“Alright. Just a few more moments in the shadows, Scrappy, then you can come out okay?”

A muffled hum came from a space beyond the material realm.

Albert surveyed the terrain while he finished preparing and laying out the items for the ritual in a small ellipse around him. The two axes of the ellipse were made of diamond dust, while at the vertices he placed modern-day sensors, gunpowder and ammunition taken from his inventory. He could open it easily now, the action having become practiced and fast, as well as cheap, but keeping the portal open to retrieve all the items was still a bit taxing.

Even more taxing would be doing the ritual itself. That’s why he had chosen items to be sacrificed, to lower the price, to make it easier on his body and his mind. After all, whatever his Power needed would have to come from his own vitality unless he offered something else in its stead.

In the end, it all came down to sacrifice. There were things one was willing to sacrifice without much thought, and when it came to reality bending Albert knew those things were mental energy and focus. Those were also the things that offered him less Power in return, for they came almost without a price.

Then there were things one was reluctant to part with. Perhaps because obtaining them was a hard task, perhaps because they came from a finite supply. Perhaps they held sentimental value. Those things offered a great deal of Power when Albert sacrificed them.

Then there was the last category of things. Things he did not want to lose. Things so precious that losing them was a price was too high to pay. Not just things either. People too.

He had never used them, so he didn’t know for sure, but his mind thrummed with power at the sole idea of sacrificing something he did not want to lose. Power, and fear. It was like the call of the void he felt back at the void island before he jumped. And indeed, his life would be the ultimate sacrifice in all of this, and he wondered for a moment just how much Power such a sacrifice would grant him.

Not enough, he concluded. There was not an amount of power he could ever gain, control and use that would be worth losing his life over. As long as he was alive, the universe was his oyster. Perhaps more than just this universe. Death meant the end. No amount of finite power could be worth ending things forever.

That being said, this ritual was not on such a scale. It was using things from a finite supply, but nothing Albert was too attached to. The ritual, after all, was just a catalyst so that the Power could siphon the energy in the air – heat, kinetic, and radiation – to fuel a search spell.

After a quick check at the diagram with Jeff’s aid, and after checking that Lina’s personal shield was still holding up within safety parameters, it appeared that they were ready. The AI had not been the most useful in coming up with the ritual, since it seemed to struggle with Albert’s own way of using the Power, but once he explained what he wanted to do to his machine assistant things went along smoothly.

A snap of Albert’s fingers and the items began to glow. He felt the girls join him, attracted by the sudden development, and the trio settled to watch the show unfold. Lina and he from here, Scrappy from the world of the shadows. For a moment, Albert wondered what she saw from there. How did magic look under the guise of shadows?

Under his careful direction, the lights joined together at the center of the ellipse and shot up in a ray of energy. It pierced the sky, and then disappeared. Along with all the light, heat, radiation and leftover power of the nuclear explosion.

Lina gasped at the sudden shift into darkness. Scrappy materialized from her strange realm with a sigh of relief at being back into the material realm. Albert watched the darkness, waiting.

It took a few moments, moments that were filled with doubt as this was an experimental kind of magic he had never tried before, but finally a small light appeared into being. Tiny particles came out of that light, floating in the air and appearing out of nothing like little fireflies that flew towards where the center of the ritual used to be, splitting the night with their electric yellow light.

Stolen novel; please report.

They coalesced together into a bigger light, and slowly more and more of them joined the bunch and the light changed, its shape becoming that of a thick rod, then of a stick, and finally an arrow pointing in the distance.

Albert smiled. “Gotcha.”

They started walking, following the floating arrow that led the way by always remaining a few paces ahead of them, always pointing towards something. It didn’t take long until the arrow started spinning in place as they moved, with Albert making small markings in the molten ground.

All the markings converged into a single point.

“There’s nothing there.” Lina said, disappointed.

“That there isn’t.” Scrappy added. When Albert looked at her quizzically, she simply stuck out her tongue.

The man simply sighed. “There is.” He said. “But we gotta dig.”

Three shovels and three pickaxes appeared in everyone’s hands, plucked from Albert’s inventory. The third and smallest set, Scrappy’s, got resized in the process by Albert’s Power. It was funny seeing the small girl wielding an equally small pickaxe around and feeling its weight, and it brought a smile to his face.

“Aww, come on!” Lina pouted. “Didn’t you say that overwhelming power is convenient? Why do we have to dig?”

“Physical labor is good?” Albert said tentatively, wiping some sweat from his brow and beginning to pound the stone. A look was all it took for him to wilt under the gaze. “Okay, fine, it’s because I’m a bit tired from casting. Not because I want to see you dig around. I swear!”

Scrappy joined him soon after, looking at Lina. “Come on, don’t be lazy Lady Lina!”

Lina shook her head and joined them. A few minutes later, the trio of sweaty and dirty diggers finally unearthed something that glowed with bright purple light in the night, the color blending and mixing with the only other light illuminating the area coming from the yellow arrow still hovering overhead.

Albert squinted. He didn’t have issues seeing, of course, but—

“Is it just me or it doesn’t look like a Core at all?” Lina said, voicing his concerns.

“That it doesn’t.” Scrappy said helpfully.

Albert frowned. “It looks like it’s just a fragment of a whole.” He turned it around in his hands. “Look, this part here is all smooth like it was the outer part of a sphere, while on this side it’s almost sharp!”

Indeed, it felt exactly like a shard of what once was a quite large, hefty, polished ball of crystal.

“If this is only a shard,” Lina said. “Where are the other pieces?”

As if on cue, the light winked out from above them, plunging them in purple twilight. Being the only light source left, the core produced long shadows from within Albert’s hand.

“Uh… Albert?”

Before anyone could adapt to the sudden darkness, however, the fireflies returned and reassembled themselves. This time instead of one single body of light, they distributed themselves evenly into four different ones, until the trio was staring at four smaller arrows hovering in the air, pointing in different directions.

Three of them pointed West, their directions almost identical. Only Albert could tell for sure that their bearings differed by a tiny amount. The fourth arrow pointed somewhere deeper North than they already were.

“Well,” Albert said with exaggerated cheer, “looks like we got our answer.”

“What do we do?” Lina asked.

“We hunt them, of course. We need them.” Albert began. “But we will need to be quick. Time is ticking and we still lack a way to cross the ocean to reach Sitea.”

“Won’t your magic help?” Scrappy asked.

Current growth models are inconclusive. It would help if you stopped being so unpredictable with your Power, Albert. Jeff spoke into Albert’s mind.

Albert shrugged. “It takes a lot of power to cross an ocean, even more so if we need to be quick.”

“We won’t make it, then?” She looked down, and Albert imagined some phantom cat ears on her head dropping down as well. “What happens if we don’t make it? I don’t want us to die.”

“Yep, I’m not into visiting the afterlife anytime soon if I have anything to say about it.” Lina nodded.

“You technically don’t.” Albert began, but then he saw the looks on their faces. “…have… any say… about it…” His voice died out, and he coughed into his hand. “Listen! It all depends on how fast I can grow, and it goes for you too, by the way. What we find at the next core location might also help us, you know? Besides, there are many ways to cross an ocean and I should remind you that I do have a crazy plan to skip crossing it entirely, provided even it works at all.”

“Fine,” Lina said, stifling a yawn. Too late, though, because Scrappy too began yawning. “It’s late. Can we make camp?”

“Mm,” Albert nodded, “I’m pre-tty out of juice so we’ll have to make do with tents and old-school camping gear.”

Lina groaned.

“That’s unfair! You got us used to the hedge camp and now you take it away?”

“She’s right, that she is.” Scrappy said.

Albert scoffed. “Since when have you become a spoiled brat? Lina I understand, but you?”

Lina cried out in mock outrage. “What do you mean ‘Lina I understand’, Albert?”

Sensing a minefield and not wanting to blow up his legs, Albert decided to sidestep the topic entirely. “Besides, I never said we will be sleeping in the cold! Here, let me show you the wonders of modern tents, sleeping bags and a pinch of reality bending.”