CHAPTER 5: WHERE'S MY DOG?

Hiro was having the time of her life. She was in one of the sun-soaked patches of light in this underground cavern taking shots at various orbs. They were indestructible so she used them as target practice. She traveled with the light, trying to get used to the feeling of teleportation. When she would reform she'd conjure her bow, taking a few shots. Her eyes zoomed in on the blue orbs helping her shoot them accurately. Next, she slowed down time to get several shots off at once. Hitting a stalactite with two or three shots at once to cause it to break off and crash to the ground. Depleted, she'd conjure some light knives and soak in the sun practicing how to throw the knives until it was time to do another jump.

After a half hour or so she sprawled in the soft moss arms wide face to the sun. She had walked with her thoughts to where she had woken up and used it as a platform for her antics.

"Miss?" Button asked her as she had finally settled laying in the soft moss in her conjured sweat pants and hoodie.

"Yeah?" she replied lazily, eyes closed. She felt a bit more at peace now she was getting a handle on her powers. It took five minutes, well, four minutes fifty-six seconds actually, to charge enough for a short jump and still have some juice left for combat. Her stomach still didn't appreciate the jumps, but it was barely noticeable now. How she got here was still a mystery, but she did like having magical powers. She also felt more prepared to talk with who put her here with powers packing her up.

"Was I sensing you shoot multiple arrows at once while you were practicing? Is that an ability you picked up somewhere? When you do it, my memory has a weird bubble in response that I cannot tell what's happening for a moment. I have run my troubleshooting systems several times and am unable to come up with a solution." Button's normally cheery voice had a hint of confusion in it for the first time.

Hiro's eyes went wide, sunlight not bothering her. She didn't need to squint anymore. She took a deep breath, if he could read her heartbeat he could probably pick up when she was lying. So don't lie, she told herself. "Yes, I have an ability that allows me to shoot multiple arrows in quick succession. so far I can only get three off in a go, but it's a lot of fun. Is the memory bubble something I need to worry about?"

"No miss, I will log it as a response to an ability and it will not send up any error codes anymore." Button told her.

"Ok good, you had me worried for a second Button," well, worried about keeping her secret anyway.

She closed her eyes again soaking up more light to add to her internal batteries. She decided she liked being solar-powered when her eyes flew open again. "Button!"

"What is it? What's wrong Miss?"

"My dog! where's my dog? Who's taking care of her? How long have I been here? She probably really needs to pee! I don't have any magical powers that would help get pee spots out of carpets do I?"

"One moment" Button paused for a longer time than normal. Hiro became aware that she could feel a faint pulse coming from behind her ear. She reached up to touch the blue gemstone behind her ear containing Button. Indeed she could feel it pulse as it did something. It was new. She hadn't noticed it before.

"I have received a message from headquarters that they will send someone to pick up your dog and it will be taken care of until you arrive for training." Button told her.

The tension in her body lessened, but she was still concerned. "Thanks." She wasn't sure how she felt about the mysterious headquarters having her dog, but at least she could get her back soon.

"What's your dog's name?" Button asked her.

"Katniss. I tend to just call her Niss though. I got her when I was still doing archery in college and wanted to name her after an archer."

"Is that a famous warrior?" Button asked.

"Yes. Fictional though. I suppose your size limits you from downloading all the books in the world." she mused.

"Something like that yes Miss." Button replied. "You should get on with absorbing more magical essence Miss Skylark. It has been some time since you went looking for another orb."

"Yeah yeah," her internal clock said it had been nearly forty-eight minutes since she got her last power. It was somewhat annoying to keep having times pop into her head. She wondered if that meant her chronic lateness would be fixed. Probably not, Hiro just couldn't blame it on time blindness anymore. She sat up and stretched having enjoyed her time recharging after the impromptu practice session.

She got to her feet having ended her practice on the wide circular platform she arrived at this strange world. She looked around for the pedestals she noted earlier. She was looking for wing, air, or flight or something along those lines and Button had pointed them out earlier as she had walked toward the time essence. Her jump and prompt slide down the stalactite told her she needed the ability not to hurt herself if she was up in the air. Plus she could imagine herself flying, raining down arrows. She would be cooler than Hawkeye! He had always needed a lift.

She saw the path she had taken past the fire essence and walked it once more until she came to a few familiar pedestals. "Button, what are these?" She asked to confirm it.

"The one to the left is air, the one on the right is wing, and the one in front of you is holy. There should also be one nearby that is flight. That one is a common choice." Button explained.

"Holy?" she asked confused, that one was pushing her away something fierce. The other two had a moderate pull but she couldn't feel the flight one at all.

"Yes, unholy is on the other end of the cavern. Many people who serve various deities will pick up one or the other, though some pick them up unaffiliated with any deities." Button told her.

"Gods are real?" she asked him.

"Yes, though my programming is blocking me from elaborating now. There is an introductory course at training if you wish to learn more." Button told her back to being as chipper as ever.

"Well if magic is real, I suppose gods can't be far behind." She shook her head. She still wasn't going to pick holy. She's never been religious though was brought up in faith. She just never seemed to click with the people and their beliefs so as an adult she didn't follow them. She believed that helping others and being a good person was its own reward. She didn't need some dude in the sky to tell her to do that. "Wait a minute," she said mind kicking up. "Sky. Is there a sky essence?" She asked.

"Yes, it's in the area based on cosmic concepts. It's not far from where you found the light essence. There is a Sky, moon, star, space, and several others like comets and vast in the region."

"Great cosmic powers? It doesn't come with a little bitty living space does it?"

"Your room at the training center at headquarters is a single room with a bathroom attached Miss Skylark." Button said.

"Not really what I meant, but that's ok. As long as I don't turn blue, we'll be fine," she said shaking her head.

"I believe you said you could change the color of your summoned armor if you wanted Miss Skylark."

"It's ok Button, I was referencing a movie. I don't need to change the color of anything. I'll head back to the pedestal I got the light essence from and you can point me to the sky essence from there ok?"

"I'm at your service Miss."

With that, she practiced her jumps back over to the empty light pedestal. She found the shorter they were the less they impacted her and the faster it was to recharge in between each one. Leapfrogging back she found if she paused for a few minutes between each jump she had more energy than when she started. She didn't know how she knew this, but her instincts told her it was true. "So shorter jumps use less power. That makes sense," she murmured. She could string two or three together by now but the trade-off was taking a longer pause. She compared that to one long jump and found it was harder on her internal reserves. "I wonder if it has to do with how much darkness is in the way." She asked herself.

Hiro tried jumping from one end of an area of light to the other and found it didn't take much energy at all. "Darkness definitely has an impact." her eyes were wide as just thirty seconds later she found she was already past the internal point she was at before the jump.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Hiro took the last three jumps to get back to the empty pedestal and took a few breaths. She was getting a little tired from all this magic she was doing. "Alright Button, where to from here?"

Button guided her using several pedestals as guide stones. He had to detour her around some of the broken rocky mess she had made with her exuberance. She felt kind of bad about it, but also, being transported without her permission and having a talking jewel embedded in her head didn't incline her to care that much about keeping the magical cavern in pristine condition.

She knew she was in the right place as she got close to it. There was faint humming coming from the grouping and the orbs she was near were beautiful. One looked like a field of stars in the void of space. One felt like she could look into it forever and never see the other side. Button identified that one as Vast. The one that was the essence of moons looked like a glowing cratered rock, but not the grey of the moon she was used to, but rather a rusty red. She felt no revulsion with any of these cosmic concepts, but not all of them drew at her either.

Finally, she got to the sky essence. It was a beautiful sky blue on the top and a dark blue with small speckles on the bottom. A few cloudy whisps floated around peacefully. She felt the light inside her reach out to it and it pulled her as well. "Wow, I think it likes the light inside me." She said. The others didn't resonate with her like this one did.

"Hey Listen!" Button chimed in making her snort, "Some concepts go better with other essences. When that happens users often say they feel not only the pull like normal but a calling of the two to be joined. It can be quite rare because it depends on the user to have affinities with both and for the concepts themselves to resonate with one another."

"Awesome," She reached out and plucked the orb without a second thought. The orb shone brighter than the others had, the sky shining a light blue of a sunny day. then something unexpected happened. The light inside her shone and she glowed too. It traveled up her arm like when she summoned her weapons and into the orb of the sky. It transformed.

The top half becomes the bright reds, oranges, and yellows of a sunrise and the bottom mirrored it but with more purples and deep blues of sunset. The orb heated up in her hand and a cloud bank formed. First fluffy then quickly growing grey and heavy. Soon a full rainstorm cycled through like a fast-forwarded nature documentary. Finally, it ended back with the pure colors of the sunrise and sunset. As the energy swirled inside the orb a great sun burst forth from the center before the orb sunk into her hand.

She was speechless and the beauty of it, but the orb wasn't done yet. It had to show off her powers. The air around her swirled and clouds the color of a sunrise formed around her. As they gathered they darkened and rose before they hit critical mass and started raining. A single lightning bolt jumped from the ground into the cloud as she felt the atmosphere around her change. Rain clouds parted and a beam of light shot through the grey clouds directly onto her. Hiro felt all the light she had fed into the sky orb returned plus some.

As the power rose within her she rose as well. She could feel the atmosphere around her and knew she could be wherever she wanted to be within the sphere of her influence. Her area wasn't large, but she felt like she could make it grow with time. Finally, she sank back down as the power finished absorbing and the clouds returned to puffy white clouds that filled the sky after a rainstorm. The clouds settled around her shoulders into a cloak. As they touched her summoned hoodie, light spilled from it making the cloak the color of a sunrise. She didn't even feel its weight as it settled. But the misty form seemed to cool her shoulders.

Instinctively she knew the sky essence loved letting in light and filtering it for all. It would take light from inside her filter through and would take and make what she wanted from it. Hiro knew she could conjure not just her weapons and armor now, but things made out of clouds. She also knew she could fly within her sphere. She reached out with her new sense of the sky around her. She felt like she could comfortably get five meters away from herself with her new sense of the atmosphere and maybe six if she was pushing it. Within the sphere, Hiro could control the weather, though she somehow knew she couldn't make lightning strikes on command. At least not yet. The earth had to have charged up and she could make the right conditions for lightning but she couldn't command it or cause it to strike where she wanted. It was its own beast.

A huge grin had formed on her face as the cloak had formed and stuck around. This was incredible! She looked around for the closest hole in the cavern roof and jumped below it. She was buzzing from the absorption. She took some deep breaths looking up at the sky. Strange colorful birds in reds, greens, and blues were darting in and out of the gaps still. They seem to be nesting in holes in the ceiling and pillars of stone. When she was practicing earlier she tried to avoid where she saw them. Now it was her chance to fly with them. She wanted to see where she was and she was going through the whole in the roof to do it.

She stuck up her right arm and held the other on her hip like a superhero and used her new ability to be where she wanted to be in her atmosphere. "To infinity and beyond!" She shouted as she pushed with her powers for lift off. She had a moment like an astronaut where she felt wonderous her feet left the ground as she rose. She wished she had background music! Then her heart sank, she pushed, but she couldn't move much faster than a walk as she rose. It was flying, but slow flying. Hiro was suddenly glad there was no background music, it would have gone Whomp whomp.

"Miss, there is no beyond to infinity. Infinity is forever. Besides, you will need to attend training first." Button told her as cheery as ever.

"Yeah, I shouldn't have used that quote. I think I cursed my flying power." She wobbled as she stopped concentrating on it for a second before going back to dedicating herself to continue rising. As she did she tried to pay attention to the atmosphere she could influence. On the ground it had felt like a perfect sphere, deadening, but not stopping where the floor was. As she flew upwards, it turned into an oblong shape. Pushing into the new space above her and slowly retreating from behind her.

"You have not picked up the power of curse or encountered anyone with it, so you should not be cursed." Button said helpfully.

"Yeah, ok, shh for a moment. I need to concentrate." She told him. Noting there were curses out there for later.

She looked down at the cavern below her. She was quite a ways up as she neared one of the splits in the ceiling. she was trying to calculate the distance when she bonked into an invisible barrier. She hadn't tried to stop rising so soon she found her back rolling up the barrier until her whole body lay flat against it and still pressed upward. She scrambled internally to figure out how to just hover as she felt pressure like she was on one of the spinning rides at the fair. A few heartbeats later the pressure released as she figured out how to hold herself stationary in the air.

She carefully rolled over. It was an odd sensation as she felt gravity below her. Hiro lowered herself, no longer pressed up against the barrier she reached out to touch it. She explored it with her senses. It felt somewhat like the power flowing through her but different. She couldn't figure it out, so she asked Button. "What's this barrier here?"

"That is a barrier added to prevent people from leaving the cavern before they are done choosing their essences. In the past, some new sparks would gain flying power, fly out of the cavern, and hurt themselves before they could properly learn how to use their powers. Some even went missing. To prevent that from happening, they have installed magical barriers to keep new Sparks from hurting themselves or going missing."

Yeah, that didn't sound ominous. She thought to herself. A group controlling who got magic was suspicious enough but stopped people with magic from leaving. That was another red flag to add to her list of many. She would reserve final judgment until she got there, but this mysterious headquarters that had her dog and currently controlled her fate was not showing itself in the best light.

She craned her neck to see what she could from the barrier right inside the lip of the opening. One side went higher and she couldn't see much but on the other, she saw lush grassland past the edge of the rocky opening. The birds were darting in and out of the stalks of grass plucking some sort of insect and either eating it or darting back through the barrier to either eat or feed their young.

"Why do the birds get to come in and out?" She asked just a little sullenly. She would love to lay in the grass and soak up the sun some more before continuing. She had four magical essences now, but she still could tell she could take more.

"The birds eat the necrotic flies and the barrier helps keep them out of here. Until your body has reached a full density of magic and has progressed past nonmagical flesh those bugs could give you afflictions you could not survive. The birds keep the swarm small, so they are permitted through the barrier. If the swarm reached critical mass it could come in here to attack the initiates." Button told her matter of factly.

"Maybe not letting us out was more sensible than I thought." She whispered.

"Indeed Miss Skylark."

She floated there for a bit before having an idea. Hiro concentrated on her cloud cloak and formed a cloud bank below her. She lay on its softness while she watched. It was odd to have a cloak made of cloud that didn't care about gravity, but man was it nice to use as a sofa. Once she had formed it into something to lay on she didn't have to focus so hard on hovering. She still had to keep the flow of energy to it, but she didn't have to concentrate to stay aloft. She could watch the birds and the sky. She longed to be high up in the atmosphere and feel the wind around her and soak up the light of the sun.

A thought occurred to her, the faster she got out of here the faster she could fly as high as she wanted. She had just started pondering what would go well with time, light, accuracy, and sky when a bird pooped on her head. She was so shocked the cloud cloak became insubstantial mist again and she dropped through it. She had stopped concentrating on hovering some time ago.

"Fu...." The rest of the word was lost in the air as she fell. Hiro struggled to figure out how to arrest her fall. Parachute! She needed a parachute! She pulsed out energy and her cloud cloak picked up her intent and rose above her. Luckily the magic she panicked into it hardened into a parachute. It jerked her upright and slowed her fall. She slowly floated down swinging softly in the harness her cloak had turned into. She dropped gently into the grass, heart racing. She had landed on her butt and laid back as she breathed heavily.

"Hey listen!" She pulled a face, it was funny earlier, but her heart racing and almost falling to her death wasn't the time for the antics she had set up. "Until you get better at manipulating your spark abilities, you should stay closer to the ground." Button told her as her cloak parachute covered her in soft fluffy fabric. She stopped feeding energy into it and sat in a fog bank until it finished slowly forming up behind her again. It took on a cloaked shape once more. Instead of laying like fabric, however, it formed a fog bank across the grass above her head where she lay.

"Yeah, I got that with my face full of bird poop thanks Button." She said angrily before standing up and looking for the nearest pool of water to wash up in.