It was a new sensation for Killian. He had learned about magical resonance from Seren, but encountering it was different than reading about it from a book. Especially so as a sorcerer, he could feel the resonance itself instead of just seeing the signs. To him, it felt like a vibration, one that emanated from the spike. As he had gotten within its range, the vibration went through him, seeming to gain strength as it met his innate magic. After gaining that strength, it flowed back from him to the spike, where it pulsed back, not quite creating a feedback loop but instead reaching a deeper tone than before. Where he stood, he and the spike came together to make more than they could have alone. One plus one equals three.

Killian shook his head and turned to Imari as she began to read from her ledger, not noticing how he reacted.

"It says here that this is something called a spatial anchor, as well as a notebook describing how it functions. There is a note that it was a side project that was shelved until the current workload was done, the notebook being here for whoever picked up where it was left off later. This is supposed to be able to allow someone to teleport to its location from vast distances."

"It's definitely space magic, at least the work that was completed before it was shelved." Killian replied. "I feel resonance from it."

"Really?" Imari said interested. "You think you could make use of it?"

"I'm not sure, but I can read the notebook later tonight if no one has any objections that I make a claim to it."

The trio shook their heads. In the negative, turning to continue looting the shelves. Killian reached out to the spike and notebook, lifting them from the shelf and hefting the spike in his hand. Unsurprisingly, the stone spike was heavy. Shifting both items into a separate space, he joined the others.

Arden located a sword in the locker by the door; the ledger detailing it was simply enchanted to hold its edge and take more punishment. Killian thought Arden would have been disappointed that the only magic weapon in the room was so simple, but he was instead ecstatic. According to him, his fury put a lot of strain on anything he enhanced with it, and the sword took to the emotional energy well. After asking Killian if he wanted the sword as well and receiving a negative in response, the warrior asked Killian to shift his old sword into their camp and strapped the new one to his waist.

Shan located a set of six metal rods about five feet in length. After reading the ledger, the group learned they were used to trap things in place. The rods were set up in any vaguely circular shape, and when ether was channeled into one of them from the outside, a barrier would form in the shape outlined by the rods. It was apparently invisible to normal sight and would even mask the magic and presence of those trapped inside. The group thought it was interesting but didn’t know if they would have a use for it, and so it was shifted away for now.

Finally, the four of them stood by a small stack of plain, heavy cloaks. Each had a hood and varied in color from brown, grey, or black, with seven in total. The three adventurers, "Wait," Killian thought to himself, "I'm an adventurer now as well." His three friends looked excited about the cloaks, reading that they not only kept the wearer at a comfortable temperature, but they also decreased the amount of sleep someone would need while wearing it. They each immediately picked one out for themselves, Shan taking a brown one, Arden grey, and Imari black. Killian shifted the rest away, stating he would choose later.

There was nothing left in the room of note, Killian thinking to himself that there must have been an exodus from the facility or some massive task that required most of the items normally stored here. He stepped back into the front section of the room to see Shan standing alone, staring at the door leading back into the hallway.

"What's wrong?" He asked.

"Hm? Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about camping tonight." She replied, the other two joining them to listen in. "You said that you return to wherever you are standing when you go into your pocket spaces, and I was looking at the lock on the door. It's already getting late into the day; I was thinking we could just lock the door and go ahead and camp for the night. We're in no real rush, and we would have a secure place to return to when we are done for the night."

Killian thought it over and agreed, saying, "We have had a hell of a day. I'm all for turning in for the night. Having a few extra hours would give us the time to read some of the things we found as well."

"You won't get any arguments from me," Arden said. "I'm wound too tight, and the thought about being packed away in a safe place might be the only thing that allows me to sleep after what we saw today."

Imari agreed with the simple statement, "I want to soak in the tub."

Shan walked over to the door and secured the lock, returning to the group before saying, "Wisk us away, oh mighty Fadeborn." With a snort, Killian did so.

The camp the four adventurers stood in was not as comfortable as Killian's base, but that was only when comparing it to modern earth furniture and appliances. His three friends had done quite the job in setting up the space to be comfortable as well as functional. Three "bedroom" areas were set up on one side of the room, separated by large folding screens for some privacy. In each was a moderately sized bed, table and chair, trunk, as well as an armoire. To the side of that, an open area was set up as a communal space. A bench in front of a permanent cooking fire, set up by Shan herself, was flanked by a few chairs. A plush couch near enough to enjoy the heat from the fire finished off the space. Further down the rectangular-shaped room was a large area devoted to setting up gear or crafting. At the end were piled all of the crates of supplies the trio had bought.

"Ok, I'll transfer all of the notebooks you wanted to look at, Imari. I didn’t want to place them directly in here on the off chance a curse or something was on them and did something to the room before we came in here." Killian said as the pile of notebooks appeared on the work table. "I'm going to head over to my base now. If you need me for something, write a note and set it on the corner of the work table, and I'll check in by looking at the spot regularly. I won't look anywhere else, so don’t worry about your privacy."

Before he could shift away, Imari stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. Surprised, he paused long enough for Imari to say, "You did a good job, Killian. I'm sorry our first adventure together was to such an awful place. I wanted to show you how wonderful it could be; instead, you had to see how bad it could be first."

Killian recovered from the sudden physical contact and placed an arm around her in response, replying, "It's ok, I'm definitely going to struggle with this for a bit; we all are, but knowing I'm going to help make sure whatever caused all we saw today is put down, that's enough for me."

Imari released him, nodding her head in acknowledgement before he shifted home.

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Imari watched as Killian disappeared, wishing she could do more. It took a while for her to see it, to see something Killian did his best to hide, but after months of helping her teacher with his magic lessons, she had seen what was hidden beneath. Killian grappled with a deep sadness, with pain that had been there for a long time.

He would lose focus, fading off when he thought no one could see. Even when in a conversation or engaged directly, there were times when she could notice he became…detached. A light in his eyes would dim, a small stiffening of his body like he moved automatically instead of by choice. A handful of times she had seen him sit or stand in place, face devoid of emotion, as if his spirit had left his body.

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She hadn't yet asked him about it; every time he came back to himself, he acted so normal that Imari knew it was nothing new to him; he was quite good at hiding it. If he hid it so well, she knew it was something he didn’t want others to know about. So she left it alone. But now she stood staring at the place he stood a moment ago, knowing he was alone, knowing he grappled with whatever he struggled with made worse with the nightmares they had all witnessed today. People like Killian pulled back when in pain, where someone like her reached out. Which was ironic given that the man seemed to do anything he could to brighten the lives of others.

Imari turned to face her friends, the ones she held most dear, and stepped into their waiting embrace. She didn’t know if they had seen what she did in Killian; Shan probably had, but it was clear Killian didn’t want others to know, so she had kept it to herself. They didn’t ask though, assuming her reaction came from the hard day they had or something else; the two simply held her when she needed it. Imari couldn’t ask for better friends.

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Killian fell onto the couch, more tired than he had ever been in his life before. Imari's words about the tub echoing in his mind gave him the fortitude he needed to stand from the comfortable couch and head to the shower. He washed the day from his skin, reveling the fact he had hot water while delving into a dungeon. Toweling himself off the glimpse of himself he caught in the mirror did nothing more than briefly fuzz his vision. Seems sights beyond normal mortal sanity outweighed long-term mental illness. Small miracles. Changing into a comfortable pair of shorts and a tee shirt, Killian fell back into his place on the couch.

He just sat there for a time, trying to ignore what Imari had said to him. Killian knew she was just trying to say sorry, but he would have had a chance at ignoring the worst of today had she not brought it right into his attention before he left. The image of the Hollow strapped to the table still sat behind his eyelids, entirely too much detail to be fair, hanging like a picture in a frame on the wall of his mind. "Fuck," he said quietly to himself. Sitting up, he planned to do what he always did, to utilize the one tool he had that helped him make it this far. Distraction.

Mentally reaching out to the space he stored the spike and notebook, he shifted them both to the cushion beside him. Once again, the resonance built until it reached the level it had before. Killian picked up the notebook and began to read. He had an inkling when first feeling the resonance, but smiled to himself when it was proven correct as he went through what sat on the pages. Whoever made this thing had some understanding of space as it really was. The runes marking the surface of the spike were simple things. They were supposedly meant to represent the concepts of position, transfer, magical energy, and anchor. The purpose of the spike was to infuse a piece of space itself with the magical signature of who ever used it, creating an anchor that the user could sense at any point thereafter and use as a target for teleportation spells. What interested him the most was the fact the creator chose to infuse a piece of space itself. Killian read how the creator was worried about how easy it would be to sense and sabotage an anchor that was just placed into the air. They had learned through trial and intuition the nature of the world we live in, that space was more than the box we all played in or the stage the play was put on. They had learned it was just as physical as the things occupying it. And so they had devised a way to target a specific point in three-dimensional space, a point almost no one would be able to sense or manipulate, and by saturating it with a person's unique magical fingerprint, allow them to feel that point and use it to teleport no matter where they were.

It was some technical stuff, to say the least, but something Killian was sure he could do using his own abilities. He spent a couple of hours just reading the notebook, going over the concepts it explained to make sure he understood as much as he could. He then practiced targeting space itself and tried to infuse it with his internal ether but hit a problem. His pocket space was packed full of his magic, making it impossible to practice this particular skill inside it. He sighed deeply to himself as he knew what he would have to do, stood from his couch, and shifted back into the dungeon.

The room felt creepier than before. He stood unarmed with his bare feet on the gray stone. Worst of all, he was alone. Glancing to the door, he saw it was still locked, though it didn’t give him much comfort. Doing his best to ignore what he was feeling, Killian reached out to touch the space in front of him. After all the practice trying to make his razor, it was simple. He tapped into his well of ether and focused on the point he held with his mind. This was the hard part; he was sure the creator of the spike had been a wizard or something similar, but he was a sorcerer. The details and formulas meant nothing to him; he only knew what they all did because the creator was thorough and explained the purpose of each part in the equation. Killian had to picture what he wanted and will it to happen, and so he did. He had no idea how much ether it would take, so he just let it flow at a steady rate. He pictured his ether pushing itself into space, like a liquid soaking into cloth. It worked, but slowly. He felt a resistance he had to push through. After a few minutes, he knew it was working, but it was very inefficient. He could feel his own ether already beginning to bead to the surface and fall away. With the amount he had already infused, he guessed it would bleed away in a few days, but he knew the small amount he infused wouldn’t be the full amount. As he continued, he began to feel a new sensation that was hard to explain. He compared it to a weight he could feel with his mind. Not physical in any way, but something that drew his attention. "Like gravity," he said to himself.

That made sense; gravity was just the effect of mass pressing on spacetime. What he was doing could be described as creating magical, or metaphysical, mass in a fixed point. Something he could sense with his innate ability with space magic, and because it was his own magical signature. He sped up the process before he felt he couldn’t pack any more ether into his chosen point. Taking a moment to feel the rate it bled away, he had a rough estimate of a few weeks at most before the anchor would fade away. So the spike would have had to be used to reapply the anchor off and on. Killian turned and walked to the door, blinking into the hallway and striding back the way his group had traveled to get there.

Killian wove through the hallways and did his best to ignore the bodies of the Hollows as he exited the hallway he had used his beam in earlier. He pointedly didn’t look in the direction of the room he torched and blinked into the first room of the dungeon. The stack of crates filled with ingots were blessedly untouched, and so he blinked one more time onto the stair beyond and walked into the night air outside of the dungeon. Killian took a deep breath of the fresh air and focused on what he had felt as he walked through the dungeon. He had felt his anchor behind him as he moved. It wasn’t a sensation he could easily describe, but he knew exactly where it was in relation to him. As he stood in the cold night air, he glanced down in the direction he knew one hundred percent his anchor was in. He didn’t have a teleport spell other than his blink, so he blinked while choosing the destination as his anchor.

Killian found himself back inside the room in the dungeon, staring at the point his invisible anchor hung in the air. Oddly enough, the blink didn’t use as much ether as it would have if he could have blinked here without the anchor. It felt different too; he knew instantly that it had been the work of his instilled intuition for his chosen magic. The spell he used was similar to his blink but clearly designed for long-distance use. In fact, the knowledge implanted in his brain informed him he had actually spent more ether on the teleport because he had used it so close. Killian smiled; no matter what happened next in this dungeon, he had gained a powerful tool for exploring The Elder Realm. Jogging, he retraced his steps back outside the dungeon; he wanted an anchor out of this horrible place in case of an emergency.

Standing alone outside, he reached out again and tapped his well for power. As he began to push his ether into the space he chose, he thought to himself that the anchor bleeding away would be a problem. He understood why it was happening, but the creator didn’t have the abilities he did; he knew he could come up with a way to do it better. Once again, the combination of intuition and all of his practice making his razor sparked an idea across his mind. Stopping the flow of ether, he instead grabbed it with his mental fingers and formed it into threads. He began to weave it into the point in space in front of him, something he would have struggled with greatly had he not practiced manipulating space for so long. It took about twenty minutes, to the point he was shivering by the time he finished. He knew he could do it quicker in time, but for the first try it was delicate work. He waited for sixty more seconds. No ether bled from his anchor. Near the end, he had had to fight hard to continue his weave, the magical mass being quite dense before he reached the saturation he needed to finish the anchor, but the weave held strong. Killian Teleported back into the dungeon room with his new spell before teleporting back outside. The anchor worked.

By this point, Killian shook all over due to the cold, but he didn’t care. Teleporting once more into the dungeon room and shifting into his base, he dove under the covers on his bed. The first time he entered his base today, he thought he would have a hard time sleeping because of the day he had; now he would struggle to sleep because of the possibilities running through his head. This brand new world had just gotten a little bit smaller.