It was weird, to have gone to a new plane and come away without any trouble… but that was why we picked Elysium in the first place. We wouldn’t be going back for a while, to avoid causing too much of a disturbance on either side.
Shortly after that, Midnight and I returned home to Earth, where we were back to the most normal that things got. Though we couldn’t relax long, because we had things to do. Like checking out the hopefully not cursed tome sent over by Zenfer Cloudfound.
There had been no signs of activity while we were gone, and scans had still produced no worrying results. That was heartening, but it still required some caution.
“If you could wait outside the room, Midnight,” I said. “You’ll be able to react if something weird happens to me.”
He didn’t do anything silly like try to tell me he should be in there too. “We should ward ourselves first.”
I nodded. “Good idea.” Reviewing what we had, aside from the constant options, there were three spells that stood out as helpful. “If we use both Physical and Mental Freedom, Stoneskin, and five types of Energy Ward to cover the normal types… that should probably cover it. Though it’s 47 mana, so we’ll have to split the cost.” If I was completely full, I could just barely eke out everything, but there was rarely a moment that was true.
I cast the Freedom spells and Stoneskin, leaving 20 mana worth of Energy Wards for Midnight. It would be nice to have all of them going all the time, but 20 mana per hour was simply impossible to keep up, even with nothing else. So they were only used when we actually had an idea of what we were going up against.
“That’s everything, I guess,” Midnight said as he finished.
I nodded. The final step was to use Arcane Sight, just in case any of the enchantments on the tome had shifted. Both of us were nervous. We’d never really interacted with strong mages, and didn’t have a good basis for how dangerous this could be. All I knew was that some of the things I had access to were stronger than I thought reasonable, so I had to at least consider protecting against those.
All signs so far indicated nothing wrong, but there was no way to tell if Zenfer was part of the shadowy cabal trying to force everyone else to be bad. Because that was effectively what they were doing. Which really made me want to do everything else they didn’t want… if we could actually learn about them and whatever else they wanted.
Deciding that if I kept delaying I would never get anything done, I entered the room, carefully opened the tome, and began to read. Nothing seemed to happen, but somehow that didn’t help relax me immediately. My mind couldn’t help but think about what would happen after an hour, when most of the more potent defenses would be gone.
My worries faded away naturally as I got invested in the text. I didn’t have access to many books on magic anymore, and even though I knew I couldn’t get experience from reading them, they still contained valuable knowledge. Not spells themselves- the system covered that- but things about how magic worked in general.
I didn’t read everything in order, instead looking for a section I’d skimmed before. About growing mana pools, mana crystals, and the dangers involved. I’d obviously learned some of the pitfalls already. Consuming too many crystals in a short time- specifically too large of a total quantity of mana from crystals- made something build up in my system, making me sick for a time period afterwards.
I wanted to see if it had information about using them to overcharge my maximum mana. It was uncomfortable, certainly, but I hadn’t noticed any long term effects. But if there was something that happened years down the line I wouldn’t have, yet. I didn’t think I would regret some side effects, though. I had increased my mana pool by more than ten points, somewhere around a quarter. That wasn’t insignificant in its value.
It said many things. Something about extreme pain and unsuited individuals receiving temporary mana loss, escalating to more permanent if they kept trying. But that wasn’t a problem, because it ultimately said that those suited would find it effective. It even had numbers similar to the values I’d measured. It was still listed as not recommended, however.
“Other techniques of similar efficacy with less unpleasant effects have been developed. The increase in time investment tends to be worthwhile.” That was interesting. “However, so far no techniques have been shown to work concurrently with another, with the more practiced eclipsing the others.” Oh, so everything else was worthless, then. I’d already found something that worked.
Well, maybe Midnight could benefit from one. It would be good for him to have a larger mana pool, as that was one thing limiting him from being equivalent to me in power. The other was his mana fatigue point, but he could already cast most reasonable things without hitting that threshold.
“Let’s see here,” I muttered to myself. “Mana fatigue…” Oh, there was a proper index. Good. I turned to that section, and found it disappointingly short. Aside from a table- unnecessary, as it was literally always half of the base maximum mana- there were a couple paragraphs. At least they confirmed no adverse effects should one accidentally hit the limit and pass out- aside from potential falls.
There were some notes that the response should actually be a self defense mechanism to keep people from using actually dangerous amounts of mana. There was a short aside about young mages who pushed themselves past the limits somehow- but they weren’t available to comment on the methods as they usually went catatonic.
Well, that was fine. I didn’t need to do that now. Unless I somehow discovered more things that cost more than 20 points of mana. So far, only Multicasting seemed to have that potential. Though maybe there would be spells higher than level 20 somehow? I couldn’t imagine what they would be necessary for, as they were all far too strong to begin with.
Before I got too deep into things, I stepped outside to tell Midnight he didn’t need to hang around. “I’m not seeing any dangers, so you can probably find something better to do with your time than waiting for me. Even if it’s just going home to wait somewhere more comfortable.”
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Midnight nodded. “Good, this particular facility is… not comfortable,” he said looking down the bare halls.
It was true. Even the chair in the room was a hard plastic one. Even the little bits that would normally be metal studs were plastic, to avoid interfering with the scanners.
Hours went by, and my perusal came across a section about ‘Free Mana Casting’. If what the tome said was true… it was possible to mix free mana from the surroundings with a mage’s own mana, effectively saving half the cost. The downside being draining the local area- obviously- and it taking significantly longer. Like, minutes per spell instead of seconds. And then of course there was the note about it requiring extraplanar mana attunement.
Was that what they were calling it? That was odd, as there wasn’t anything different about extraplanar mana. Mana was mana. … Right?
I sighed. Clearly, I was going to have to look into that more. I was used to the mana of Earth, and to me it felt like all of the mana around Mossley, but I hadn’t really looked for differences, had I?
At least Free Mana Casting was something that I could test before having Midnight try any of the other mana building techniques. Just because this had some accurate information in it didn’t mean there weren’t traps somewhere. Though perhaps even this Free Mana Casting could be the trap. But I decided that there was too much value here to not trust something. There were plenty of reasons for Zenfer to send me a functional spell tome even if he was part of a shadow cabal- which we had no particular reason to believe except for his position among the mages in the capital.
-----
I didn’t finish reading the book in a single session, so I left it in containment. Just in case. Calculator had offered me scans of the pages, and I would certainly be glad to have those later, but there was something about a physical tome. And I didn’t just mean the feeling of the leather or the smell. No, it might have magic woven into it that was useful, as well as the possible detriments. I hadn’t found any hidden text yet, but I was wondering if I might fake a different mana signature.
I couldn’t tell if that was working unless I actually had something I knew reacted- which was the tome from Uvithar with notes. And even then, the best I could do was confirm that I could conceal my mana from it, not replicate someone else’s. So that idea would stay on the back burner for a while.
There were too many other things for me to do this week. Like testing out Free Mana Casting, and whatever else before Jet came to visit. We’d finally got that arranged, and Midnight’s mother was going to come visit.
Midnight, of course, was nervous about it. I wasn’t, because Midnight had a high opinion of her and my few interactions had upheld his assessment. She wasn’t going to be disappointed about Midnight having magic and helping protect the city from supervillains. Plus we rescued a bunch of Celmothians that one time, and we had a rival Bunvorixian.
-----
“Stop being nervous,” I said.
“It doesn’t work like that!” Midnight complained.
“Then, think about tuna,” I suggested.
“Okay,” he said. There was a moment of peace. Then panic. “What if she wants good tuna? We need to go catch some fresh bluefin tuna. Or-”
“We have restaurants, you know,” I said. “You can get pretty much anything in New Bay. And we can pay for expensive chefs and stuff.” Speaking of paying for things, I should consider purchasing more dispelling bullets from Vilhelmiina. I’d kind of used or bartered the entire clip of ten she gave me. And I didn’t regret any of it, but that was exactly why I wanted more. The only issue was, while my salary as part of the Power Brigade was high, it wasn’t so high I could easily afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a few bullets.
At least diamonds were cheap.
“Keep thinking about that,” Midnight said. “It’s helping.”
“Diamonds?” I asked.
“Whatever it was. Anything.”
I wondered if Midnight’s mom could fight. And if she had powers, and how the Celmothians with portal powers were doing. Celmoth had a strange connection with Earth- though very rare, it seemed that many of their mysterious technological disappearances ended up on Earth. And not just New Bay, but other hotspots like the ones in Yew-Kay.
Then our alarm beeped. “Well, it’s time,” I said. “She should be waiting.” We’d put in some effort to properly sync up our times. Even with some error, the plan was to have Jet waiting early. And in the worst case scenario where we ended up early, we still had enough mana to try again ten minutes later. Midnight was the anchor here, obviously, as he was the only one who’d actually been to Celmoth.
I projected as much confidence as I could towards Midnight. I didn’t even have to fake it. We’d already opened this Gate before. And I also knew he was going to be the focus of any social interactions, so I didn’t have to be nervous about that.
The Gate slowly opened- we kept it modestly sized, which was still a few feet wide. Far more than any Celmothian would need, but hopefully more stable and enduring. Not that we needed much time. On the other side of the Gate was Jet… presumably. Midnight seemed relieved to see the Celmothian at least. I’d only seen her once or twice, and I hadn’t gotten much practice with the subtle variations of Celmothian physiology.
Also there was the part where she had a silver coating over most of her body, which made her look quite different from before. But Midnight seemed to think that was normal. I imagined it was made with similar intentions as his Power Brigade outfit- something that could go over fur without being restricting.
Jet strode through the Gate confidently, then turned around. “Huh. It’s actually that easy, is it?” Then she turned back towards Midnight, walking up to him and touching her nose to his, then rubbing her head next to him. “It’s difficult to believe it’s you.”
“Y-yeah,” Midnight replied nervously.
“And you,” Jet looked up towards me. “I heard you were tall, but I hadn’t imagined quite that tall.”
“Yeah, well, I got taller,” I shrugged as I knelt down and offered my hand. There wasn’t really an established formality that Midnight knew about for Celmothians meeting humanoids.
Jet seemed willing enough to go with the flow, touching my hand with her nose. “And you speak Celmothian fluidly, without a translation device. I had heard it, but it is still curious.”
“Well, it’s magic,” I shrugged. “Otherwise my vocal chords aren’t great at this.”
“Magic, is it?” She tilted her head. “I don’t think I will get used to that easily.”
“It’s surprisingly quick,” Midnight commented. “If you’re around him long enough.”
“You’re basically as magical as me,” I pointed out.
And that was how our first real meeting went. Now we just had to figure out how to fill the rest of the time she was here. We had some ideas, but neither of us really knew what made sense.