05 There’s A Pyromaniac Lighting Up The Forest

I knew that I wasn’t prepared to fight before I cast my spell. The brief scuffle with the murderball hadn’t been the first time I’d fought, but comparing it to a schoolyard scrap just didn’t really work. I’d been far out of depth going into that one, and if it hadn’t been busy attacking Diane I would have likely died. Swinging sticks, shooting at something alive, getting close to flashing blades because I wasn’t close enough to hurt it more, that had all been new to me.

And right now, as the fuzzy slice ball's eyes locked onto me while the glow of my magic circle intensified, I felt that same uncertainty. Then the forest lit up purple as a crackling beam of energy connected directly with the face of my enemy. Which, admittedly, was nearly the sum of its parts.

As for the stuff I hadn’t prepared myself for, that was the noise. Not the yowling of the murderball, which successfully got on my nerves, but the crackling of the beam of energy I was casting. It was hard to hear myself think, and I almost missed the smell because of it.

There wasn't time to put words to it, but my nose wrinkled all the same.

I channelled for three seconds before stopping the magic and looking for a trace of the fuzzy little thing. All I had time to see was smoke rising before I heard Diane make a sound of alarm and I spun to bring my beam to bear on the other assailants coming from behind.

“Ahhh!” I screamed as I pushed my magic forward again. This time I angled down to aim at a small shadow moving along the forest floor towards, and then that crackling sound was my world again.

A shadow moved in the corner of my eye and I swung around to blast that one as well. There wasn’t any time to try and confirm my kill, I just turned and swung my beam in an arc across where I saw the shadow and stopped pushing when I realised I had no target.

I breathed for a second, then realised there was an oversized lizard thing climbing up one of the trees on the perimeter of the clearing. The risk of letting it climb around the trunk and out of my sight wasn’t one I was willing to take, so I aimed and started to channel again.

The crackling purple burned itself into my eyes, and I quickly lost the ability to tell if I was hitting it or not.

[We advise restraint, Donna,] the Familiar spoke up, somehow perfectly clear through the sound. [You missed that Scoutscale entirely, as well as the tree. You are now wasting mana.]

I stopped and lowered my hand. The lizard thing was gone, and I was breathing heavily.

[You should move to the centre of the clearing,] the Familiar advised. [Your remaining adversaries lack ranged options, and will soon ambush you physically.]

“Right,” I breathed. “Come on Diane, let’s enjoy the campfire.”

“Mm…” Diane whimpered. She stumbled to follow as I hurried us over.

The fire pit at the centre of the clearing was empty, and I circled around it as I kept a wary eye out. Diane came with me, since we were still attached at our hands. I had an idea after a few seconds of tense quiet.

“Familiar,” I said, and pointed my casting hand at the fire pit. “False Flame.”

[Casting that spell at an intensity that will aid you will be a significant drain on your mana,] it told me.

I checked my mana values. Bound mana surprisingly still had four points left. Unbound had gone up to forty four.

“Do it anyway,” I decided, and snapped my fingers.

A purple circle drew itself in the fire pit and subsequently combusted in a roaring fire that gave off no heat. It lit up the clearing nicely, and I noticed another of the lizard things hiding behind one of the felled logs that we would’ve sat on for marshmallows and scary stories. The purple light made it look positively otherworldly.

It began to hiss something right as I directed an Authentic Energy Channel its way. I squinted past the blinding light to try and track my target, but it was big enough that I thankfully didn’t need to correct much before it stopped moving. I kept channelling for another second after that just to be safe.

“Donna!” Diane screamed, and I spun around just in time to see a flying person sized lizard sailing through the air towards us.

I stepped forward to take the brunt of it without thinking. My outstretched hand caught its scaly elongated neck, but its arms and legs, and even its tail wrapped around my arm and upper body in the next moment. Just that made my eyes water from the shock going through my wrist and elbow, but the real pain only started when it began to squeeze.

A crushed scream escaped me as I tried to push through the cloud of pain. My eyes sharpened as I finally found the inscrutable method of casting Authentic Energy Channel, and violent purple lit up in the freaky lizard’s neck.

It screamed in a hissing sort of way. I kept casting and screamed back until the crushing force on my arm and torso subsided, paused, and then kept blasting for another three seconds after that. Part of it was I had to be certain. Mostly it was because I hated how it was grappling me.

The violent violet glow in my hand subsided.

“Is that all of them?” I asked with a raspy voice.

[All Starbane forms in your immediate vicinity have been harvested,] the Familiar informed me. That was enough for me.

“Then cut the spells.” Nearly all light in the clearing vanished as both my magic circles shattered, and a refreshing breath reached my lungs as my bound mana returned to seven. “Is this thing gonna fall off me anytime soon?” The neck of the lizard thing was hanging loosely where it had been burned, but the rest of it that had attached itself to me was still sticking.

The Familiar pounced onto the air in front of me and curled its tail around its front paws. [Scoutscale forms are capable of turning any individual scale on their body into a suction pad. It takes approximately six hours for this function to naturally deactivate post mortem.]

“I don’t have six hours,” I said drily. My whole upper everything felt like it was aching.

[Nor do you need them. There is a horn on the nape of the neck that can be pressed to relax the scales across the entire body. Diane is more than capable of applying the necessary force.]

“Diane?” I turned to where Diane was still holding my hand. She was staring at the dead scoutscale with stark fear in her eyes. “Diane,” I repeated more urgently. “Can you press this idiot’s horn? Its tail is groping my butt, and I don’t like that.”

“Oh,” she said, partially returning to the present. “I’ll do that. Get it off you, I mean.”

I frowned but released her hand so she could release me. She had to press a few times to get the right pressure, then the scoutscale dropped unceremoniously onto the ground between us before flopping creepily into the fire pit. I decided to leave it there. Immediately, I felt much better. Being able to breath without lifting a whole lizard thing that was attached to me was like that.

“So,” I said, shaking out my hand and unable to take my eyes off of the corpse in the shallow hole, now a grave. “What now?”

The Familiar scrabbled as it overbalanced, but managed to find a secure place to sit after a second of struggling. It never actually touched anything solid, and gave no indication of its distress as it spoke. [You humans typically need a near minute of decompression after close fighting to think rationally again. We will count the time. Remain alert until then.]

I nodded, and finally tore my eyes away from the scoutscale. Diane sat heavily on another of the felled logs, and I ended up moving back to where I realised my personal grimoire had been left. It wasn’t on the ground, but I did find the BB gun, as well as Diane’s phone, which was shining its torch down on a bent leaf. I only saw it because I happened to glance that way from the right angle.

“Hey Diane,” I said when I had picked both things up. The hand that caught the scoutscale functioned well, I was pleased to find, though there was a sluggish ache to it. “I think you should hold on to these.”

The other girl looked up. “You found my phone,” she quietly observed.

I nodded, but worried about the strength in her tone. The phone got handed over as soon as I got close enough, but Diane hesitated to take the BB gun.

“It won’t be entirely useless,” I told her. “I managed to score that first murderball in the eye, and if you can get a pellet in their mouths while they’re screaming at you it’ll at least make them stop for a moment. Not to mention, you’re a better shot than me.”

“I can try,” she said faintly, and pulled the model gun onto her lap.

My concern grew, but I turned to where the Familiar was still struggling with a shrinking invisible platform. “Did you see where my grimoire ended up?”

[No,] it told me. [But we did return it to your storage dimension when we noticed several metres of separation between you and your grimoire. We will always do this unless told not to, and you may retrieve your grimoire as you did before.]

That was… reasonable, and it made more sense the more I thought about it. One of the pages was essentially a how-to for the spell I just used to kill four starbanes. I wasn’t sure if it was safe for me to have that, and I certainly wouldn’t trust it with a random stranger.

So I nodded. “Okay, thanks.” Then I reached out and pulled my grimoire from thin air, still not quite over how strange and cool it was to just be able to do that. I opened it up and went straight to my healing spells, flipping through in search of something blood related. The names started out rather simple, in line with Deep Organ Mending, but quickly veered into the territory of names like Emergency Respiratory Correction.

“Is there a spell in here for uh…” I searched for the right words as I remembered my index for my spells was a glowing speaking creature that was having trouble balancing on nothing. “Blood supplements?”

[Bolster Cardiovascular System is on the next page,] I was informed. I turned and saw an illustration of a heart underneath the same header. This time I actually glanced through the text to try and find an indication of how I was supposed to cast the spell. I’d been lucky that Authentic Energy Channel had responded as well as it did.

I found the words “To apply,” written in bold at the start of the bottom paragraph. It was short compared to the walls of text above it, and the cursive was minimalistic, so I quickly comprehended that it was another touch spell like Deep Organ Mending had been. I snapped the book shut and checked my mana levels.

B: 7/24

U: 55

I should’ve checked what the mana cost was, but that wouldn’t have changed my intention to cast it. “I’m going to cast another spell on you,” I said to Diane. “Which means I will need to touch you.”

Diane looked up from where she was tracing one hand’s fingers along the BB gun. “What for? And where?”

“Well I’m no doctor, but that metallic smell that’s coming through the burnt scale is coming from a whole lot of blood that should be inside your body,” I said. “As for where…”

[Close proximity to your primary cardiovascular organ is best for this spell,] the Familiar picked up for me.

“Okay,” Diane said, just accepting it. She started to pull up her half blood soaked shirt with her free hand.

[Application from the front is unnecessary,] the Familiar continued. I couldn't tell if it was concerned about Diane's modesty like I was. [And the magic is easily capable of piercing that fabric.]

Diane stopped, her waist fully exposed. “So…”

“You don’t need to strip,” I said, ignoring the heat in my cheeks. “In fact, can I get my vest from storage?” Diane was actually a little underdressed for nighttime in these parts. She had probably been banking on having heat from the fire until it was time to go inside. That clearly hadn’t panned out.

[Of course.] I held my hand out and my down vest appeared in it, though I shortly dropped it when my gloves failed to grip the naturally slippery surface. The way it happened so fast left me blinking before I realised that I should pick it up. I took a moment to inspect the hand length slash on the side, then handed it to Diane, happy to see she’d pushed her shirt back down.

“For the cold,” I explained. Then I moved around to her back and pressed the hand that wasn’t aching over where I thought her heart was. “Bolster Cardiovascular System.”

Another cyan magic circle drew itself around my hand, before fading as it moved into Diane’s body. I made sure to keep aware of my mana, which dropped to zero before taking four points from my unbound pool, and then three more to leave me with forty eight. Then the circle broke and my bound mana returned to showing seven.

“How does that feel?” I asked Diane, looking over her shoulder.

“Numb,” she told me.

“Right, the anaesthetic,” I remembered. “The names of these spells don’t really roll off the tongue. Anyway, you should feel that helping you in…” I looked at the Familiar.

[We predict a linear improvement to be noticed after two minutes,] the Familiar said, they continued when I glanced at where it was walking on a wobbly invisible tightrope. [The spell crystallised your mana and transmuted that new form into a lining inside Diane’s Aorta, which will consistently dissolve and add a small amount of pre oxygenated blood to her system with every heartbeat.

[It will continue the process until her blood returns to equilibrium, or the lining completely transmutes itself into new blood. Whichever occurs first. It also performed complex corrections to any recognised inefficiencies with her heart, and related problems are now significantly less likely to arise as she ages. We recommend casting this spell on yourself in the future.]

That didn’t explain what happened if that lining was left there in her heart, and I hadn’t been aware I was essentially performing heart surgery. At the same time Diane wasn’t falling over and clutching her chest, so I was willing to let that point lie.

“Later, when I have more mana to spare,” I said. Then a soft snap had me whipping my head around to find the source. I found Diane facing away from me and holding up her phone.

My eyes narrowed. I recognised the pose. “Did you just take a selfie?” I asked, halfway between scorn and disbelief.

Diane turned around, already looking better in the dim light of the Familiar. She had a pleased look about her as she showed me the picture she just took. “I wanted to show you your crown.”

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I bit my tongue and leaned over to take a look. There was, in fact, a crown of sorts hovering over my head in the picture glowing faintly violet, only it took the form of five glowing crystals rather than a physical tiara. It reminded me of the crystals that floated around the simulacrum of Authority, and wasn’t the only thing I noticed.

My hand went to my neck to feel the embedded choker there, which I hadn’t realised existed until now thanks to how it just… fit. My breathing hadn’t been interfered with at all. Mostly, however, I focused on how Diane was smiling in the picture, the first genuine looking smile I’d seen on her the whole camp, and how she was pointing at the image of me in the background.

“This picture didn’t need to be a selfie,” I said instead of commenting on how I’d misjudged Diane. She did have a pretty smile.

“I wanted the memory,” she protested, a touch shy. “I’m coping.”

I gave Diane another evaluating look, and decided to let it be. “Just don’t go showing that to anyone. I’m not sure I want to be a public magical girl.”

“I won’t,” Diane said quickly. Too quickly for my tastes.

[There are ways to separate magician and civilian identities,] the Familiar decided to chime in. When I turned to look it finally lost its battle with the invisible platform, and fell to the ground where it acted like nothing interesting had been going on. [You are able to afford three of the associated grimoires with your current unbound mana, but we cannot recommend scribing any of those tomes at this time.]

“We need to move,” I agreed, then said to Diane, “I’ll get a pinky promise out of you later. Come on, up.”

Diane spent a few moments getting her things in her pockets and shrugging on the vest I’d given her. She took the hand I offered to help her up, but needed both hands to properly aim the BB gun. That wobble that had worried me before was still there, but was lesser, and that was all I needed to consider the mana spent as a good investment.

“That path will lead us back to the gymnasium, which is apparently a bunker against Starbane,” I said, pointing at the path which technically led to the concrete outside lounge. “Plan A is to make a break for it and blast everything that attacks us.”

[We cannot recommend that plan,] the Familiar said, its tail swishing again. [Starbane forms have an easier time breaching the fabric in locations where there are few living beings. For lowly forms, this forest is a considerable obstacle.]

“So the fields, which are just grass and completely open, will be teeming with murderballs,” I concluded.

[Your culture’s accepted title for that Starbane form is Sixball. And yes, along with more Scoutscales and other forms. You would be overwhelmed shortly after leaving the trees.]

“So we limit the time we spend in the open. We go around the edge of the forest then break for the side entrance to the gymnasium. That way we spend the least amount of time in the open.” I looked at my Familiar. “We might run into one of the Authority fairies, but in case we don’t, do you think you could contact Authority’s simulacrum through the walls? So they know to open at the right time.”

[We are capable.] The tail twitched. [However, as the gymnasium walls have been spelled against intrusion, breaching the barrier to send a message will involve a mana expenditure which will attract the attention of most Starbane forms under the veil. Unless Authority has created a system to do this discreetly, she will also be forced to alert nearby Starbane.]

I touched the middle segment of my index finger to my lips in thought. “Could I fend off the Starbanes with what I have while we go through the door to safety?”

[Each of us could be through the door within a span of five seconds, limiting necessary combat. The door simply needs to be opened, and then closed.]

“But you won’t recommend that because fighting would be good for my growth?” I guessed.

The tail swished from one side to the other. [The experience would be dangerous, but invaluable. We hold confidence in your ability to prevail.]

“Okay,” I said, figuring I could make that decision once we made it to the door. “We’ll consider hold out options on the way over. Diane.” I looked at the other girl and was surprised to see fear in her otherwise composed expression. “You’ll get into the gym where it's safe. I promise.”

“I…” Diane breathed in deep. “All this for me?”

One of my eyebrows went up. “Would you have preferred I didn’t?”

“That’s not what I-”

“Stop complaining then. Let me help you.” I glanced up at the timer counting down at the top of my vision. We still had three hours and fifteen minutes with change. “Time’s ticking. Let’s go.”

We didn’t start moving until I led the way. It wasn’t something I was used to, being looked at like that. Especially not by someone like Diane.

“Okay, Familiar,” I said quietly as I led us into the trees on the other side of the campfire clearing. “Some questions.”

[Do ask these questions.]

I stepped around a tree that I only saw because of the lowlight from the familiar’s glow. “Should I cast a hands free lighting spell? I saw one at the start of that grimoire.”

[It would mean that Starbane forms more easily notice your presence,] the Familiar told me. [If you believe the ability to see to be worth it, then by all means, cast the spell.]

“But how much more easily?”

[The difference would be minimal. You are loud and the traces of used mana on both of you stand out from your surroundings.]

I nodded and came to a halt as I cracked open my grimoire, going straight to Wisp of Adjustable Brightness. Glancing at the bottom paragraph revealed the adjustable part was because I could treat it like an adjustable knob on a light switch. The wisp would appear from my fingertip, and hover above my head shortly after.

“Wisp of Adjustable Brightness,” I whispered, and a tiny yellow orb rose from a tiny magic circle that drew itself on the tip of my finger. It was barely more than a speck, so I placed two fingers and my thumb around it and turned them clockwise. The speck became a mote and then a dim orb before I stopped. Then it floated up and above my head where it stopped leaving a trail on my retinas. In all, it took a single point of my bound mana.

“It’s like a will-o-wisp,” Diane said quietly from behind me.

“It is pretty, isn’t it?” I agreed, then looked at my familiar on the ground beside me. “Is there an alarm spell I could use for if one of those things snuck up on us?”

[The Grimoire of Human Tricks is a novice level tome that has a spell like the one you describe,] the Familiar told me. [However, it is among the most expensive of the novice grimoires, and requires 100 mana to scribe.]

“There isn’t a less expensive option?” I asked. “You can’t just give me that one spell?”

[The Grimoire of Human Tricks is one we recommend all human magicians scribe as soon as they possess the mana to spare.] It decided to walk up an invisible ramp to where the wisp of light was. [Other alarm spells are included in other grimoires which are less useful to you as a whole. We view scribing these grimoires as wasteful, as that would delay your acquisition of the preferred spellbook.] It nudged the wisp with what would’ve been its mouth, and the light moved away.

“And the spell?” I prompted.

[We are incapable of granting singular spells.] It batted the wisp with its paw. [We apologise for the inconvenience.]

“Right,” I said, unsatisfied. I kept moving rather than pressing the point as the Familiar played with the wisp of light. It kept the light above me and Diane, at least, and I realised that might have been a flaw in the spell.

Something to keep in mind for next time.

We kept moving, doing our best to stay quiet and ignore the frolicking creature in the air above us. More than once I halted when I heard a twig snap, but it turned out to just be Diane or me stepping on the unreasonably loud and fragile things. Soon I began to hear the content trickling of a slow moving river further into the trees.

“Okay,” I said as quietly as I could, moving smoothly into a crouch. Diane did the same next to me. “The plan is we follow the river for the time being. The only hitch is that it’s going to elbow out of the trees when we make it to the kayak shed, and there’s a lot of open area around there.”

“So there will be more… Starbanes?” Diane aked, matching my volume but not hiding her fear.

[More of the Enemy is a given,] the Familiar told us. It had laid down in the air again, and was using one paw to bat the wisp down whenever it hovered back up to a certain height.

“I’m worried that if I start a fight in the open, every one of the things in camp will come sprinting our way,” I said.

[A reasonable concern. However, if you managed to secure a chokepoint, the sole offensive spell you have could be used to defend yourself from the invading forms of the enemy almost indefinitely.]

“Almost?” I prompted.

[When the Enemy’s elite forms begin to appear, you would quickly be overwhelmed,] it told me in that inscrutable upbeat voice.

“Okay,” I said, taking that in. “What forms should we be looking out for in the meantime?”

[Lampers are aquatic forms which have undoubtedly already been added to the river and begun to proliferate,] the Familiar said as it batted the wisp of light hard enough that it rebounded on the ground. [They bear a resemblance to lampreys, and are of a similar size but are considerably more mobile. They are bioluminescent to your eyes and therefore distinct. They use a parasitic form of reproduction if they encounter prey too large for them to simply eat, potentially producing three hundred offspring depending on the mass of the host.]

“Nightmare fuel,” I summarised.

“I’m not going to swim for a few months,” Diane agreed.

“We’ll stay away from the water.”

[If you notice Lampers in the water, be aware they are capable of launching themselves two metres onto the shoreline with considerable accuracy,] the Familiar continued. [They are also individually low in mana, but worth harvesting if you learn a spell capable of boiling large volumes of water.]

“We’ll put a pin in that one,” I decided, feeling faintly sick.

[There will likely be several Lowly Striders placed sparsely throughout the camp grounds. These are reinforcement forms whose role it is to provide aid when other forms of the Enemy are in distress. They remain in the open as they are taller than a single floor in a building of typical size. Most of that height is attributed to their four legs, which they use to move quickly, and they have a number of arms connected to their central body which they can use to carry a limited number of other Starbane.]

“How far does my energy channel go?” I asked, wondering if I could take out one of those things as it was approaching.

[At the intensity you have been casting, the beam’s energy is reduced to safe levels after fifty two metres. However, with the accuracy you have been displaying, you should only consider using it against targets within fifteen metres of you.]

My cheeks heated up, but I couldn’t protest. “Bet you’re going to recommend a grimoire or something for that.”

[We are eager to scribe the Novice Grimoire of Lethal Accuracy for you, but it is of the same cost as the Grimoire of Human Tricks.]

“You’ll get better with practice,” Diane assured me. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I just nodded towards her before moving on.

“How would a strider try to kill me?” I asked.

[First it will attempt to stamp or kick you against a surface repeatedly,] the Familiar told me as the invisible surface it was resting on rotated upside down, and it continued to bat my wisp up into the air. Was it trying to make me comment on… whatever it was doing? [If that fails, it will manoeuvre to grapple you with its arms before tearing you apart in a manner reminiscent of your culture’s quartering execution method. When approaching a conflict in progress, it will seek to approach from an unwatched angle, such as from a rooftop.]

Well that was… informative. “There’s more forms to watch out for, right?” I asked. “There’s no way it’s just what you’ve told me about.”

[Your presumption is correct. However, the lowly forms of the Enemy are numerous enough that educating you on each of them would take months on account of your easily bruised neural matter.]

The way it said that in its perpetually upbeat tone got on my nerves.

“So we’ll go near the river, but not closer than five metres to it. Follow it to the kayak shed, and take stock before planning out next move,” I said instead of addressing that. “Any questions?”

Diane shook her head, and the Familiar suddenly lost whatever was letting it ignore gravity. Only it fell up and started jumping at the wisp from the canopy above us, still upside down, and not asking questions.

“It’s so weird,” Diane commented.

“I think it wins if you give it more attention,” I said. “But it is helping. And I heard no questions so let’s go.” I started moving towards the river, moving a bit faster now that the sound of water was muffling our footsteps some. After making a short way, I glanced up to see the Familiar doing graceful leaps to poke at the wisp of light with its nose, ultimately keeping up with us.

We shortly got close to the river, and I put a hand out to stop Diane. She walked into it, which started an embarrassed shuffle as I muttered an apology, but it achieved what I wanted it to. We stopped to take a look at the river

There were motes of light drifting and darting around under the surface, like fireflies. Only, these things were yellow-green lines instead of dots, they stayed firmly underwater, and were parasitic lamprey things that would eat me given the chance. My timer still had three hours and eight minutes, so they must have only had maybe fifty minutes in the water at most. The lights were far too numerous to count all the same.

It was pretty, if I was being honest. Too bad each of the lights would kill me given half a chance.

I reached up with one hand and found my wisp of light, and turned it down before beckoning my Familiar closer. “What are those?” I quietly asked once it decided to obey gravity like everyone else and dropped next to me, pointing at one of two silhouettes above the glowing river. They were bipedal, and slowly wading through the lamper infested water without a care in the world. Neither had any arms to speak of, but had a single tentacle extending up from its torso before hanging down and around the body like an overly long scarf.

[Those are called living hives by your culture,] the Familiar explained. [These two have already fulfilled their purpose, as they would have transported the lampers into the water around them. The trunk wrapped around their body is their normal delivery method for small lowly forms of the Enemy. With their purpose fulfilled, they have likely been reassigned to scout the river.]

“They carry around Lampers?” Diane asked, her quiet voice thick with disgust.

“Not just Lampers,” I said heavily.

[Indeed. The enemy have several smaller forms that thrive in specific environments, and living hives take the small forms to those locations. Be assured that Lampers are likely the only such form present at this location.]

“I’m assured alright,” I muttered. “Diane, start shooting the one on the right as soon as I start casting. Try and aim for eyes or something.”

[Living hives do not possess ocular organs, and must be directed by other forms.]

“Thanks,” I said. “Shoot it anyway.”

“Glad to,” Diane said, levelling the BB gun at the living hives.

I held my hand out towards the freaky creature on the left. “Authentic Energy Channel.” This time when I felt the magic circle draw itself into existence I kept an eye on the two numbers at the bottom corner of my vision. The circle itself took five of my bound mana, and when the purple beam started crackling and engulfing the living hive, it went down at a rate slightly slower than once a second.

My mana reached one, then zero. I expected my unbound mana to go down after that, but it went up instead. From forty eight to fifty three. I used that as a cue to cut my beam and see what it had done.

The living hive just anticlimactically slumped into the water while the other one slowly turned our way as Diane harried it with plastic pellets. Then the water erupted into thrashing froth as a feeding frenzy started.

“Oh, fuck all of that,” I said, and channeled my beam towards the other living hive. I counted to three, then slanted the beam downward rather than letting it cut immediately. It was a gamble, since the Familiar hadn’t indicated the energy channel would be enough to kill lampers, but I was rewarded by a short rush of unbound mana going… wherever it was that unbound mana was stored.

I channelled until the number representing my unbound mana stopped moving up at sixty four. When I dissolved the magic circle I got three mana back, which was something at least. It did spur a thought I should have had a while ago.

“Am I supposed to be regenerating my mana?” I asked as the remains of the living hives were dragged upstream in pieces too small to try burning. Diane was breathing heavily beside me, but that seemed to just be adrenaline from shooting a living thing.

The Familiar dropped onto the ground in front of me, then rolled right side up and sat like nothing strange had occurred. [You are regenerating mana at the moment, but we understand your consternation. Living things do not generate mana at a linear rate as depicted in your entertainment simulations.]

“Entertainment simulations?” I repeated under my breath.

Diane heard me. “Games,” she said by way of explanation.

“No, I knew that. I just wasn’t expecting that… way of phrasing it.”

[To the credit of humanity, its entertainment simulations are comparatively advanced. More so than other cultures would achieve at this level of societal development.]

“Please go back to mana,” I requested. The Familiar seemed to take every opportunity to explain a tangent.

[Of course,] it said, tail twitching. [As stated, mana does not generate at a linear rate. Instead, it generates in pulses. The first pulse can take a long time to occur, but after that it will take place with a somewhat consistent frequency.]

“And how much mana can I expect?”

[You will generate one mana in each colour you have access to. This is the basis for measuring a single unit of mana.]

“You said I have twelve colours, if I remember correctly. So that’s… half my mana?”

The Familiar’s tail twitched again. [Correct. Your basic division skills are adequate.]

Diane stifled a sound that was probably a giggle beside me. For my part, I gave the Familiar a glare before looking up as I noticed movement. I reached up and turned the brightness of my wisp back to the level it was before and saw a flash of blue against the canopy.

“Authority?” I called out, risking a normal speaking voice.

The fairy’s little head poked out from behind a separate tree trunk. It took me too long to realise that was because there were two of them. Thankfully, they didn’t make a big deal over it and fluttered over to where the three of us were waiting. I wasn’t expecting the looks of fear in their oversized fairy eyes.

“You’re new,” the one on the right said first.

“I hope you found Diane without anything too terrible happening,” the other said.

“It… We survived,” I said.

“That’s always a plus!”

“Cute, but this isn’t the time,” the one on the right cut in, more serious than I’d ever known an Authority to be. “There’s a miasma beacon further into the forest, across the river. I don’t think they’re rushing it like they did the veil, but they need to be interrupted.” She turned to me with a coldness in her fairy eyes. “You’re the only one capable of doing that. I will be leading you there.”

I blinked slowly while Diane stiffened beside me and the Familiar swished its tail behind itself. That was far more responsibility than I was used to being given. Even worse, it sounded like the Authority wanted me to go and do that right now.