Faye watched the spellcasting with absolute, undivided attention.
The very first rule her mother and grandmother had ever taught her about spellcasting was that if a Witch wished to stir her mana and reach toward nature and the spiritual realm, the true sources of power, her voice was her main channel for it.
Voice, or sound, came first, the initial offering a Witch made toward a spell, followed by the words, and lastly, mana itself.
If a Witch’s voice was found unworthy, the whole thing failed before it ever reached that second step.
The chanting words themselves were entirely foreign to her, nothing like anything she’d heard or learned before, but the way they flowed from Magna’s lips, the hypnotic pull of his voice, was more than enough to convince her.
She had no doubt whatsoever that whatever spell her sister was casting, it carried real, extraordinary potential.
The very next moment, though, horror washed over her at what unfolded in front of her.
Magna, who’d been resting so calmly, eyes closed, suddenly began making sounds from deep in his chest, sounds that turned her stomach.
Sharp, popping noises filled the air, something like tiny bubbles bursting mixed with the brittle snap of bone breaking.
It wasn’t only the grotesque sound of it that made the whole scene so horrifying.
His skin was actually changing right in front of her, losing its warmth, its colour, drying out into the rough, grey bark of some ancient tree.
Faye wanted to look away from it, but seeing Magna’s face stay so calm, so utterly without reaction, she forced herself to keep watching.
’Is she not in any pain?’
She knew of a few spells that put the caster through painful physical changes.
Her own invisibility spell was one of them, in fact. Not intensely painful, no, but she still hated casting it, given the deeply uncomfortable feeling it left behind.
But setting her own spell against whatever this was felt rather like comparing a scraped knee to a broken spine.
In truth, Magna was going through agony that felt like his body was being shattered from the inside out. Only his remarkably high pain tolerance let him get through it without much visible distress.
Only once the transformation hit its peak did a flicker of real agony show through on his face.
Even that was brief, his skin already easing back to normal, the popping and cracking inside him fading down into silence.
[Utilization completed.]
Magna slowly opened his eyes, letting out a long breath he’d been forced to hold through the whole ordeal.
Even with an entire lifetime of assassin’s memories behind him now, that transformation had been nearly unbearable. Still, he’d pushed through it without blacking out.
He lifted his hands to inspect them, being the only part of his body he could easily see.
There wasn’t much to look at, his skin seemed a touch more lustrous than before, if anything. But a strange, tight sensation had settled over his entire body, as though he’d been wrapped in some second skin.
’Is this what it feels like to wear one of those latex suits?’ he wondered.
He could tell, too, that his body felt far more energetic than before, every last trace of fatigue simply gone.
His eyes drifted down to the three remaining jelly cookies still sitting on their paper wrapper, and a flicker of greed crossed his gaze.
He was fairly certain that if he ate the rest, he could trigger Gaia a second time. He could feel it in his body, some of that energy from the first cookie still hadn’t been used up.
Before eating again, though, he peeked carefully over the rock to check on the two lizards.
The one across the river hadn’t moved an inch, still deep in what looked like sleep.
The other, standing back the way they’d come, had already swallowed its catch and was watching the water now, hunting for its next meal.
Relief, at least, that neither had noticed them yet.
Magna pulled his head back down, grabbed another cookie, and popped it straight into his mouth.
"A-are you really going to eat more?" Faye asked, her expression troubled.
Watching him toss the third piece, then the last one right after, into his mouth in quick succession, her jaw dropped into a wide O.
"What?" Magna asked, his mouth still full, trying to work out what had her so worked up.
"N-nothing..." she murmured, staring down at the empty scrap of paper that had held her cookies only moments before.
’Is she upset because I ate her lunch?’ He couldn’t quite make sense of what was going through her head.
Still, he couldn’t bring himself to worry about it much, not when this was something he needed to do to get them both out of this place alive.
He felt the familiar rush of heat wash over his whole body again as the last piece slid down his throat.
Just as he’d hoped, the system triggered a second time.
[Energy accumulation threshold reached.]
[Please select a method to utilize the gathered energy.]
It was somewhat worrying, though. He’d needed three cookies this time just to fill the bar.
Which meant every activation from here on would demand more than triple the food or energy of the last, just to trigger again.
’Please, give me something I can actually use,’ he prayed silently, looking over the options laid out before him.
And yet, scanning through them, he honestly couldn’t tell whether Gaia was trying to help him, or simply mocking his whole situation.