Kyle and Jones parted ways at the museum after securing the artifact in one of the reconstruction labs for working on in the morning. Jones went to the onsite rooms for the Magicorps security guards after saying goodnight. Because the military security weren’t actually museum employees, they didn’t generally live in employee housing unless they chose to. Jones hadn’t chosen to.

Instead, he’d taken advantage of the onsite dormitory housing for the Magicorps soldiers inside the upper floors of the museum itself. He still got to collect his housing allowance, which was high because, New York. But he didn’t have to actually pay rent or deal with commuting in New York, which was awesome. And he had access to all kinds of amenities.

“The girl did face down a big scary fucking monster on her own.” Kyle muttered under his breath as he let himself into the building. He probably should have checked on the prisms that were making themselves comfy in the mail drop box, but since no one was going to be delivering mail anytime soon, or checking it anytime soon, he decided to leave that problem for another day.

Trudging up the stairs, the warlock noted that the emergency lights still glowed a rich blue. That was fine. Most people didn’t realize that magic levels on the East Coast were naturally up in the high Green low Blue range without the magic collectors that protected urban areas and kept magic levels down in the more familiar Yellow zone. Just as he was about to open his door a sound made Kyle pause. There was some clicking, some buzzing, tinkling, chiming, and Anna’s muffled voice coming from the other side of the door.

Anna… was… not asleep, apparently. Curiosity bubbling inside him, Kyle finished unlocking his door and casually entered. One look at what was happening, and he walked back out and shut the door behind him. I did not just see what I thought I saw. I did not just see what I thought I saw. I did not just see what I thought I saw. After repeating it a few times, Kyle almost believed it and was therefore far more disappointed when he walked into his apartment for the second time to see the exact same thing.

Shoulders slumping as he accepted defeat, Kyle closed and locked the door behind him then just stood and watched for a few minutes. Those prisms he’d been leaving to deal with as some other day’s problem. They were a right now problem. And possibly a long-term problem because his sister was definitely invested in all of them. Already Kyle was trying to articulate the argument in his mind for explaining to his mother why Anna should be allowed to keep an entire herd of prisms.

Picture this scene.

Anna in her pink flannel cloud hopper rabbit pajamas with the zigzag lightning bolts, buttons properly buttoned this time, was on the couch. No big deal. Right? Wrong. Because she was surrounded, completely surrounded by prisms. The herd had to have doubled in size since he’d left that morning and Kyle narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Not doubled as in the individual prisms were bigger. No, they were all conveniently cute pocket-riding-sized. But there were definitely more of them than he originally thought there were.

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He wasn’t certain, but he didn’t think those things reproduced that quickly. There were some smaller baby looking ones though. The babies were sitting on Anna’s lap next to Kyle’s personal laptop as Anna directed the prisms, the majority of which had joined together to make a scaffolding that was wielding an antenna made from a wire clothes hanger. The makeshift antenna was connected to the laptop’s router port. Or whatever that port was called there the hardline to the internet would connect when Wi-Fi wasn’t an option. Static played through the laptops speakers which was occasionally broken up with bits of what almost sounded like speech.

“Okay, a little bit more to the left. Left. Other left. And up, up, up. Stop. Back down. Just a smidge. Hold. Hold.” The prisms were remarkably well coordinated. Even if Kyle wasn’t Anna’s older brother, he’d have been impressed with her magical creature wrangling. Seriously. They were an unstable tower of softly glowing, humming, chiming crystal creatures.

At her direction, the tower moved. Prisms lifting and leaning or lowering and straightening as she needed. As Anna shrieked ‘hold’, the sounds from the laptop grew more distinct. How was she doing that. There shouldn’t be any internet. Unless…

Kyle wracked his memory. Was the employee housing on some kind of magical internet? The museum would have working internet communications instead of just scrolls if that was the case. Well, maybe they did have working communications with the outside world that Kyle didn’t know about?

No. That’s not right. Didn’t Director Arcas say something about limited contact. He shook the whirling thoughts out of his head as a familiar theme song fuzzed its way out of the speakers.

“Yes!” Anna gave a little sitting hop in place, raising her hands together in triumph. Which was adorable, of course, while also jostling the laptop and the little prisms sitting on her lap gazing expectantly at the screen. The static surged for a second and Anna cried out with disappointment “Oh, no!” before the music came back steadier than before. “Woot! We did it guys. Let me see if I can get it to record.”

What the heck was going on?

Then, a tinkling crash alerted Kyle to the tower of prisms near the window toppling over. A sound like windchimes falling in slow motion was what came to Kyle’s mind. Then there was a heap of crystals with a cord running into it and a makeshift antenna sticking out the top.

“Shit. Are you guys okay?” Quickly she scooched the baby prisms onto the keyboard of the laptop and placed it aside as she rushed over to the prisms. Dejected meeps of possibly pain called out, but Kyle suspected that those little stinkers might be milking it for attention. “Did anyone chip? Are you hurt? Here, I’ve got some tasty ice magic for you.”

Her fingers were dripping cold vapors as the mewling chiming prisms untangled themselves and scurried over to her with little clicking steps.