“Are all mage fights like that?” Jennings said after a few too many seconds of silence. Well I had a puzzle on hand anyway so she needn’t have bothered. Still it was good to see she didn’t seem to have too many hang-ups about the whole situation; a flexible mind-set would serve her well in the world. I’m especially glad to see that she didn’t go after me for letting suspects go. Now how should I answer that question?
“What did you perceive of that fight,” I said as I knelt down examining the sturdy safe. An amateur would likely have a very different perspective to a veteran. ‘Like that’ was a vague enough descriptor that I had no idea how to answer it. Do all fights cause massive property damage; well yes, if you fight in a house made of paper and plywood. Do all fights end with the fighters on both sides alive; surprisingly a lot do; as long as no uncrossable lines have not been crossed.
“I didn’t see you move,” Jennings said with barely concealed disbelief in her voice, and I felt a brief sense of smugness at the reaction. “I saw you kick him, I saw him summon that big snake and you flew through the wall, but then you were back and there was and then he morphed into that creature__” she was rambling at this point, a somewhat feeble attempt of trying to reassert her sense of normalcy after a shock to her worldview. It was a worldview that, apparently, missed out a large amount of the fight.
“An Orochi,” I pointed out. “They are a rather powerful species of Youkai.”
“That Orochi,” Jennings corrected herself. “Then the floor was gone and that was the last I could see of the fight. Sometimes you were talking and then I could see what was happening but as soon as you moved again I lost track. Are all fights like that?”
“Standard reaction speed of a Magic User is one fifth of a second while standard reaction speed of a Wielder is one eighth,” I stated using the currently politically in vogue Maverice terms; while prodding at the lock. A bit of unsuccessful poking and I summoned up some more White Zurite; creating my special detective eyewear in an attempt to isolate the specific traces of mana. “That’s without the use of any spells; nothing but inert mana slightly strengthening the body over time.”
“That’s quite the improvement,” Jennings said uncertainly.
“No it’s not really,” I rebutted her presumption. “Youkai start with a reaction speed of one twentieth of a second without using mana. On average your beginner Wielder will find that some non-humans are just too fast to keep up with them. Thankfully there are spells to improve your perception speed, you'll find them when you do the research.”
“I haven’t heard of any,” Jennings admitted. "Is this public knowledge or..."
“I think the Tower has a few sections," I said rifling through my brain trying to remember them. "Thought Acceleration and Enhance Reaction are the two most basic and will be there,” I continued before refocusing on my work. “You can find them in any decent library. Past those you have Lightning Reflexes, Void Mind, Hyper Neuron and Cause Repose. All of them also work by different mechanisms by default so it's probably best to just pick one and start learning it. Are you nervous about going to war with the Youkai?”
It was probably a pertinent question considering the situation, and I half-wondered if the newly transformed Wielder had put any thought into it yet. I was scared out of my mind the first time that my father took my brother and I to defend a village against a Nacht swarm. The sight of twelve foot birds with gnashing jaws gulping down serf after serf with the casual ease of a farmer picking carrots stuck with me and for many days afterwards I had nightmares of their humanlike hands reaching down to pluck me from their bed and into their fanged maw. Well it provided motivation to practice my magic, which was probably the point.
"A bit," Jennings admitted. "Can you crack that," she transparently changed the subject with an utter lack of subtlety.
"It's not actually that difficult. I have nearly got it down," I stated dragging the tips of my fingers against the safe creating runes wherever they trailed.
Well the statement wasn’t technically true, but I had dissolved the connecting runes that linked the hardening, detection, self-destruction, storage and miscellaneous systems. While this safe was well-made it lacked imagination and with a few stabs I widened several not-so-well-hidden flaws that would only widen over time if nobody repaired it
And nobody would repair it as I forcibly inserted mana into the systems forcing the circulation of mana through the systems to increase and fast-forwarding the inevitable as the entire formation flickered. This was the textbook sign of a runic cascade; where certain parts of the formation stopped listening correctly to other systems and then passed on bad information until the entire system began to collapse; an almost certainly irreversible. A few movements of my fingers and I precisely isolated the self-destruct sequence from the rapidly developing mess and then I simply watched with interest as the whole thing harmlessly fell to pieces.
“Have you cast a spell yet,” I made conversation as I waited for the runes to cool. It was rhetorical. I was in the same room with her and if she had done anything more than passively attract mana I would certainly have noticed.
“No,” she said after a while before she began to whisper words and I felt the surrounding mana weakly move as it flowed towards the now formed pool and languidly shaped itself into a configuration probably practiced hundreds or thousands of times in hopes that it would one day be more than merely empty ritual.
A painful few seconds later a weak yet refreshingly cool breeze blew causing loose objects around the room to flutter and a whistling noise to sound as the recently stirred air ground against the exotic wood of the apartment. “I did it,” she exclaimed with a voice full of weary triumph. I could empathize, I felt much the same when I awakened my own magic.
“Great job,” I said idly picking the safe apart and pulling out a sheaf of notes. I sighed as I saw the coding. They were probably in Kaminojin as well and undoubtedly more complex than my rudimentary grasp of the language. “Janitor,” I said turning towards the inconspicuous Youkai who had melted into the background as soon as their fight was over and only emerged into the foreground as soon as I addressed him. “Can you read this?” I said holding up the sheaf of notes for him to feast his eyes upon, which he did after a fashion.
“It’s coded,” the weasel Youkai said pointing out the obvious. His mannerisms were flawless to my eyes and if it wasn’t for my prior insights I probably would have accepted that statement.
“But isn’t your type good at deciphering codes?” I asked in my second language and I paused in a slight attempt to create some level of drama. “Or at least that’s what I’ve heard about Kaminotochi’s famous ninjas.” Bingo, a slight twitch of his eyes was enough to give the game away, so subtle that I would not have noticed if I hadn't precisely been looking for it.
“How long have you known,” he asked in flawless Galmanic and I took note of Jennings suddenly more tense movements. Good, although I felt like she was suspicious of the janitor previously; she now had the firm evidence. It would only make sense to be wary.
“I never didn’t know,” I clarified as I leaned back placing my hand in my pocket before pulling out a lollipop. “A little life lesson from the Old World. You should never assume that you can always hide your ranking. The converse of that is that you should never assume that the low ranking person in front of you is actually harmless. It's called the Dragon in Disguise Rule. Keeps everybody a bit more respectful to strangers in the street”
“That doesn’t explain it,” the unmasked ninja said, his voice slightly challenging despite being caught in the act.
“My apologies, I tend to get side-tracked,” I clarified as I unwrapped my favorite sweet. “What I was aiming towards was that from the little I had observed of your fight and movements in general they were too advanced for a janitor, and seeing that the Youkai society is entirely strength based and there is huge social pressure to be the strongest all the time; I knew you must work in some covert manner if you weren't a high ranking staff member. Honestly you might be some non-ninja group that has been recently established but we would be splitting hairs at that point.” I tossed him the sheaf of notes and watched as he snatched the scattered papers out of the air before rearranging them in an inhuman display of reflexes and perception before he started to flick through them.
“Are we going to..?” Jennings said forgoing even to whisper as she gestured towards the former janitor now ninja. Actually the two things were not mutually exclusive. I’ve heard stories of the assassins working mundane jobs for years before one day taking out their target. Assassins from other countries of course; if Maverice had any assassins, which was a distinct possibility, they maintained an advanced level of innocuity which I would have no difficulty in believing. Besides it was not my department.
“He’s fine for now,” I said shrugging while covering my mouth with my hand as I bit into the lollipop. “I wonder if this place has any tea.”
“I can smell some in the upper left cupboard,” the ninja said gesturing while not looking up from the dossier. “It’s all foreign Kaminotochi tea though.”
“Yeah,” I said opening up the cupboard and trying to make some sense of the squiggles. I didn’t recognize the brand. “Maybe I’ll just have a glass of tap water.” Ignoring the reading Ninja I went and poured myself a glass of water from the tap; leaving the arduos task of watching him to the junior police officer and newly awakened mage Jennings. Not that it would have made a difference if she was looking at him or not. Ninja were masters of deception and a single unwary blink could conceal a catalogue of actions.
“Any letters in there?” the ninja asked when I returned with my glass of water. The pupils in his eyes were moving so fast as to be a blur while he flicked through the sheets of paper with disconcerting speed. “Most of this is effectively garbage considering the subject of the observations is dead but our suspect mentions receiving a letter from Lord Sukumo which hasn’t been included in this pack.” He stopped and the mad jittering of his eyes slowed down to a halt before focusing on me.
“Nothing left in the safe,” I said shrugging as I matched his eyes and he looked away. “Common code?” I asked seeing his ease at reading the writing.
“Not common but I’ve seen this exact code before,” the unnamed ninja stated. “It’s amateur work. This Neposa was definitely not a professional.”
“I would take the cool work of a professional over the flailing of an amateur every day,” I admitted reflecting for a moment.
“The only people who say that; are those at confident in dealing with professionals,” the unnamed janitor remarked before placing down the papers within arm’s reach in a display indicating that he either didn’t put much stock in the papers or he was willing to show sincerity by allowing myself and through me Maverice to have the records, or he didn’t believe we could crack them. That was possibly a bold thought indeed, but I wasn't going to expend energy into trying to decipher his motivations.
“So if I was a spy; where would I go?” I mused to myself not really drawing any conclusions. Still it was a slightly interesting puzzle and I gave it my attention as I idly examined the now useless runes all over the safe. “I’m fairly burned. Lead suspect in a murder. Employers will almost certainly disavow any connection; if I even met my employer in the first place, that is. Wait, why am I asking myself this? I should be asking you.”
I gestured towards the ninja who was basically in the same professional field if maybe possessing a speck more legitimacy. He didn't seem to want to volunteer any information, or he didn't have it.
“I am going to run a background check on her,” Jennings spoke up. “If she has any family whom she can hunker down with; we will know.”
“Doubtful that she does,” the ninja spoke up firmly. “Spies don’t typically have a lot of family, nor do they bring their family to a foreign nation. I’ve taken a look through the staff files but…” he shrugged his shoulders as if indicating that his search had been unsuccessful.
“And you turned up nothing,” Jennings clarified holding her communicator. She looked contemplating for a moment before she sighed. “I’m going to get a second opinion anyway.” After seeing that none of us had any intention of stopping her she dialled a code before she placed the communicator to her ear and created some distance between the two of us; talking quietly into the communicator in the low hushed tones indicative of somebody who didn’t want to be overheard.
“Now what are you not telling me,” I said casually slurping up the rest of the sugar as soon as Jennings was out of earshot.
“Why do you think I’m not telling you something,” the weasel ninja said, with a restrained joking tone. “And I can see your hand on that truth detector.”
“I wasn’t bothering to hide it,” I stated before matching eyes with him again, trying to convey my stance while decisively not relinquishing my grip over the cube. “If you refuse to answer the question then I will have to take force you to answer.” I didn’t really want to do that. Now that the fight had ended my body started to remind me both how long it had been since I had been in a fight and just why I stopped enjoying them in the first place.
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Still, there was no use of having him with me if I couldn’t trust him. Seriously, I started to circulate my mana and smiled slightly as I felt the chokehold caused by my stagnant mana begin to crack slightly. He was probably a decent bit stronger individually than those two earlier, maybe a good fight would help thaw out my frozen mana pool. The air rippled as near-tangible waves of mana rolled off the two of us and for a moment it looked like the weasel was considering it; before he sighed with the expression of one who was going to the dentist after a month long sweet binge.
“Very well,” he said reluctantly, before shrugging with a cheerful grin that didn't quite meet his eyes. “I'm part of the peace faction anyway.” He gestured with an annoyed expression towards the sheaf of papers. “The wording here indicates that certain elements of the Spider Clan were at least leaning towards the possibility of war and were making plans. While I certainly don’t believe that the death of Sukumo was a part of the plan I have no doubt that this will increase their eagerness.”
“So you’re saying that even if we find the culprit they might not reconsider,” I said after a while feeling slightly demoralized at that thought. If that was truly the case then what was the point of this investigation that I had been forced to undertake. Still I caught my disappointment and revaluated the situation inside my head. “Still if we can prove that this was a set-up it might cause them to hesitate, out of wounded pride if nothing else. So you really are with the peace faction then.”
“That is correct,” the weasel said. “Along with more than a few clans who believe that it is in our best interests to not plunge Kaminotochi into another hell fresh out of the Rampage. Tell me,” he said before he hesitated perhaps realizing just how inappropriate the question was. “Would you have any idea what the attitude of Maverice is towards war at the moment. The Spider Clan at least is likely to demand some heavy concessions.”
“I'm not actually involved in the government you know, but if I had to make a guess I would say they will go for it,” I said after a few moments of thought. I knew a bit more but quite reasonably I wasn’t allowed to go into much detail. Let’s see how much I can say without technically committing treason. “We're actually currently much stronger than we were before the Rampage.” That was about as much as I could say.
I couldn’t specifically mention Aymee to him; but she would be a massive factor behind the decision of Maverice to indulge in battle. The nigh-unstoppable hell spawn was currently an unknown variable that spent most of her time in the Salt Plains and would be a horrendous problem to unleash upon anybody. The higher-ups might just transport her to a Kaminotochi and instruct her to burn everything in that direction and she would do it with a malicious glee. I felt that a war with the Youkai be damaging but against the relatively disunited Youkai clans it wouldn't be one that we would lose.
“Then I have twice the motivation to make sure that it doesn’t come to that,” the weasel said after a while showing a look of cheerful resolve upon his face. Good to see we're on the same page on this. I was already quite motivated as any registered mage was automatically conferred a military rank; and as a superior mage my rank wouldn’t be low and as a result my duties wouldn’t be light. For a few seconds we stood in thoughtful silence before we were interrupted by the return of Jennings who was holding her communicator in an attempt to isolate noise from the ears of those on the other side.
“They’ve got something out of the autopsy,” Jennings whispered. “You’ll never believe this…” then she deliberately released her thumb from the miniscule series of holes in the Between that teleported sound waves between two communicators. “We’re listening, Sir.”
“Alright,” a gruff voice that I recognized as Higgins came over the radio. “We managed to cut open the skull and we discovered that the majority of his brain had been permeated by a strange thorny vine. It looks like it was just summoned and immediately tore through his brain matter. The victim died nearly instantly. The guys at the mortuary say it looks like we can safely conclude it’s not a curse.”
“That sounds like druidism,” Jennings responded immediately, obviously drawing knowledge from her recent classes. I actually wonder what they are teaching nowadays to initiate mages. Maybe I should ask Kat for a copy of the syllabus. “Could it be a druid who did this?” She turned towards me at that moment, as if seeking my advice. It was a cute answer but obviously sounded wrong to anybody who had spent some time around druids.
“Druidism has an extremely hard time acting internally,” I said thinking of the few druids that I knew. There was a naturism camp about two hours out of the border of Maverice and the place was absolutely littered with druids and other wielders of nature. “If this is a druid spell then it’s not one that I’ve ever heard of,” I admitted.
“Could it be deific in nature?” weasel asked suddenly. “It does sound like a type of malicious blessing and I know those have been popular lately.”
“Blessings have the same issue with curses in that they seldom take physical shape and they mostly lose their effect after the death of the target,” I pointed out quashing that thought. “If the vines are there still then it can’t be a curse. Is the vine still alive?” I asked Higgins wondering if it could perhaps still be an issue. I wanted to know if it was still siphoning nutrients from the corpse, which could prove the druidism theory or refute it.
“Yes, it’s still alive,” Higgins said after a moment’s pause. “I saw the thing twitch when they cut him open. Damn near gave me a heart attack. Thankfully the thing hasn’t moved since. There are some wicked looking red thorns on the sprout.”
“Red thorns,” I repeated automatically before I froze as a thought occurred to me. “Wait a minute.” I stirred old recollections in my mind and a nearly forgotten memory returned to me. “What exact color do you think the thorns are? And what color is the vine?” I worked very hard to keep any trace of alarm out of my voice. If I started to leak some emotions here then they might panic and if I'm right that panic could kill them.
“Is that important?” Higgins said tersely, but he seemed to do as I asked as he fell silent. “Now that I look at it the color is a bit deeper, maybe scarlet,” Higgins said, his voice sounding tenser in response. Dammit that wasn’t the result I wanted. “The vine I would call…” he stopped and I could imagine him conversing with the others in the room. “It’s emerald.” Oh, that was bad.
“Ruby and emerald,” I whispered. “I understand.” I took a look around the room. Jennings looked fairly clueless still but the weasel had frozen before his eyes locked onto mine and we shared a wordless glance; each of our thoughts clear to the other in that moment. I made a gesture for Jennings to give me the communicator and after a blank look and a repeating of the gesture she reluctantly complied. Taking the device in my hands I deliberately paused before I composed my thoughts.
“Higgins I want you to listen very closely to me,” I said trying to make my voice as calm as possible.
“Go ahead,” the experienced police officer said, his voice wary but attentive. Good, he and everybody else in that room might not die at that rate.
“I need you to withdraw people from that room, one by one. Be casual,” I advised sternly. “The most important thing is not to panic. If you have some mind stabilization spell then now is the time to use it.” There was a pause and then a few whispered words before…
“I have cast the spell,” Higgins responded, his voice lacking just a hint of everyday emotion that was only discovered in its absence.
“That’s great to hear,” I said calmly. “Go,” I mouthed towards the ninja, gesturing towards the direction of New Bremen Central, and after barely a pause he was out the room, leaping through the window swiftly before with a gust of wind he was escaped my sight radius. “Now the vine should still be sleeping but if there is any massive fluctuation in emotion that little vegetable is going to very quickly wake up.
“What is the danger classification,” Higgins said keeping his voice thankfully low.
“Uh,” I said scratching my head as I tried to remember the Maverice threat rating system. It was a bureaucratic solution to try and tackle the rather ubiquitous problem of gauging a target's abilities before contact. Unfortunately, I hadn't seen actual combat for years and the whole classification thing was just not something that I had ever bothered to pick up. “It should be G… that’s growing, right. G3, G4." I paused . "Wait, you realize I’m not actually there and can’t see the vine, right? Is there a teleporter in this building?” I said directing the question towards Jennings.
“I didn’t see one,” Jennings said. I hadn’t either. I frankly would be surprised if there was. Teleporters were prohibitively expensive.
“Is this Biomancy,” Higgins whispered from the Between and I blinked for a moment. I suppose this would look a lot like Biomancy from a certain perspective and I had been considering it briefly before. Still…
“I don’t think we have an AntiTheist within a thousand leagues of here,” I pointed out. “No it’s almost certainly not Biomancy. You haven’t called in a specialist team, have you?”
“I have,” Higgins responded.
“You might want to send them back then,” I said pinching the bridge of my nose. “I’ve sent a guy over who should be able to help; err slightly. If you have any superior mages in the station you should get them down there. Actually do you still have Jeff with you?” I said thinking about the powerful creature from Unterfol.
“No, he is following up on a lead with one of our two superior mages,” Higgins responded and I silently winced. “The other is upstairs, should I go and get him?”
“Send somebody to go and get him,” I said ruminating before a sudden idea came to me. “Also tell that person to move this communicator somewhere out of the danger zone and leave it on.” That was an unusual request from me but to his credit Higgins didn’t even question as he called somebody over.
“What are you going to do,” Jennings whispered as I turned my communicator over building a 3D model in my head of the various runes that allowed it to tunnel through the Between to another one of its kind. Runes for searching, connecting, spatial slicing and spatial stabilization as well as sound reception and conversion all came together to create the unique device known as the communicator. It was an immensely complex device and fiddling with it would have dire consequences. I believe the yearly death rates for those who mess with communicators almost always hit two digits.
“I’m voiding the warranty,” I said before I tapped against the stabilization runes that limited the portal breaking two of them before I joined the broken parts together in a reasonable approximation of an absorption rune that I proceeded to feed my own mana, supplementing it's now insufficient storage of energy. I linked the absorption rune to the battery rune before making a few to it in an attempt to reach the greatly increased requirements of energy. I had picked at my own communicator a few times since I purchased it yet never gone so far as disassembling it, but I was ready and willing to try.
“Hello,” a different, younger voice came over the communicator, wavering slightly as I tapped the sound conversion runes. “You want to speak to the Lieutenant?”
“If the Lieutenant is a superior mage, then yes I want to speak to the Lieutenant,” I said despite being absorbed in my work. While the whole Great-Superior-Arch divide wasn’t a hard and fast rule there was a stark difference between the classifications.
“Good sir, I will just fetch the lieutenant for you,” the voice said stuttering as I continued to rip into the communicator.
“Hurry,” I said as I continued to alter the function of the device.
“I can’t help but notice I’m probably not going to get that back,” Jennings said.
“Claim it from the Tower,” I responded unable to devote any of my time to the questions. “At the Lieutenant, yet?” I inquired politely, not having heard anything for a while.
“Sorry,” the unnamed policeman said. “Door is closed and it looks like he’s in a meeting. Would you like me to hold or…”
“I don’t care if it’s a meeting with President Krenwell,” I said politely yet firmly. “There is a severe danger inside that building and if it’s not dealt with then everybody in that building could die.”
It was a calculated risk saying that considering the noted effects of panic on most of their species and a moment after I said that I heard a rumble as if to say my calculations were slightly off. A second later the sound of rumbling increased until it sounded like the whole building was shaking itself to pieces and I heard a clatter as the communicator fell to the floor.
“Who dares attack my station?” the voice that accompanied the door slamming seethed with restrained fury and even through the communicator I could feel the power of a superior mage. That was a potent energy and I hoped that he wouldn't actually destroy the communicator or I would have to walk.
“A Mania Bloom,” I said and picked up speed as I broke down and recombined the runes. I didn’t recognize that Superior Mage but I suppose it wasn’t unusual. While Superior Mages were incredibly rare in Maverice I didn’t exactly visit the Tower of Bremen much and all of my interactions with new mages were strictly through Kat. “They grow in the brains of dead corpses eating their residual thoughts until exposed to a high level of emotions upon which they will bloom,” I said keeping my tone clinical. “I’m told that fear; anger and hatred are particular contributors towards their growth. If you don’t hurry you won’t just be dealing with a fresh sapling.”
“That might be difficult right now,” the unknown policeman said with a restrained voice as the sound of crunching stone. “I’m very angry.” The whooshing of air told me that he was accelerating followed by a loud bang in the area that he was probably standing earlier. My imagination visualized a scene if massive thorny green vines as thick as a giant’s wrist tearing reflexively into nearby lifeforms before piercing them through and extracting the distilled emotions contained inside their brain matter. It was a disquieting process and one that I had unfortunately had the misfortune to encounter a few times during the rampage.
“Deal,” I stated directly putting the final touches on the makeshift portal before I started reviewing the artefact. It was incredibly crude with only a fraction of the functions that a normal portal would require to be certified so I would have to treat it with a certain delicacy. “You’re a superior mage.” I didn’t elaborate. If he hadn’t learnt some way of preventing mental fluctuations by now then he didn’t deserve to be.
“Hmm, that’s true,” the superior mage mused. “But I cannot speak for the rank and file. Get everybody out now,” he said to somebody on the other side of the communicator with a voice tinged with authority. "Calmly," he amended his statement a second later. It was probably a lost cause at this point; the fear generated by an unknown attack on a police station would be huge boon for the plant.
“Please put down the communicator,” I said calmly. “I’m coming through.” The sound of battle was familiar to me by that point. A hundred discordant sounds flickering in their various positions before fading and then bursting into a crescendo of what was almost certainly violence.
“Okay, you’re__” the policeman said before his voice stopped. “You’re what?”
“I’m… adjusting the communicator into a portal,” I pointed out as I sealed the messy attempt before putting down the communicator. “They operate on the same principles.”
“Okay,” the man said after a while before the sound of wrenching steel incredibly close to him seemed to prompt a reaction. “If you can do that then I’ll buy you a drink once this is all over.” He seemed doubtful but I heard the slight clatter of a communicator against the floor.
“Can we both go?” Jennings spoke up. I hadn’t paid much attention to her as absorbed in my workings but she was easily standing close enough to hear the conversation. She didn’t sound very hopeful so at least she had some measure of common sense even if her caution was still a bit lacking.
“You’ve had your magic for literal minutes,” I pointed out coolly as I flicked the power rune allowing the circuit to complete and the makeshift device to charge. Despite mere seconds going by it already was flickering; the clear sign of a rush job. “In addition, this portal is built for one, specifically this one. I’ve built it based around my own magic and there is very little margin for error included in my calculations. Your presence will crash the portal and leave us stranded in the Between. You__”
“I’ll search the room for any more evidence,” Jennings said decisively with only the barest hint of regret. “I won’t waste your time. Good luck.”
“Thanks,” I said. You could never really have enough luck in this world. The charge hit maximum at that moment and I picked up my bag before pressing the activation rune causing the normally microscopic portal into the Between to expand into a two foot wide swirling doorway into that unusual mess of space.
I frowned as I saw the door starting to fray and without a pause I channeled mana into my left fingers before grabbing the spatial edges causing the additional mana to stabilize it slightly and pulled the communicator over my head before pulling it downwards.