16 Avoid Eight, Six, Four, Two, And Any Odd Numbers Too
The crowd of starbanes outside the cave had stopped feeding my choker crystal fresh bodies when I looked up from my newest spell. They were still there, waiting for me to try and leave, and probably screaming as they did. I set about dismissing the spells around me one by one, activating Proximity Alarm again because of its helpful alerting sounds. The way that it overlaid with my normal pair of eyes just made it more usable than the other scrying spell I had going.
Actually… A thought occurred to me as I shelved my personal grimoire. “How much mana is Life Detection taxing?” I asked, glancing at my sideways Familiar.
[It will consume fifty four blue mana at seventy three minute intervals,] I was told.
“Why that long?” I asked, since that was odd.
[The Grumskn used measurements of time based on the rotation and orbit of their home planet, just as your culture does. Your unit of a minute is the closest equivalent to that length of period. There are also twenty seven excess seconds beyond the stated time.]
“Oh, cool,” I said, looking back at the waiting starbanes. Then I set about dismissing Privacy and reclaiming the mana from my choker crystal but leaving the convex crystal alone because it was my functional wall for the moment. I took stock before really starting to move. Thankfully, the starbanes had stopped their screaming during my study session.
B: 37/85
U: 461
14s
I had enough to afford wasting a lot to figure out Hopscotch, but I shouldn’t start a fight when a mana pulse was that close. To fill the time I asked two questions. “Familiar, what’s my newest colour?” There had been three mana pulses during the study session. That put it at longer than half an hour.
Frustratingly, putting mana into my choker crystal hadn’t given me any more mana depth. Presumably that was because I needed a variety, or just a bigger amount of mana moving through me.
[It is yet another purple, shaded slightly darker than your primary.]
“Any idea what it’s from?” I asked. That wasn’t one of my planned questions, so the number I was asking went up to three.
[Your self-cauterisation event seems to be the likely source. Your frustrations regarding the matter would explain the darker shade.]
That just led me to another question I wanted to ask, but I let it lie for the time being. Instead, I turned to where Authority was hovering close to the ceiling.
“Can you see my third eye?” I asked after a moment of hesitation and pointing at my forehead. “I can feel it, but I don’t know what it looks like.”
The fairy fluttered closer briefly, leaning forward to get a good look before flying up again. “Oh, if you’re worried about it looking silly, don’t be.” My mana pulse hit then, and when the strange feeling was done running through my head the ache from studying was reduced. Not gone, though. I lowered my hand as the fairy continued, oblivious to the event. “It’s light blue, and I really like that colour. And it’s marquise shaped, with the points going up and down.”
I blinked, my confusion evident.
“It looks like another eye, basically,” Authority explained patiently. “Except it’s crystal. I’ll try to remind you to look up the shapes jewellers cut after everything, but I think it’s cool!”
I nodded, then turned away. Then I looked back. “Thank you. My mana pulse just went, so I’m going now.”
“Wish you luck!”
[We will remain with the convex crystal in anticipation of a sentry form finding our location,] my Familiar said, still sitting where it had been before. It must have missed the memo that the shield it had been sitting on was gone, but that hadn’t ever stopped it before.
“I’ve been thinking about those,” I confessed as I studied the wall of corpses blocking my way out. They had really piled themselves all the way up to the ceiling, and it was difficult to say I was unaffected by that fact. “I’ve got two names. Manahounds, or Coldlight Seekers.”
[Another starbane form is already designated as a Manahound. We will designate the sentry form Coldlight Seeker until further notice.]
“That’s a pretty name,” Authority commented. “What made you think of it?”
“The light I saw one shining on my Familiar,” I explained, taking a few friendily enhanced steps back from the wall. “It reminded me of a searchlight, and I didn’t want to name it something like hookblow. I’m not satisfied with that name, by the way.”
“We’ll call them coldlights for short!” Authority exclaimed, like it was already a done deal.
“I like that,” I said. After a moment I pointed at the little blue thing. “Familiar, take note.”
Its body made a big and petulant but silent sigh. [We will take note of the simulacrum’s words.]
The byplay brought an honest smile to my face, small though it may have been. Then it cracked. How could I smile when a literal pile of corpses was cutting me off from the outside world?
“I don’t know how to deal with this,” I confessed. “Anklebiter would only burn part of this so I can’t see it being useful, and pulling the things past with Tug of War would take forever. Hopscotch… doesn’t feel appropriate.”
My Familiar looked at the wall blocking the way out, then at me. [We concur, an explosion in this contained space would be immensely detrimental. Specifically to your ability to hear and see, in addition to the damage your body would take from the shockwave. This is irrelevant, however. The solution is simple.]
I waited for it to give me that solution. “Well?”
[Disengage the convex crystal.]
That made me blink. The yellow energy making a sphere around us was holding back the bodies pressed against it. “What if I…”
Rather than take the advice and need to deal with a tidal wave of bodies that I didn’t want to touch, I instead tapped the bottom of my convex crystal to see if I could shift the bubble against the weight. The yellow magic circle formed around my crystal as usual, and for a moment it stayed there. Then I moved my hand and breathed a sigh of relief as the bodies pressed against us were shoved back a tiny amount. There was a delay, but the movement was what I cared about.
“I’m going to leave this charged,” I explained to Authority as I began slowly walking out of the cave. “It should stay up while there are starbanes around.” I looked at my Familiar. “Will it let her out like it let me in?”
[It is too late to educate the dumb crystal,] it told me. I took that for a no.
“Thank you for everything you’ve done,” Authority told me. I gave her an odd look. “You may think that’s implicit, but it’s good to say it anyway. Thank you.”
Whatever I was going to respond with escaped me when we finally bulldozed our way out of the cave proper, and the group of starbanes waiting for us noticed out entrance. Naturally, they started screaming.
“Kind of want something noise cancelling,” I complained, but my heart wasn’t really in it. I was too busy studying the forces that had gathered to siege me down. There were eight hookblows arranged in a semi-circle around the cave, and many more of the other forms behind them. I took a deep breath and cast Friendly Race, inadvertently countering their ambush when I stepped out of the protective bubble and onto some arachno silk. My vision was briefly blocked by the fire spreading out from me.
Hopefully Authority wasn’t caught up in that.
“Emergency Respiratory Correction,” I immediately cast, not willing to chance the toxin with this many starbanes this close. That done, I quickly followed up with, “Hopscotch. Jump!”
I didn’t put any forward intent into the jump. All I wanted was height, and I got what I was after. My normal eyes didn’t make them out, but life detection showed me where the striders were standing behind the hookblows. Somewhere in the middle was where I was going to target.
As for Hopscotch, the spell made a purple wristband for me on both arms, and it was difficult to distinguish them from the ribbons Friendly Race made. They didn’t do anything until I flourished my arm, ending with my palm face up. I needed to do it with intent, otherwise the spell wouldn’t activate, but when I flourished my arms at the apex of my jump I was suddenly holding two purple disks of magic, just the right size to hold comfortably. Those disks were thrown right as I started coming back down again.
They fell slower than me, so I was back on the ground and casting Jump Rope by the time those disks landed and subsequently activated. I was watching, of course.
There was no way I wasn’t going to watch my first real explosions go off.
That was a big mistake.
All I caught was a purple tinted shockwave spreading from where the first disk had landed. Then my eyes went briefly blind and my ears were suddenly listening to a constant high pitched tone. Everything about that hurt, especially the regret.
“Oh, that was dumb,” I said as I blinked my eyes back into focus. Or I think I said that. I probably did, but I didn’t hear myself. It really felt like I slurred the words. At least my vision quickly returned as I blinked repeatedly.
[There are spells in the Androkan Grimoire of Restoration to repair your aural system,] the words of my Familiar came to me all the same. It had obviously never been normal speaking, but that confirmed it for me. [Do not invest too much time into this conflict. You have objectives beyond harvesting these starbane forms.]
“Right,” I think I said.
I sent Jump Rope out, then activated it and began sweeping it through the crowd of starbanes. For once, I didn’t hear their screams. I got a little too focused on that and was blindsided by a hookblow striking my side. Its hook snapped around and gave me whiplash as it briefly caught my torso before my burning armour broke it apart.
My staggering footsteps that I used to find balance again took me far away from it, thankfully. Less fortunately, there was more than just the one hookblow. At least this time I stopped standing there like an idiot and started defending myself. A few purposeful steps that covered more ground than they should’ve brought me a few seconds to catch my breath. Then, with that breath, I cast Jump again.
I looked around with Life Detection to see where the crowd was thinnest. It turned out that directly in front of me was probably my best bet. The other hopscotch tokens had worked well, and through my third eye there was mostly the grey of trees in that direction.
So landing was going to suck. But it would suck less than staying where I was. My decision was made for me.
“Hup!” I involuntarily huffed as I jumped, putting more physical effort into it than I had any of my previous ones. One hand flourished to make another Hopscotch token, and I threw it beneath me as I sailed through the air between two striders. My other hand adjusted Jump Rope to follow me, then held in place to make it follow my horizontal movement.
I didn’t see how many starbanes either of those manoeuvres kneecapped. Getting away seemed like a bigger priority.
And those trees I’d jumped towards were more than willing to welcome me with thorny hugs. My head whipped back more than once as my floating crown caught on something, and I suspect my neck would have broken if a magical force hadn’t propped my head up from behind. That made me flip midair as well, and I caught a glimpse of red hot leaves and branches before my back hit another branch that made me flip forward again.
Then I hit the ground. Face down and with dignity… of a sort. I almost tried standing up before remembering what happened the last time I tried that with Friendly Race active.
I had to have made some distance, so I allowed myself a few seconds to think. The solution I came up with was essentially doing a press up, then trying to push myself back to upright.
It didn’t work, and I hit the ground with my face again.
Gritting my teeth and purposefully not venting my frustrations, I tried something similar, propping myself up and then getting a foot underneath my torso for support. It worked, and the spell did too. It carried me about three times the distance my foot actually moved, and my shoulder hit a tree trunk with enough force that I nearly fell over again.
But I was up. I straightened the rest of the way and looked down at myself to see if I needed dusting off. The hands-free torch that was still following me around illuminated my front enough to see that I did not. Before I left, I threw the hopscotch token I’d almost forgotten about behind me and watched a purple square draw itself around where it landed. The whole thing glowed ominously, and I noticed something green moving towards me from that direction, so I decided to leave.
There were more starbane forms in front of me, from sixballs to hookblows. But they were more sparse than the crowd had been so I didn’t stop to fight them. There was enough space for me to dodge around them.
When I felt a shockwave come from behind me, I remembered that I could be doing that too. After throwing another Hopscotch token to mine my path, I pulled off the ring for Jump Rope to reclaim that mana. It was a good spell, and it was satisfying to find applications for it, but that wasn’t this. Me finally getting good enough to navigate the movement of Friendly Race with something approaching grace helped immensely.
“I didn’t see any coldlights,” I said as I ran, sort of hearing myself. That was fine though. I was confident my Familiar would hear me regardless, even with all the distance between us.
[We noticed thirteen in your vicinity through Life Detection, and question your observational skills.]
I frowned, even though it couldn’t see it. Maybe because it couldn’t see it. All I could make out through life detection were silhouettes, and starbanes were all the same colour. So how had it managed to differentiate them?
Thoughts for later when I wasn’t dealing with creatures that wanted me dead. I flourished another Hopscotch token into my hand and took a moment to stop and look back. Three tall black shapes that reminded me of a giant and oversized but four legged spider were slowly growing larger through my third eye. The two I’d been born with just saw a few tree trunks before the forest faded into darkness.
I threw down the Hopscotch disk, and decided to retreat several long steps. “Four,” I said. “You’ve got four legs! So just keep one of them up!”
The largest, and therefore nearest strider form briefly ragdolled as something exploded underneath it before the whole thing vanished from my scrying eye. Another shockwave blew past moments later, the weakest I’d felt so far.
It wasn’t from the one I just put down though.
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“That was three! Three in german is “Drie!”” I used the german pronunciation, for the record. “You should’ve watched out, ‘cause it sounds like “die!””
[Lowly starbane forms do not respond to taunting,] the Familiar informed me.
“I didn’t solicit that advice,” I shot back, talking quieter and happy to find that I could hear low volumes again. “This is for me.”
[We will continue to offer unsolicited advice where we believe it to be appropriate.]
That made me snort, but I made sure to stay focused.
I stepped back from my newest magic mine even further. A scoutscale tried to ambush me, but Proximity Alarm gave it away. It didn’t manage to constrict me before I put a friendly punch into its neck. I looked back in time to see the two striders become one in the same way they had become two. With an explosion, that was. All it took was another flourish and I had another Hopscotch token that I threw down and ran away from.
“Come on! Make it to six and grab the sticks!” I shouted, dodging around a sixball. Then I saw a coldlight seeker and took the time to kick its spherical head.
After another few moments yet another shockwave blew past me. I took a few moments to think up what I wanted to say as I ran. In the end, I made it to the lamper infested river before finding a good rhyme. Since I didn’t want to leave it unfinished before Jumping away, I turned around and yelled my final taunt.
“I forgot to say, skip five to stay alive!” I shouted through cupped hands. For effect, I waited a few seconds. “You already stepped on five, didn’t you!?”
[We are curious, why are you acting like this, Donna?] my Familiar asked. There was a tiny purple flash above me, and then it fell down onto my shoulder. Its concerned eyes had their effect increased when it cocked its head curiously, somehow looking innocent while it did.
I gave it a short glance. “Effect.” I turned around and cast jump, taking care to arc my leap far above the water this time. “Well, the effect on my stress,” I admitted after landing. “Yelling dumb rhymes seems better than revelling in destruction.”
[We concur that it is healthier. Do not feel judged if you continue to heckle creatures with no ears.]
I gave my Familiar another glance before picking up the pace again. “They don’t have ears?”
[They have no need of them.]
“But…” I was just baffled by this claim. “How do they communicate?”
[By other means more effective than sound, but less effective than our method,] it told me with a hint of pride. Or was that derision? It was hard to tell with its consistent timbre. [Be aware that many forms, such as striders and arachnos, do have organs to detect tremors in the ground despite their disdain for sound. It is still tactically advantageous to limit noise under a veil.]
That felt like my Familiar was abridging a lengthy explanation again, and it had still ended up wordy. I took the hint and changed the subject. “Where should I be heading first?”
[Look left. Life detection will show starbane forms in the shape of roots. The second nearest miasma beacon in that direction is the one nearest to completion.]
I slowed again, then dealt with a sixball that chose that moment to enter the radius of my Proximity Alarm, and finally looked in the direction it indicated. What I “saw” was exactly as it had been described. Black roots, like the colour of a lightless void were visible through the greys of the trees and their roots. They were distinct because they went far deeper, and converged to a point from a wider radius.
Behind the first set of black roots I saw another set which went far deeper and were much thicker.
“How am I doing with mastering Hopscotch?” I asked as I changed course.
[You will be proficient enough to start focusing on another spell if you can dismiss the prepared spell with less than one mana lost in reclamation.]
“How much did preparing it cost, again?”
[Thirty four mana was used to prepare the spell. Each explosive disk uses a further seven mana. As a strider form has a potential of twenty one mana to harvest, you gained fourteen mana from each of your three most recent uses of the spell. The first two were significantly more effective.]
“And that was enough for you to approve my use of it?” I checked.
[Correct. For the purposes of this evaluation, we are lessening the importance of your academic understanding of the Stoccoro spells, and instead focusing on your practical applications. The spells you have yet to display significant proficiency with are Jump Rope and Anklebiter.]
My eyes narrowed as I jogged through the forest at a magically enhanced speed. “Those are my favourite spells.”
[You are wasteful with them. Jump Rope is better aimed towards large forms incapable of avoidance, such as striders. Anklebiter taxes more mana in the first instants of a given channel than it does in the following time units.]
“So I need to take down a strider with Jump Rope, and do a longer channel with Anklebiter?” I gathered.
[Correct.]
“How long, exactly?”
[Two minutes and three seconds.]
I looked ahead at the starbane silhouettes around my destination. No striders, but definitely calling curtains. “I’ll start with Anklebiter.”
A few seconds passed with me just running.
[We would like to propose a course of action to plan ahead,] my Familiar said.
“Shoot.”
[Alas, we possess no gun. It is with Diane in her stasis.]
I lightly flicked its side and it went flying off into the dark, only to reappear in the same way it had before. It continued with dignity, as if nothing had happened.
[After destroying these two miasma beacons, you will be able to return to Diane in time for her stasis to conclude. Then will be a good opportunity to learn another spell from the Stoccoro Grimoire.]
I skidded to a stop, then looked at my various timers. The one I’d been using to keep track of Diane’s waking had been done away with, but the Familiar had told me it would take an hour and it had been well over an hour since then. “She’s not out already?” I asked a little hesitantly.
Where had the time gone? I’d done barely anything.
[We were vague on specific details as you were emotional at the time. Diane’s stasis will conclude in less than fifteen minutes.]
I looked in the direction I thought the dorm was. Then I realised I could use Life Detection to find the gymnasium, and therefore the dorm building to its left. So I did that, then slowly looked down towards my feet.
“Right, let’s get moving then.”
I wanted to be there when she woke up. Nobody deserved to be alone in this sort of situation.
__________
Destroying the next two miasma beacons went differently than my first two. There wasn’t any one thing I could point at which really separated them, except for how I didn’t make any glaring mistakes. Not that it was smooth sailing. Achieving a continuous channel with Anklebiter proved harder than I first thought, and took several attempts. The first two were cut short when I got flanked, and the next three simply because a different spell was better for the situation.
Anklebiter actually had a progressively destabilising magic circle, something about residual mana. My Familiar compared the issue to the rifling of an actual gun dirtying with extended use, only exaggerated. The longer I channelled the beam, the more it shook and responded to micro adjustments. That meant after a minute, even breathing could influence where the end of the beam was going, but I only knew that because my Familiar told me so. The beam was jumping around so much because of everything else at that point that it was impossible to tell.
Making things worse was how it needed to be an “effective” use of the spell when I achieved the two minute and three second channel. If I wasn’t killing starbanes throughout the casting, then it didn’t count. I received an apology about that when I asked the Familiar, but it rang hollow.
At least tripping a strider with Jump Rope went easier. I was chased by no fewer than four when I was moving to my second destination. When I did that, I sent the twin circles of the spell as far apart as I reasonably could before activating them. They each hovered a set distance above the ground, which was on an incline.
I found beauty in watching the blazing purple line move across the landscape before the towering green things ruined it and fell over. The spell wasn’t even enough to kill them right away, but with them immobilised I just left them there. I had more important things to do.
Such as killing foundation serpents. Given that I had a well tested strategy for killing all eight, that’s what I used for that task. Between that and the other starbanes that I had to kill along the way, I was up to over eight hundred bound mana by the time I was done.
I started throwing Hopscotch squares around when I left somewhere to mine it. Leaving a nasty surprise for any starbane that got curious about the magical glowing square thing.
It was something I started doing after destroying my third miasma beacon. By the time I cleared out the starbanes guarding the fourth, which happened to be the one closest to finishing, I was hearing the sound of distant explosions intermittently disrupting the silence.
“How far away can you harvest mana, anyway?” I asked my Familiar while I was setting up my eight choker crystals. I made enough mana off of these things that I was willing to cast the spell eight times at each one, plus the collaboration crystal.
[Normally, we are subtle, and restrict ourselves to seven hundred and seven metres to prevent detection from starbane forms,] the Familiar answered. It was hopping from crystal to crystal as I cast them, apparently having learned the secret to standing on pointy objects. Or it was cheating, which I thought was more likely. [However, with the situation of this veil, we will harvest any mana released within the boundaries of the camp until another magician joins you. Each point of mana is necessary for you.]
“Good to know,” I commented, and turned the magic circle above the collaboration crystal to start killing the foundation serpents.
This miasma beacon actually looked more like a structure than eight snakes all lying on top of one another. The bodies at the bottom of the hexagon had smoothed out, and it was difficult to make out the seams between them considering they were each the same colour, with that colour being mostly black. It seemed the things went through a growth spurt towards the end of the process as well, because the living structure actually towered well over me. I was maybe half as tall as it.
The snake heads were nowhere to be seen as well. They must have turned inwards after reaching a certain height. Their absence actually added to the imposing presence of the miasma beacon, and that wasn’t just because it was a big tower. I felt wrong just standing near it.
After a moment spent looking at that, I stopped giving mana to the collaboration crystal and cast Anklebiter. These foundation serpents took longer than the others to start reacting, but they did reveal themselves after a near minute of my blasting a deadly purple beam into one of them.
Maybe three. The end of Anklebiter was jumping around a whole lot by that point.
I kept up the channel and gave mana to the crystals as well. Doing the task like that is what gave me the two minutes and change I needed for my Familiar to approve of my skill with Anklebiter.
“Could I have just beamed trees to get the channel?” I asked as I was jogging back to the dorm building.
[It would have been a horrendous waste of mana, but it would have satisfied the criteria,] my Familiar told me. It was hanging from my shoulder, which was the safest place for it when we were down a shielding crystal and were on the move.
I huffed as I ran. That would have been nice to know ten minutes before I killed the most recent foundation serpents.
It continued when I didn’t say anything in response. [We withheld this information because we believed you were capable of accomplishing the feat without a costly handicap. Not only were we correct, you have improved your situational awareness in the process.]
“Are you going to tell me I’m a high achiever?” I asked, snarky despite myself.
[You are a high achiever. We are certain that few other magician candidates could have achieved what you have in a similar time frame, and none of those which could are under this veil.] Its tail wrapped around the side of my waist, which I barely felt. [I am pleased to be your familiar! Rather than being contracted to one of those underachievers.]
“Stop it,” I told it.
It wasn’t that I was unused to praise. My mom had showered praise on me all the time before she left, and she had made damn sure that I knew how to receive compliments with what looked like humility. But that last part had gone beyond what I knew how to deal with.
Mercifully, the Familiar stopped.
[Please take care to avoid the lounge area,] it requested after ten or so seconds. We were just then coming up on the main camp complex since the miasma beacon had taken us so far out of the way, and I could see through Life Detection that there were a bunch of coldseekers there. Whether or not they were the same ones as before I couldn’t tell.
I slowed to a stop, I needed some time to think about something.
All these starbanes needed to go. They were between the dorms and the gymnasium, so they’d attack if someone moved from one to the other, no matter what. More than that, the gymnasium was still covered in arachno webbing, and was probably enough to be toxic in the open air. That needed to be dealt with first.
“How far away from the gymnasium am I right now?” I asked.
For now, there weren’t any striders after me. Jump Rope was a very effective tool at stopping them in place, and this wasn’t the first time I’d just left all the starbanes behind. If I glanced backwards, I’d have seen a black crowd of silhouettes where I’d felled the striders since they screamed and gathered the smaller forms around them.
Did injured starbanes always call their friends like that?
Questions for later. I waited for the answer to the one I had actually asked.
[Seventy eight metres,] my Familiar informed me. [And thirty two centimetres. Would you like further accuracy?]
“Okay, I’m going to use Jump to close the distance,” I decided, ignoring that. I cast a convex crystal which I charged up about halfway. “This should keep you safe from any coldlight seekers I miss.”
My Familiar jumped onto the crystal and slipped off. Only, it seemed purposeful this time because it miraculously hung on using a single paw. [We are thankful for the consideration,] it told me, swaying slightly.
For a moment I wondered why there wasn’t any shield appearing. Then I remembered there weren’t any starbanes immediately there.
“Wish me fortune,” I told it, then turned towards my enemies and cast Jump in that direction. While I was still in midair, I cast one of my first spells that would have the necessary distance. “Authentic Energy Channel!”
It was like launching a sideways lightning strike. I only channelled for the time I was flying through the air, but when I dismissed the spell shortly before my touchdown I could see the black arachno webbing on the gymnasium had caught fire and was rapidly spreading. There were a few silhouettes that I caught with my real eyes being swallowed by the flame, which wasn’t visible to my life detection.
Not that I was splitting my focus between the two perspectives. That way led to headaches the likes of which I would rather not subject myself to.
In any case, I landed near the concrete lounge where the coldlight seekers were and began casting choker crystals. My goal was to establish this area as an automatic kill zone for starbanes, and this was the one spell that would accomplish that.
With the recent harvest of the sixballs on the gymnasium, since they always died to fire from friendly sources, I was up to over nine hundred unbound mana when I started casting. That would roughly translate to nine fully charged crystals, so I couldn’t be too free with placing them. I still started with two fully charged crystals to handle the smaller starbanes that were near me while I dealt with the starbanes on the gymnasium that hadn’t died to my alpha strike.
I still had my hopscotch bracelets, so I flourished both hands and threw the disks as far as I could towards the gym. They fell short, which was fine, and didn’t activate right away. But with the number of arachnos and hookblows that had started to react, that wouldn’t be the case for long. I threw out more innocuous disks that turned into deadly hopscotch squares and cast Anklebiter in preparation.
After that, it was a matter of beaming down the starbanes until they stopped coming. It ended sooner than I thought it would.
I was panting and searching for my next target when I noticed my Familiar was next to me, stomping ineffectively on the cracked crystal head of a coldlight seeker. “It’s safe?” I panted out.
[No starbane forms are approaching your current location with intent,] it told me. [We thank you for subjecting the coldlight seeker forms to a slow demise. It was pleasurable to watch.]
I didn’t respond to that right away. Instead, I distracted myself by researching how to slowly dismiss Anklebiter. It turned out that involved extending my pinky and rotating the handle counterclockwise as far as it could go, and I did so relatively slowly. Nearly thirty mana returned to my bound pool.
“Watch that you don’t become a psychopath,” I warned my Familiar.
[We would not. That would reduce the schadenfreude of watching a weapon designed to kill us utterly fail to do so.]
I blew out through my nose harder than necessary, so I let it slide. “Come on, how long until Diane gets un… stasised?” I realised that I didn’t really know what I was saying until it was too late, and that this was actually the second time Diane had a stasis cast on her. Both of those were things I decided not to dwell on.
Thankfully, my Familiar didn’t comment. [Thirty tw-one seconds.]
All the same, with how pedantic it was, I knew for certain my flub was in its memory somewhere. It could probably browse them like a computer document.
I nodded and held my arm out for it to climb up. When it was on my shoulder again I looked at the door I was aiming for and cast, “Jump!”
It was an odd feeling, Jumping back to the spot I had first jumped from. Somehow, I didn’t over or undershoot, and landed almost perfectly on the walkway connecting the upstairs dorms. I did all of that smoothly, even pulling the ribbons from my shoulders when I was still in the air. My only still active spells were divination spells by the time my hand was on the door handle, but then I stopped.
I had settled into a fugue of sorts since I left the fairy of Authority in that cave. My Familiar was an easing presence, but it somehow still felt like I was by myself when it was with me. That was…
That was stupid. The truth was that I was afraid to face Diane for some reason, and I wasn’t able to put why into words. Because I’d wished for her without her permission? Because I barely knew her and did that for her anyway? Because I’d been the reason that wish had been necessary in the first place? Because I was worried I’d need to wish something like that again, somehow?
All of the above?
I closed my eyes and breathed out. That didn’t shut off what I could see with Life Detection though, and a white-grey silhouette snapped into existence right at that moment. It was a cue, and I used it to push past my trepidation and into the room.
“-fault,” I heard Diane finish saying.
My mind went back, fishing up what she had been saying before the stasis. “This was-” if I was recalling correctly. I knew what she had been trying to say, but my mind still constructed the less charitable version anyway. It stopped me three steps into the room and kept me silent as I watched Diane react to the new environment.
She reacted to something new every second. First was the new room. Then how she was in her bed. After that came the crystals floating on the floor next to her, before her eyes finally landed on me. Only then did her eyes set with comprehension.
“This wasn’t your fault,” she told me again as she got up and out of her bed, repeating what I knew she had been telling me.
That didn’t do much to shift my guilt though. I needed to get over that and myself though. Deadly things were happening. I had just over ninety minutes on my shortest doom countdown, and my Familiar had added five more doom counters in the time it took for me to remove two.
“I know,” I said softly, then turned to lead the way out of the room. “The gymnasium is cleared for now. Let’s move you in there before more starbanes show up.”