My hand was hot, and raw. I sat with it stuck in the fountain inside the Sanctuary, pouting. Just because I understood the basic physics of why it hurt didn't really make me feel better. In the moment of the first try, it hadn't hit quiet yet, but the pain had spiked a moment later. Thankfully, it wasn't the worst thing I'd felt recently.
"Why do I need to guard against my own damn magic?" I asked the open air, extremely annoyed.
Lightning is HOT. Hot enough to turn the surrounding air into plasma. I can't imagine my little Spark spell (which had been investigated while nursing my injured hand) would be as powerful as a full-on lightning strike, but it had still been enough for a slight bit of damage, like I'd just slapped a rough concrete block. I was glad, though, that I'd done it in a peaceful location. That would have been hell to figure out in the middle of combat.
It was getting to be quite dark, and I could feel the gentle chill of the evening start to seep into the area. I sighed and pulled my hand away from the water, shaking it clean. I stood and walked over to my bags to grab a piece of jerky, putting it between my teeth before grabbing a potato and looking at it sourly. Not only was my sword gone, that meant my knife was gone, and I was just gonna have to eat this thing like an apple again. I chewed a bit of the jerky off, and with the meaty taste in my life, I munched on the potato in my good hand.
"Alright, Allison. It's just a setback. Surely, the mages of Avare don't have all this crazy magic just for it to kill them right back. You're missing something." I started pacing while I ate, going over what I knew. I could feel the mana as it formed within me. I could alter it as it left me, but I couldn't really feel how to change it while it was within me. Was internal magic somehow fundamentally different from external magic? Something like iron or copper exposed to air?
I looked over at the light switch, popped the last bit of raw potato into my mouth (ugh) and padded over to it. I looked at it closely, and tried to feel the thing with my Mana Sense. Within this sense, it felt almost 'loud', and like it wanted to break free, but was very contained. Like a bottle of raging flame. I poked it with my hand, and was surprised to feel a bit of mana flow back into me and the lights dimmed, leaving me in the dark with an incredulous mouth wide open. That was... revelatory. It meant that one, I had had some sort of mana within me since I'd landed here (which tracked with my stats), and two, magical items like this worked by flowing mana back and forth. It was a tiny amount, though. Definitely not enough to power those lights on its own. Unless light magic was incredibly efficient, there was no possible way that the amount I gave it would sustain that kind of spell indefinitely.
I touched the panel again, and watched as the lights turned back on. The tiny bit of mana left me as well. A quick bit of calculation told me that a Mana Bolt should cost me somewhere around 6 of my mana, and this felt like... less than one. Less than HALF of one.
Did it channel the ambient mana somehow? Was there a bunch of ambient mana? My Mana Sense was giving me a very neutral picture of the Sanctuary, rather than the foreboding presences of the Labyrinth, but that didn't necessarily mean anything. This was just the baseline, probably. 'Room Temperature' was 'normal' but in fact did have a particular temperature.
I wrung my hands for a moment before wincing and regretting it, my raw palm stinging a bit. This was all immensely interesting. I loved learning it all, but I had hoped to find something useful. I probably had, but I didn't really know how to make use of it. Without a guide, teacher, or text to tell me more, these were all disparate pieces of information, and I was just fumbling around in the dark until I could find my way.
I pondered it for some time, trying to put the pieces I'd learned together into something usable, but either there was nothing, or I simply could not connect what I needed to. Eventually, the sound of insects began to signal that the nocturnal creatures were out and about. I had never particularly liked them, and they didn't sound exactly the same, but the grasshopper-like sounds calmed me somewhat. The air tonight was a little warmer than it was, and I went ahead and grabbed the remaining cloak that was in good condition. I stepped outside to breathe in the night air, and was startled when I looked up.
I'd seen all sorts of stories, of course, and while there were fantastical elements, it was a whole 'nother thing to see it in person. Four moons hung gently in the sky in various positions and sizes. Two of them seemed to be around the same scale as Earth's moon, with another slightly smaller and farther, and another larger and closer. The closest moon was covered with red spots all over it, and both... moon sized moons? That was going to be weird. The two moons that were the size of earth's moon were both slightly different shades of blue and gray, with one of them having teal streaks through it. The furthest, smallest orb was the most familiar, looking more like an overly large star than anything. It had to be a satellite of the planet, I knew, because a star being that close would bode poorly for things in general. "I think," I said.
"How the hell did I miss those?" I wondered. I'd gone outside once or twice at night to relieve myself and I hadn't spotted them. Clouds? Bad timing? It was unlikely, but really the only explanation, unless they just disappeared sometimes. I pulled the cloak about myself, shivering slightly in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature. It was easy to get lost in the weeds, but this place had its own rules that I knew nothing about, and should not assume that I did. After all, there was a third fundamental aspect to the universe that humanity hadn't known, back on earth. How much of my basic, high school physics education applied here?
I stepped back into the Sanctuary, slightly unnerved now. The moons were beautiful, gorgeous, but a little too much. I turned the lights off in the Sanctuary and laid myself down on one of the pews, wrapping the cloak around myself fully.
I'd died, three times in as many days. I was doing magic. I was murdered, I fought an insect, I made a friend (I think), and now I was coming to grips with just how alien this place - Avare - was.
Could it be home?
Maybe.
But right now, no, it wasn't. It was still this new place, wonderful and terrifying. My thoughts wandered and my eyes drifted closed. What was dad up to? How was he taking my death? My breath caught, and I felt it start to hit me. I was never going to see him again. I was never going to go to a state fair, never going to sleep in my bed, never going to see my friends...
The tears started. "Fuck," I said. It was real. This place was hostile, I was forever ripped from my old life, and as exciting and wonderful as it was to have a chance to do something 'great,' the costs were high. Too high? It didn't matter.
I'd already paid the costs in full, like it or not.
My eyes continued to leak, now a full deluge of tears sliding down. I extricated my good hand to wipe them away, but the futile gesture just made room for more of them.
I wanted to rail at the world, wail until someone would come to help me, but even breaking down, I couldn't lose my grip on the cold logic of my situation. Even as I vocally began to whine and sniffle, bawling like a fool, I couldn't let go of reality. I wanted to be mad at Nollnine. At Kastris. At this world. But I couldn't. I was killed, with or without all this, by the cold, senseless accident on earth. I had the opportunity to even feel this at all because they'd saved me.
It was unfair. It was so unfair. I wanted to be angry at it all, I wanted to feel anything but the full-blown despair that was taking over my mind. I'd held it off too long, compartmentalized too much, and I simply laid there, miserable and sobbing, until I couldn't think anymore.
I sat next to the fountain, occasionally bringing the dusty water to my mouth for a sip to 'complement' the raw potatoes that composed my breakfast. Surprisingly, it wasn't as bad anymore. Was it slowly improving because it was running now? My hand was better, though I suspected that my face was an absolute mess from my breakdown the night before. I'd checked my status first thing after waking up and found that my injuries were apparently healed, but I still felt sore. Probably more from the exercise.
I wanted to go back into the Labyrinth, and that was a problem. I wasn't ready. I needed to get better at moving, at my fighting style, figure out how to use my new spell, and get a game plan before just jumping back into it. I couldn't afford to run into Nathan again, not like I was. I had to be good enough to move, and get away from him, or beat him.
Of course, that meant I couldn't stay out for very long, either. He was likely in the damn thing already, gaining strength while I sat here and whined. I was ahead of him by maybe a level, or even, but it wouldn't last. So in order to stay ahead of him, I had to be smart. Work on my abilities.
Which meant exercise. I hopped up to my feet, tossing the last of the current potato into my mouth. No jerky this morning, no, it was limited and I needed to spread it out. I dusted off my beaten-up pants and walked outside, smelling the fresh air that didn't fully make it into the Sanctuary, as it was. I stripped out of my outer clothes, not wanting to fill them up with the sweat of activities, since they were my only option at the moment. Who was gonna see? The birds? "Feh."
I stared to do some basic stretching and movements, to warm up, before doing more running around and kicking. I tried to toss in some special movements, like a combination of a Dash and a kick here and there, but it always felt like an aspect was missing. I desperately would need to replace my lost sword, and fast. A morning of 'training' later, I padded back into the Sanctuary to cool off out of the direct sunlight. There was very little in the way of a breeze right now, so the heat of the day was getting to me. The weather here seemed to fluctuate a little more than I would have thought, but then again, I was no expert of mountainous weather patterns. Maybe this was normal?
I sat back and basked in the pleasant soreness that accompanied exercise, my head going back to the problem that had plagued me before I'd laid down last night. I aimed out of the main entrance, and muttered a spell. "Mana Bolt," I said, trying to feel through the spell as much as possible. Once again, it welled up in my core and flared through my body before gathering at my fingertips and firing off. The splotch of pink was briefly part of my senses - like the feeling of when someone is behind you, even though you can't see them - and disconnected before long.
A thought occurred to me. I hadn't needed to invoke any kind of spell to interact with the lights.
There was ambient magic.
When I activated the lights, the magic that left me did not come from my core.
The realizations started to spin in my head, and I realized that I was chewing pretty madly on my upper lip. I forced myself to stop and looked at my hand. I tried to locate the source of magic within me using another Mana Bolt to pinpoint the spot.
I could feel it. It was there, tangible, like an actual organ inside of me. For all I knew, it was. So I focused all my attention on it, and imagined pulling power from it.
Nothing happened.
I frowned, and closed my eyes, trying to immerse myself in my Mana Sense. I tried to feel at the movement of the magic, to understand its flow, and how the stuff inside me was different. Eventually, I could actually tell that it was different, in some way that I couldn't comprehend. Pleased with myself despite my inability to get to the end of things, I opened my eyes and did a double take.
It was evening. My butt was sore from sitting on the ground, and I had to pop my neck something fierce. I stood, realizing that I had to have been looking inward for hours. Is this how people meditated? If so, I was slightly annoyed. All that time just to confirm that, yeah, inside does not equal outside. My earlier positivity faded.
"Give yourself more credit, girl," I said at myself. "I bet lots of people have actual fucking teachers for this."
Always with the cold logic, deep down, even at myself. I sighed, moving around some. Determined to not lose anymore time for the day, I loped around my portion of the structure in a fast walk, alternating between Dashes, kicks, and Mana Bolts to try and become more fluid. I didn't know if I was actually getting any better, but at least it felt like it.
I stared at the air like an idiot for a few moments, hoping that my musings would have been enough to make the aether give me a tier in Martial Style, or something. I guess it wouldn't be that easy. Or, maybe it was, and I was just doing it wrong. I slapped my cheeks, focusing on the moment. Pointless speculation would not help me in the slightest. As the sun began to finish its vanishing act and the smallest moon began to peek above the peaks, I headed back into the Sanctuary, ready to get some rest after the day of straining my body and mind. I paused, though, near the pew, and walked over to the lens room. Next to the door, I found a piece of rubble from the throne and scrawled some scratches. The time might have been slightly off, and I'd correct it once my age was properly reflected in my Status, but four scratches were placed on the wall. Four days I'd been here. I returned to the pew, and thankfully, drifted off quickly.
The next day would have to be a different affair to the previous ones. I woke to the rumble of thunder rolling through me, and I could hear the calming drops of rain hitting the temple outside. I looked at the entrance, momentarily concerned at the sanctity of my Sanctuary (Hah! I definitely needed someone around to pun badly at), but curiously, any water from the rain failed to find its way into the building. I shrugged, attributed it to magic, and started my morning. A cross along the tallies marked my fifth day as I grabbed a pair of potatoes, and as a lightning bolt struck in my peripheral vision, I sighed.
"More raw p..." I trailed off. Wait. Oh, god, yes, that investigation would be worth some pain. I grabbed one in my left hand, braced myself, and before I could think better of it, I let out "Spark."
The familiar rush of mana went through me, and instead of the odd stretching sensation from before, it was almost a tickle as the energy left me and rushed into the potato. I watched, giddy, and my smile fell as I realized I'd just slammed the little vegetable with a bunch of heat with no way to contain its water content. The thing shriveled in my hand, smoking slightly where my hand had been holding it.
My disappointment faded instantly afterward. I threw off the annoyance at the failed culinary experiment easily as I embraced the fact that I'd used the Spark spell without hurting myself! I looked at my hand, unmarked from the spell. That was the secret! I just needed to be touching my target.
That sounded weird, thinking about things like lightning bolts that were roiling outside and all of that, but maybe it was just because I was using at the baby basic level. Regardless, it was a massive success. That meant I could use it safely without injuring myself. It added to my arsenal. I looked outside at the storm raging outside, hair on my arms raising as I watched the electrical discharges in the clouds amongst the mountains. It was my first step in harnessing something like that. I hadn't solved the underlying problem - there had to be a way not to hurt your own self with spells like this - but I could make this work.
I was healed. I'd taken a day off of going in, and now, I had my new tool. I grinned. "I think it's time I dive back in."
I grabbed another piece of jerky for some extra protein to assist with my exercise, stuffed two more potatoes into a bag, and took an extra bag with me on top of that one. I gulped down some water, idly wondering if I'd ever find a waterskin like Rachel had, and then briefly pondered if Rachel was okay, before moving again. I left the intact cloak here, opting instead to use one of the slightly damaged ones to augment my shitty, beat up attire. I rolled my shoulders and hopped between my feet, feeling the happiness of my breakthrough course through me.
Yeah, it was probably still too soon. I should wait another day. I could tell I wasn't fully better, mentally, but I also knew my time was limited. What was worse? Crying myself to sleep? Or some prick finding me and killing me on the mountainside?
Yeah, one of those was definitely worse, and I'd be damned if I let that bastard get one over me again. I looked at my hand, thinking about how nice it would be to fill his face with electricity, and stepped downstairs. I wasted no time, simply walking with purpose and strode through the portal.