad after all. Right, let's try another aspect!"
*We are on watch and we can't use air scan unless we try the air aspect. Plus, we don't even know what that will do to your ability to use air scan...*
"Well, then we won't use it for very long."
*Alright… then which one should we try, Air?*
"Flame on!"
*I don't know... we are in a forest, pyro.*
"We have used flame affinity in the forest plenty of times. We will literally be part fire. I am sure we will be able to control it."
*Famous last words...*
Ignoring him, Danny jumped carefully down from the tree and walked over into a small clearing nearby, "I will not use that much mana, so stop nagging."
*Fine, just let me handle the mana then. Let's use... 100 mana and see what that does.*
Danny felt part of his mana disappear and like before there was no immediate feeling of change. Watching his hands and arms closely he eventually noticed that his skin was darkening. After a few minutes his hands and arms looked black and coarse like coal. Pulling back his shirt he noticed the skin on his chest just looked red.
Danny waved his arms around, "Where is the flame aura? Did we not use enough mana?"
*Maybe it is a safety measure in case you are inside a wooden structure or riding something when you activate it? I don't know, try using flame affinity on the ground in front of you.*
Danny focused and flame erupted all over his body to coalesce onto the ground in front of him. It was strange as he didn't feel the heat of the flame.
After a few seconds smoke suddenly obscured his vision. He went to yell and obscenity when he inhaled the smoke and started coughing. While he didn't panic enough to run aimlessly around, he did lose control of the flames as they burn brightly through the smoke.
*Stop inhaling smoke, you don't have to breathe, dummy! Stop, drop, and roll! Stop, drop, and roll!*
Danny was too scared of causing a forest fire and ignored Cranny’s last suggestion. Plus, he wasn't on fire, he was the fire. The smoke abruptly cleared and Danny could easily see the forest around him. The flames surrounding him dwindled away as his aspect died. The grass around him was burning and a low hanging branch was on fire. He quickly reached out and used flame affinity to pull the heat from the surrounding smoldering plant life.
Coughing Danny turned around, only to find everyone had woken up and gathered in a semicircle around him. A few of them even had their weapons drawn.
Danny smiled sheepishly and weakly said, “Hey everyone… I discovered how to use my flame aspect. It lets me surround myself in fire. Though, I didn't expect all that smoke.”
No one was responding and that's when Danny realized everyone was looking, wide eyed, down at his legs. Confused he looked down to see that, not only was he back to his old self but all his clothing had burned away. He was buck naked.
Danny quickly looked back up to see Wizard Basalt silently chuckling while turning back to his tent. The wizard’s wives smirked while having apparent coughing fits behind their hands. They quickly choose follow their husband.
Ivy had a single eyebrow raised as she looked him in the eyes. Jade had her hands over eyes but Danny noticed she was doing a really bad job of hiding the fact that she was peeking. Brooke unabashedly stared at his… “magic wand”.
Brooke looked up, smiled, and said, “Hmmm, it’s a good thing you’re so pretty.”
Everyone but Danny broke down into fits of raucous laughter. Danny opened his mouth and looked around quickly, unsure how best to defend himself.
“The cold front blew in… This is a normal response to the cold!” Danny tried his best cover himself.
Brooke took a few deep breaths, so that she could stop laughing long enough to add, “But I thought… I thought you said… that you were just surrounded by flames… did you miss a spot?”
Danny made a frustrated noise and fled into his tent to the sounds of uncontrolled laughter.