Given that the events surrounding the Faerie Gold ending up in the Memorian Outpost played out a thousand years ago, and that everyone involved "came to a bad end," to use Navi's words, there isn't really any pressing need for you to hear the details.

More than that, if the Great Fairy's tone and body language are anything to go by, whatever happened to those people was fairly depressing.

It may only be a few hours more before your birthday party official ends, but you'd be just as happy to spend that time NOT being dismayed by the sad tale of people who lived and died around the time that the Vikings visited North America.

That having been said-

-you would like to know how the lack of any proper owner affected Navi's disposal of the Faerie Gold. It would be a lie to say that your interest in this is not motivated by a desire for personal gain, but that isn't the whole of your interest - you'd make it fifty percent, at most. The rest is just honest curiosity as to what Navi did with the gold, after she confirmed that there wasn't anyone to give it back to.

"I found the grave of the girl it was meant for, and I left it there," the Great Fairy replies. "Hers was the last true claim on the gold, so leaving it at her memorial for a year and a day ought to satisfy the magic and make it completely safe for someone else to take - unless of course some greedy fool tries to swipe the gold in the meantime."

A year and a day, huh?

Well, then; you'll revisit this topic when that day comes - from what Navi says, it should be right around next Halloween.

Funny, how that works out.

You mentally review the suggested locations where you might find Souta. Where on Bali Ha'i would a boy who wanted to be alone go?

The hot springs, you disregard almost at once. You haven't visited them yourself, but from what you've seen and heard, they've been fairly popular with the guests, the lack of modern amenities being made up for by the natural beauty of the surroundings. If Souta honestly wanted to be by himself for a while, he wouldn't go there; too much traffic.

As far as privacy goes, further down the beach or somewhere up the river both have a lot to recommend them. However, since you just came from the direction of the river and didn't see or sense any evidence that anyone else - anyway who wasn't a spirit, anyway - had been that way, you decide to explore past the Ring of Trials instead of backtracking. There's a bend in the shoreline, not too much farther down from the arena, where a rocky outcropping blocks the view of anything beyond. That feels like a good place to start.

Just to be sure, though, you focus on the idea of "finding Souta" as you start walking, hoping that Bali Ha'i's helpful nature will guide you to the boy.

A couple of minutes of uninterrupted marching across sun-warmed sands later, you round that rocky "corner".

*PLOP*

And there is the youngest Higurashi, throwing stones into the white swell of the incoming waves.

You send a quick spiritual pulse of gratitude towards the island, just in case.

Having caught sight of you as you came around the bend, Souta offers a token, "Hey," of recognition before loosing another stone into the surf.

*PLOP*

"Hey, yourself," you return, as you watch the motion.

...is he trying to skip those stones?


Eh, why not?

You search the ground all about, and there find a handful of stones, just about perfectly sized and shaped for throwing.

Bali Ha'i's helpfulness shining through, or just good fortune?

In any case, you pick a spot that's neither too close nor too far from Souta, and then stand there for a few seconds, bouncing the first smooth-sided rock in your hand a couple of times to get a better sense of its mass and shape, while watching the ebb and flow of the tide.

*PLOP*

Undeterred, you try again.

*PLOP*

And again.

*PLOP*

And again.

*Skip*
*PLOP*

Hey, progress.

For a time, it's just two boys and a fairy, the sighing of waves breaking on the shore, the song of unseen island birds-

*PLOP*

-and the splash of rocks striving valiantly to grasp the secrets of flight, and inevitably sinking to the bottom of the sea in failure.

*Skip*
*PLOP*

The key, you eventually discover, is a mix of force, angle, and timing. It would doubtlessly be easier if you were throwing rocks over at the lagoon or some other relatively calm body of water, but the ever-changing face of the ocean adds an interesting element of challenge. Let your stone fly at the wrong time, and it'll either smash into the crest of the latest wave to touch the beach, or come down at too steep an angle, into water that the receding surf has rendered too shallow to withstand the impact.

*Skip*
*Skip*
*Skip*
*PLOP*

Gained Dexterity D (Plus) (Plus)

Souta squints in the direction of your latest success, and then at you. "Are you using magic again?" he asks suspiciously.

"No magic," you reply, winding up for another toss. "Just skill."

*PLOP*

"...amazing skill," Souta dryly observes.

Then he turns to throw his next stone.

*PLOP*

And promptly scowls.

Eventually, you both run out of rocks, but Bali Ha'i continues to provide. As the two of you pause to stock up on fresh ammunition, you decide that this is a good time to speak with Souta about what brought you here, and extend your apology about getting him stuck "on an island full of girls, with no other boys his age" for the last couple of days.

"It wasn't that bad the first day," Souta says after a moment. "We were only here for a few hours, and there was this whole TROPICAL ISLAND to explore. We NEVER take vacations like this: Grandpa has to mind the Shrine; Mom has to mind him; and there's ALWAYS school. And the second day was SO COO-" he catches himself in the middle of his mounting enthusiasm, and (badly) affects a casual demeanor in its place "-I mean, the fights were pretty good, too. And some of those fairy boys were alright."

...huh. You hadn't really considered that.

Souta is mostly mundane, especially when compared to his sister's massive reserves of spiritual power, which makes it easy to forget that he's not without some potential in that field himself. Between that modest strength, his young age and somewhat puckish nature, and Bali Ha'i's spiritually-charged environment helping things along, he probably finds it relatively easy to perceive Navi's kids. Apparently, that allowed him to make a few friends when you weren't looking.

"But today?" you venture.

"...today's been kind of meh," Souta admits.


While it would have been a fine opening to offer Souta some advice on improving his stone-skipping technique, you know the boy well enough to recognize the determination underlying his scowl. He wants to get this down on his own if he can, and he wants it strongly enough that advice from his older sister's weird American friend might not be wholly appreciated.

*PLOP*

At least, not until he decides to ask for tips.

After all, a young boy's pride can be a delicate thing

So you wait, continuing to skip stones until your current companion speaks up.

*Skip*
*Skip*
*PLOP*

*PLOP*

This doesn't mean that you carry on in complete silence, though, or that skipping stones is so complex an art that it requires one hundred percent of your focus.

*Skip*
*Skip*
*PLOP*

*PLOP*

No, between throws, you take the opportunity to measure Souta's spiritual presence again, comparing it to the auras of other humans you've encountered with gifts in that field. Koron said the other day that Kagome had been "blessed" by the Sacred Tree, and he implied that the effect should have covered the rest of her family as well - less a conscious application of power, and more a natural consequence of dwelling next to and taking care of a living receptacle of divine power.

You'd missed it before then because your affinity for trees was nothing special - and still isn't, though the gardening you've been getting into should eventually change that - and proximity to the Sacred Tree was enough to drown out subtle traces. When you met the Higurashis at Halloween, outside of the Tree's aura, it was at a convention of youkai and other supernatural types, which had enough wild energy filling the air to once again blunt the edges of your spiritual sensitivity. Bali Ha'i's ambient spiritual energy might be an issue, if you weren't as physically close to Souta as you are right now.

*Skip*
*Skip*
*Skip*
*Skip*
*PLOP*

Hey, a new personal best.

*PLOP*

Speaking of proximity, being just a couple steps away from Souta means that his not-so-quietly grumbled complaint might as well have been said in a normal tone of voice, as far as your keen ears are concerned. It certainly wasn't a request for help, so you don't make the offer you were planning, but the frustration expressed in those few strangled syllables is enough to convince you to relax your usual guard and let your movements become a bit more obvious.

Just, not too obvious.

You want to give Souta an opportunity to see what you're doing and learn from it - basically, to teach without teaching - but you don't want to come across as smug or pitying or anything like that.

*Skip*
*Skip*
*PLOP*

*PLOP*

Getting back to the topic of botanical blessings, you're not seeing anything unusual around Souta. Certainly nothing that stands up and says to you, "A (minor) god did this!"

But given the passive nature of the blessing and the vegetative nature of its source, that doesn't really surprise you. It wouldn't have the frankly artificial feeling of your personal, brute-forced, arcane approach to clerical magic, and it certainly shouldn't be as open and obvious as Ginta's Holy Smite was. It should be subtle, natural, and as much a part of Souta or the other members of his family as the air they breathe - because unless science class has lied to you about the oxygen cycle, some of that air would have come from the Sacred Tree.

*Skip*
*Skip*
*Skip*
*PLOP*

*PLOP*

And when you compare your readings of Souta to the scans you've taken of other humans in the past, he does feel different. Cleaner, healthier. More... right, you suppose. Some of that is just a consequence of his youth, and some of it comes from living on holy ground rather than in its absence - much less on or geographically near the Hellmouth - but some of it doesn't fit into either category.

At least, you don't think so.

Gained Spiritual Sight B (Plus) (Plus)

*Skip*
*Skip*
*PLOP*

*Skip*
*Skip*
*PLOP*

"Ah-ha!" Souta laughs in triumph. "I'm catching up~!"

"So you are," you agree, before flinging another rock.

*Skip*
*Skip*
*PLOP*

*PLOP*

"Oh, come on!"

"...today's been kind of meh."

You nod slightly at that remark. "Anything particular I should try to do better next time?"

"Include video games," Souta replies immediately.

"Anything that doesn't involve electronics," you clarify.

"...can't magic that stuff up, huh?"

"Not yet, anyway," you admit. "I've been working on it, and I got a book of Car Magic a while back, if you can believe that, but it's still pretty complicated."

"'Car Magic,'" Souta repeats slowly. "Like, flying cars and stuff?"

There is a note of something not unlike gleeful hope in those words.

Come to think of it, there actually WASN'T a Spell to Make a Flying Car in Balthazar's book. Was that an oversight by the author, or a deliberate choice?

"More like really fast repair and maintenance work, ways to protect the car-"

"Ah, that's boring," Souta complains.

"-and how to transform one car into another on the spot," you add.

"...okay, less boring." There is a pause, and then Souta asks, "What about squirt guns?"

"That eager for a repeat of Halloween, are you?"

"I was totally winning that fight until a certain SOMEBODY stomped in and went all anime supervillain!"


Thinking back to those frantic moments of flying colored water and happily-screaming kids, you do recall that Souta's cowboy costume was pretty much untouched when you first arrived - but "pretty much" is not quite the same thing as "completely," and in any case, he wasn't the only participant of the water-war to have avoided being obviously spattered with paint. Those little spider-girls that were hanging out on the ceiling seemed to be in similarly good order, if only because most people weren't shooting at them to begin with, and the ones that tried were having problems with their aim, thanks to gravity and trajectory.

Mind you, it was still a really impressive performance from a basically-ordinary human boy in a room full of monsters. However...

"Doom remembers otherwise," you declare. Then, before Souta can do more than look offended, you add, "However, let it not be said that Doom is ingracious, or cannot recognize talent when he sees it. Doom would offer you employment as a henchman for next year's event."

Souta blinks, and then slowly asks, "Are you talking about next Halloween, or your next party?"

"And more importantly," Souta adds with a growing, eager grin, "would I get a cool costume, too?"

Ah, the young henchman has TASTE. Doom approves.

"But seriously, Souta," you continue, lapsing out of character for a bit, "where-"

*Skip*
*Skip*
*PLOP*

"-did you learn to shoot like that?"

He wasn't hitting everyone he fired at, by any means - some of the beings you saw running around that night could make a good attempt at dodging bullets, much less mere squirt guns and the like - but in those moments you took to observe the running battle before jumping in with your conjured water-blasts and illusory twin, Souta still scored some hits. More than that, he was doing very well at suppressing fire, which you'd guess was part of the reason why he stayed as dry as he did.

"Nowhere," Souta says, puffing himself up. "I am just that good."

*PLOP*

"Do not get ahead of yourself, minion," you warn him with a smirk. "Doom is yet your master."

*Skip*
*Skip*
*Ski-splash*

Drat. Mistimed that one, and it went into the swell of an incoming wave.

As you run low on rocks for a second time, you ask Souta if he's heard about the Island Curry Challenge.

He has not, and from the face he makes when you mention spicy curry, he's also not a big fan of the hot stuff. You end up leaving off asking if he thinks there will be any good reactions.

A few more thrown rocks-

*Skip*
*Skip*
*Skip*
*PLOP*

-and you feel like it's about time to be moving on. The Higurashis are staying until after lunch, but some of your other Japanese guests will be leaving shortly, and you should be there to see them off. Before you go, however, you ask Souta a final question, inquiring if he'd like you to try and arrange a visit from any of the fairies he hung out with.

"And how were you planning on pulling that off, Alex?" Briar interrupts, before the boy has a chance to respond.


While you do have some vague ideas as to how your next birthday can top this one, or at least not lose out to it, you have enough projects on your plate for the coming months that you feel no urgent need to start making concrete plans.

It IS, after all, a whole year away.

Technically, it's a bit more than a year, your actual birthday being the 11th and all, but you'll probably end up celebrating early again for the same reasons you did this time around - namely, that a lot of your friends are from Japan, and have the first week of April off before their new school year starts.

Halloween, meanwhile, is about six months away. Still a fairly long time, but close enough that you can reasonably predict what resources you should have available by then, barring accidents or unexpected windfalls. Not to mention that it's time enough for you to get in touch with whoever was responsible for putting that party together, and see if they're open to working with a sorcerer or not...

That aside, Souta looks pleased by your statement-

-though he's less enthusiastic about the following one.

"Aw, come on," he groans. "I don't need Mom's help to pick a costume; I'm a big kid!"

You stare down at the smaller boy for a moment, looking him over from head to toe, and then shooting him a wordless glance that is yet loaded with meaning.

"That is not what I meant, and you know it," Souta grumbles. "And anyway, you don't count. You're years older than me. And American. And magic."

True enough.

"Not old enough that I can get away with going around your mother, even if I wanted to," you answer firmly. And not about to resort to magic for the purpose, either, you mentally add.

"Aw, man..."

By casting Summon Nature's Ally, of course.

"...ah," Briar says. "In that case, carry on."

What did she think you were going to do? Research a new spell specifically to summon and bind fairies?

It's around a quarter to ten, which - following a bit of mental exertion - makes it shy of eight o'clock in Japan, at least by greater Tokyo time. It's a Monday as well, and while their children don't have school to worry about, some of your Japanese guests will be leaving soon all the same, as they have jobs and other obligations to be getting back to.

While you worked the schedule out with Jermafencer ahead of time and don't technically need to re-summon him for this, you do still need to be there to satisfy some of the terms of the magic. Plus, it's just good manners to see your guests off, as you greeted them when they arrived.

Although the Higurashis aren't among those who will be departing early, Souta still accompanies you as you hike back up the beach to the "landing zone," looking forward to seeing some more magic.

First up are the Kurosaki/Arisawa party.

"But I don't wanna," Isshin whines petulantly, as he hauls most of his family's luggage along, the handle of a suitcase grasped in each hand, with two more pieces tucked under his arms.

"Stop complaining and just remember to ASK the man to let you off this time, Isshin," Masaki chides.

"Seriously, manners are NOT that hard," Akkiko grumbles.

"You'd know, oni-woman."

"Exactly. Besides, you're burning up all the 'cool dad' points you earned yesterday. You don't have any to spare."

"Erk!"

"She's not wrong," Ichigo agrees, bouncing his new practice sword on his shoulder.

"Oh, my son, why do you betray me?" Isshin groans, before turning to his daughters with a hopeful expression. "But YOU still think Daddy's really cool, right, girls?"

"Nope," Karin says without hesitation.

"Daddy's silly," Yuzu giggles, to a chorus of agreeing laughter from the handful of fairies clustered around her and her sister.

"Nrgh!" Isshin exclaims, staggering to one side as if one of the monsters from the Ring just popped up and whalloped him.

Shaking your head, you focus your mana, mentally take hold of the "tether" that represents your current contract with the Knight of the Shadowed Mire, and send out a signal.

...it occurs to you that this is very much the magical equivalent of standing on a curb in a major city, sticking out your hand, and calling, "Yo, taxi!"

The guy even has a cab - or at least the precursor to one.

Is there anything special that needs to be said to any of the Kurosakis or Arisawas before they depart?


In response to your call, the Death Coach appears offshore in a flash of eerie green light, sparks of which fly from hooves and wheels to mark an invisible road of the air above the waves. As Jermafencer guides his team in, you relax from your spellcasting pose, and face your guests.

"Personally," you say, "I think what you did for your wife was really cool, Mr. Kurosaki."

Isshin blinks, and then puffs up slightly. "Thank you, Alex."

"But you should be careful about creating unreachable expectations," you add.

"...huh?"

"I mean, you fought a bunch of monsters and gave your wife your Heart. How are you going to top that going forward?"

Isshin blinks again, and then slowly goes wide-eyed as he realizes the implications.

Birthdays.

Holidays.

ANNIVERSARIES.

By undertaking the Trials, he's set a STANDARD - one that he has to live up to if he wants to keep his newly-made image as the cool dad and valiant husband.

"I did NOT think this through," Isshin breathes.

"Do you ever?" Akkiko wonders.

"Both of you," Masaki chides, even though she's smiling, "stop picking on my husband. Isshin, stop worrying and go load up our luggage."

Isshin makes a vaguely affirmative sound and totters off towards the Death Coach. Yuzu tags along with him to help, while Karin trails behind.

As the suitcases are being piled into their ride, Masaki and Akkiko both thank you for inviting them and their families, inquire lightly about your plans for next year, and calmly accept your response of not having anything particular in mind just yet. Ichigo and Tatsuki add their own thoughts on these matters, and thank you again for your mutual gift-giving and allowing them to take their shots at the Trials.

As the two families climb aboard the carriage, Masaki turns to you. "We'll see you in Karakura in a couple of weeks, then?"

You nod. "If you need any information about the Heart before then, give me a call - or have Akkiko do it - and I'll share what I know."

It probably won't be necessary; Heart Containers don't particularly DO anything until they've been assimilated by a host, except hover in place and glow softly. Still, it IS a concentration of magical and - more relevantly - spiritual energy, and they DO live in a place with a lot of spiritual activity. Akkiko put some suppressing wards around the Heart before they tucked it into one of the suitcases, and its aura is pretty well covered, but there's always that outside chance...

Well, you'll deal with that when and if it happens.

Nodding at your words, Masaki takes her husband's offered hand and climbs aboard. This leaves Isshin as the last of the group still standing on the beach, and he sends you a final nod of unspoken farewell before turning and - with a visible wince - stepping up into the carriage himself.

"Bye, Alex! Briar!" Tatsuki calls, waving.

"Bye, fairies!" Yuzu and Karin add, with the same gesture.

"Bye, girls!" the fairies reply, waving back in turn.

...you do a quick head count at that point, but it appears that all of Briar's younger siblings who were floating around the Kurosaki twins are present and accounted for, rather than trying to sneak on the Death Coach and ride off with the girls - or just going with them openly, and not thinking anything of it.

Whatever the case, when Jermafencer drives off over the ocean, it's only with the people that are supposed to be leaving.

Based on his performance from Friday afternoon, it'll take Jermafencer about fifteen or twenty minutes to make the trip from Bali Ha'i to Karakura and back again. Since there's no point at all in your standing around waiting for him, you head to meet the Hakubas, who - along with Ayane - are the next group scheduled to depart.


Although Isshin volunteered to carry most of his family's luggage for reasons of machismo, Masaki and the Arisawas had no issue with letting you repeat your performance from the first day, and taking a minute to ritually summon some Unseen Servants to handle their remaining suitcases, as well as Akkiko's share of the spoils from the Great Island Boar Hunt - an entire pig's worth of pork, dressed, smoked, and magically-cured over the last day, and wrapped in palm leaves.

You reassign those invisible helpers to carry most of the Hakubas' luggage now, save for Miss Suzuka's, which Ichiro is taking care of.

You offer to carry Ayane's things, and while she thanks you for that, she adds - grinning as she speaks - that she decided to pack what she brought with her into her new Bag of Holding.

Which is, it must be admitted, entirely practical, and pretty much what the Bag was meant for.

"So how do you think that's going to go over when you get home?" you ask the small kunoichi-in-training, as the two of you walk down to the beach together to meet up with the Hakubas. "Your new magic bag, I mean, and how you got it."

Ever since you got the reply to the invitation you sent to Ayane and Kasumi, you've been aware that their clan elders raised certain concerns about allowing either girl to attend your party. Some of those objections were simple common sense, while others, which a regular person might consider paranoid, were merely healthy caution for those who live in the Moonlit World.

After all, you ARE a powerful sorcerer who pretty much came out of nowhere last year to win the division title at the World Tournament; you DO live on the Hellmouth; you HAVE had fairly limited contact with the two young kunoichi - and even less with any of the adults responsible for them; and you HAVE been rather extensively associating with the Shuzens, who are not on the best of terms with the ninjas.

The rest of it, though?

If you hadn't already known that Ayane wasn't well-regarded by most of her clan, you would have suspected that they were treating her as an expendable asset by allowing her to attend your party. And since you DID know, it came as more of a confirmation.

"I was planning not to call too much attention to the bag," Ayane replies. "I have to report to Master Genra, of course, and I was planning to tell Kasumi and Hayate - if I ask them to keep it a secret, they will. Everyone else... I'm hoping my report of what happened here will keep them too distracted to notice I came back with one more pouch than I left with."

"Do you think it'll work?"

"If they believe me about the ghosts and divine entities walking around, and the demons in the Ring? Yes."

...she doesn't sound entirely convinced that this faceless "they" will believe her, which brings a frown to your face.

Perhaps you should send some kind of "hard evidence" back with Ayane, to help prove the truth of her report to her doubters?


Perhaps it's because you used the tapes of the World Tournament to help introduce your immediate family to the truth of your personal abilities and involvement with the supernatural, but you immediately regret that you didn't think to record the Trials.

Of course, the original schedule for your party didn't include any of your guests trying their luck in the Ring of Trials, so if you HAD planned to record anything, it would have been your Trials alone, which... really wouldn't have given the best impression.

There are names for people who do stuff like that, and you think the nicest of them is "narcissist."

That said...

"Hang on a second," you tell Ayane, before casting a modified Spell of Messages, duration dumped to open up the range. "Sorry to bother you, Ambrose, but did you record the Trials yesterday? And if so, could I get a copy for Ayane? It's to help wind up a bunch of stuffy, self-important ninja elders."

Ayane does a double-take at that last bit, and starts sputtering. "Alex!"

"That IS the impression I've been getting of them, Ayane," you tell her frankly. "If I've insulted any nice or just polite old ninja people by lumping them in with the jerks, I apologize for that, but I stand by the rest of it."

"You can't just- it's not done, even if they are- I mean-"

Huh. You appear to have successfully flustered a kunoichi. Ayane's not to the point of having an Emiko-class meltdown, but she's closer to it than you ever expected to see the rather self-controlled girl get.

A moment later, a voice comes back to you on the wind:

"I'll be right there."

Oh, good. You figured Ambrose wouldn't pass up a chance to tweak some noses.

You continue down to the landing area, and have only been there for a few second when you catch sight of Ambrose jogging down the beach from somewhere further inland. You have no idea where he was or what he was doing, but if the lack of a towel or a dripping beard are any indication, he at least wasn't visiting the hot spring.

"Right," Ambrose says as he comes to a stop, looking around with a bright, keen gaze. "Now, what was this about wanting a recording?"

You tell him that you were thinking of sending some evidence home with Ayane, to help support the report she's going to be expected to make to her clan about what happened here.

"And you think they wouldn't take her at word?" Kanna exclaims, sounding scandalized.

"Some of them will, ma'am, but others..." You trail off, not wanting to give away too much about what you know about Ayane's private life.

Fortunately, you don't really need to; Kanna starts grumbling what she thinks of what you've already said and implied. The tone is angry, but the words you catch make it pretty clear that she's offended on Ayane's behalf.

Ayane gives the older woman another of those complicated looks, a mix of frustration, discomfort, and gratitude.

...she's really not used to having adults in her corner, is she? At least, not any adults other than her teacher, Genra, who she's had a consistently respectful and positive opinion of.

Giving the muttering Tokyo housewife a guarded glance, Ambrose turns back to you and explains that while he did commit the bulk of the Trials to magically-enhanced memory, he doesn't currently have any copies of the information. He's perfectly willing to create one - it will only take a few minutes, and he won't even ask a favor of you in return - but he needs to know how much of what happened in the Trials you feel comfortable with revealing to a bunch of ninjas.

You immediately discard the idea of sending a complete recording. None of your guests gave their permission for something like that, and you don't really have the time to ask - not to mention that several of them just left. The Shuzens would collectively refuse anyway, given the tensions you know to exist between them and the ninjas.


While a part of you would like to provide Ayane with as much information as she needs to blow the minds of her doubters and naysayers, it gets shouted down by the rest. You're dealing with a bunch of ninjas, and while at least some of them may be letting their personal biases get in the way of their professional conduct, that's no reason for you not to try and do better.

Besides, they'll probably treat you with a bit more respect for exercising a measure of proper information security, both in regards to your own capabilities, and for those of your guests.

Then there's the matter of the divinely-given rewards. Although you're hardly keen on denying the Goddesses acknowledgment for their involvement, you have to admit that calling attention to Ayane's new enchanted bag is probably not the best idea.
That would probably be wise.
Ambrose looks a little put out by your decision, but Ayane agrees that it is entirely reasonable.
It's annoying, is what it is.
In a tone that isn't quite a whine, the old wizard says, "If you don't want me showing off the fights, fine, but can I at least add shots of some of the more impressive monsters?"

With the information content decided upon, Ambrose plants the butt of his staff in the sand, holding it in the crook of his right arm as he fishes a small, mostly pink seashell out of some hidden pocket with his left hand. Holding the shell before him, he raises his right hand above it, fingers aimed downwards as if to grasp - but before his aura can do more than twitch, the wizard gives you a sharp glance, reaches up to take hold of his staff again, and sends a pulse of mana through it, causing a flash from the tip.

A shell of Illusion Magic forms around the wizard. You immediate recognize the Greater Spell to Create a Magic Aura.

Really, Ambrose?

And then, for good measure, he turns his back to you.

Really?

It takes Ambrose about a minute to cast whatever spell he had in mind on the shell. Although your passive magical senses can't penetrate the Magic Aura, you see small, hazy images swirling around the old man, as if flowing out of his head, down and around his shoulders, and into the item in the palm of his hand. Some of them are small enough that their translucent state renders them indistinct, but Diababa's vegetative bulk is easy to make out.

Midway through the process, Jermafencer reappears offshore.

When he's finished, Ambrose pulls his staff out of the sand and touches the head to the shell in his other hand. The Magic Aura shifts, as if moving from the staff to the seashell, but then fades from notice. To your passive senses, the shell is completely ordinary, even though you know Ambrose just cast a spell on it.

"Right, then," the wizard says cheerfully, as he turns around and holds the item out for Ayane to see. "I've anchored a Spell of Illusion to the shell that will project the events in question. When you want to activate it, hold the shell in your hand and say 'Play recording' in English. Just be sure that everyone you want to see the show is present and paying attention, because it'll only work the once."

Ayane nods. "Understood." She takes the seashell and tucks it away in one of her non-magical pouches, and then gives Ambrose a respectful bow. "Thank you, sir."

Ambrose matches the gesture with a gallant and archaic Western-style bow. "You're welcome, my dear."

With that out of the way, Ayane turns and joins the Hakubas in bowing and thanking you for having them at your party. You return the gesture and - with your Unseen Servants having already loaded up their luggage in the background - everyone boards the Death Coach for their trip to the Hakuba Shrine.

Next up - and the last to be leaving this morning - are the Hayashis, who will take two trips. Considering the order they arrived in, and the minor bit of trouble most of Emiko's older sisters got themselves into almost as soon as they were on Bali Ha'i, you expect their parents will be sending them home in the first group.

...then again, they may just make the quadruplets wait for the second trip, to leave them under Lady Takara's watchful eye a little longer.

Before you go check on the foxes, is there anything you want to say to Ambrose?


Allowing the ninjas to get a brief look at a selection of Hyrulean monsters doesn't cost you anything, or go against your responsibilities as a host in any way. From a very broad perspective, it could be said that you're actually living up to that duty, by giving Ayane's clan a friendly heads-up about things they might want to be on the lookout for.

Not that you think they're going to run into any of those creatures, but you can never be entirely sure of that. Summoning Magic can pull in the weirdest critters at times, even when the caster doesn't have a definitive link to them or the realm they originate from - your work at Gen's is proof enough of that. And on the off-chance that one of Ayane's kinsmen or co-workers runs into, say, King Dodongo, it might help them to know there's someone they can get into touch with for further information.

Granted, if that ever happens, some of the ninjas would probably suspect you of being involved, but given your use of summoned Hyruleans to date, you wouldn't really blame them for that. Plus, you'd honestly prefer that someone called your attention to Hyrulean monsters turning up independently of your efforts - even if they were rude about it - rather than being left in the dark about such things.

In any case, you see no real problem with Ambrose including some footage of the bigger, scarier things from the Trials.

...at least not until he starts cackling.

After the Death Coach has vanished in another green flash, you turn to Ambrose and thank him for helping you out with that last-minute request.

"I'm always happy to tweak some noses, lad," the wizard replies drolly. "And if, in the process, I get to take some of the pressure off a young lady in a tough spot... well, that's not a bad thing, either."

You give him a sharp glance at that, wondering just how much he knows or suspects about Ayane's home life.

Ambrose waves off your look. "No need to get suspicious on behalf of your ninja friend, lad; I don't know her story, and I'm not about to pry. As Lucia and Anna are both so fond of reminding me, a girl's entitled to her secrets. I just recognize some of the signs, is all."

...oh.

Well, that's... probably okay, then.

"On an unrelated note," you venture slowly, "have you thought of a way I could pay back that favor I owe you?"

"Oh, I've had all KINDS of ideas," Ambrose says with a grin. "But I think I'm going to save that one until I need it."

"Drawing it out as long as possible to inflict maximum suffering, huh?" Briar asks dryly.

"Of course!"

With another cackle, Ambrose turns and starts walking off.

Shaking your head - and privately reflecting that it's THAT sort of behavior that gives magic-users a bad rep - you gather up your Unseen Sevants and head back to the Mansions to meet up with the Hayashis.

When you arrive, there is a knot of furry-tailed forms and a heap of luggage gathered about one of the extradimensional doorways that line this part of the beach. All of the younger Hayashis appear to be present, but the adults are absent - though from the noises you can hear through the open portal, they're not far.

Emiko and one of her older sisters absently make room for you as you step closer and lean forward to listen in.

"-Inari's sake-"

"-don't wanna-"

"-a grown vixen-"

"-can't make me-"

"-in front of the children!"

Aside from the three raised female voices, there's also the peculiar high-pitched yipping sound of kitsune laughter that you've heard in short bursts a few times in the past, which must be coming from one of the older male foxes. You're not sure which one, though.

"What's going on?" you ask softly.

"Elder Mitsuki's making a fuss," the older kitsune replies, in a tone of quiet awe.

...

"...really?" you sigh.

Emiko hums in affirmation. "Something about not wanting to go back to dealing with clan politics and stinky cities. Mom and Auntie are trying to guilt her into it, Uncle hasn't stopped laughing the whole time-"

Ah. That explains it.

"-and Daddy is staying out of the argument and keeping his new Doom Chicken calm."

You reflexively shudder.

Yeah, that's a REALLY good call on Asamu's part.


Your sense of propriety informs you that you really shouldn't be eavesdropping on your guests, much less your kitsune guests, who are more likely than some of your other guests to notice, and more likely than most to visit an amusing punishment upon you. The best thing to do in this situation would be to take the luggage down to the landing area, and at least try to usher the girls along with you to spare them at least some of their elders' impending displeasure.

The rest of you tells propriety to hush, because it's distracting you from what's going on in the Hayashi Mansion. As you quiet your thoughts and focus, the distracting sounds of the waves breaking on the beach, the background noise of people and animals, and Uncle's ongoing foxy laughter are quickly shut out, leaving only the voices of the older Hayashi females.

"Honestly, Elder," Natsu huffs disapprovingly, "you're acting like one of my youngest when they don't want to eat their vegetables or have a bath. Have some dignity, for goodness' sake!"

"Dignity can go hang," Mitsuki shoots back. "I've been stuck being dignified ever since THAT old furball retired and dumped all his responsibilities on me - and that was over fifty years ago! Half a century, Natsu! Do you have any idea what it's like, trying to ride herd on the collected crazy of an entire clan of foxes for that long!?"

"Oh, I can take a guess..."

"You were mad enough to go through five pregnancies in the span of two decades," the Elder retorts flatly. "You have no one to blame for your misfortunes but yourself and your husband." There is a pause. "Speaking of whom: will you put that chicken down already, boy?"

"The yelling is making him nervous, Elder."

There is an ominous clucking.

Once again, you shudder.

"There, there," Asamu says soothingly. "The scary lady isn't yelling at you."

There is another, longer pause.

"However energetic they are, Natsu," Mitsuki continues, as if that little Cucco-related digression hadn't happened, "your kits still LISTEN to you when you put your foot down. Family heads and clan elders DON'T listen. They have authority and seniority, and they leverage both as an excuse to do whatever the hell they want - and as if dealing with THAT wasn't headache enough, I have to worry about inter-clan and inter-species politics besides."

"I see enough of monster politics at work to have some idea of why you would want to take a break, Elder," Hanabi interjects in a reasonable tone of voice. "But if you need time off so badly, why not just arrange it?"

"Because then I'd have to appoint a member of the clan council to take my place until I got back," Mitsuki groans. "Half of them are smart enough not to take the job even on a temporary basis, just in case I decide to run off for a decade or two like Kanami did, back before the Meiji Restoration. Most of the rest, I wouldn't trust with that much authority, whether because they're greedy, whimsical, too impressed with their own cleverness, or just incompetent. And the ones that might actually be able to do the job properly either already have their paws full with other important business, or aren't powerful enough to keep the rest of the lunatics in line."

As you take this in, you frown. If Elder Mitsuki has that much trouble finding someone to take over for her, how did she swing accepting your invitation?


While it would make an interesting thought exercise to consider the kind of arguments or leverage Elder Mitsuki might have applied to get her nominal peers and subordinates to grant her enough time off from her duties to attend your party, the fact remains that you're listening in, uninvited, on a conversation that doesn't directly concern you.

With that in mind, you dismiss your idle thoughts, do your best to stop paying attention to what the older foxes are saying, and turn your attention to the matter of sorting out which of the Hayashis will be the first to depart Bali Ha'i, and what pieces of luggage will be going with them.

"But I want to keep listening!" one of the quads complains in a low voice.

"I think we've all heard enough, Nina," the girl with the longest hair says. Rina, was it?

"Yeah, they're just getting into boring political stuff now," the short-haired Hina sighs.

"Besides," the last one, Mina, adds, "do you want to get caught, and have Her find out about it?"

"...on second thought," a suddenly pale Nina squeaks, "we really should be going, shouldn't we?"

Her three lookalikes nod as one, and all four turn to you and start pointing out which of the bags are theirs.

You direct your Unseen Servants accordingly.

When Asamu emerges from the Mansion a minute later - a bag in one hand and his Cucco nestled under the other arm - he casts a bemused glance at the row of suitcases floating down the beach after his four not-quite-fleeing daughters.

His two eldest send similar looks after their younger siblings.

"I don't think I've heard them snipe at each other this little since that time with the inuyoukai," Shinju comments wistfully.

"It's been a really nice couple of days, hasn't it?" Shinta agrees with a sigh. Turning to his father, the sole male scion of the Hayashi family asks, "Is there any chance we could invite Lady Takara over for a visit some time?"

"Basically none," Asamu admits with a nod.

"I figured as much," his son replies, echoing both tone and gesture. Then Shinta grins. "But we can still say you're thinking about doing it, right?"

"Oh, of course."

"You should probably leave that to Daddy and us girls, though, Shinta," Shinju advises. "Otherwise, when those four finally figure out the truth, they'll probably start teasing you about your taste in older women."

"...um," Shinta exclaims intelligently, while looking downright alarmed at the prospect.

Things eventually get sorted out. The four sisters are keen to leave Bali Ha'i and Lady Takara's area of immediate influence as soon as possible, and Asamu will once again be going with them to try and keep some semblance of control over the group. Emiko looks reluctant to accompany them as she did yesterday, right up until her brother tells her he's willing to trade seats, so she can spend a little more time visiting you.

Emiko's blush at that is very minor, though it intensifies when the twins notice it and croon a wordless "Oooo" at her.

While Emiko and her new pet fox Himitsu proceed to chase those two around the beach - threats about becoming the youngest sister again interspersed with cheerful yips - you thank the six soon-to-depart kitsune for their attendance and participation, and express your hope that everyone had a good time.

"I still say I got gypped with that joke book," Hina grumbles.

"No, you didn't," half her family disagrees.


"Take it as a challenge, and practice for the rematch."

You offer Hina your frank, fairly Dinnite advice, adding that she might want to look into humor from other cultures in addition to reading through the Hyrulean book of jokes. You know that some of what's considered funny in Japan comes across as bemusing or just plain incomprehensible to an American audience, and vice versa, and you definitely witnessed the same issue at work during Hina's Battle of Humor with the Keaton. By the same token, though, there are some gags that work across cultural lines. The broader Hina's understanding of comedy, the more likely she is to be able to figure out what would give her the edge against her opponent, even if it's a crude knock-knock joke or a tired old pun.

Though it does bear mentioning that an "old" joke becomes "new" again, when told to an audience that has never heard it before - and Earth and Hyrule are completely separate worlds, each with plenty of old jokes that no one from the other world has ever heard, so there's a lot of potential ammunition available.

Hina starts looking very thoughtful as you speak, and ends up retrieving the Book of Jokes from her luggage and flipping through it while you all wait for Jermafencer to return.

Her father and siblings, meanwhile, collectively send you a wounded look, mutely asking what they did to offend you, that you would unleash this trial upon them in return.

Even the Cucco is looking at you, and you really, really hope that's merely because of the fact that Asamu turned to face you, and the bird is too comfortable in its current position and too lazy to muster the effort to turn its soulless, dead-eyed gaze elsewhere.

"Does it help at all that I tried to aim her at the Keaton?" you ask, manfully not flinching even though you can feel the empty stare of the Hyrulean Doom Chicken crawling upon your skin.

"Not really," Emiko replies with a weary sigh. "Because she's going to practice on US from now until whenever it is that she gets her rematch."

...whoops?

The Death Coach flashes back into view before you can come up with a response to that, and you take the distraction the vehicle's return provides for all it's worth, focusing your attention on getting the luggage tied to the back of the carriage, and seeing the first half-dozen kitsune - and the Cucco - safely on their way home.

You are simultaneously relieved and chagrined to see Jermafencer momentarily pause when he catches sight of the bundle of feathers and malice tucked under Asamu's arm. The Knight of the Shadowed Mire makes no comment on the Cucco's presence, however, and resumes ushering his next group of passengers aboard without missing a beat - thus demonstrating his courage, his sense of tact, and his dedication to duty.

Though once the coach door swings shut behind Shinta, Jermafencer turns to you, leans down, and says, "If we hadn't already set the terms and the Goddesses hadn't been the ones to send it here, I'd be charging you extra for the Cucco, lad."

The Knight climbs back into his seat, flicks the reins, and sets off once more. The Death Coach rumbles across the sandy beach and out over the waves, to disappear in the same green flash-

"BUCKAW!"

-with a most unexpected accompaniment.

...

"...did... anyone else hear that chicken caw just now?" Emiko asks slowly.

The twins and Shinju silently raise their hands.

So does Briar.


You are somewhat reluctant to part with any of your hard-earned Rupees, particularly when Jermafencer just said he wasn't going to charge you extra for handling the Doom Chicken. However, the Cucco's presence aboard the Death Coach - and indeed, that of the other Goddess-given pets which will be following it - strikes you as one of those "letter of the agreement versus the spirit of the agreement" situations.

Knight of Hyrule or not, Jermafencer IS part Fae. Do you really want to exploit the technicalities of your very first deal with him, thus establishing the precedent that it's okay to do so, and giving him an excuse to treat you in kind in any future deals?

It takes no consideration at all for you to decide that no, you really don't.

A few Rupees is a small price to pay not to have to worry about that kind of thing.

"It was three Rupees a head, right?" you ask the Knight of the Shadowed Mire, as you dig into your pocket and pull out three Green Rupees.

Jermafencer regards you in silence for a moment, surprise visible even through his armor.

"It was," he agrees, before accepting the payment.

Spent 3 Rupees

You take a moment to check with him about the other animals - a fox, a dog, three bats, and a Remlit - as well as Kokoa's new fairy partner, but Jermafencer confirms that he's not going to charge you for them. Goddess-sent origins aside, they're all small enough (and cuddly enough) that space isn't likely to be an issue, and the Death Coach travels fast enough that the young animals are unlikely to make any unfortunate messes in the time it takes to reach their destinations.

The same can't exactly be said for the Cucco.

You join the rest of the group in raising your hand.

Out of the corner of one eye, you catch Himitsu the fox looking up from where he - or is it she? - sits attentively at Emiko's heel, regarding the six of you curiously before briefly raising one forepaw.

"And that makes it unanimous," Shinju notes with an amused glance at the little fox.

That seems to be the cue for the rest of you to lower your hands.

"On a related note," the eldest Hayashi adds, turning to you and Briar, "is there any way to calm one of those Cuckoo-chicken-things down, once it's freaked out?"

"'Cucco,'" you correct the older girl's pronunciation. "And... I'm not entirely sure, to be honest." You glance at Briar.

"They're not too bright," Briar replies, "so if you can get out of their line of sight and stay that way for about ten seconds, they usually forget about you and cool off - or at least go after the nearest thing that looks like you, instead. They're not particularly magic-resistant, either, but when they get angry enough to attack, they have a scary tendency to throw off spells meant to force calm, put them to sleep, or otherwise stop them from pecking you to death. Your best bet is probably just to turn invisible, or create an illusion that makes it look like you ran one way, when you're actually going the other."

...there is something positively surreal about a fox seeking advice from a fairy on how best to deal with an angry chicken.

Shaking your head at the strangeness of your life, you guide your Unseen Servants back up the beach to collect the remainder of the Hayashi family's luggage. Emiko goes with you, and her remaining sisters tag along.

Aside from Cuccos, is there anything else you want to talk with any of the Hayashis about before they leave?


You take your time heading back up the beach to the Mansions. Part of the reason for your relaxed pace comes from the fact that Jermafencer just left, but you're also concerned that Elder Mitsuki may not have completely recovered her usual composure.

Aside from that, you're just happy to spend a little more time talking to Emiko before she goes home, even if the conversation amounts to idle chatter, punctuated by a few teasing comments from the twins, flustered kitsune noises, and another failed attempt at sororicide.

The four Hayashi elders are waiting outside the Mansion when you arrive, the prior argument among the ladies ended and Uncle recovered from his laughing fit. Elder Mitsuki is back to her usual serious self, giving no sign of the mild tantrum she was throwing earlier beyond a certain glum cast to her features, and half-hearted glares being shot at the two younger vixens when you aren't looking directly at her.

You pretend not to notice any of it, instead ordering your Unseen Servants to collect the family's remaining luggage.

"Are we sure we have everything?" Natsu frets, half to herself. "Oh, I always feel like there's something I've forgotten to pack..."

"I can only imagine," her sister-in-law says, glancing at the bags and suitcases your invisible constructs are hauling off, and shaking her head.

"Relax, Mom," Shinju soothes her mother. "Dad's group had all their stuff with them when they left, and the 'Nas didn't freak out even once that they might be leaving something behind."

"That might have been because they were in such a hurry to get away from Lady Takara, though," Emiko observes.

Her mother buries her face in her hands, groaning something about shame.

Shinju glares. "Not helping, Little Sis."

"...sorry."

To try and ease Mrs. Hayashi's original concern, you go ahead and dispel the Mansion that the younger Hayashis were staying in, as anything that was brought into the extradimensional space after its creation and not removed should fall out when it dissipates. You can't repeat this trick with the adults' quarters, as Lady Takara's room is in there as well, and she's not leaving until later today. Instead, you set that Mansion's servants to making a last-minute check of the place for anything which doesn't belong and isn't obviously Takara's.

As it happens, the younger kitsune did miss a few things when they were packing, including three mismatched socks, a pair of shorts, half a dozen seashells-

"Oops," the twins chorus abashedly.

-and a magazine with some Japanese pop star you don't recognize on the cover.

"That will be Nina's," Natsu sighs, clucking her tongue. "I swear, that girl..."

The search of the adult kitsunes' rooms doesn't turn up anything, but it is possible that the servants missed something - even with the improvements you made over the standard Magnificent Mansion's staff, their awareness is pretty simplistic. Just in case, you promise Mrs. Hayashi to send on anything that is left behind when you dispel the Mansion later, and that Takara doesn't claim.

With that settled, you escort the second Hayashi party down to the waiting zone.

Emiko spends the last few minutes fidgeting nervously and blushing about something, and when the Death Coach returns, she fumbles through her farewell to you before hurrying aboard ahead of everyone else - only to cry out "Waaaaiiiit!" in sudden protest as her aunt is about to close the door.

"Emiko?" you ask, as the fox-girl runs back over to you. "Did you forget something?"

"I did? I-I mean, I did! And it's, um, well, waaa..."

Trembling, yet resolute, Emiko suddenly lunges forward to give you a hug.

"Ha-ha-happy b-birthday, Alex," she stammers.

And then, before you can say anything in reply, Emiko lets go, turns, and flees into the carriage with an embarrassed noise.


"...so, I'll return the hug on your birthday, then?"

You stand there in silence for a moment, before raising one hand and calling out, "...so, I'll return the hug on your birthday, then?"

From inside the Death Coach comes a slightly muffled, "Hwa-wa-waaa!" of reply.

That's not a no.

Jermafencer retakes his place on the driver's seat, and looks your way. "I'll see you again in two hours, Young Alexander."

"Until then, Sir Knight," you agree, nodding.

That will be one in afternoon on Bali Ha'i, which is about six in the evening in L.A. That's not a bad time for Beryl and Cecilia to return home - at least not since the clocks skipped ahead byan hour over the weekend, pushing sunset to somewhere after seven o'clock. You'll be teleporting your family and friends from Sunnydale home around that time as well, making two round trips due to the number of people involved and the fact that you, personally, need to return to Bali Ha'i afterwards to see to your remaining guests and the post-party cleanup.

Before you move on to lunch, howeer, there is still one more group of guests who will be leaving Bali Ha'i this morning, and you head up the beach again to meet them.

You're two-thirds of the way back to the Mansions when you meet Balthazar and the Stutlers coming from the other direction, their suitcases floating along - well, wobbling along, really - just ahead of Dave, who has a look of concentration on his face. Not particularly intense concentration, mind you; just enough that it's apparent.

"-ways to do it, though," the Sorcerer of the Seven Hundred and Seventy-Seventh degree is saying to his apprentice's mother, as she eyes her son and the levitating luggage with an expression of speculative curiosity. "The simplest method is essentially a form of telekinesis, using the strength of your will to move matter instead of your muscles. Since most people can't do that kind of thing naturally, the spell comes with a lot of built-in limitations to protect them, like not letting you move more than five pounds at a time, not working on more than one object at a time, and only generating force as long as you maintain your focus. As you can see, this is a couple of steps up from that." He pauses to send a nod your way. "Good morning, Alex."

"Good morning, Balthazar, Mrs. Stutler," you reply, nodding in kind to the two adults, who you hadn't seen so far today. "Keeping it together, there, Dave?"

"What, this?" your fellow American sorcerer replies, indicating the suitcases with a thumb. "I've levitated twice this weight much while dodging plasma bolts. After that, this is no-"

On cue, one of the suitcases dips towards the sand.

"-oooh boy, don't you dare, don't do it, come on, back up, back up!"

"There is a difference between levitating a single heavy object, and multiple lighter ones," Balthazar notes. "Isn't that right, Alex?"

You have to nod. It's not necessarily easier or harder, it's just difficult in a different way.

Nancy Stutler nods thoughtfully - and rather interestingly, doesn't remark on Dave's mention of "dodging plasma bolts."

Did she already know about that, or does she just not realize what's involved?

Although they aren't taking the Death Coach back to New York, Balthazar means to cast the Spell of Teleportation at the same spot on the beach where you've been landing since your first visit to Bali Ha'i. It's partly a show of manners towards Kahine and the other spirits, essentially going out their "front door" instead of through a "window" or "wall," but there's also the fact that performing a long-range group teleport will be made that little bit easier and safer by tapping into the sympathy for such an action that your repeated comings and goings have built up on that spot.

Since there's no great rush, Balthazar takes the opportunity to provide a lesson for his apprentice, laying out the fiery spectacle of the Merlin Circle around himself with a sweep of one arm, and advising Dave to, "Watch closely, now," before beginning the ritual.

"Oh, wow," Nancy murmurs in amazement, looking at the burning circle with its arcane characters. "Can you do that yet, Dave?"

"Still working on it, Mom," Dave replies, as he focuses on what his teacher is doing.


If Mrs. Stutler already knows about Balthazar's mildly-sadistic training methods and feels no need to comment upon them in public, then you should take your cue from her and let the subject lie.

And if the lady doesn't know what "dodging plasma bolts" implies, well, you're not going to be the kind of friend who spills the beans and gets your friend and his teacher into trouble with the parental authority.

...you might want to be the friend who warns his friend to be more carefully about what he says around his mom, though. Assuming you can find or make an opening to do so without her hearing - like, for example, offering Dave a few tips on levitation, and then falling back a few steps to speak quietly?

A master of the mystic arts is demonstrating an advanced technique for his apprentice, while also putting on a bit of show for the apprentice's mother in the process. As a fellow practitioner - albeit of a completely different tradition - it is only polite for you to stand back and not comment on the lesson unless or until someone asks you for your thoughts on the subject matter.

That this also allows you to focus more of your attention on what Balthazar is doing is just a convenient side-benefit.

Watching the Sorcerer of the Seven Hundred and Seventy-Seventh Degree at work doesn't grant you any groundbreaking insights into the field of Summoning Magic. After all, Balthazar is just casting the Greater Spell of Teleportation, which is one you've had in your personal repertoire for a while now, and have gotten plenty of practice with. That's not to say that seeing how someone else performs that particular piece of spellwork doesn't help you advance your grasp of that field of magic, because it does, but the progress you make is very minor compared to what it once might have been.

The real opportunity here is seeing Balthazar cast a high-level spell in the Merlinean style, with all the bells and whistles: ritual casting; the presence of the Merlin Circle; and most significantly, no particular effort on his part to hide what he's doing or how he's doing it, as that would defeat the purpose of demonstrating the spell for Dave.

It's not the first spell you've ever seen Balthazar cast, but it IS the first time he's been this open in his use of magic around you, and you don't waste the opportunity.

One thing you note is that Balthazar remains facing a particular arc of the Circle - and the symbol within it - for the entire ritual. He "reaches" - metaphorically, metaphysically, and literally - into some of the other arcs in the process of shaping the mana, but the bulk of the spell matrix that he assembles remains centered over that one sign.

Another detail, rather more concerning than the first, is that Balthazar is very mystically "open" when he's casting like this, reaching out with his inherent power - which isn't inconsiderable by the standards of anyone that isn't Ganondorf - to grasp the greater flows of energy around him in a way that has your Hyrulean-based, Hellmouth-conditioned instincts flinching. If not for the presence of the Merlin Circle, he'd be completely exposed to any passing mystical entity or localized influence.

The stylistic differences don't end there. When you use ritual casting to supplement your internal reserves, you deliberately limit yourself to shaping energy in your immediate vicinity, never allowing any of it to enter your system. That's why there's a limit to how many spells you can cast in any given area over a period of time, even when you're standing on top of a leyline or a similar source of mana; you eventually exhaust all the ambient energy, and have to wait for it to replenish from the greater sources. It's a method that has its drawbacks, but considering that it lets you keep your defenses up while casting and doesn't introduce more Hellmouth crud or other contaminants into your system, you're perfectly happy with it.

Balthazar isn't directly linked to Bali Ha'i's energies. That would be suicide even on a perfectly mundane actively volcanic island, much less one so spiritually-charged. Instead, he's linked to the Merlin Circle, which is linked to the ambient energies, which are in turn NOT being drained in the manner you employ, but instead used as a kind of relay to the greater external mana sources. Sympathy upon sympathy, like calling to like - and the result is not only an incredible supply of power, but a near-nonexistent impact on the local levels of ambient mana.

While you're grappling with that discovery, a third point catches your attention: the Merlin Circle that Balthazar conjured up with a wave of his arm is linked in a much more direct fashion to something else, something that isn't on Bali Ha'i at all. That connection gradually grows stronger and clearer as his spell takes shape, until you can almost feel whatever it is on the other side.

It feels like another Circle, only... more so.

Balthazar stops abruptly, the matrix hovering around him having reached the point of near-completion. All that's required is for him to shape one last arc of mana, and the "circuit" of the spell will be closed, allowing the power from the Merlin Circle to surge through and properly trigger the magic.

Holding the spell there with a simple act of will, Balthazar exits the Circle. "Right, then; we're all set to go. Alexander, it's been a lovely couple of days, your Goddesses are awesome in the classic sense of the word, and I hope to see you in the Arcana Cabana again some time soon."
...wait, is that a good thing, or not?
"I'll be around eventually," you assure the elder sorcerer, even as you ponder his remark about the Goddesses. "I may even wear the Old Man Shoes."

Dave bows his head with a sigh.

Balthazar smirks, and turns to your partner. "Briar, a pleasure, as always, and good luck keeping him in one piece."

"Thanks," your partner says, with full feeling.

Balthazar gathers up his suitcase with his left hand, and rests the other on Dave's shoulder. The apprentice handles his own luggage, while his mother mirrors Balthazar on his right.

"Bye, Alex," Dave says.

"Thank you for having us," his mother adds.

"You're welcome," you reply.

And then Balthazar finishes his spell, the Merlin Circle flares, and the three of them disappear.

A moment later, the Circle's green flame gutters out, leaving only wisps of smoke and blackened lines in the sand.


Nodding to yourself, you fall back a bit and (with just enough volume for Mrs. Stutler to hear it, if she's listening in) ask Dave if he'd like a few pointers on levitating multiple objects at once.

"I... think I've got it, Alex," Dave replies. "But thanks for the offer."

You nod, as if accepting that decision, but quietly murmur, "Is it okay for you to talk about being shot at in front of your mother?"

The other boy blinks, and then yelps as the suitcases collectively waver.

"No, no, no, come on, keep it together..."

You wince and watch as Dave slowly wrestles his telekinetic burden back into stability.

"Sorry about that," you apologize.

"No, it's fine," Dave answers. "And, yeah, Mom already knows. She's not exactly THRILLED at the idea of Balthazar throwing tiny lightning bolts at me just to make sure I'm paying attention, but she prefers that to me being so wrapped up in my own spellcasting that I walk into traffic or something someday. Plus, she does aerobics, so she's not exactly a stranger to the idea that training can leave you feeling a little sore."

Well, that clarifies that, at least.

Once Balthazar and the Stutlers are off, you check the time, and decide to head back to the dining area. It's only about twenty minutes after eleven, but lunch was scheduled to be held a little early today on account of the Californian guests needing to be home before dark, and how the time zone differences work out.

With the departure of nearly half of your mortal guests, there's a certain sense of closure and finality hanging in the air as people start showing up for the last formal meal of your birthday bonanza. The boisterous, anticipatory mood of the third batch of Memorians - who apparently decided to wait until this afternoon to go hunting - doesn't really help to offset the absence of certain energetic individuals, instead calling attention to the fact that Isshin, Akkiko, and the Hayashis are no longer on the island. Your own opening remarks, consisting of another round of thanks for everyone who chose to attend your party, and a quick breakdown of the departure schedule over the rest of the day, honestly isn't any better.

But, you reflect, all good things must come to an end. And there is no question in your mind that your ninth birthday was a good thing.

...though it's also not quite over yet.

Stepping down from the stage, you join Grandmaster Wen and several other brave souls who've heard about the Great Island Curry Challenge and want to try their luck - namely your dad, Sokka, Larry, Elder Terok, Koron, Madam Lanora, Batreaux, and Akua.

Fortunately (or perhaps not), Shaman Keoni was prepared for this, and has cooked a generous batch of his Green Fire Curry, which bubbles and steams in its pot in a manner that reminds you rather uncomfortably of those active lava flows you saw during the Trials.

Judging from the guarded looks crossing the faces of your fellow competitors, you aren't the only one to notice the resemblance, or just to be put off in general. Even Wen seems a little taken aback.

Keoni sees your responses, and grins. "The secret ingredient," the ghostly chef proclaims proudly, as he ladles the concoction onto waiting plates of rice, "is love."

As your plate is set before you, you catch a whiff of the curry - and while the hot, rich vapors rising off of it smell positively tantalizing, they also seem to be making the air about them warp.

...is he sure it's love he put into this, and not actually spite and malice instead? Because you're something of an expert on the subject, and you'd much sooner believe that this glowing substance was an Incarnation of Hatred than something like a Heart Container.

Warily, you reach for your spoon.

Assuming you don't melt your tongue off or spend too long recovering, is there anyone you'd like to talk to at lunch?


As you scoop up a small amount of Keoni's curry and rice, your eyes wander from the glowing dish to the nearby glass of milk - and the pitcher beyond - as well as the plate of sliced and buttered bread, and the bowls of a pale brown powder that you've been told is a mix of salt and sugar. The rules of the challenge are such that if you sample any of the three before cleaning your plate, you have conceded defeat. Likewise, the energy-manipulators among you have agreed that using ki, youki, mana, or the like to reinforce your tongue and mouth is grounds for immediate disqualification.

Even so, the presence of the supposed spice-retardants brings you some comfort - and also a measure of puzzlement as to where, exactly, a couple of them were acquired from. The bread is no mystery; you saw Keoni and his assistants gathering the ingredients in the days leading up to the party, and they've been cooking it fresh each morning. The salt was likewise processed from the ocean as part of the preparations for the party, and has been available at every meal. The milk and the sugar, on the other hand...

Well, you're pretty certain that there are no cows on Bali Ha'i, but you don't recall seeing any sheep or goats, either, or hearing anything about them. And there was no sugar available before this, leaving you drawing a bit of a blank as to where it could have come from.

The only answer that comes to mind is that the ghosts followed your lead and fetched the milk and sugar from the Mansions, just as you did Wen's breakfast curry.

...aaaand you're stalling.

You take a deep breath, brace yourself, and then eat the first spoonful of curry.

...

Hmmm. The dish is not as hot, temperature-wise, as it might have appeared, and as far as the spices go, there's a tingle of two, maybe three flavors you aren't really familiar with, but which complement each other rather well. Overall, it's tasty, but you don't see why Keoni was making such a fuss-

!

-oh, there it goes. A pleasant, tingly kind of "burn," which goes well with the blend of flavors-

!

-oh, dear. There is now a fire on your tongue, as the flavors flare strongly-

!

-make that a Fireball filling your mouth, bringing tears to your eyes and a sheen of sweat to your face-

!

-no, make that a VOLCANIC ERUPTION, burning its way along your throat and nasal passages, oh, Goddesses, WHY-!
Hang in there, Golden Boy!
"Hoooo-wheeee!" you hear your father exclaim. "That's the good stuff!"
Yeah, are you going to let some measly PLANTS do you in?
It's with all due filial piety that you stare at your father, wordlessly asking him if he's crazy.
Why do mortals insist on doing things like this to themselves?
"Glaaaargh," Sokka comments.

Right there with you, Boomerang Boy.

Larry is already going for the bread.

Your empty hand twitches in that direction as well.

"Oooh, ZESTY!" Batreaux chortles.

Of COURSE the former demon likes it. The infernal heat and the WAILING OF DAMNED SOULS probably remind him of old times!

"I could do without the meat," Koron admits, "but it's good stuff, all the same."

How is the wood Fae not ON FIRE!?

Akua says nothing, but takes a second spoonful.

If you didn't know she wasn't human before this, that would have been all the evidence you needed.


Your lips twist as the spicy burn ravages your delicate mouth. Pride and practicality go to war amid the raging inferno that is your taste buds, while the Goddesses look down and weep-
We do not!
-no, wait, that's YOUR tears and sweat. Din above, you put the incendiary curry INSIDE your mouth, so why is it that the EXTERIOR of your face feels like it's about to melt off?!
If you'd been born on Hyrule, I'd say, "Because it's more amusing this way." As it stands, your guess is as good as mine.
"You okay there, Alex?" your father asks from his place to your left.

You turn, and through the liquid sheen, make out the motion of another spoonful of the Green Fire - and boy, do you EVER have an appreciation for the source of that name now! - entering your old man's mouth.

He... he IS human, right? You haven't overlooked some streak of monstrous or demonic ancestry in your own family for all this time, have you?

"If it's too hot for you, just take a drink or eat some of the bread," Tony advises. There is not a hint of pride or scorn in his tone, only honest fatherly concern, and for a moment, you're tempted to take the excuse of doing as your father tells you to and running with it.

But no. If he can put this flame in semi-liquid form on his tongue and not only endure it without complaint, but actively enjoy the stuff, you can do the same!

Probably!

Wait, it's doing something new, oh, Goddesses, what now-

!

-whoa.

Oooh.

Your mouth still feels like it's melting down, but the mix of flavors you sensed earlier - before they were consumed by the HEAT - has come roaring back, and now there are new subtleties you hadn't noticed before.

It's... not bad.

Actually, it's pretty good.

But you can't help but wonder: was there truly no way to achieve this burst of tastiness without the epic burn?

Gained Pain Threshold C (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)

As you savor the full flavor of Keoni's Green Fire Curry, your gaze drifts to your competitors in the Great Island Curry Challenge, and then back to your own mostly-full plate. You're at least a spoonful behind everyone other than Larry and Sokka at this point, and the latter - his own face glistening around a determined grimace - has just dipped his spoon into the steaming mass of spicy doom.

...perhaps the second taste won't be as overwhelming as the first?

You scoop up a mouthful, and-

!

-it's still as hot as any flame you've personally summoned or encountered, but either your taste buds are getting accustomed to the sensation or are just too numb to register it anymore, because the painful edge has been dulled, leaving only the flavorful mélange.

There is less of a delay between the second taste and the third, but you have to pause before going back for your fourth bite, in order to wipe your face.

Is that normal?

"You get used to it," your father counsels.

You're not sure you want to.

Sokka, meanwhile, has given up and gone for the milk.

"It tastes like pain," he groans, after chugging down half a glass.

Akua tsks. "Baby."

And then she eats another spoonful.

"It actually tastes more like SUFFERING," Batreaux interjects. "I can understand why you mistook the one for the other, young warrior, they're very similar flavors, but there's a subtle distinction between the two: the former is a momentary sensation; the latter LINGERS. And then there's the BURST of DELIGHT afterwards, OOOOH, such a wondrous contrast! MY COMPLIMENTS TO THE CHEF!"

The grinning Keoni takes a modest bow. "You are too kind. More?"

"PLEASE!" Batreaux exclaims, holding forth his- Goddesses above, HOW did he clean his plate that fast?!

Several of your fellow contestants have paused to regard Batreaux with varying degrees of surprise, confusion, and suspicion. It's Larry who says, "Pain... and suffering... have FLAVORS."

"INDEED."

"How do you know this?" Sokka asks.

"My personal history is, shall we say, COMPLICATED."

The next person to bow out is Koron, who comments that, as tasty as the Green Fire is, he only has so much room in his stomach. Akua follows suit shortly afterwards, echoing the Kokiri's remark - but also reaching for the bowl of sugar and salt. Your father follows Batreaux's lead in accepting a second serving, but asks that it be only half-sized.

"I know my own limits," he says. "Any more than that, and I'll be paying for it."
I suppose it's better to show SOME Wisdom than none at all.
These resignations have narrowed the field to Grandmaster Wen, Elder Terok, Batreaux, Madam Lanora, and yourself. You're still working on your first plate by the time everyone else has moved on to their second, with Batreaux being close to starting his third, and none of the ascended entities show any particular signs of slowing down.


You're going to take a page from your father's book, here, and restrict yourself to the one plate of the Green Fire. It's important for you to have a realistic grasp on your own limits, and you're not used to food this spicy, so you can't be sure how well your body is going to handle the rest of the digestion process.

After all, you DO have plans for later, which could be compromised if you're suffering from indigestion or similar unpleasantness.

Besides, finishing a single plate of Keoni's masterpiece without the aid of milk, butter, or sugar will put you ahead of Larry and Sokka, and just about even with Akua and Koron, who finished faster but had cultural and/or species advantages over you in this Challenge. You can take a measure of satisfaction in that.

The next participant to opt out of the competition is Elder Terok, who finishes a third bowl before stating that, spicy or not, there's only so much organic food an old Goron can stomach.

"Now, if there was a bit of lava curry, it would be a different story," Terok adds, glancing at the shaman with a hint of a hopeful expression.

Keoni blinks, and admits he has no idea how to cook such a dish.

Terok sighs and nods, not really surprised. Most other races are simply not built to deal with Goron cuisine.

Next to bow out is Grandmaster Wen. He finishes three bowls of the Green Fire as well, but admits that he's simply stuffed.

That leaves Madam Lanora and Batreaux. Where the former demon is clearly relishing the heat and flavor of the Green Fire, the Zora priestess hardly seems affected by it. That said, she can't keep up with the enthusiastic pace at which Batreaux is eating the stuff - and if you're being completely honest, you doubt her stomach is physically capable of holding as much as his. He's just too big.

In the end, after four bowls, Lanora gracefully bows out, leaving Batreaux - by then on his SIXTH bowl - the undisputed winner.

"OOOOH!"

Your sorcery tutor rises from his seat, bows to his fellow competitors, then to the audience - and then pauses, turns his head to one side, and belches a plume of flame.

"Pardon me for that bit of unsightliness," he apologizes, as he thumps his chest and coughs up a thin cloud of pale smoke.

Many eyes turn from Batreaux, to the curry, and then to Keoni.

The shaman waves his hands defensively. "I swear, that almost never happens."

...

...is it just you, or does the phrase "almost never" have a worrying ring of frequency to it?

Perhaps it's just as well that you stopped eating the curry when you did.

Regardless, the Great Island Curry Challenge is over, and with the spectacle passed, the rest of your guests get on with their lunch. While those who will be staying after this carry on much as they have at previous meals, chatting over the food and taking their time to enjoy certain dishes, there is a certain air of haste about those who are to depart Bali Ha'i, a drive to finish eating and get on with any last-minute packing and farewells - though in some faces, you see reluctance to leave.

In most cases, that expression is paired with grim determination, the unspoken acknowledgment of all Sunnydale residents for the need to get home before dark.

Beryl has a similar look, which makes you wonder about the supernatural side of Los Angeles.

Following lunch, you head down to the landing zone to re-summon Jermafencer and begin ritual-casting the Spell of Teleportation, while Briar leads a procession of Unseen Servants to fetch the first half-dozen of your Californian guests to depart. Aside from Beryl and Cecilia, this includes your dad, Moblin, Mrs. Madison, Amy, and Lu-sensei.

Holding your completed spell long enough to see Beryl and Cecilia on their way aboard the Death Coach, you wait for the green flash before forming everyone and their luggage into a circle, joining hands, and teleporting to the old gas station.

-flying/falling/sinking through a strange space/medium/awareness filled with familiar shapes/alien geometries and faint/loud chorus/discordance and a near/distant green energy/presence oh hey-

Once there, you take the two shrunken cars out of your pocket - where they've been sitting in cloth form for the last couple of days - place them on the asphalt a safe distance apart, and undo your spell. The vehicles resume their original forms, and while Lu-sensei keeps an eye on the surrounding area, your father and Mrs. Madison check to see if being turned into fabric has had any negative impact on the cars' ability to start.

It didn't, and you doubted it would, but better to be sure.

While they begin packing away the luggage, you quickly teleport back to Bali Ha'i-

-flying/falling/sinking through a strange space/medium/awareness filled with familiar shapes/alien geometries and faint/loud chorus/discordance and a near/distant green energy/presence back already-

-pick up your mother, Zelda, Cordelia, Larry, and his grandmother, and then teleport back to California-

-flying/falling/sinking through a strange space/medium/awareness filled with familiar shapes/alien geometries and faint/loud chorus/discordance and a near/distant green energy/presence what, again-

-where everyone except Lu-sensei piles into the waiting cars.

There's a bit of a delay when Zelda notices you aren't getting into the car with the rest of your family, but fortunately, she doesn't throw a tantrum or anything. When you explain that no, you're not coming home just yet, and yes, you will be "sleeping over" on the island one more night, and YES, your parents knew about this and have (reluctantly) agreed to it, Zelda dons a scowl and stomps the rest of the way into the waiting car, slamming the door harder than is really necessary and sitting there in a sulk.

As the cars pull out, you begin ritually-casting a Spell to Dispel Magic, aimed at clearing up the lingering magical energy of the three rapid teleports you just performed. Once that's done, you recast the Spell of Teleportation the long way one final time, trading wordless nods with your teacher before he disappears in a blur of ki-enhanced speed, while you-

-flying/falling/sinking through a strange space/medium/awareness filled with familiar shapes/alien geometries and faint/loud chorus/discordance and a near/distant green energy/presence seriously?-

-return to the island and go looking for the Memorians.

It's time to hunt some boars.

You'll be using some of the equipment that was prepared for yesterday's hunt, but do you have a plan for the hunt beyond that?


You don't have any proper experience with hunting in this lifetime. Gathering reagents in the wild, yes, and adventuring, certainly, but while all three tasks have certain elements in common, they still aren't quite the same.

In your experience, "adventuring" boils down to wandering around until you find something interesting, or it finds you. Your approach to gathering reagents has been similarly opportunistic for the most part, except for those occasions when you've purchased what you needed from a supplier - mainly Gen and the various critters you've called up to bargain with on his behalf - or done some sort of extended trade - as with Shaman Tiriaq and the Glacial Ice.

Money is obviously not going to be much help to you in this situation, and while you could wander around blindly and hope you run into a boar, that's not really the best way to go about things when you're dealing with a moving target that has a whole island to potential roam about. You also intend to limit your use of magic and your other supernatural abilities; you won't be discarding them entirely, of course, but you would prefer to keep to using those powers as learning aids, rather than making them do all the work for you.

With that in mind, it really is for the best if you stick with the Memorians and do as they do, minus the whole phasing through solid objects bit.

When you arrive at the miniature outdoor armory where all the equipment for the hunt was returned after yesterday's hunt, you find more than Memorians there ahead of you. Word about the extension of the Great Island Boar Hunt seems to have gotten around among your remaining guests at some point, and several of your living associates have turned up now to inquire about joining in - either again, or for the first time.

Kahine is there, and states that she doesn't have any particular issue with this, as long as everyone keeps her quota in mind. As such, you don't see an issue with it yourself.

When Sokka finds out that you're going along this time, he immediately insists on joining you. He's not the only one; Altria and Kahlua both express similar interests, now that there isn't a Great Island Triathlon competing for the same time slot.
Also, a certain young fox is no longer hanging around to compete for a certain someone's attention.
Leaving that aside for the moment, you pull on one of the reinforced vests that all the living, non-vampire hunters will be wearing, and then select a spear for yourself. Sokka and Altria both offer you some advice in the process, and you go through three different weapons before you find one that feels comfortable in your hands, though even then, a part of you still isn't satisfied - the spear seems too light around the head.

Shaking off the by-now familiar grumbling from Ganondorf - and wondering, not too deeply, what sort of spear he would have preferred - you turn to the matter of your would-be hunting partners.


You are not an idiot. You are perfectly aware that if you ask Altria or Sokka to be your hunting partner, Kahlua will be a little put out - if for different reasons. Altria probably wouldn't object if you teamed up with Sokka, who has prior experience with hunting in general and (after the previous day's events) boar-hunting in particular, but she might be less sanguine if you decided to go with Kahlua, who hasn't done this before and - judging from her lack of preparation compared to the rest of you - means to stick to vampiric methods, which won't be of much help to you.

Meanwhile, after his obvious disappointment at missing a chance to hunt with you yesterday AND his clear eagerness to make up for that today, Sokka seems likely to end up sulking if you opt out of teaming up with him. But if you DID pick him to be your hunting partner, he'd pretty much be guaranteed to say something that would annoy both girls.

Instead, you suggest that the four of you work together. Not only will this forestall a bunch of unnecessary drama, it should also make the hunt a bit safer for all of you.

There are no serious objections to this plan-

Kahlua pouts for a moment.

Sokka grumbles about "hunting with girls."

Altria joins Kahlua in glaring at Sokka, but otherwise thinks it's a fine idea.

-so you go ahead with it. Hakoda goes with you, and though he's wearing a vest and armed with a spear, the way he carries the latter supports his statement that he's mostly coming along to make sure you kids don't get in over your heads. Several of the islander ghosts join your party as well, and will be acting as your beaters, using their ghostly abilities - particularly in the field of making eerie noises - to compensate for the lack of traditional hunting dogs.

As the entire hunting party marches out towards the boars' territory, you make a point of asking the more experienced hunters for tips on how to identify and track prey. While most of the ensuing advice is understandably focused on how to recognize and follow boar sign, your assorted seniors point out a few other tracks and traces left by different animals native to Bali Ha'i, and even sketch a few rough examples of those for common game animals and predators not found on the tropical island.

"It's always better to know what the local carnivores' tracks look like ahead of time," Hakoda recounts with a wry note. "If only so you know which way NOT to go."

There's a story in there, you suspect.

Other lessons, like staying downwind of your quarry (not to mention what "downwind" actually IS), minding your footing, and just paying attention to your surroundings, are the sort of thing that will be applicable in general. You pay close attention to it all, using a mix of magic, ki, and your rudimentary psychic abilities to improve your retention and later recall of the information.

Gained Survival F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)

At a certain point, the larger hunt begins to break up into smaller parties. Most of the Memorians go off in a single group, while your five-person band and accompanying islanders head off in a different direction. One of the Bali Ha'ians joins Hakoda in leading the way, the two of them putting their heads together, low to the ground, at regular intervals. They stop several times to ask you and your peers what you think, giving you all a bit of practical experience at reading trail-sign.

At one point, you even give tracking by scent a go, but you only get about ten feet that way before realizing you've lost the trail.

Eventually, your guides stop, having found what they consider to be a good area for a group of hunters to set up. It's on the edge of a moderately large glade, where you'll be able to use the scrub for cover, while still being able to see the boars coming as they cross the grassy open space ahead of you. The trees will provide additional cover, "harder" than that of the low-lying bushes, and several of them are both sturdy enough and have sufficiently low-laying branches that you and the other kids will have no trouble scrambling up into them in case of an emergency.

Kahlua looks a bit disbelieving at that, but Hakoda assures her - and includes the rest of you in that, even though Sokka is already nodding in sage agreement with his father - that this is an important consideration when hunting wild pigs in the traditional manner, even for monsters.

"In some species of boar, the adult males can grow to be more than a meter tall at the shoulder, and weigh over three hundred kilograms," the Water Tribe Chieftan says seriously. "That's plenty of muscle to make them dangerous even to us, particularly when they're as angry as a boar being hunted gets - and that's before taking supernatural influences into account. Now, it's true that none of the pigs we saw yesterday were close to being that big, but the adults and some of the older juveniles are still large enough to be a threat, especially to you kids, and this island has enough spiritual activity on it that there might be larger or more powerful boars we didn't spot still running about. So, best to take precautions."

With that in mind, you pick out spots near to the trees from which to wait, watch, and ambush your quarry. Kahlua actually ends up climbing one of the trees, both to act as a lookout and to try hitting a boar from above.

You have no idea if that's going to work, but you wish her luck all the same. Worse comes to worst, she IS wearing the Warrior-Princess Bracers.

As you wait, you wonder what sort of boar you'll take down first. Hakoda advised against trying for any of the piglets; it's early enough in the year that the ones he's seen are too small to be worth the effort, and it just gives their mothers an opening to express their displeasure anyway. Better to stay hidden and quiet and let them pass unchallenged, saving your energy for juveniles, sows without young, or the adult males.


The prospect of bringing down a fully-grown male boar appeals to your sensibilities, both for the bragging rights that would ensue and because - as a follower of the Goddess of Power - it would be a suitable test of your abilities.
Yes. Yes, it would.
And yet, as you stand there in the shadow of your chosen "emergency tree," you find your thoughts wandering to the theoretical mystically-enhanced boars that Hakoda briefly commented on.
But that would be even better.
Logically, you know that the odds of such a beast existing on Bali Ha'i are not that great. You've heard a few of the local legends from the ghosts over the days and weeks you've been working with them to prepare for the party, and as part of the entertainment besides, and while they did have a few good hunting stories to tell, supersuid monsters never came up - which, given that they knew the Great Island Boar Hunt was going to be a thing, they probably should have.

That said, the ghosts' knowledge wasn't exactly current. Even the youngest of them is a couple of centuries old, from before the time when Bali Ha'i's spiritual barrier weakened and its people began to suffer from piracy; the ghosts of that era, when distrust of outsiders was high, were not inclined to answer your summons. Since that's the period when the local population started its final decline into effective extinction, it's possible that some boar which would have been hunted down in better times instead lived to be old enough, strong enough, and - boars being boars - just plain mean enough for exposure to the island's strong spiritual energies to start making it more than a mundane pig.

Of course, if THAT was the case, you would have expected Kahine to have mentioned it when you proposed the Great Island Boar Hunt in the first place, whether as the ultimate prize for the hunters to set their sights on, or as a roaming hazard they'd need to be alert for. For the spirit of the entire island to have said nothing on the subject of overgrown mystical boars kind of implies that there isn't one here.

...and yet, you can't help but hope otherwise.
Hehehe.
After all, Bali Ha'i has been very good about helping you and your guests find the places and even the people that you wanted to see, when you wanted to see them; would it really be that much of a stretch for it to guide you to its largest native boar? Or, since you're not currently moving, to send such a beast to you? Particularly when your Aura of Power skews probability and draws strong creatures and strange chances your way?

Your thoughts are interrupted by a sudden, savage roar that sounds like it could have come from a lion.

Out of the corner of your eye, you notice Altria twitch.

The thunderous bellow is followed almost instantly by an explosion of noise: eerie, ululating wails; wild, weirdly-echoing yells; high-pitched shrieks; squeals of alarm; and a sudden rush of wings, as every bird within hearing range is simultaneously spooked into flight.

The cacophonous chorus carries on for a minute or so before your ears pick up a new sound, of something - or more accurately, a LOT of somethings - moving through the underbrush at speed, trampling and tearing at whatever fails to get out of their way.

You and your companions duck deeper into cover, and a moment later, peering around the trunk of your chosen tree, you see the boars burst into view on the far side of the glade.

The piglets, you think, are honestly cute, or would be if they weren't fleeing in terror of the horrible noises coming from behind them. Their older siblings are somewhat less adorable, if not precisely ugly, and even the adult females aren't actually that bad-looking - furry and furious, yes, but not as unattractive as some of the images of boars you've seen in books, much less the monster living in your soul.

The Boar grunts at that, sounding smugly satisfied by your assessment.

In keeping with Hakoda's advice and your own preferences, you stick to your hard cover and let the sounder pass unchallenged. You count somewhere on the order of twenty squeakers, perhaps eight juveniles, and five adult females, none of which appear to notice you or your friends. Boars don't have the best eyesight, you recall, and as long as you're quiet and don't distract them from the Terrible Things they're running away from-

In the woods ahead, something that is very much NOT a maybe-lion bellows in outrage: "BWWWWEEEEEEEE!"
Oh, for the love of-!
A moment later, you hear human (or in this case, ghostly) voices yelling in surprise.

"Look out!"

"Storm and tide, that's a big one!"

"Where did it even-?!"

"OW!"

"How did it-?!"

"It's a MONSTER!"

"Float away, float awaAAAAHHHH!"

"Oh, ancestors! It killed Keone!"

"You bastAAAARRRRGH!"

You become aware that everybody is looking at you.
Din. Farore.
"Alex," Briar says slowly. "What did you DO?!"
What. Did. You. DO?!
Before you can answer, your senses ping, warning you that whatever the ghosts ran into, it's heading your way at speed.


Ignoring your partner's accusing tone and the suspicious stares of your other companions for the moment, you quickly take stock of the situation.

Judging by the rate at which that spiritually-charged aura and the sounds of wood breaking under and before an enraged beast are drawing closer, you have only scant seconds to prepare yourself for what you are about to receive. And if the strength of that aura and the volume of that crashing and screaming are any indication, it's a big pig indeed.

Your gaze shifts to the boar spear in your hands. While you took the time to conjure steel spearheads and heeded the guidance of Bali Ha'i's past hunters as you worked, that was the limit of your efforts in preparing these tools. Your reasoning in this decision was threefold: first, you had a lot of other tasks that needed doing, and only so much time and mana to go around; second, the spears were only intended to be used for one day, and at least some of them were sure to get broken in the process; and third, you didn't want to offend any of your guests by implying that they'd NEED the assistance of magical weapons to hunt some island pigs.

It wasn't the wrong choice, you think, but you are rather regretting it now, because regardless of its magical origins, the weapon you carry is effectively mundane, and hence not really ideal for keeping several hundred pounds of spiritually-potent, pissed-off pig from getting right up into your face - possibly literally.

With that in mind, you gather your mana and quickly cast the Greater Spell of the Magic Weapon. Mana flows over, around, and through the spear, and as your Augmentation Magic reinforces every aspect that defines a "spear," you can see the haft straightening, the join of metal and wood becoming smoother and better-anchored, and the edges of the spearhead glinting in the light of the afternoon sun.

You know that the apparent transformation isn't genuine; the real spear is still there, unchanged, beneath the "shell" of shaped mana, and will re-emerge when the spell runs its course or is broken. Even while your magic lasts, the spear is still inferior to a properly enchanted weapon in a number of ways, chief among them its hardness, resilience, and flexibility - you simply don't have the time required to run your magic through every inch of wood and steel over and over again, filling in the weaknesses and shoring up the strengths, until the enchantment truly takes root.

Despite that, this spear is now every bit as bloodthirsty as a truly enchanted weapon would be; moreover, it has the mystical potency necessary to punch through any exotic defenses your quarry might reasonably be expected to possess. As an added precaution, you infuse your ki into the weapon, shoring up its strength a little more.

"Ask me not what I have done, Briar," you say - and as you do so, you realize that you are grinning. "Ask me what I am about to do!"
Bwahahahaha!
"Alex, no!" the fairy protests.
Alex, yes!
"Alex, yes!" you roar.

With that, you step all the way out from behind your tree, set the butt of your spear between one foot and the ground, and flare your aura. Some of that energy surges through your spear, further enhancing it, but most is simply blasted out in all directions as a blatant declaration of your presence and intent.

Gained Aura of Power B (Plus)
Gained Spiritual Imbuement E (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)

From somewhere above, you hear Kahlua let out a surprised squeak: "Wha-?!"

Within, you hear the Raging Boar thunder in approval.

Without, there is a moment of silence, followed by a renewed bellow of rage as the approaching animal senses your challenge, and takes grave offense at it.

A moment later, the monster emerges from the brush - and "monster" is indeed an apt term for it. The boar before you is easily twice the size of any of the adult males taken in the previous day's hunt, more akin to a Bullbo than any Earthly swine. Its massive chest swells like a bellows with each breath, sending ripples through its fat flanks, yet the mute evidence of how well the beast has fed over its lifetime does not disguise the hard, heavy muscle beneath. Atop the gristly hide bristles a coat of fur like a thicket.

Dark, bloodshot eyes glower ferociously at you from above a snout that appears to be fifty percent scar tissue by area, the marks of year upon year of battles fought and won for dominance against other males. The old injuries almost seem to glow red from the sheer fury that radiates off the beast. Four huge tusks curve upwards from its lower jaw, flecked with spittle and pieces of whatever didn't get out of the way in time - including, you note with a wince, one unfortunate ghost, who now has the larger, leading tusk on the boar's right side driven clean through his midsection, and is hanging off of its head, groaning piteously.

You know from your study of your totem animal that boars do not have the best eyesight in the animal kingdom, to the point that they cannot recognize humans at a distance of ten or fifteen meters. That's about the distance between you and your quarry now, yet those glaring eyes are aimed straight at you, little pits full of fire and fury.

GREAT ISLAND BOAR: HINANA

With a grunt, the Great Island Boar tosses his head to one side-

"Ancestors, whyyyy?!" the ethereal islander screams as he goes flying through the air.

-hunkers down, and begins pawing at the earth with one massive, weathered hoof, snorting fiercely.

There is only one thing to be said: "COME AT ME, BOAR!"

And with a final, ear-splitting roar, he does just that.

You and the Raging Boar howl right back at him.

Hinana crosses the glade alarmingly quick for something of his size, and you absently register divots of earth and grass flying into the air behind him. It is a fleeting thought, logged alongside the yelling of other voices as the bulk of your attention is focused on just three things: the rapidly-approaching boar; your own body; and the spear that is about to become the only thing separating the two of you.

Several things happen in rapid succession.

First, Hinana closes the distance, and you register a tremendous IMPACT as all his momentum crashes into your spear. Despite your attempts to brace your weapon and yourself, you're driven backwards by the shock, the boar's strength and sheer mass proving to be too much for you to hold your ground against. You don't fall, but it's all you can do to stay upright and keep the spear in position - and in the process, its haft bends with a most alarming sound, as the Great Island Boar pushes forward.

You're not even sure if you've pierced its hide!

Second, there is a surge of energy neither your own nor the Boar's, coming from off to your left, right before Altria slams into the monster's flank, her own aura of mana keeping her spear intact. Nearly simultaneous with this is the arrival of Sokka, now in his orca-like form, from your right. His aura is surging as well, but as he lacks the ability to externally express his energies on the level you and the young knight do, you half-expect to see his spear shatter as it strikes Hinana's side.

Surprisingly, it doesn't.

Sokka is yelling something about not underestimating the skills of a hunter of the Southern Water Tribe, and you have to wonder if he's talking to the boar, to you, or both.

Third, you can hear Kahlua, Briar, and Hakoda all yelling things, but between the shouting you, Altria, and Sokka are already doing, and the MASSIVE, FURIOUS PIG in your face, you can't quite make out who's saying what.


There's no question that you need to be stronger if you're going to help pin this beastly boar in place, and you experience an urge to unleash Maximum Power to get the necessary boost.

Two things stop you from doing so.

The first is your concern that your spear, which is already creaking under the strain placed upon it, won't be able to withstand the kind of force you can bring to bear at your absolute best. There's absolutely no point in being stronger if your own strength destroys the main thing that's keeping those tusks from getting up close and personal. Altria and Sokka would do their best to cover you, but they're not in the best of positions to stop the Great Island Boar from pressing directly ahead - that's on you.

The other reason that you decline to use Maximum Power is that the idea of doing so came in company with a wild urge to cast your spear aside anyway and headbutt your opponent.

You suspect the Raging Boar is to blame for that uncannily porcine impulse.

Actually, you rather HOPE that's the case, because the only alternative that comes to mind is lingering influence from all the occasions when Ganondorf turned into a giant pig demon. And that would be bad.

Setting aside that weird and disturbing feeling, you focus on your ki alone, causing a pale glow to erupt from your very pores as the excess energy of your Overloaded Ki Enhancement spills forth like a ghostly white fire.

As new strength flows through your body, you adjust your grip on your spear, set your feet, and PUSH.

Your weapon groans under the strain - but thanks to the ki and magic already flowing through it, it does not break. And as you stabilize your stance, you see that you did, in fact, score a hit on the Great Island Boar, for blood is welling up around the tip of your spear, which is slowly being driven deeper as Hinana thrashes against the three-part "pin" you and your allies have him in.

Despite that, you can tell immediately that none of the wounds you've inflicted are mortal, whether alone or taken all together.

Just as well, then, that you called for additional backup as you focused your energies.

With the skirt and sleeves of her white sundress flapping about her limbs and her hair trailing out behind her in a golden halo, Kahlua descends from the sky like a dark angel to land ATOP Hinana.

Spear-point first.

Part of your mind absently reflects that Kahlua was clearly paying attention when you used the Leap Attack technique yesterday, and has adapted it pretty well to a spear instead of a sword.

There is a sound like tearing steel as the huge boar squeals in pain and intensified rage, rearing up and trying to fling Kahlua off. It's only the leverage provided by her two-handed grip on her deeply-driven spear that keeps the vampire princess from taking another short flight, and you can see that it's taking a lot of her focus not to get thrown even with that advantage. You'd like to help, but Hinana's thrashing movements are making it hard to keep the pressure on with your spear - not just for you, but for Altria and Sokka as well. In fact, you can see that Sokka is getting pushed back, his natural strength simply not up to the task of matching a beast like this. Sensing weakness, the Great Island Boar shifts to its left-

!

-and then the dark form of Hakoda's transformed state is there alongside his son, adding his spear and - arguably even more importantly - much greater mass to helping keep the monster pinned.

The Island Boar's deafening squeals take on a pained note as the veteran hunter and warrior steps in. Unlike the rest of you, Hakoda clearly has the strength, the skill, AND the experience to hit a boar where it HURTS.

This is a double-edged spear, however, for the already-enraged Hinana's reaction to the pain of a genuine injury is EVEN MORE anger - which, thanks to the wonders of adrenaline, or whatever it is that pigs have as an equivalent, translates directly to POWER.

With his inherent spiritual power focused by pain and wrath, the Great Island Boar's aura FLARES.

Your own soul is strong enough to weather the eruption unhindered. It might have been a different matter if you had your spiritual senses opened up, but with them in their "standby" mode, you're able to shrug off the sudden ethereal glare much as you would a flash of mundane light. With her Mana Burst technique up and running and putting out all sorts of interference, Altria is likewise undaunted.

The rest of your party, however...

Kahlua's vampire senses don't have the sort of convenient dial-a-setting that your supernatural awarenesses allow for, so she gets the full blast of the Great Island Boar's wrath. Sokka and Hakoda aren't as sensitive as that, but they both live closer to nature and the spirits than the rest of you do, and so are somewhat more in tune with the Spirit World. They're no shamans, of course, but as a tribal chieftain, Hakoda is something of a spiritual focal point for his people, with both the ability and the responsibility to represent them as a whole in dealings with the spirits. Ideally, with the aid of a shaman or three, but there are some things he'd be able to do without their direct involvement - especially now that he has a Heart of Spirit to support him. And Sokka is a chief's son; if his father was not available for some reason, that same duty would fall to him.

As such, when Hinana's rage boils over, the three of them flinch.

Hakoda grits his teeth - and he has SO MANY TEETH at the moment - and recovers almost immediately, his own aura flaring and pushing back against the Boar's as the Heart of Spirit shows its worth.

Sokka, being younger and less experienced than his father, staggers back a step, wide-eyed. He's clearly going to need a second to recover from that.

And Kahlua-

"Gah!"

-loses her balance, feet slipping back across the boar's bristly hide and leaving her hanging from her spear.

Between that sudden "pull" and the thrashing of the monster beneath it, the weapon in question starts to slide free of the boar's flesh.

"Kahlua!" Altria calls out.

"Keep! It! PINNED!" Hakoda roars over the boar's bellowing. In the next breath, he glances off to somewhere behind the Boar and adds, "OVER! HERE!"

Who-?


Shaking off your curiosity about who Hakoda is yelling to, you focus on the task before you: keeping the Great Island Boar pinned.

There's not much more you can do in that regard using physical strength alone, or even supernaturally-augmented strength. You're already at the limits of what Ki Enhancement will allow, and if you try to bring Maximum Power or Mana Burst into it, your spear probably isn't going to hold up under the strain. Needless to say, that would be bad.

If you can't use your powers on yourself, you'll just have to use them on someone else - and since it's taking both hands AND one foot on your spear just to keep Hinana from goring or trampling you, you're going to have to cast without gestures. That is a skill you possess, but it's not one you've often used, largely because there hasn't been much call for it. Your preference for fighting unarmed or with your Blessed Blade generally leaves you with one hand free to shape and direct your magic, or at least the option to let go of your sword (or your opponent) to do so. You've also made a point of avoiding casting at point-blank range like this, as it generally takes too long and leaves you too exposed to counters - a problem that the extra time and focus required to "still" or otherwise modify a spell on the fly only makes that much worse.

But here and now, there's nothing for it but to hold fast to your spear, focus your will, and make with the magic.

As mana begins to move through and around you and arcane syllables hiss between your gritted teeth, the Great Island Boar squeals and intensifies his struggles, as if he realizes what you're doing. Your spear groans as it bends under the renewed force of the huge pig's mass and muscle bearing down on it, but it doesn't crack, and you're able to keep your footing - in no small part thanks to the other three hunters flanking you and the beast.

Gained Spear Training D (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)

As you define the spell you have in mind, stripping out its usual range, Hinana's furious thrashing finally causes Kahlua's spear to slide free from where it was stuck into the boar's thick hide. With a spurt of dark pig's blood and a yelp of alarm, the vampire princess tumbles off the beast's bristling back and falls to its right. You've seen Kahlua jump off of empty air before, but that must take a bit more time and focus to set up than she could spare here, because she hits the ground without even slowing down.

Hinana, of course, immediately tries to stomp on the form he senses next to him, but Kahlua was already rolling away, and the boar's heavy hoof simply crushes grass and soil. You lose sight of your vampire friend right after that, as her movements carry her behind Altria and her glowing aura, and while you're tempted to turn your head to make sure she's okay, something inside tells you NOT to take your eyes off of your opponent.

Moments later, you finish the spell you chose. Motes of excess mana fly in all directions as the magic surges from your hands, into the haft of your spear, and then races down the wooden shaft to the steely tip, where it sinks into Hinana's burly shoulder with a flash of light.

Gained Spell Combat E
Gained Spellstrike E

The Great Island Boar shudders and lets out another deafening cry of pain and anger, but the next time it thrashes, there is less force behind the movement. Not an enormous difference, mind you, but enough to be noticed.

The Spell of Enfeeblement appears to have had only minimal success, but even that was enough to sap some of the beast's wild strength.

As you wait for your mana flow to recover from the exertion of that unavoidably wasteful casting, Kahlua reappears. Having circled around behind Altria, she's now standing between the two of you, and lunging forward to plant her spear across from yours, increasing the push and leverage directed against the now-weakened Hinana.

Between the effects of your spell and the sudden addition of a second superhumanly-strong spear-wielder attacking it from the front, the great boar is actually pushed back a step, head whipping back and forth and casting droplets of foam in all directions, as he screams defiance and makes you fight for every last inch.

And then you see the ghosts arrive. Leading the charge are two of the islanders that accompanied your group; of the third, who got impaled by the boar's tusk, there's no sign. A short distance behind the spear-waving locals are several Memorians.

Hakoda starts calling out orders, and not a single soul questions or hesitates to follow them; moving almost as one, the hunters surround the boar and add their spectral strength to containing it. Hinana roars like a thunderstorm given flesh and struggles madly to escape, or just to hurt something the way he's being hurt, but the ghosts know what they're about, and the boar's struggles succeed only in worsening its wounds.

But even with nearly a dozen spears in him, the huge animal still won't die.

Then the wounded islander appears. One hand is pressed across his stomach, where long trails of a bright, silvery vapor are leaking out from the hideously gaping wound Hinana dealt to him. In his other hand, he holds a huge, curved knife of black stone, whose edge glints menacingly.

As the ghost steps forward to finish Hinana, you-


-don't look away. You owe the Boar that much.

This hunt has been a group effort from the start, and as such, you're not inclined to quibble about who gets to finish off the Great Island Boar, particularly not when you're already busy helping to keep the monster pinned. Besides, there's a certain symmetry in having the only member of your hunting party to be injured by the raging beast also be the one to strike the finishing blow.

The injured ghost comes up between you and Sokka, walking into arm's reach of Hinana - and promptly leaning backwards, and then shifting to one side, as the beast tries to gore him with his tusks again. For all his fury, however, the boar can only turn his head so far.

The ghost waits until he has the measure of the animal's reach, and then - murmuring words in his own language that sound vaguely like a prayer - he lunges in, drawing his dark stone knife across Hinana's thick throat.

Leathery flesh that (briefly) resisted spears backed by superhuman strength withstands the first touch of the black blade, but not unscathed; a fine line of blood wells up where the knife passed, reminding you bizarrely of times when your dad has cut himself shaving in the morning.

And then the ghost pulls his blade back the other way.

A horrible note enters Hinana's bellows, a wet wheezing unlike anything in your personal experience. Thick, dark blood gushes from the wound across its throat, painting the trampled grass beneath almost black; the foam about its toothy maw is rapidly painted with the same hue, a scarlet stain deeper than rubies; and droplets of fluid spray from its snout as the animal gasps for air that is no longer coming. Eyes bulge wide with shock, and through the all-consuming fury that has been the boar's primary emotion since before it thundered into view, you glimpse the first inklings of fear. Hinana's wild thrashing intensifies again, taking on a hint of true desperation, but the surge of effort is short-lived, and the beast's movements rapidly become weak and sluggish, as his voice falters.

Slowly, stubbornly fighting to stay upright, the Great Island Boar sinks to his knees.

It is a grim, grisly spectacle, and you force yourself not to look away for a second.

You remind yourself that you chose to come on this hunt, and that it was always going to result in the death of SOME creature. Your presence, your Power, may be the reason why it is Hinana that met his end here today, rather than one of his lesser kin, but even if that was not the case, you would still owe your quarry this last measure of respect.

Gained Blooded E (Plus) (Plus)

As his struggles weaken, Hinana falls onto his belly. One bulging, bloodshot eye rolls your way-

For an instant, you see the Great Island Boar as he was when he emerged from the underbrush: tall and fierce; vital and strong; driving all lesser beings before him. He raises his head and bellows a final cry of defiance.

Behind you, the Raging Boar returns the call.

Gained Totem of the Raging Boar B (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Totemic Knowledge D (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)

-and then, with a final guttering growl, the beast slumps to the soil, eyes closing.

For a moment, your party and your reinforcements stand there in silence.

Then, with a grunt, Hakoda pulls his spear free of Hinana's body, resting the butt on the forest floor as he looks over the party.

"Is everyone-"

Before the Water Tribe Chieftain can get any farther, he's interrupted by a sudden rush of sound from BEHIND you, which has everyone whirling about and readying those weapons that aren't stuck in the massive corpse-

!

-but fortunately, you recognize the incoming aura and shout for everyone to stand down before Miss Akasha bursts into view and skids to a halt, a few tears in her dress and twigs in her hair. The Dark Lady looks your party over, blinks a few times at the sight of the boar of unusual size laying speared in your midst, and then sighs.

"Alright," she says, rubbing her forehead. "What happened this time?"


You give Miss Akasha a quick recap of your encounter with the Great Island Boar, during which she checks Kahlua over, picks a few blades of grass out of the girl's hair, frowns at the grass stains and dirt smudges on her white dress, and is just generally a mom. Your friend endures the fussing with good grace, even though the worst "injury" she'll be taking away from the incident is a dirty dress: the bruises and scapes a human her age might have suffered from being thrown off the back of an angry, overgrown boar were buffered by the defensive properties of the Warrior-Princess Bracers; and whatever might have gotten through that invisible barrier has already healed anyway, vampire constitution being what it is.

Once that's done, and it's been confirmed that nobody other than Keone was hurt, the question is raised of how to deal with the corpse. Though diminished in death, Hinana's body is still massive - Hakoda estimates the boar to be in the neighborhood of half a ton, which is enough weight to be problematic even for those of you with superhuman strength, though admittedly more as an issue of leverage and possible damage to the body than lift.

Fortunately, you have magic. You summon forth the legendary Tenser's Floating Disk, then cast the Spell of Levitation on Hinana's corpse, raise it straight into the air, and hold it there while sliding the Disk underneath. At your level of ability, both spells are able to bear the dead weight of the Great Island Boar with no more than a brief wobble.

While you are all physically capable of continuing the hunt, you personally don't feel inclined to do so. Hinana gave you more of a challenge than any other animal on Bali Ha'i is likely to be able to muster, and after facing that, you can't help but question the point in going after any lesser quarry. Even if you did all the work yourself, the hunt would feel like a pale shadow of this one, and it's not like you or your guests are in desperate need of the meat and other materials that will be harvested from the mighty boar's body.

Also, you feel the hot springs calling. You haven't found a good opportunity to visit them before now, having relied on the facilities within your Mansion to stay clean, and it seems like it would be a great shame to end this birthday outing without visiting the springs at least once.

Your companions express similar sentiments, both for discontinuing the hunt and taking a trip to the hot springs, and one of the Memorians heads off to alert his compatriots as to your decision. As the rest of the group start the trek back to the beach, you take a final look around at the area, noting a few possible reagent-grade materials produced by the encounter.

Does one of these particularly attract your attention?

Your decision made, you turn and follow the others, Hinana's floating corpse hovering along in your wake.

The Look that Shaman Keoni gives you upon your return speaks volumes of his thoughts on the sheer amount of work that you've just added to his schedule. That said, he does ask if you have any requests for the special materials that could be gleaned from this monster's spiritually-charged corpse.


The strongest potential reagent you can see here is that black stone knife that Keone used to finish off Hinana, but something about the idea of trying to negotiate for possession of that (probably obsidian) tool strikes you as inappropriate.

Instead, you settle for the next-best material: the bloodied soil where Hinana's lifeblood spilled. It's almost as potent a material as the knife would have been, and it costs you precisely nothing to acquire.

As luck would have it, you even have an empty Clay Bottle in your inventory to store the stuff. Some careful scooping with the edge of the Bottle is enough to recover a good-sized sample of iron-enriched soil, without contaminating it or getting the blood smeared on your hands.

Clay Bottle becomes Clay Bottle (Hinana's Blood)

A quick application of Prestidigitation scrubs the exterior of the Bottle clean, after which you seal it, tuck it back into your pocket, and move to follow the rest of your party back to base.

For much of the return trip, you thought about the potential reagents that might be harvested from Hinana's corpse directly, and what might be done with them. The idea of making something out of one of those fearsome, ghost-goring tusks was strong in your mind, but so too were the possibilities for working that tough hide into leather.

Seriously. Leather jackets are cool, but a jacket made of leather from an animal you killed yourself? One as strong and spiritually potent as Hinana was? That's BADASS, pardon your Goblin.

Still, you definitely want to check with Elder Tiriaq about the possibilities of adding a tusk to your Trophy Spear first, before you go making plans to expand your wardrobe. As such, you send Briar ahead to find the Water Tribe shaman and ask him for his input on the matter, and when you get back to the outdoor kitchen, you consult Shaman Keoni about it as well, just for the sake of comparison.

Both shaman agree that it would be possible, but add that since you didn't specifically set out to hunt Hinana, and because you had so much help bringing him down, the value of his tusks as a personal totemic trophy would be considerably lessened.

"It would work better if you broke the tusks into pieces, made a set of matching items from those, and distributed them among the entire hunting party," Keoni says. "But as you might imagine, that would also reduce their spiritual 'weight' compared to a single intact tusk, or for preference, all four being used in a single work."

Tiriaq's assessment, conveyed by Briar, amounts to the same thing.

In light of the sheer amount of work you just dumped on him and his helpers, you offer to stick around and lend Keoni a hand with processing Hinana's corpse.

The shaman grins, slaps another knife of black stone into your hand, and ushers you over to the body.

*SQUELCH*

You quickly come to regret your generous decision.

*RRRRIIIIP*

You regret it SO much.

*SSSSLOP-PLOP-PLOP-PLOP*

Oh, Goddesses, why?!

Gained Survival E
Gained Zoology E (Plus) (Plus)

...you may never eat pork or bacon again.


The prospect of working with the tusks is tempting, but in the end, you decide to claim Hinana's hide as a reagent. There's enough of it that, if you're dead-set on making matching items to commemorate the hunt for everyone that took part, you could probably make jackets for the living members of your hunting party - and if not, you could definitely make gloves.

Your thoughts about what you'll do with your new abundance of pigskin are interrupted as Keoni hands you the knife and puts you to work helping to butcher the corpse.

Hakoda and Sokka lend their own efforts without hesitation, and Altria pitches in after only a brief hesitation. Kahlua actually turns a bit green at the prospect, which you might find funnier if you weren't up to your wrists in pig's blood and guts.

Eeeew.

You're honestly not sure how long the whole smelly, stomach-turning business takes, but you don't lose your lunch in the process, and you also manage not to make TOO horrible a mess. Some of that success is down to Keoni handling the truly vile parts himself, saying something about you needing to practice on SMALLER kills before he lets you try to remove the bowels of an animal of this size.

In the end, you find yourself standing before a much-diminished pile of meat and bloodstained bones, blinking in confusion as you wonder where the rest of the body went.

Keoni deftly removes the stone knife from your hands and advises you and your friends to go get cleaned up, while he and his assistants take care of the remaining work.

This strikes you as the ideal opportunity to hit the hot springs, although rather than walk all the way there spattered with gore and smelling like a slaughterhouse, you cast a Spell of Prestidigitation to scrub away the filth - and then, when that fails to leave you feeling clean, you cast it a second time.

You STILL feel kind of grody after that, but the smell and the stickiness are gone, so you figure that the lingering sense of uncleanliness is psychological in nature, and refrain from casting further magic on yourself.

After stopping by your effectively private Mansion to pick up a towel and a fresh change of clothes, you head out to the hot springs, which are located in the foothills around Kahine's volcano.

From the days spent preparing for the party, you know that Bali Ha'i's hot spring features one large central pool, surrounded by eight smaller pools of varying temperatures. They're conveniently arranged in two very rough rows on opposite sides of the main bath, with the two coolest pools out in front, and the remaining six growing steadily hotter as you move towards the back, to the point that you doubt anyone other than a Goron - or a volcano spirit - would find the last couple of pools comfortable without the use of magic. The central bath is large enough for a good thirty or more roughly human-sized people, while the amount of space afforded by the smaller ones varies between five and eight occupants.

At some point in the distant past, Bali Ha'i's residents carved the natural stone surrounding the springs into more comfortable and aesthetically-pleasing forms. The stone flooring and carvings had cracked and worn down from age and exposure, but advice from the ghosts and some magic on your part was sufficient to restore much of the original work, producing a gallery of grinning faces - some of them placed facing away from the baths, others facing towards but with hands over their eyes, and a few of those peeking through - stylistic depictions of men, women, and children going about the business of washing up, and images of the local elemental spirits of water, earth, and fire, whose combined efforts the islanders believed created and maintained the hot springs.

And who knows? They may well have.

The hot springs were originally unisex, but in light of the fact that most of your guests were either unfamiliar with public bathing or at least used to gender-segregated facilities, you went ahead and had some colorfully-painted wooden barriers installed to divide the central bath, and to afford some privacy for those guests who wouldn't be comfortable sharing the springs. Men's baths on the left, women's on the right - Briar heads off that way with Altria and Kahlua.

Do you have a preference here?


You head into the men's side of the baths, strip down, and stow your hunting clothes in your pocket, taking out your towel and bathing supplies in exchange. As you undress, you cycle your ki and spiritual energies, activating the techniques of Environmental Adaptation and Spiritual Attunement, to give them time to "warm up" before you test them directly against the heated pools - specifically, the second-hottest of the four.

There is, after all, a difference between exerting yourself to test an ability, and just doing yourself injury.

Considering that you aren't used to walking around in the altogether while out of doors, you notice the ki technique taking effect almost immediately. It becomes more apparent when you first dip your foot into the hot pool, a stinging sensation that quickly diminishes to a "merely" uncomfortable heat, which in turn is all that the lower half - or three-fifths, if you want to be more accurate - of your body registers as you settle into the water. The open air, aboveground bath makes for a markedly different experience than the subterranean sauna you've experienced at the Water Tribe village, which was in turn quite distinct from your customary baths and showers.

Gained Environmental Adaptation D

As for the spiritual side of things... that's going to take a while.

After about fifteen minutes of sitting in the hot water, more or less meditating as you try to calm your spirit to help your Attunement along, you hear Sokka call from the warm pool, "Hey, Alex? You over there?"

"I'm here, Sokka. What's up?"

"Just wondering where you got to," the other boy replies. Then he adds, "That, and making sure you hadn't passed out in the heat and drowned."

Heh.

"It's no worse in here than your village baths," you tell him. "At least not in this pool; there IS still the fourth one."

"Yeah, I'm not going anywhere near that one," Sokka says easily. "Water that hot is for cooking, and I'm not food."

At the next break in the conversation, you reach out with your senses, trying to get an idea of who else is in the baths, and where they are. Hakoda seems to be in the same pool as his son, though from the way his aura is moving, he's about to exit - either to go dry off, or just switch pools. Through your familiar bond, you previously sensed Briar over in the cool bath on the girls' side, but now it feels like she's at the central one, in the same general location as your duller sense of Altria and Kahlua. There's also a heavy, earthy, fire-touched presence in the hottest pool on the men's side, from which you can just make out a low rumble like a tiny, happy earthquake - Elder Terok taking it easy. It feels like some of Briar's siblings are hanging around as well, a few over with her and the girls, others off in different pools - or different parts of the big bath - in their twos and threes.


"Well, you are made of meat..."

"This is true," Sokka admits, with a slight shift in his voice that makes you think he's nodding. "And I'm sure that I am delicious. But with all due respect to my fellow carnivores, anything that wants to take a bite out of me is going to have to beat me in a fight to win that privilege." There is a splash and a wet thump of a waterlogged fist striking against a chest. "And there is nothing on the seas or their shores that a Water Tribe hunter cannot out-fight, out-think, or out-run."

"Unless it's another Water Tribe hunter," Hakoda chimes in, in a mischievous tone.

"Yeah, unless... wait, Dad, why- oh crap!"

Much splashing ensues.

Testing out your spiritual techniques was a big part of the reason why you decided to come up to the hot springs at all, rather than simply cleaning up in your Mansion or via magic, so you sit tight and do your best to focus on the Attunement technique.

Progress is not precisely slowed, but also not really helped along by Sokka, who - after crying uncle and taking a minute to recover from the impromptu wrestling match with his father - resumes the conversation you had going. You don't speak of anything particularly significant: at first, it's mostly the other boy grumbling about parental unfairness and cheating; and once he's sufficiently vented about that, Sokka starts going back over the day's brief but eventful hunt, and how it compared to yesterday's longer enterprise.

You say enough to keep up your end of the discussion, but Sokka carries the majority of it, and eventually clues in to your lack of focus.

"You're being awfully quiet over there, Alex," Sokka says suspiciously. "Are you doing some kind of magical bath meditation, or what?"

...

"That's... one way of putting it, I guess," you admit, before you explain how you're trying to bring your spirit into harmony with the energies of the hot springs.

"...weird, but alright," Sokka concludes. "Just one question: why? I mean, does being in tune with the energies of the hot spring somehow help you get cleaner, or something?"

"Not that I'm aware of," you tell him. "I'm just hoping that if I can work out how to harmonize myself with the elements around me, it'll help me balance out my different elemental affinities."

That leads into a discussion about what elemental affinities are, how they impact your magic and your interactions with other beings, and how different affinities can interfere with each other. Given Sokka's origins, you go with the example of how a strong Water Affinity would make you better at Water Magic - and to a lesser extent, Ice Magic - and how you'd find interactions with beings of Elemental Water easier and more natural, while at the same time, your capacity for Fire Magic and dealings with creatures of Fire would be impaired.

"And that's a bad thing?" Sokka wonders doubtfully.

"Picture us living at home," Hakoda advises his son. "The hot springs and our homes' internal heating are Fire Magic. The weather is Ice and Water Magic."

"Okay...?"

"Now imagine that whenever the weather gets colder or wetter, the hot springs and heaters start to go out."

"...I withdraw the question. Brrr."

Not too long after that, Hakoda decides that he's been in the warm-water pool long enough, and gets out to dry off and get dressed. Sokka stays put and keeps talking, but you're getting the sense that he's just about done with the bath as well - or at least with sitting around chatting in these smaller pools.

Then Briar flies into view.

"Hey, Alex. The girls are ready to go, and they were wondering if you were done?"

You consider the progress of your technique.

Gained Spiritual Attunement E (Plus) (Plus)

Technically, yes, you suppose you could leave the hot springs now. There hasn't been any sort of major breakthrough or local reaction to your efforts at harmonization, but you weren't really expecting anything like that.

On the other hand, it's only been about forty minutes since you arrived at the springs, and less than that since you got in the hot pool. Maybe you need to sit here longer, or be more proactive?


You send Briar on her way to let the girls know your decision, spend one last minute enjoying the soothing heat of the spring, and finally rise from the water and wade out to begin drying off and getting dressed. A short time later, you and Sokka rejoin the girls and start making your way back to the camp. None of you have anywhere you particularly need to be, and so you take your time crossing the volcanic foothills and the tropical forest, talking about your encounter with the Great Island Boar. All three of your friends are curious as to what you plan to do with Hinana's hide, but while you offer a few speculative ideas, you don't make any concrete statements; it's really going to depend on just how much leather you end up with, and how much of that certain projects will require.

There's a more spirited exchange when the Memorians and the others return from the Great Island Boar Hunt with their trophies and stories. As Kahine requested, they kept their kills down, taking a total of fifteen boars of varying size, but it takes the three largest of those together to really rival Hinana for simple mass, and when it comes to lingering spiritual potency, there's just no comparison. As for the tales of their hunts, nobody mentions a beater or a spearman getting gored by one of the lesser beasts, but there are some entertaining accounts all the same.

One of those comes from a Memorian whose spear broke when he tried to intercept the charge of his chosen beast. He was too close and too startled to get out of the way of the enraged animal, but the boar in question lacked the spiritual potency to actually harm a ghost, and just ran right through the soldier, disappearing into the bushes beyond. Interestingly enough, that boar managed to outrun the attempt at pursuit, and didn't leave much of a blood trail, suggesting its injury was relatively minor. It will most likely survive, heal, and learn from this encounter.

Another of the legionaries didn't suffer a broken spear, but tried to take on a boar too big for him to handle alone. Thanks to his ethereal form's highly questionable mass, he ended up getting pushed along ahead of his quarry for some distance, as the injured animal furiously "pursued" the thing that was hurting it. Several of the other ghosts have a good laugh at their peer's expense, re-enacting frantic screaming and calls for help, and taunting him mercilessly for forgetting he could have just flown away - though they do commend him for remembering his training and not letting go of his weapon.

That boar also got away, after driving the unfortunate trooper up a tree and jarring the spear in its shoulder loose in the process. The hunters are less certain about this animal's chances of survival, given its more serious wound, but their attempts to track it down and finish it off were thwarted when the beast fled into a crevice that turned out to be the entrance to a whole system of caves. For all that ghosts can see in the dark, they lost the pig's trail when it passed over a section of bare stone floor, and as none of them are trained in magical methods of tracking, they couldn't find it again thereafter.

Your fellow hunters are suitably impressed by the Tale of the Hunt of Hinana, as well as the physical proofs of the kill.

After welcoming the last of the hunters back and officially declaring an end to the Great Island Boar Hunt (again), you excuse yourself to check in with your other guests about their impending departure times. Everyone who's still on Bali Ha'i will be staying for dinner, but after that, there's going to be sufficient traffic - and luggage-carrying duties, particularly with all the pork you're shipping out - that it bears one last review, while you've got the time.

And once you've finished sorting that out, it's just about time for the last official supper of your three-day birthday party.

With your family having departed at lunch, is there anyone among your remaining guests that you'd like to sit with for this final meal?


You sit by yourself and polish off your first serving of dinner quickly, taking the edge off of your hunger so that you can spend the next little while moving among your guests and asking their opinions about what sort of events they would like to see, should you throw a party like this again.

This of course leads to some questions about what plans you had in mind already, particularly with regards to where you were thinking about holding this theoretical future party. Would it be here on Bali Ha'i? Or did you have another venue in mind?

You reply to that inquiry with an offhanded remark about throwing a party on the Moon, which prompts some amused chuckles - as well as other reactions. Mostly surprise, although Ambrose just closes his eyes and massages his brow, muttering quietly to himself.

Sokka sends you a suspicious, sidelong glance, and states, "I'm not sure if you're joking about that, or if you're actually serious..."

You're joking, of course. You've never BEEN to the Moon, and your current mastery of Summoning Magic won't even let you make the trip - though you have been working on breaking that limit in your magical studies. You should have the Spell of Interplanetary Teleportation down by the start of the next school year, at which point the Moon would be easily within your reach.

...which would actually make a party on the Moon possible, though perhaps not plausible. There'd be a terrible amount of prep work required just to ensure your guests' survival, much less their comfort or entertainment; while there would be tremendous novelty value in going where only a handful of astronauts have gone before, once that wore off, there wouldn't exactly be a lot to DO, unless you went ahead and devoted even more effort to arranging such things. Visiting the Moon might go over better if it were merely one event that was part of a party being hosted somewhere less inimical to mortal life...

You may have to come back to this idea in a few months' time.

Putting that aside for now, there's a general consensus regarding the events you included for this birthday. The Ring of Trials was definitely the main attraction, at least as far as your guests from the Moonlit World are concerned. The Great Island Boar Hunt and the Great Island Triathlon also went over quite well, though there is some disappointment from various parties about not being able to attend one or the other - so if you hold those events again in the future, you might want to consider scheduling them for different times. Several of your magically-inclined guests also suggest working out some way for non-participants to observe the events, like you did with the Ring, so that they can at least enjoy the spectacle and feel included that way.

Sokka is rather disappointed that, despite your choice of a tropical island setting, there was only the one organized water sport - and that only as part of a larger event. People were free to go swimming on their own time, of course, and most of them did - even the vampires got in on it, thanks to your protective magic - but Sokka notes that you could have added a swimming meet, boat races, or surfing competition to your list of events pretty easily.

"And I'm not just saying that because I would have won any events Katara wasn't part of," Sokka adds. "Although I totally would have."

Katara looks a bit touched by Sokka's roundabout admission of her abilities on the water, though she's also exasperated by his cocky self-confidence.

Ambrose throws in his vote for a beach volleyball tournament, drawing suspicious glances from Altria and Anna as a result. However, the Drake sisters can't quite seem to figure out the old wizard's angle in that request - even though they clearly recognize that there IS one there - so they're unable to argue against it.

One of Briar's older siblings suggests a treasure hunt, whether a simple one to keep the younger kids occupied-

He glances meaningfully at all the little fairies drifting around.

-or a more serious event for all the guests.

The ladies mention they would have appreciated having a wider array of music to listen to, as well as a large enough space for dancing. Not that they didn't find Ekewaka and the Island Chorus entertaining, but their songs are only good as accompaniment for certain kinds of dancing, and the elevated stage at the center of the dining area is really too small for more than a single couple.

After you've spoken to everyone, you go and get yourself a second serving of dinner. By the time you've finished that, most of your guests are just lingering over their desserts, so you get up and go through the "closing ceremonies" of your party. Mostly, it's another quick round of thanking everyone for attending and your hopes that they enjoyed the festivities, but you do take the opportunity to call up the island ghosts and ask everyone to give them a big round of applause for all their help.

Kahine also gets a big thank-you for allowing you the use of Bali Ha'i, and you conclude with a gesture of gratitude to the Golden Goddesses and their three representatives, without whom the Ring of Trials simply would not have been possible.

With that, supper ends, and your Ninth Birthday Party officially comes to a close.


Over the next couple of hours, you gradually see all of your guests on their way home. Now that the party is properly concluded, you feel no reluctance to talk business with your associates, and you do so with regard to several points of interest.

While escorting the Drakes down to the landing zone, you check in with Ambrose about the progress of his investigation into the Fuyuki Grail War, as well as the associated inquiry into the Einzbern family. The wizard replies that if getting data about the Grail War and the current state of affairs in Fuyuki City from the Magus Association has been like pulling teeth, digging into the doings of a family of magi that are considered old, powerful, and reclusive even by most magi has proven to be akin to pulling teeth from one of the giant monsters from the Ring.

Still, he has enough raw data at this point that he believes he has an "accurate, if not exacting" outline of the events of the Fourth Holy Grail War, including what the Einzberns were up to.

"And yes, at this point, it does look like I'm going to get to set Acht's beard on fire after all," Ambrose tells you with a cheerful smirk, before adding that he'll need another month or so to finish up and confirm his findings. Once that's done, he'll get in touch with you and the Shuzens about a meeting.

Since you're on the subject of investigations, you also ask how his investigation into the reincarnation of Grey Voice's "Mother" is going.

Ambrose claims that, with all his other responsibilities, he was having some trouble finding time to conduct a proper study of the individual in question - so he outsourced to someone he knows who lives not too far from her, and could be trusted not to allow his mind to be detected and/or influenced. That person sent him a report a few weeks ago, which he passed on to Grey Voice yesterday - one part double-checking his informant's intel against what Grey Voice already knew, and one part providing a human's-eye view of the situation, just in case there were factors that the alien ghost wouldn't have considered important.

Now that they're both on the same page, the wizard will be summoning the Chozo to discuss how to handle the situation going forward.

Of Mother's reincarnation, Ambrose says: "Her life story isn't the worst I've ever read by any means, but it makes for a troubling bit of reading all the same, particularly when you have some idea of how the preceeding volume went. On a related note, if I ever track down whatever's causing all these otherworldly reincarnations to line up so neatly, I swear I'm going to smack it."
You might be overreaching yourself with that goal, wizard.
You wouldn't mind taking a shot at the entity or force in question yourself.
You're not ready for that yet, either.
Still, it's good to know that your associates are working things out on that front, particularly when Grey Voice was so opposed to you getting more directly involved with it. If he and Ambrose can take care of the issue without your input, it's more time that you can spend taking care of all your other pressing business.

Following the Drakes' departure, you see off the Water Tribe party, the Reinhardts, and the Shuzens in turn. Of the three, the most substantial topic you cover is letting Issa, Gyokuro, and Akasha know of Ambrose's progress and the tentative timeline for the meeting you're eventually going to have in relation to it. You also remind Kahlua to set aside some time during your next visit, so you can examine her Warrior-Princess Gauntlets and get a better idea of what upgrading them to accommodate her arm-blades will involve.

Incidentally, Kahlua hugs you before she leaves, and is rather less flustered about it than Emiko was.

With all the vampires on their way, you turn your attention to the fairies. THAT takes you as long as it did to see off the previous four parties combined, thanks to certain fairies - not all of them tiny - who don't want to go home. It's not until the sun is setting over the ocean that Navi finally opens up the Gate and, with a Maternal Look and an Index Finger of Command, orders her brood through.

After all of that, the simple dismissal of Lady Akemi and subsequent self-powered departure of Lady Takara are an honest relief.

With them off, you dismiss most of your other summoned guests. The islanders will be spending a few more days on this plane, to finish treating the meat, hides, and other spoils of the Great Island Boar Hunt, and to help you clean up the leavings of the party. The Memorians will also be staying a bit longer, returning to their Outpost in Faerie tomorrow morning when their "leave" expires. Everyone else gathers up their things, offers a final round of thanks for the invitation and congratulations on turning nine, and then departs in a flash of magic as you end the spells holding them on Earth.

As a final note, you close down all but the final two Magnificent Mansions, an action that somehow leaves this stretch of beach feeling far emptier than it did when you first visited Bali Ha'i, weeks ago.

You end the day with another trip to the hot springs, on the reasoning that you so rarely have a chance to kick back and relax without some kind of looming threat or other demand on your time. Sitting in the central pool, looking up at the stars, while Briar floats around on a little lily-pad, is quite nice.

Also, the stars here are different from how they appear at home - not just because of the lack of light pollution, but because you're legitimately seeing a different part of the sky. You'd known this intellectually, but hadn't really stopped to appreciate it until now.

Gained Astronomy E (Plus)

As spectacular as the starry sky is, the sheer scale and openness of it drives home the fact that you and your partner are the only living mortals left on this magical island. The sudden sense of isolation makes it difficult to really enjoy the springs, and you end up calling the visit short and hiking back to your room for your final night on the island.

You haven't been using your Restful Blanket the last few nights, but you bring it out now, knowing that you need to be up before dawn, local time, in order to make it home and off to school in good order. Given all the activity around the old gas station over the last few days, you head to your northern teleport location instead, run home under the cover of a Spell of Invisibility, and slip into the backyard to re-enter the house.

And as the back door closes behind you, life returns to normal.


Ambrose waves off your remark. "Yes, yes; if we stumble over another apocalypse in the making, I'll be sure to let you know. Possibly just from the sheer quantity and intensity of the ensuing profanity..."

...okay, then?

Your return to school on Monday is interesting. Although you and your three Sunnydale friends attended class all day on Friday, you also left town almost immediately after school let out for the weekend. You and Cordelia are popular enough that people noticed your two-and-a-half-day absence, especially when the pair of you had cited "prior arrangements" when certain peers invited you to join them for various activities on Friday afternoon, Saturday, and/or Sunday. Amy and Larry aren't quite as socially-prominent, but they're close enough to the two of you that their absence over the weekend didn't pass unnoticed.

The fact that you, personally, had been spending a lot of time out of the public eye in the weeks leading up to your birthday - the date of which isn't exactly a secret - was also remarked upon, and set the rumor-mill to whispering before you skipped down. The murmurs don't appear to have died down over the weekend.

From what you overhear, most people are in agreement that you had an early birthday party somewhere out of town, but the particulars are in great dispute. One version has you and your guests camping out for a couple days, while another claims you went to Disneyland. A third account claims you were all spotted boarding a plane at the airport and flying off to parts unknown, while another puts your last known location as the marina - holders of that view are in turn divided over whether or not you sailed to some island resort, or just spent the weekend cruising the waves.

In either case, there's a further split as to whether or not you encountered any pirates.

You wonder if you should say something about this.

School aside, you have a number of investigations and projects to pursue, now that your birthday party is over. However, since your mana reserves are still recovering from the massive expenditures over the last few days, you hold off on those tasks until you're back at full strength.

It only takes until Tuesday morning, after all.

With your reserves finally refilled, you make your plans to proceed with absorbing the Heart of Spirit, which you've been putting off since you won it in the Trials, so that you could fully analyze the process.

Having Shadow Alex around to partake in the observation and analysis is going to be very helpful - in point of fact, no sooner have you summoned him that day after school than he offers an insight.

"Are you sure you want to do this now?" he asks. "Because as much as I'm all for more power-"

"Ar, ar, ar," you chime in obligingly.

"-if we wait until next Sunday, we could get that Urahara person's thoughts on the matter as well."

You take a minute to consider that suggestion. The Kurosakis WERE planning to hold off on making use of the Heart that Isshin won until Urahara could look at it and give them an idea of what was likely to happen, and the man might well appreciate a chance to examine a second of the Goddess-given relics...


You consider making a statement about the events of your birthday party, but nothing that comes to mind really appeals.

In the end, you say nothing, and let Cordelia handle the gossip. The story that she spins at lunch that day takes the "birthday camping trip" rumor and embellishes it slightly, making it sound like your guests were people you just happened to meet at the "campsite." This includes a variety of interesting edits to cover for the supernatural origins of certain groups and individuals.

Navi becomes a camp counselor riding herd on a mob of kids, and your other Hyrulean guests a troop of costumed performers.

The Memorians are depicted as a group of Roman reenactors, while the Drakes are a family with ties to the Society for Creative Anachronism.

The Hayashis are simply a large middle-class family, with all mention of foxy ears and fluffy tails dropped.

The Great Island Boar Hunt is referenced as "something for the adults and older teenagers," with no actual mention of boars or spears.

The Great Island Triathlon makes it into the retelling basically unchanged, aside from the lagoon becoming a large pond or small lake.

Cordy even mentions the Ring of Trials, although rather than a magical gauntlet of otherworldly monsters, she presents it as the various martial artists and historical reenactors getting together to put on a show.

All in all, Cordelia does a pretty good job of taking the explicitly supernatural elements of your party and presenting them as mundane.

Of course, some people promptly take her account and run with it, spinning entirely new and increasingly-ridiculous rumors; by the end of the day, you've heard an account of wild animals invading the camp and having to be driven off, a second that has your two groups of "historical enthusiasts" declaring war on each other, and a third - spoken only in whispers - of how this "other rich girl" must be a member of the extended Chase family, because there's no way Cordelia would dislike her that much and still put up with her for a whole weekend.

You have to agree with your Shadow. Waiting a couple of weeks to get a second opinion on the effects of the Heart of Spirit, from an apparent expert in spiritual matters, is just too good an opportunity to let slip away.

"I'm glad we agree," Shadow Alex says with a smirk.

"Thanks for bringing it up," you say earnestly, as you return the Heart of Spirit to your pocket. "Though that does leave an opening in my schedule."

"Maximum Power Study Session?" Shadow Alex suggests.

You consider that, but shake your head. You don't know how well Ambrose's wards can hide your Power techniques, and it's not an area you're willing to test your luck in; likewise, you don't want to step into your Mirror Hideaway and start playing around with your Power, only to have the extra-dimensional space collapse on you when the spell that created it is disrupted.

For both those reasons, you were planning to have the Study Session somewhere well out of town - Bali Ha'i comes to mind - but you don't really have the time to skip town today.

After some thought, you get out the Japanese Spirit Dossier that Isshin, Masaki, and Akkiko gave you. If you're going to visit Karakura in a couple of weeks, you might as well brush up on your knowledge of Hollows and Shinigami in advance.

Dismissing Shadow Alex-

"Already?!"

*POOF*

-you head upstairs to read in comfort.

Gained Local Knowledge (Karakura) E (Plus)

The rumors surrounding your weekend birthday camping trip gradually die down, and by the end of the school week, people have largely stopped talking about it. There were some grumbles along the way about how few of your "friends" you invited to join you, and a handful of envious looks from others, but ultimately, a birthday party that's already over and done with is no longer very important in the mind of your average eight- or nine-year-old.

Saturday morning after breakfast, you head out to the Madison residence. When you arrive, you find Mr. Madison moving a cardboard box into the back of the family car.

"Good morning, Alex," he greets you.

"Good morning, sir." You nod at the box. "Is that today's project?"

"Most of it," he agrees. "Mind keeping an eye on things here while I go grab the other box and let the girls know you're here?"

"Sure."

As Amy's father heads back into the house, you move around behind the car and take a look, trying to get an idea of how many contaminated tools and reagents Mrs. Madison has, and how bad the level corruption is. There's only the one box in the trunk, a cardboard cube about two feet to a side, and from the way Mr. Madison was handling it, it's fairly heavy. You're able to register the presence of demonic taint through the packaging, mixed in with a score of minor magical auras, and two or three stronger ones that suggested either magically-crafted or actively enchanted items.

All three members of the Madison family exit the house a minute later, with Amy hurrying along ahead of her father and Catherine bringing up the rear. Mr. Madison is carrying a second box the same size as the first, though it appears to be lighter as well.

You're a little surprised when the entire family piles into the car with you.


Part of you thinks that this may be a bad idea, but the rest of you is too busy snickering in anticipation of the looks on the girls' faces to heed it.

Granted, it's likely to be a while before you get the opportunity, unless Kahlua invites you both to her upcoming birthday and Cordelia changes her mind about attending, but it should still be worth it.

You shrug, close the rear passenger-side door behind you, and buckle up without a word. Amy's dad is already in the know about the supernatural in general and your own magical abilities in particular, even if he's never directly witnessed the scale of what you can do, so it costs you nothing if he wants to come along for this little project.

You and Mrs. Madison discussed where to set up for the cleansing ritual, with you passing on the cautionary tale of what happened with Uncle Rory's taxidermy collection - both the unexpected need for high-intensity purification, and the consequences of that.

Speaking of which, you'd been keeping a cautious eye on that invisible ghoul you detected lurking in the bushes outside your family cottage, and the undead monster finally went away around Halloween. While the creature and/or its employer(s) may have just finally given up on catching the source of the Holy magic that disturbed the entire town's darker side, your cautious nature wouldn't let you rule out the possibility that they merely moved to a more passive, long-term method of observation. With Batreaux's help, you conducted several rounds of magical investigation via summoned creatures and divinations, which ultimately failed to reveal evidence of any supernatural tampering with the old building or the area around it. At this point, you're just about prepared to declare the cabin safe again - or at least as safe as any remote building in or near Sunnydale that spends weeks and months at a time unoccupied can be.

To prevent any similar hassles from afflicting the Madison family, you and Catherine agreed that going somewhere WELL past the town limits was in order. As such, Mr. Madison guides the car out of Sunnydale and down the highway towards Oxnard, passing the by-now familiar abandoned gas station without slowing down. Twenty minutes on, he takes a right, heading off the highway and onto a less-used road that heads down to the coast; not long after, he leaves that road for a dusty track that doesn't look like it's been used any time this decade. About ten minutes later, he pulls to a stop outside an old walled property.

The place is clearly abandoned, and has been so for a rather long time. The outer wall is more tumbled stone than an upright structure, overgrown with creeping ivy and half-buried in windswept dust besides. Trees are scattered about inside the perimeter, ranging from a dusting of seedlings to one ancient, gnarled specimen that looks like it's ready to fall over in the next storm - much as its peers must have done, if the rotted logs and weathered paths of old destruction inflicted on the main building are any indication. The house was probably built in a style similar to Sunnydale's oldest buildings, but the roof is completely gone - smashed by at least two of those long-rotted trees, you think - as is any hint of glass and most of the wood. The building's walls are in no better shape than the one defining the perimeter. Beyond the ruin, the landscape continues on along a flat, grassy plane for perhaps fifty feet, before suddenly falling away; not all that far below, you can hear the steady boom of waves breaking against a cliff, while the mid-morning sun sparkles on the face of the ocean in the distance.

"This place looks like it's been abandoned for a hundred years," Amy says with surprise.

"At least," you agree. It's not ancient on the scale of Hylian temples, by any means, but if somebody told you the last master of this place picked up stakes and moved on before Sunnydale ever got its town charter, you'd be inclined to believe them.

"How did you know this was here, Dad?" Amy asks.

"One of my teammates threw a party out here in my freshman year of college," Mr. Madison answers. "I never did find out how he knew about the place."

Amy looks from her father to the ruin, and makes a face. "You had a party? Here?" She makes no effort to hide her disbelief.

"They did," Catherine agrees wryly. "Of course, the fact that the place was still haunted at the time made it look a lot different."

Oh-ho! A haunting, was it?

You reach out with your spiritual senses, but aren't terribly surprised when you pick up no traces of ghostly activity. Mrs. Madison's statement DID carry an implication that the place was no longer haunted.


It's not just idle curiosity that compels you to ask. The ruin obviously isn't haunted now, so if it was, that means somebody performed an exorcism - which is to say, an act of purification. If you know the circumstances surrounding that event, particularly WHERE it happened, it could make your own work today go more smoothly.

Mr. Madison looks at his wife. "Set up on in the old dining room?"

"Better see what condition the floor is in first, John," Catherine replies, glancing at the the collapsed house. "We can set up outside if we have to."

The man nods and heads towards the house to investigate. As he leaves, Catherine turns to you, Briar, and Amy and recounts the tale.

You'd heard before that the Madisons got married straight out of high school, so Catherine naturally accompanied John to this party as his date. Being a devotee of Hecate, the Queen of the Crossroads, she noticed the spectral activity soon after their arrival.

"Not before we'd gone inside, though," she admits with a sigh. "That made things so much more complicated than they needed to be."

Yes, it probably would have. Walking blind into a spirit's place of power is never a good idea, and it would be worse for a witch like Mrs. Madison, whose magic is more reliant on material components than your own sorcery. Being a Sunnydale native, you don't doubt that she had an "emergency kit" with enough items to cast some spells that would be useful against a wide variety of threats, but the odds of that including the items necessary for a proper exorcism would be small.

"It started small," Catherine continues. "The house was old enough or just far enough from town that it didn't have electricity, so the boys set up candles and battery-powered lights everywhere, and brought in a boombox with a lot of extra speakers. They all started acting strangely, with the lights flickering and eventually going out, while the sound system stuttered, played the wrong songs, and started making disturbing noises and all kinds of awful threats. Then the doors and windows disappeared."

You nod. Standard practice for a haunt, or any other entity trapped in one location; when your prey turns up, don't let them escape.

"After that, it turned into the house party from hell," Mrs. Madison says frankly. "The architecture changed around us, breaking everyone up into smaller groups and isolating them from each other. I swear the interior volume of the place must have increased ten times over - and as you can see," she adds, waving at the pile of rubble, "it wasn't exactly a small house to begin with."

She's right about that. From what you can tell, there were only two stories to this place, but the ground floor looks like it covered more area than both floors and the basement of your house, combined.

Catherine recounts all manner of unnatural confrontations: aggressively animated furniture; hostile flocks of flying dishes, cutlery, and books; food that tried to eat people; and ambushes by figures of horror that leapt from the shadows, the mirrors, or even straight out of the walls, occasionally dragging some screaming co-ed back inside with them, and at other times just slashing people with their claws. And while dealing with all of that and various panicking students, she had to figure out who the spirit behind the haunting had been in life, as well as how they'd died and become bound to the house, and hunt down components for a ritual to force their spirit to manifest in a form that could be confronted.

Mrs. Madison doesn't go into great detail about the entire series of events, and you suspect there's more than a few things she's leaving out, either because they're too nasty for kids your age, or because she just doesn't want to talk about them. Which is only fair, seeing as how she's the one who had to deal with the mess.

Ultimately, Catherine discovered that the house's first, last, and only owner had been a miserly businessman turned warlock from the 1800's, who'd used his magic to gain advantage in his financial dealings. Coupled with his already-avaricious nature, his dark powers and the ends he used them for warped the man into a caricature of himself, obsessed with wealth, envious of successful rivals - to the point where he coerced more than one into giving up their fortunes to him, before killing them - and paranoid that he would eventually lose everything.

Taking inspiration from the example of the Egyptian pharaohs, he had the house built as a sort of modern-day pyramid, with the intention of filling it with all his ill-gotten gains and taking the entire lot into the afterlife with him. The work was done in relative secrecy, with materials, enthralled laborers, and supplies all acquired off the books, and transported by a privately-owned ship. Once the house was completed and all of his belongings moved in - again by ship - the owner began a systematic cull of his workforce, killing them, preserving their bodies in a pseudo-Egyptian fashion, and sealing them into the tomb complex built underneath the house; this way, not only did he not have to pay them, but they would be his "servants" in the next life. The handful of individuals who knew of the project and retained their own minds were likewise disposed of, and at last, the warlock moved in - only to finally go completely insane and end his own life exactly one year later.

All in all, a suitably-horrifying explanation for the origins of a major haunting.

For all the damage he'd wrought, the warlock actually wasn't all that powerful. When Catherine forced his shade to manifest, she was able to defeat it in magical combat, even with her situational handicap.

"Though it did help that John had picked up a sword along the way," she adds with a smile for her husband, who's just re-emerged from the house. "His technique was awful, but he made up for it with sheer enthusiasm."

By compelling the ghost to materialize, Catherine's spell temporarily broke its control over the house, effectively freeing everyone that was still alive. The majority promptly showed the usual survival instincts of Sunnydale residents, and fled en mass. A few stuck around and tried to help, among them a theology student who'd gotten his hands on a Bible and found that reciting certain verses really worked to ward off and dispel evil.

"He helped me convince a priest to come and do a proper exorcism," Catherine concludes, "to make sure the ghost didn't reform."

You'd been wondering about that. Laying unquiet souls to rest isn't one of the strengths of witchcraft, at least not in either of the traditions you're familiar with.

Mr. Madison waits for his wife to finish speaking, and then reports that about half of the dining room floor has fallen into the catacombs below, and he doesn't really trust what's left.

So instead of setting up on the exact spot where the warlock's ghost was confined, defeated, and later exorcised, you move the contents of the car's trunk to a point just beyond the wall nearest the ruined chamber.


Certain elements of Catherine's tale stir the more larcenous portions of your soul. After all, if this warlock planned to be "buried" with all his earthly goods, there might still be some valuables tucked away, even with the ruined state of the house. It IS supposed to include an underground complex...

But that's not why you're out here.

As John Madison opens up the heavier of the two boxes and wrestles out the contents - including a traditional metal cauldon, which certainly explains the weight - you take a moment to make a slow circuit of the ruined house, conducting a deep scan of the area as you go. You mean no disrespect to Catherine or the priest she brought in, but it's possible that one or both of them missed something in their respective attempts to cleanse this place. And even if they did everything right, that was well over a decade ago; there's been plenty of time for something else to move in.

You detect no magical energies, and no life-force beyond what you'd expect from the trees, the grass, and the little lives dwelling among them - mostly insects, some small burrowing mammals, a few birds, that sort of thing. Nothing even as large as a housecat, though. You're far enough from the Hellmouth for its taint to be greatly lessened - not entirely gone, mind you, but that aura of chaos, evil, and death can be felt across a good portion of the state. What you're picking up here is nothing out of the ordinary, and doesn't suggest any demons have taken up residence, or even visited this site. Things also feel quite normal on the spiritual side, while aside from Briar, your Fey Sense is returning a null result. Mental Sense likewise gives you nothing.

Of course, even the keenest of your enhanced senses can't penetrate more than a few feet into the ground - less, where the stone foundations of the house are concerned - but on the whole, you're satisfied that this location is safe enough for you to get on with your current task.

And so you do, laying down a ritual circle containing the emblem of the Triforce.

Things go much more easily today than they did the last time you set out to perform a mass purification. Some of that is down to your increase in power and skill since then, but you think more of it has to do with the difference in targets. Where your Uncle Rory's an otherwise ordinary guy with a slightly disturbing hobby, Catherine Madison is a witch; even if she was underestimating the level of protection she needed from the Hellmouth's taint, she DID have some wards up before you made her aware of the true scope of the problem, and even that token defense would have reduced the amount of taint her possessions could accumulate.

More than that, Rory was collecting the skins of animals that had lived on or near the Hellmouth, and preserving them in poses that evoked life-like posture and behavior. This gave his creations a stronger sympathetic link to life, motion, and their original spirits, which would have encouraged the sort of unholy reanimation you saw happening. Most of Catherine's collection of tools and reagents don't have that issue, although she does own a stuffed lizard about the length of your forearm, which radiates somewhat more unholy energy than any of the collected implements.

"No crocodile?" you ask.

"On a housewife's budget?" Catherine laughs. "Not a chance."

Once again, you perform the purification in lots of ten, watching carefully for reactions like those Rory's creations displayed. No such thing occurs, even with the stuffed lizard, and the whole procedure is over and done with in a little more than an hour. Not only that, but this time around, you're quite sure that you managed to suppress the signature of your spells.

A final Spell to Dispel Magic to purge the circle and the residual Light Magic built up within it, and it's almost as if no spells were cast here at all.

Once everything is packed up, you all pile in the car and drive the rest of the way to Oxnard for lunch.

Is there anything you want to discuss during the ride?

The next day, at about ten-thirty, you head out of Sunnydale by foot. While you have an appointment scheduled with the Shuzens for today, it's still several hours before dawn in Japan; nocturnal instincts or no, you're not about to drop in on them THIS early.

Instead, the teleportation ritual you perform carries you back to Bali Ha'i, where you are greeted by Kahine, Shaman Keoni, and a handful of his assistants. They are the only ones from the party remaining on the island at this point: the last of the Memorians left the same day you did; and the other islanders have slipped back into the Spirit World over the past week as they completed their tasks and decided that their visit to the mortal plane had lasted long enough. Keoni and his fellows have remained only to present you with the final fruits of the Great Island Boar Hunt.

Gained Hinana's Hide
Gained Island Boar Bones
Gained Island Boar Leather
Gained Island Boar Meat

...that's a lot of pork products.

Is there anything you want to say to Keoni before he heads off?


As the countryside rolls by outside your window, dust and rock gradually giving way to scraggly grass and comparatively verdant hills, you ask what happened to the priest that helped the elder Madisons put the finishing touch on the haunted house.

"Father Andrews retired a couple of years before you kids were born," Mr. Madison says. "Truth be told, he probably should have retired around the time WE were your age" - John gestures at himself and his wife - "but the church was having a hard time keeping its younger priests, and the old man refused to stand down from his regular duties until they found someone he could trust to take over for him. Thankfully, Father Conroy came around when he did; Andrews was starting to get a little... weird. Then again, eighty years of living in Sunnydale would make ANYBODY a bit strange."

"The drink didn't exactly help," Catherine adds, shaking her head.

Her husband doesn't argue that. "Anyway, when he isn't attending services or ministering to some of the older members of the parish, Father Andrews spends most of his time these days in the rectory. I couldn't say what he gets up to beyond that."

Hm. Something to look into, perhaps, although given the man you're talking about must be pushing ninety, it might be kinder to just let him enjoy his retirement than to drag him into the weirdness that is your existence.

Letting that topic go for now, you ask next what became of the sword that John Madison used to fight the warlock's ghost. If he happened to strike the "killing blow," there's a chance that it might have absorbed some interesting properties.

As it happens, this inquiry runs headfirst into a dead-end. After a century or so of abandonment and neglect, the warlock's house and its contents should have been very much like the pile of rubble and rot it is today; that the Madisons and their peers found an intact house was entirely due to the haunting, the warlock's power and possessiveness keeping his worldly goods pristine even in the face of decades of exposure. When the ghost was suppressed, the house and its contents manifested much of that decay in a matter of minutes, and when Father Andrews concluded his exorcism the following day, what was left simply fell apart.

This includes the sword.

You're a bit disappointed to hear all of this, but to be fair, it's been over a decade since the ghost was put to rest. The odds of the sword having gained and then retained any useful potential for all that time would have been rather small, particularly in Sunnydale's... charming environment.

Eyeing the large pile of pork products askance, you ask Shaman Keoni if there would be any sort of mystical benefits to eating the boar meat - or for that matter, if there are any drawbacks you should watch out for and let your former guests know to beware of. You clarify that, despite your experience with magic, you've never eaten so much food that was raised in such a spiritually-rich environment as Bali Ha'i before.

You're also a bit concerned about proper long-term storage for this stuff, which leads you to ask if there'd be a good place on the island to set up a storehouse.

To the former question, Keoni isn't aware of any issues, positive or negative, that might arise from eating the boars' meat. It was a pretty common part of the islanders' diet in life, and they never saw any unusual results - not outside of certain magical ceremonies, anyway, which haven't been performed and hence, aren't an issue. Of course, the shaman admits he has no idea how the traditional Bali Ha'ian diet compares to what you or any of your guests are used to, but even in the worst-case scenario, he doesn't expect anything significant to come of it.

As far as a storehouse goes, Keoni says that the islanders used to store preserved food in a single stone cellar in each village, and all of those have collapsed or been exposed. While your magic is certainly powerful enough to restore them, the ghosts and Kahine would really rather not have what little is left of the old villages disturbed.

"That said," the shaman tells you, "if you want to cast that spell that makes rooms appear in spaces in the air, and then store the goods inside that, it's fine by me. No idea why you'd want to leave it all here instead of somewhere you could get at it in less than an hour or so, but the stories did always say sorcerers were strange birds."

...well, that certainly could work. It would be a BIT much, casting the Spell of the Magnificent Mansion just to create a proverbial and literal meat-locker, but it's easily doable.

A less-extravagant method would be to take your cue from the islanders, find a good-sized section of bedrock, and hollow out your own cellar with the Spell of Stone Shaping. You'd need to get another large rock to seal the entrance, in order to keep out the elements and scavengers, but that wouldn't be a big deal.

You suppose you could also keep the stuff in your pocket until you've found enough time to put together a Bag of Holding, but given the amount of meat, bones, and hide you're dealing with, you'd need a pretty big bag, one that would - at a quick estimate - run you a good $10,000 in material costs if you made it the normal way. Your current funds can't cover that, and a quick mental search through your inventory turns up no reagents of sufficient quality to make up the difference. You'd have to make a "discount" Bag, then, one that only the magically-trained would be able to open.

Not that this is exactly an argument AGAINST it, but it would still be the most time- and effort-consuming method.


Turning to Kahine, you ask her if she'd object to you finding a suitably-sized mass of rock away from any of the lost villages - and from the homes of the lesser elemental spirits, for that matter - and digging out a cellar to hold the meat until you have need of it.

The volcano spirit considers your request for a moment, and then nods. "I know just the place. Gather up the meat and follow me, Little Magic Man."

Then she turns and starts walking away.

You glance at Keoni, quirking one eyebrow in puzzlement.

"Best not to keep her waiting," the shaman replies with a grin.

Shrugging, you cast the Spell of the Floating Disk, exchanging some of the usual duration and adding a couple levels' worth of extra mana besides to double the diameter of the hovering platform - and hence, quadruple its area. While this doesn't change the amount of weight the Disk can bear, it does give you more space to fill with packages of leaf-wrapped meat, without piling them up on top of each other and risking a spill. The ghosts join you in loading up the airborne construct, many hands making comparatively light work, and when you're done with the meat, they gather up the loosely-bound pigskin bags of bones and place them atop the pile.

You then set out after Kahine, with Briar showing the way and Keoni and his fellow ghosts tagging along out of curiosity, while the Disk drifts obediently along in your wake.

As you go, you speak with the shaman about the spiritual barrier that keeps evil away from Bali Ha'i, and how you were considering trying to restore it from its failing state. To that, of course, you'd need a much better idea of how the ward works - you're particularly curious about how they manage to determine a person's nature - and since it was created by the islanders' shamans, you turn to the only such individual you know.

Keoni chuckles and thanks you for your high opinion of his knowledge, but regretfully informs you that the workings of the barrier are a mystery to him.

"Even counting my time of living and my time of death together, I have not yet seen the passage of three full centuries," the shaman reminds you. "The ancestral shamans who raised the great barrier were dead and dust a thousand years before Lady Kahine first awoke and walked among us, a thousand turns of the seasons ago. Their knowledge, their skills, were long lost to us by then."

Well, that's annoying - but surely, there must be SOMETHING he can tell you about the barrier?

"...there is one thing that might help you," Keoni says after a moment's consideration. "The tale of the barrier's making is a curious one among our legends, for it names no names, whether among mortals or spirits. The former is not so unusual, for mortal lives - and mortal deaths! - are fleeting in the grand scheme of things. A mortal hero might be remembered by name, or they might be known as the Brave Boy, the Wise Chief, or the Clever Daughter, and their soul would be content either way. But for the spirits to go unnamed, their role unacknowledged? That is beyond peculiar, and even insulting. For the spirits who contributed to the safety and security of Bali Ha'i for thousands of years to never be named or honored for their efforts? That should have invited their WRATH, and brought the barrier crashing down ages ago, to say nothing of how they would have expressed their displeasure besides."

"But that didn't happen," you point out.

"Indeed, it did not."

He pauses.

"So... somehow, they WERE being acknowledged?"

"Just so."

You think back to Kahine's telling of the tale. No names were given, but the spirits who created the barrier, the spirits of Earth and Fire, Sea and Sky, had to be acknowledged, so...

Gained Spiritual Knowledge B

...oh.

Oh, boy.

"So... you're suggesting that your ancestors didn't just call on spirits of Earth, Fire, Sea, and Sky to create the barrier, but that they called on THE Earth, THE Fire, THE Sea, and THE Sky?"

The shaman grins mirthlessly. "Kind of terrifying to think about, isn't it?"

Uh, yeah. Just a bit.

Goddesses, what did the islanders DO, to get the attention of four spirits of THAT magnitude all at once? And to NOT die horribly in the process?
...that's a good question. Hmmm...
You're still trying to wrap your head around the implications of Keoni's remarks when you catch up with Kahine.
Uh, Nayru?
The volcano spirit led you along Bali Ha'i's shore, past the Ring of Trials and the area where you spent an hour or so skipping stones with Higurashi Souta, and then further inland as the "beach" became less sand and more rough stone - not to mention increasingly vertical.
Aaaand we've lost her.
She's come to a stop atop a hill crowned by three upthrust spires of stone, each about seven or eight feet tall and three to four feet across at the base. The ground between and around them is mostly stone and bare earth, with some grass enroaching at the edges. Looking past the spires, you see the forest half a mile or so further inland; glancing back over your shoulder, you see the ocean about that far away as well.

"Here we are," Kahine proclaims, stomping her foot just hard enough for you to feel the reverberation, without the ground actually shaking. "Far enough inland and high enough above sea level to be fairly dry, far enough from the forest for most animals to stay away, and not so high that wind is a problem. Also" - she kicks the dark stone again - "it's more or less solid below, no caves or burrows or large pockets, just a few 'bubbles' formed when the stone was cooling."

In other words, you're in the path of a former lava flow.

...eh, whatever. The whole ISLAND is volcanic, that was ALWAYS going to be the case.

Reaching out with your senses, you examine the site. As you requested, it's nothing special as far as Bali Ha'i goes: spiritual traces no higher than the local average; elemental energies low and stable; and as Kahine said, no evidence that any animals have been through in a while. The location and composition of the three standing stones also hasn't given rise to any exotic phenomenon, although they do serve as a bit of a wind-break.

Is this site acceptable to you?

Assuming you say yes, and aside from making the Stone Cellar big enough to hold all the pork products and giving yourself enough space to move around when you need to fetch something, do you have any special details in mind for the Stone Cellar?


Some people might say that when looking to acquire real estate, you shouldn't go with the first option presented to you, at least not until you've seen the other available possibilities.

Some people have never been to a magical island where the very geography seems to rearrange itself to provide, or at least take you to, places you want or need to go, much less had the spirit of said island acting as their realtor.

Thanking Kahine, you take a couple of minutes to examine the site more closely, checking with the volcano spirit and Briar to get a better sense of how much space the mass of stone beneath you occupies, and hence what you have to work with. Kahine leads you around the perimeter of the formation, describing the depth of the rock, while your partner performs a minor spell of Druidism to determine the composition of the stone.

You also pause to study the three standing stones, with an eye towards including them in a Goddess-backed ward - you know, when you're able to set something like that up. Initial impressions prove misleading, however, as the rock formation turns out to be far from perfect for such a purpose. Yes, there's one stone for each Goddess, but the "triangle" whose corners they mark is an irregular one, with no two angles matching, and while the volcanic origins of the stone would make for a good shrine to Din, it's not really any good for either of her sisters.

Maybe you could reshape the pillars into statues, or something?

Shaking your head, you abandon that line of thought for the time being, and focus on the Stone Cellar.

Using the Spell to Soften Earth and Stone-

Quite unexpectedly, Kahine giggles and flinches away from you.

-you transmute a large portion of the black stone beneath you into soft clay. The brittle nature of the volcanic rock works in your favor here, making it easier for the magic to alter and hence allowing you to affect a larger volume. While it's still only half as much as you'd have been able to alter if you'd been targeting loose sand or soil, your overall power and particular proficiency with Earth Elementalism allowed you to convert over forty-seven hundred cubic feet of stone in one shot.

About the same volume as four rooms measuring ten feet on each side, with about three-quarters of a fifth for good measure.

"Are you alright, ma'am?" you ask, looking up at the volcano-spirit.

"Fine!" Kahine exclaims, waving off your concern. "I'm fine. Really. It tickled."

...okay, then.

Your next casting is the Spell to Move Earth. This one takes a while, as you have to sort of magically wrestle with the mass of the newly-created clay to haul it up out of the ground. You need a few attempts to find the right rhythm for the task, but before long you hit on the method of visualizing a rope-pull: grasp with both hands; draw back slowly and steadily, rather than give one hard yank; reach ahead with your trailing hand to "grip" the "rope"; and then begin over again.

Swells of clay rise up from the five-by-five patch of softened stone you created, like the thickest, heaviest water in the world somehow flowing UP a pipe. Gradually, a very rough stairway is revealed, and then a chamber below. You tried to shape the transmutation to create the cellar you envisioned, and while the end result is very rough - and possibly even sharp in some places, if the glassy glitter of the black stone is any indication - it does appear to more or less match up with what you had in mind.

Mentally ordering your Floating Disk to "wait," you call a Spell of Light to your hand and descend into the cellar to take a closer look at the fruits of your labors, volcanic rock crackling beneath your shoes as you go.

The stairs are five feet wide and descend over ten feet at an easy sixty-degree incline. The floor below is fifteen feet to a side, with the stairs reaching right to the middle of the room while still leaving plenty of space on either side for someone to move around in, or to serve as a hub for future expansion. Directly ahead of the foot of the stairs are two vaguely triangular lumps of stone about chest-high to you, and past them stands a single portal, five feet wide, connecting to a passage just five feet long; on the other end of that is a second room as big as the first, its walls lined with faint depressions and two more lumpy pedestals about halfway across. The ceiling is about nine feet high throughout, while the tops of the doorways are perhaps a foot lower. You also can't help but notice that, for all the crackling sharpness of the black stone, the edges and surfaces in here aren't particularly flat or even, tending more towards a rounded smoothness - even kind of smeared-looking in places. Plus there's still bits of clay clinging here and there, as well as the odd indentation where one of those "bubbles" Kahine mentioned was split by your magic-

*POP!*

-or crushed underfoot, as the case may be.

All in all, not bad for a couple of spells that were never designed for anything like detailed work.

You begin casting the Spell of Stone Shaping, providing more definite features for your storage chamber. Those vague suggestions of shelves and cubicles in the second room become the genuine article, while those lumpy pedestals become uniform triangular prisms. The doorway now looks like it has a proper finished arch, rather than just being a literal hole in the wall, and the floor and stairs are shored up so that they don't creak and crackle with every step.

Once all that is done, you call up the stairs to Keoni, asking for advice on how to make this a proper storehouse for meat. A moment later, the shaman's ghost shuffles down the steps, looking around and making sounds of consideration.

"It's already dry, and the temperature is good," he muses. "Definitely going to need to cover the hole to make sure it stays that way, though, and if you're serious about it, you might want to fill in this door as well." He gestures at the portal separating the two rooms. "That way, you could close the main entrance before opening the actual storage area."

As for the matter of protecting your goods from insects, fungus, and other forms of spoilage, the shaman is willing to cast a general-purpose spell of preservation on your Stone Cellar, once you've got all the meat down here. When you float the idea of gathering ambient spiritual energy to try and enhance that aspect of the meat, however...
...seriously?
"Lad," Keoni says slowly, "I know you can't help coming up with these crazy sorcerer ideas, but planning to shove a whole bunch of extra spiritual energy into a room full of meat over an extended period of time is the kind of plan that gets you haunted meat."

"Any plan that gets you haunted meat is a bad plan," Briar chimes in.

It was just an idea.

Shaking your head, you look around at the Stone Cellar. All those Stone Shape spells ate about a sixth of your available mana, and seeing as how you were planning on having that Maximum Power Study Session after this and visiting Kahlua later on, you probably don't want to spend too many more spells on this.

Besides the door(s), is there anything else that you feel absolutely needs to be added?


Satisfied with this level of security, you cast a couple more Spells of Light to provide useful illumination in the Stone Cellar, then hustle back up the stairs and join the ghosts in unloading your Floating Disk. It takes a while to get everything squared away, as you have to decide if you want to take any of the meat, bones, and leather with you - and if so, how much of each - as well as whether or not to store the bones in their crude pigskin bags for convenience's sake, or to dump them out on the shelves and undo the simple bindings, so that the leather doesn't get permanently stretched or something.

Once you've got all the meat onto the shelves, however, Shaman Keoni goes ahead and starts casting those spells of preservation you asked about. You pay attention, but while you see familiar elements of Abjuration, Elementalism, and Necromancy in the magic meant to ward off insects, fungus, disease, heat, and/or dampness, the fact that it's all shamanism gives the spells odd quirks that you can't quite wrap your head around. They have almost nothing in common with sorcery beyond the end results, and while there are similarities to divine magic, witchcraft, and druidism, the entities Keoni is calling on to power his spellcasting are individually much weaker and far more numerous than what a priest or a witch would typically deal with, making the differences in style much harder to discern. And that's before taking his active efforts at subtlety and control into account.

For all of that, you're pretty sure one of the spells Keoni casts is a take on Endure Elements, while another looks like a less-powerful version of your Spell to Repel Vermin. You're not quite sure about the other two, though.

Once the shaman is done, everyone clears out, you extinguish the light in the storage room and cast the Spell of Stone Shape again. A two-part symphony of crackling rings out from opposite sides of the passage between the two chambers, followed by a slow, grating slither as rectangular slabs of stone begin to slide out of the walls towards each other, about a foot from the storage room. Though only three inches thick, the moving sections of volcanic rock extended from floor to ceiling, and as more and more of them emerges from the walls, they reveal the same shaped smoothness as the other surfaces.

Finally, with a faint "click" that vaguely annoys you for failing to be an imposing "boom," the stone door closes, sealing off the end of the passage.

You turn and exit the Stone Cellar, waving the remaining Spell of Light out as you go, and then cast Stone Shape one final time to seal the top of the stairs.

Gained Stone Cellar

With the last of their contracted duties officially concluded, Shaman Keoni and his fellow ghosts say their final farewells, and fade back into the spirit realm.

Perhaps you'll see them again, someday?

Once the islanders are gone, Kahine also moves to take her leave, though when you mention that you'd like to take this opportunity to practice one of the more volatile aspects of your powerset, she looks curious and asks if you'd mind an audience.

Rather than stick around the Stone Cellar and risk damaging it, you return to the beach. Your stomach growls at this point, reminding you that even if it looks like early morning on Bali Ha'i, it's lunchtime back in Sunnydale. Fortunately, you brought a snack, so that's easily taken care of.

As you eat, you consider how to proceed with your Maximum Power Study Session, which leads to a quick recap of your available resources. In terms of energy, you've got a good amount of mana to work with despite all the spellcasting you just did, and you're at full power in every other respect, so you can afford to be fairly profligate if you want. As far as time goes, it's currently around 7:00 am on Bali Ha'i, which puts Japan a couple of hours behind you and gives you three or four hours to work with, before it'll be socially-acceptable for you to visit the Shuzens. You also have six hours before you have to head home.

You will, of course, be calling up Shadow Alex to observe whatever tests you perform and offer his findings and insights. Your alter-ego's presence means you can either forego or at least outsource a lot of the Divination Magic you'd normally set up for something like this, and gives you someone you could potentially bounce a few moves off of, in addition to ideas.

That just leaves the question of where to run these tests. You came back to the beach because there's nothing here other than sand, sea, and a few unworked stones to worry about, so if your Power testing gets REALLY crazy, nothing of value will be at risk.. though there is the Ring of Trials to think about. Then again, given the wards built into the arena and the fact that it's dedicated to the Goddesses, it might actually be the safest possible place to practice with your Power...


In the process of putting away the meat, you feel the desire to shore up your home reserves of bacon. Checking with the islanders about which of the leaf-wrapped bundles contains what - and what's actually required for making homemade bacon, as it's something you've never done before - you end up grabbing a slab of pork belly to take with you.

Altered Island Boar Meat
Gained Island Pork Belly

Kahine's request to sit in on your Maximum Power Study Session doesn't bother you.

You do, however, ask her to share any thoughts or insights she might have, to complement the ones from you, your other self, and Briar.

She agrees to this easily.

For SCIENCE!
Once your hasty lunch is over, you pack away the leavings and hike down the beach to the Ring of Trials. While the arena wasn't exactly built to serve as a magical testing ground, it IS physically- and mystically-sturdy enough that it can serve as one without too much trouble. More than that, it's consecrated to the Goddesses, and as such, is the closest thing to true hallowed ground - and territory - that they hold in this world. Here, they can observe you with minimal interference from the local Powers, keep unwanted snoops OUT, and perhaps even intervene on your behalf if something goes wrong.
It's nice that he has such faith in us, isn't it?
While Kahine and Briar head up to the main box to take a seat, you go ahead and summon Shadow Alex.

POOF!

Your dark doppelganger looks around at the (mostly) empty Ring, then turns back to you. "Maximum Power Study Session?"

"Maximum Power Study Session," you agree.

"Cool. Let me just get out of the blast radius before you start..."

Everybody's a comedian.

Still, you go ahead and wait while your not-so-evil twin jogs up the short stair into the stands. You can sense his magic and ki moving as he goes, setting various spells and techniques to expand and focus his sensory powers and mental faculties into place.

Once that's done, you begin with the test you feel is least likely to blow up in your face: an examination of your Power Aura.

You start with a standard use of the technique, to set your baseline, and there is a brief flare of gold, followed by six or seven seconds of a fainter glow that appears to emanate from your body.

"Huh," Shadow Alex comments.

"Indeed," Kahine agrees.

"What you said," Briar chimes in.

"And all of that means, what, exactly?" you ask.

"Well, for one thing, it's not just light you're giving off like that," your counterpart explains. "That 'glow' extends into the magical, psychic, and spiritual planes as well as the physical. I think if you flared like that, even someone who had their eyes closed or their back turned might notice."

You go ahead and test that hypothesis, and sure enough, it proves accurate. More than that, the psychic and spiritual elements of the technique appear to give it some ability to convey your thoughts and feelings - only in the most basic and fleeting manner, given the low level of the skill, but all three members of your audience report experiencing a momentary flicker of interest not their own. In Briar's case, it's a little tangled up with what she can sense of you through the familiar bond, but if you both focus on suppressing that connection, the Power Aura's effects become more obvious.

Basically? This appears to be a "battle aura" straight out of any martial arts anime you'd care to name.

When you fire up Power Armor to see if the two techniques have anything in common, the answer appears to be, "No - at least not besides the distinctive golden glow." In fact, the two techniques are exact opposites in many respects: where Power Armor is focused on you, Power Aura is focused outwards; where the former is a strict zero-range skill, the latter covers a good thirty-foot radius; and where the Armor is able to exert influence on the physical plane due to its sheer focus, the Aura is so diffuse that its primary impact is confined to the non-physical realms.

At higher levels, you might be able to push people around with a blast of your Power Aura, though that would probably be as much due to psychological shock as any sort of physical force. Hitting purely physical objects with the skill seems an unlikely prospect, at best.

Gained Power Armor E
Gained Power Aura F (Plus) (Plus)


Thinking a bit on the observed effects of Power Aura, you call up to Shadow Alex: "What do you suppose the chances are that the Aura's non-physical elements are what keep causing those funky punch-visions?"

"I'd say, pretty good," he replies.

If the two of you are correct, then refining the Power Aura technique might make it possible to prevent those visions, or to trigger them in a manner that doesn't require you to be fighting. Even if that doesn't pan out, the skill can certainly be used for intimidation purposes, and perhaps for other forms of emotional broadcasting as well - though there will likely be some limits on that. Those who personally know you and are accustomed to your brand of weirdness will have a greater tolerance, but people in general are unlikely to react to the experience of having someone else's thoughts and feelings in their heads in a calm and accepting manner.

You also wonder if Power Aura is contributing to the phenomenon of "power calling to power," but can't think of a way to really test that. At least not in a manner that won't get you into trouble.

While you're pondering that, Kahine speaks up: "'Funky punch-visions?'"

"You know how they say true warriors can communicate with their fists?" Briar offers.

"...I do now."

"Well, when Alex is using that technique that turns him into a glowing golden superhuman, and fighting someone who's also going all-out, they get to see whole movies." Almost immediately after that, your partner adds, "Aaaand it just hit me that you probably don't know what a 'movie' is, do you?"

"Actually, I do," Kahine tells her. "One of the last of the women who lived on Bali Ha'i visited an American naval base on the next island over, trying to find a good man to marry her daughter. They had an outdoor theater that showed movies while she was there."

"...huh," Briar says.

Another point that comes to mind is that, since Power Aura's effects are primarily non-physical in nature, it might work better as a base for adapting non-physical techniques to run off of Power instead of whatever they used before. Turning that around, Power Armor might work better for some of your more physical skills.

You briefly consider the notion of adapting Power Aura as a new sensory skill, but suspect that it's something of an impractical goal. At your current level of ability, Power Aura returns no information to you; it's only when you're in Maximum Power that you start seeing things, and even then, it's relatively rare. Not to mention that you already have a couple of Power techniques that are direct analogues to some of your most fundamental senses; further developments in that field seem much more likely to come from Power Sight and Power Sense than Power Aura.

Using Power Aura to interfere with other people's supernatural attempts to trick your senses might well be possible, though. You have plenty of evidence of your Power disrupting other forms of energy, even those under your control. Once again, though, Power Sense might be a better technique to play around with for that - after all, you DID once knock Ayane out of stealth when you "pinged" her with the skill. Even if that was due to the equivalent of standing too close to a loudspeaker, it's still active disruption, which is something Power Aura didn't demonstrate.

Your testing of Power Aura has also revealed a potential problem, not in the technique itself, but in how your use of it and Power in general affects Briar. If she had trouble sorting out your emotions from her own, what about your respective energies? You know that fairies in general grow by absorbing ambient magic, but through the familiar bond, Briar's got a direct tap to a potent source of energy that's only getting stronger over time. You THOUGHT you'd taken sufficient precautions against that when you redesigned the Familiar Binding Ritual and got Ambrose's input on the matter besides, but even if your partner can safely sort out the forces flowing back and forth through the bond MOST of the time, what about when you call on your full Power?

...you think you need to sit down and have a talk with your partner about this.

Gained Protective B

In fact, you think you'd better do that before proceeding with your Power experiments.

"Problems, other me?" Shadow Alex asks, as you head for the stairs.

"Maybe," you reply, holding your tongue until you're close enough to Briar that neither of you need to shout. Then you lay out your concerns.

"Grk!"

"Are you okay, Briar?"

"I don't know that's the whole PROBLEM isn't it why are you just standing there HURRY UP AND SCAN ME ALREADY!"


You regard Briar for a moment. Then:

"I'll need a lift in a second, other me."

"Why would you-"

You cast the Spell to Reduce A Person('s Size), heavily modified in a manner you've used several times in the past.

"-oh, that."

Shadow Alex bends down, holding his right hand out with fingers extended and palm up. You hop onto the organic "platform" and grab hold of his thumb for balance as he lifts you up to where Briar hangs in the air, freaking out. Once he's stopped moving, you let go of the support and hold your arms up to Briar in wordless invitation.

"This is not the time for hugs, Alex!"

You affect a disappointed expression.

There's a brief pause-

*THUMP*

-and then you are hugging a fairy.

"Okay," Briar mumbles into your chest. "Maybe it is."

You nod and pat your partner on the back, above the base of her wings.

Silly fairy. It's ALWAYS time for hugs.

"This is just precious," Kahine chuckles, her humanoid avatar now looming above you like the volcano she truly is.

Once Briar has calmed down a bit, you go ahead and start scanning her. Shadow Alex does the same, making up for any loss of magical power due to shrinkage on your part, and thus sparing you the need to revert to your normal size.

Though he does add that YOUR partner has a rather different aura from HIS partner, so his analysis may be a little off.

That's fine; you can perform a second set of scans after this, once you've resumed your regular height.

Your first batch of results are as follows: when actively probed with Mage Sight, Ki Sight, Spiritual Sight, Fairy Sight, and Mental Sight, each used individually so as to eliminate any possible distraction, Briar registers as normal, with no deviations apparent in her aura. After some discussion, you (but not Shadow Alex) go ahead and use Power Sight as well, looking for traces of Power, the Traceforce, or any other anomalies that your "lesser" skills couldn't turn up.

You find nothing, but you're not sure if that's because there's nothing TO find, or if it's simply a consequence of you being much less-practiced at using Power Sight than any of your other extrasensory abilities.

Incidentally, while you're shooting golden beams of light at Briar from your eyes, Shadow Alex observes your familiar bond. As near as he can tell, your Power IS moving through the bond, it just isn't STAYING in Briar's system. He speculates that this may be because the fairy doesn't carry the residual energy of the Triforce, a supposition that is at least partially supported by the fact that the various people you've faced while using Maximum Power haven't started glowing golden themselves.

True, you don't have a deep metaphysical bond with any of those people, but you didn't have a proper familiar bond with Briar, either, those first few months after you unlocked Maximum Power. And in that time, you fought Kahlua and Altria often enough that, if this kind of contamination WERE an issue, at least one of them ought to have displayed some kind of sign.

That still doesn't mean that long-term exposure to your Power is without consequence - beyond your tendency to punch people in the face with it, that is - but you are hopeful all the same.

You cancel your Spell of Shrinking and do that second set of scans, up to and including Power Sight, but the results come back the same.

Gained Fairy Sight D (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Knowledge of Power D (Plus)
Gained Mental Control D (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Mental Sight D (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Power Sight E (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Spiritual Control C (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)

You will, of course, be keeping an eye on this going forward, just in case the effects of "Power radiation" take longer to properly manifest, or are subtle enough to pass your notice at this point in time. You very much doubt the latter is the case, though; all of your experience to date indicates that "subtle" is something Power just doesn't do. As to the former... well, like you said; you'll be watching.

Is this a satisfactory assessment?


With that brief scare past, you head back down to the arena floor to resume your experiments.

It is perhaps ironic that the next item on your to-do list calls for a series of tests on Power Sense.

You fire off the technique once, with Shadow Alex observing the expanding ring of energy using Mage Sight and Ki Sight. He also takes a minute to examine the Hyrulean symbols carved into the walls of the arena, which are left crackling with faint golden energy for a few seconds after the "ring" of your expressed Power sweeps over them.

In the next seat over, Kahine frowns. "That is a rather loud technique, for such a little man."

"I'd say you get used to it," Briar sighs, "but I'd be lying."

Once Shadow Alex signals his readiness, you repeat the "ping." This time around, your dark doppelganger is using Mental Sight and Spiritual Sight.

You employ the technique a third time, while Shadow Alex's eyes glow with the distinctive light of Power Sight.

"It almost reminds me of whalesong," Kahine muses.

Briar turns to her in surprise. "What, really?"

"Hm. But only if the whale in question was drunk and tone-deaf."

...ow.

In any event, with your baseline having been set, you proceed the actual experimental part of this set of tests. Once again, you start with the trial you feel is least likely to blow up on you, which in this case involves trying to push more Power into Power Sense, to see if you can increase its range, the rate at which it propagates, or its sensory returns. In this, you take your starting cues from the Ki Overload technique, which you attempt to adapt to run on Power.

*POW*

The next thing you know, you're laying on the arena's sandy floor, blinking up at wisps of gold-tinted smoke drifting about and the blue sky beyond. A moment later, Briar appears, wand and empty hand waving about in a mix of curiously-wordless concern.

It dawns on you that Briar is NOT being quiet, you've just been temporarily deafened - and stunned - by the explosion of Power.

So much for that approach being "less likely to explode."

"-an -ou -ear me?" a small voice says through the ringing in your ears.

"I can hear you, Briar," you sigh as you sit up.

Subsequent conversation with Shadow Alex about this mishap leads the two of you to a pair of possibilities regarding the failure of your "Power Overload" technique: either you simply slipped up because Power is more volatile and less familiar to you than ki; or else it happened because Power techniques are already as powerful as they can get.

If it's the former, you just need more practice - and probably a few more explosions until you get the hang of controlling the golden energy. Briar won't exactly be thrilled about that.

If it's the latter, however, then it won't matter how many times you blow yourself up, because there's simply no progress to be made in this direction.


As much as you are reluctant to cause Briar additional stress so soon after that brief panic about your Power potentially affecting her growth, the prospect of giving up a line of inquiry about your Power just because it blew up in your face - all of ONE time - is no more appealing.

It will take at least three explosions, with nothing to show for them, before you start seriously considering dropping this approach.

With that in mind, you stay sitting in the sand and tell Briar to move back to a safe distance. Only when she has done so - grumbling every inch of the way about boys, hard heads, and explosions - do you reach for your Power once again.

*POW*
...you know, somehow this isn't as funny as all those times Link blew himself up.
For the second time, your attempt to overcharge Power Sense with extra Power explodes in your face.
Maybe it's because the Kid-King's doing it on purpose, where the Green Machine did it by accident?
But like you said, it will take at least THREE such failures before you think about giving up.
Two words, Farore: Blast. Mask.
Sitting up once again, you shake off the ringing in your ears and gather golden energy one more time.
...oh yeah.
*POW*

You saw something that time!
Are you sure that's not just a concussion?
And it was even something OTHER than a destabilizing technique going critical!

One more time, and-

*GONG*
Wow, that IS loud.
The SOUND of the amped-up Power Sense reverberates through your bones in a decidedly unpleasant manner, as the expanding ring of bright energy paints the sand and stones around you momentarily golden.

You're abruptly reminded of that Bottle of "Power Sand" in your pocket, which you still haven't found the time to poke at.

Through the glare over your over-Powered technique, you see Kahine and Shadow Alex covering their ears and wincing at the noise, while Briar dives behind the wall of warded stone ringing the box.

Gained Power Overload F (Plus)
Gained Power Sense D (Plus)

So the good news is, you've discovered that you can, in fact, overload a Power technique. And from the way the energy of Power Sense is clinging to everything in sight, it does appear to have gained a level of increased range and improved functionality - though the latter would probably be more evident if there'd been an invisible or otherwise hidden target around.

The bad news is that your new skill makes Power techniques even MORE obvious than they already were. It's also physically painful for YOU, although that may be a consequence of the technique you were using already being rather "loud" to begin with.

Just to be sure, you try flaring your Power Aura, one of your weakest Power techniques-

!

-yeah, stress confirmed. Though it doesn't feel as bad as the recoil from Power Sense, suggesting that either overloading that particular skill is just going to be nasty no matter what, or else the more powerful the basic technique, the worse the backlash from pushing it beyond its limits.

Also, ow.

Gained Power Aura F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)

"A drunk, tone-deaf whale, huh?" Shadow Alex groans.

"Also yelling, apparently," Kahine replies in kind.

"That's it," Briar says, as she flies back into view. "I'm putting my foot down, Alex. No more exploding techniques!"


You're already testing applications of Power on the ground that is - according to your calculations - least likely to draw interference from unfriendly or simply meddlesome Powers. The only reason you might be reluctant to add examining the Power Sand to your list of experiments is because of a lack of mana, and you're not so far gone for that to be a major issue.

Worse comes to worst, you'll just limit yourself to using ki when you spar with Kahlua and/or her sisters later.

You agree with the fairy; you've been blown up more than enough for one day.

Besides, you can always come back and try out your new, potentially self-destructive technique some other time. There's literally nothing stopping you.
Not even a healthy sense of self-preservation, it seems.
You know, except for Briar.
Hang in there, Fairy Girl.
Having put Power Overload to bed for the day, you get on with that last aspect of Power Sense you wanted to test out: namely, gathering the Power, shaping the technique, and then just... NOT letting it go.

You were originally concerned that this skill might explode on you, but having gone through that several times in quick succession, you have a distinctly better idea of what it feels like when a Power skill is about to fail in a destructive manner. You keep a proverbial eye out for that sensation, ready to relax your metaphysical "grip" on your energies and let the technique do as it will at the first sign of danger.

*PING*

It turns out to be a moot point, as you find yourself unable to hold onto Power Sense.

It's strange. You can gather mana and hold it without casting a spell or engaging a technique like Mana Burst or Mage Sight, and you can likewise gather and hold ki. But bringing those energies together to form Power makes them much more volatile, and in the face of that, all your practiced control seems to amount to nothing, as golden light slips through your fingers.

You repeat that twice without making meaningful progress, and finally give up.

You've had prior experiences aplenty that suggested it, but the fact bears repeating: Power is not so easily controlled.

The last item on your ballot calls for playing around with Maximum Power. Before you get on with that, however, you opt to take a bit of a breather, and reach into your pocket to pull out the Bottle of so-called Power Sand. Calling Shadow Alex down to assist, you uncork the Bottle-

*POP*

-and pour about half a handful of the golden grains into your counterpart's upturned hand. Re-sealing and stowing the Bottle in your pocket - whose stasis effect will prevent the Sand from dissolving or transmuting into some lesser form, just in case that's a thing - you join Shadow Alex in probing the small sample of the material *ahem* in hand.

You don't even need to actively probe the material with your Mage Sight to pick up the aura of Transformation Magic radiating from it. Ki Sight likewise picks up an echo of your personal energies, albeit much fainter than the magical aspect - a fraction of a fraction of a percent. Quick scans with Mental and Spiritual Sight return nothing, but considering how weak the ki traces were, that makes sense - they'd each account for a third or less of the already miniscule reading.

You get a surprise when you switch on Power Sight again, for while the familiar and expected golden glow is there - albeit fainter than you've ever seen it - it's not radiating from within the individual grains of Sand as you half-expected it to be. Instead, it clings to them, as if externally imposed.

And before your golden gaze, the aura of Power rapidly diminishes, until what you're left holding is not glittering sand, not even common dirt, but shredded flakes of dry skin. These continue to shrivel up until the "half a handful" has been reduced to a small fraction of its original volume - perhaps an eighth, give or take.

...

Shadow Alex joins you in turning a slow, sidelong glance at the pocket where you tucked the Bottle, which apparently contains a bunch of your own transformed, Power-infused skin.

Do you have any thoughts on this development?


"Note to self," you state aloud. "Clean up after creating this, or other stuff like it, on the grounds that leaving bits of yourself laying around for just anyone to find is a bad idea."

The Spell of Prestidigitation should suffice for that purpose.

"Especially when they're magically-charged," Shadow Alex agrees. "Though it looks like that won't be an issue for this batch," he adds, calling your attention back to the flakes of dead skin in his hand. Before your eyes, the cast-off epidermal fragments decay from organic material to an ectoplasmic slurry, which rapidly boils away into nothingness.

"...that happened because this stuff came from inside the Ring of Trials, didn't it," Briar says.

It's not a question, but you nod anyway.

The entire reason the Ring sends people into a pocket reality to face its challenges is because the creatures they encounter in there aren't precisely "real" - and for the duration of the Trials, neither are the challengers. That was why everyone was able to step out of the Ring under their own power at the end of their Trials, even cases like Akkiko, who would have needed immediate and major treatment just to stay alive, after Morpheel snapped her up like a piece of cut bait.

That you were able to "pocket" the Power Sand in the first place is up to magical shenanigans, chiefly the strong sympathy between your not-quite-real self and your actual self, while the fact that it still exists, a full week later, is down to the stasis effect imposed by your dimensional pocket.

Though you can't overlook the possibility that your Power may have played a role both times.

With that in mind, you take out the Bottle of Power Sand a second time, pour a little more of the stuff into Shadow Alex's hand, and then close the Bottle and put it away once more.

And then you wait, doing nothing but gesture to your counterpart and your partner for silence and patience.

About half a minute later, the residual glow of your Power has died out on its own, leaving only the "Sand" - which is probably more accurately termed "Dust," and quickly decays thereafter.

Right. So it wasn't just exposure to your Power Sight that caused the first handful to break down; the stuff is genuinely short-lived all on its own.

On a related note, this does not bode well for the stability and usefulness of that Bottle of Gleeok Blood you collected.

Moblin's shiny new Ball and Bokoblin Collar get a pass, as there was divine intervention involved in making them two of his three prizes for being the first animal to ever independently clear a Ring of Trials.

Shaking your head, you take out the Bottle of Power Sand/Dust/Skin Flakes, open it, and just leave it for a minute while the contents literally fade from existence.

Diposed of Power Sand
Gained Hylian Glass Bottle (Empty)

With that done, you move on to your last planned set of experiments for the day, which call for mixing Maximum Power with various elemental enhancement spells. A year ago, you saw your Power Ball technique absorb an electricity-based defensive spell, the fusion turning the "Ball" into something more like "Ball Lightning," making it harder to dodge and possibly increasing the severity and/or duration of its paralytic effect. Last week, you saw the combination of an Elemental Body spell and Maximum Power giving you a personal aura of golden sand.

This does beg the question of which elements to test out. Darkness and Earth are your strongest affinities, and since you've already seen Earth blended with Maximum Power, it would make sense to test out Dark Magic next. On the other hand, just because the Spell of the Elemental Body reacted with Maximum Power one way doesn't necessarily mean ALL Earth Elemental spells will have the same or even a similar reaction; it might be worth it to try out a range of Earth-based buffs.

And of course, you have access to plenty of other elements, a couple of which are almost as strong as your two primary affinities.

There's also the matter of what level of intensity you wish to use Maximum Power at in this set of tests. Minimizing your output will of course allow you to study more interactions, but it might be beneficial to study how different degrees of Maximum Power interact with a single spell. Then too, letting your Power run at full strength is apt to produce the most spectacular results, while also giving you more practice at handling that level of performance - at the cost of eating into your reserves.


After a moment's consideration, you decide not to throw out the Gleeok's Blood.

Based on how long the "Power Sand" persisted once removed from the stasis of your pocket, the fake dragon's blood should still retain the properties of ACTUAL dragon's blood for as long as it's in there, and for a short time thereafter. And while its unstable nature and inevitable dissolution mean that some of the traditional legendary uses for dragon's blood aren't going to work out, you may yet encounter a situation where a temporary shot of dragon's blood could come in handy.

Your mind harkens back to the sight of Issa powering up by drinking Volvagia's blood. True, Gleeok is of a different and lesser order than the Dragon of Death Mountain, but it's still a dragon. A lesser beast would logically offer a lesser boost, which might have the beneficial side-effect of NOT driving the drinker into a frenzy...

...but that's assuming you offer it as a drink to any vampires, of course. You may well not.

You decide that basing your decisions on the behavior of a single spell isn't a good approach. You'll need to test a wider range of Earth Magic before you can make any firm statements about just how that element interacts with Power.

With that in mind, you page through your mental spellbook, seeking a suitable magic to test.

...

You are quickly reminded that you don't actually KNOW a great variety of Earth-aspected spells, at least not of the sort that that act as buffs. Spells specifically meant to conjure, move, shape, or otherwise manipulate earth, sand, rock, and mud? You've got a dozen of those, and three-quarters as many that work on "objects" or "material" in general, regardless of their composition. You also have several spells for attacking with acid, which has certain links with the element of Earth - though it has at least as many, arguably stronger links to Water, the universal solvent.

But Earth Elemental spells that directly affect a living being and apply an ongoing magical effect that ISN'T harmful to the target?

Aside from the already-tested Elemental Body, you have Stoneskin, the Earth-aspected variants of Resist Energy and Elemental Aura, and the acid-based Spell of Eruptive Pustules - and you have to stop and mentally "thank" Koume and Kotake for THAT charming addition to Ganondorf's repertoire.

That's pretty much it.

Still, those spells will give you a better baseline than Elemental Body alone for how Earth and Power interact. And they'll save you some mana as well.

You decide to start with the Spell of Stoneskin, which is pretty unambiguously Earth Magic, even if it is cut with the defensive aspects of Abjuration Magic. Reducing the duration by two steps and making it strictly self-targeting frees up enough energy to substitute for the costly material reagent, and several minutes of ritual chanting later, your flesh takes on a consistency - and briefly, a hue and texture - more akin to living granite than organic matter.

In the name of Science!, an unarmed Stalchild summoned up by Shadow Alex-

With much gravitas, he declares, "I dub thee, 'Timmy.'"

Briar facepalms.

-punches you in the stomach, confirming that the spell is working as intended.

Before the monster can strike again, you engage Maximum Power as it was meant to be used: at maximum power!

As the golden energy explodes from within you - accompanied by a crackling sound that emanates from all over your body, along with a feeling of stiffness and weight - your undead assistant pauses, its normally chattering jaw dropping as the unholy lights within its otherwise empty eyesockets fixate on you.

For a moment, you wonder if you've discovered another aspect of Maximum Power.

Then the skeleton winds up and hits you again, harder than it did the first time - hard enough, in fact, that you almost feel it.

*CRACK*

The noise of breaking bones is unpleasantly distinctive, and you're honestly relieved when the Stalchild pulls back its hand, revealing a couple of cracked fingers. Magical defenses or no, hearing that sound unexpectedly tends to trigger ancient instincts, most of them bad.

Maximum Power lapses right after that, but you shape the guttering embers of it into a wall of Power Armor.

*CRACK*

The interaction with Stoneskin seems to be pretty consistent.

Gained Power Armor E (Plus)

One more time, you guide your Power into a new form, falling back a short distance as the Power Ball takes shape - smaller than you're capable of making it, less out of a concern for conserving power than for the fact that you don't want to destroy your testing dummy, at least not without being able to see the results before it vanishes.

It belatedly occurs to you that you should have tested the technique on Timmy without Stoneskin's interaction to muddle the results, and you make a mental note to follow up on that as you throw the projectile.

Normally, Power Ball isn't a solid attack. When it hits a target, it discharges like the static shock from hell - or maybe more accurately, like ball lightning - damaging and temporarily disabling the unfortunate soul caught on the receiving end.

*CRACK*
*ZAP*

With the addition of the Elemental Earth Magic of the Spell of Stoneskin, that changes somewhat. Power Ball retains its quasi-electrical properties, and from the way Timmy's bones blacken, the usual traces of divinity are still there as well, but the initial impact - which knocks the Stalchild's head clear off its shoulders - is almost precisely like what you'd expect from a suitably powerful and well-aimed physical attack.

Like, say, a good-sized rock, flung with intent.

Incidentally, as Timmy's skull lies on the floor of the arena, you can't escape the feeling that the glowing points of unholy light lurking in the depths of its otherwise empty eyesockets are glaring accusingly up at you.

Shaking that off, you take a second to confirm that Stoneskin finally wore off, before forming and pitching another Power Ball at Timmy to confirm its effects.

*ZAP*

Temporary paralysis, further blackening of the bones, no appreciable physical recoil, and another sense of being glared at by the bodiless head. All check.

Moving on, you cast your next magic, the Spell of the Elemental Aura. Once again, you use the ritual method, which - with the much-reduced Spell of Stoneskin having guttered out along with your Power - results in an impromptu game of tag between you and the Stalchild's headless body. You're much too nimble for the creaking, clattering bag of bones, of course - you would be even if it still had its head attached - and are in no danger the entire time.

A different monster might have given up on chasing you, or started whining about the unfairness. Timmy just keeps coming, even as some of the sand covering the arena floor whips up and begins whirling around you, etching into its bones. Out of concern that your spell might destroy the already weak and not-inconsiderably damaged monster before you can complete this phase of testing, you quickly re-engage Maximum Power-

*HISS*

-only to blink in surprise as the grains of sand, now glowing gold, tear through poor Timmy even faster than before. The Stalchild comes apart right in front of you, collapsing in a heap of inert bones which quickly disappears, along with the now truly lifeless - yet still somehow glaring - skull, in a burst of dark smoke.

You and Shadow Alex trade glances.

"We're going to need another Timmy."

You back off a bit as Shadow Alex casts, giving your Power-infused aura of etching sand time to shed the golden energy and resume its normal function.

The new Timmy - which looks and feels exactly like the first one, leading you to wonder if it is indeed just a new "shadow" of the same Stalchild - has just turned its head your way when you re-engage Power Armor, step forward-

*HISS*

-and then quickly fall back, as the glowing sand once again digs into the Stalchild's bones faster than it ought to.

Power Ball, meanwhile, proves to gain a similar kinetic property from Elemental Aura as it did from Stoneskin, although the effect is distinctly less pronounced - instead of taking Timmy's skull right off its shoulders, the impact merely spins it around 180 degrees.

Your next spell is Eruptive Pustules. When Timmy, takes a swing at you, the results are-

*POP*
*SPLATTER*
*HISS*

-messy, to say the least. Damaged as it was to begin with, the acid bath rapidly dissolves the Stalchild into so much sizzling sludge.

Shadow Alex summons Timmy again, and you would swear to all the Goddesses that the undead creature trembles in silent fury when it sees you standing before it.

You trigger Maximum Power for a third time-

*HISS*

-which causes the unnaturally swollen lumps on your body to weep gold-tinted fluid so copiously that it actually drips off of you as you move, spattering across the sands. When Timmy strikes again-

*POW*
*SPLASH*
*HISS*

-the pustules EXPLODE in what's left of his face, which very quickly ceases to BE a face at all. You're not sure if it's because there's more acid, more POTENT acid, or a purifying effect from the miniscule traces of divine energy in your Power, but the Stalchild dissolves on the spot, its summoned body fading back into the ether before the bones even hit the ground.

Despite that, you once again have the feeling you're being glared at in a most judgmental fashion.

When Shadow Alex summons Timmy yet again, that feeling only grows.

*POW*
*SPLASH*
*HISS*

The unfortunate Stalchild is only about half-melted by your Power Armor/Eruptive Pustules combination-

*ZAP*
*HISS*

-but the acid-infused Power Ball finishes it off.
...I'm actually starting to feel bad for that little monster.
As you start to prepare the next spell on your docket, you pause, realizing that in order to test an Earth-aspected Spell to Resist Energy, you're going to have to get someone to throw rocks at you.

Between a fairy, the avatar of a volcano, and your not-actually-evil twin, who do you prefer to enlist for this Scientific Trial?


Following your request for her assistance and a quick explanation of what it would entail, the volcano spirit's avatar grins, leaps down from the audience box to the floor of the arena, and uses her fundamental connection to Bali Ha'i to dredge up three chunks of stone as big as your torso.

Eyeing those rocks, one of which Kahine picks up and starts juggling as casually as if it were a beachball, you cannot help but feel that you've made a terrible, terrible mistake.

You focus on completing the Spell to Resist Earth, and making it as strong as possible. Then - after several deep, calming breaths and a certain amount of psyching yourself up - you drop into a guard stance, both arms raised to shield your head, and tell Kahine to take her first-

*POW*

-she didn't even wait for you to finish! No hesitation at all, before she pitched a rock big enough to crush your head straight at you, with enough force that you got knocked right off your feet! What the heck, volcano?!
Bwahahahaha!
"Exactly!" Kahine chortles. "Volcano! There is no spite for soft little mortals in my fiery heart, but there is also NO MERCY! Hahahaha!"
Yes! That exactly! Have I mentioned that I love volcanoes?
She says that last bit with fire blazing in her eyes and throat.
Many times, sister. Many, many times.
Briar flies into view above your head, says, "You literally ASKED for that, you know," and then does a quick check to see how badly you've messed yourself up this time.

As it happens, you're fine. Your Spell to Resist Earth did what it was supposed to, and granted you a degree of resistance to attacks based on or utilizing pure earth, sand, or stone - and a fairly high degree at that, given your magical prowess. Kahine even appears to have gauged her throw precisely enough that it didn't smash through your defense, or at least not by enough to leave more than the most minor of bruises.

What the magic DIDN'T do was provide you with any sort of special protection from the secondary effects of having all that kinetic energy imparted upon your person, which is why you ended up on your back in the dust. Again.

Good thing the floor of the Ring is made of sand and stone, too, huh?

Gained Earth Resistance F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)

Wary that Kahine may grow impatient and chuck the second rock at you, you quickly pick yourself up and tell Briar to get clear, before gathering your energies and triggering another round of Maximum Pow-

*POW*

-Din damn it, AGAIN?!
Bwahahahaha!
On the positive side, you didn't get knocked over this time. You're not sure if that's because the spell's effects were somehow enhanced, or if it's just due to Maximum Power's usual benefits.

When you activate Power Armor, the truth is revealed: the third rock-

*POW*

-also fails to knock you over, though it does push you back. And since Power Armor doesn't meaningfully increase your strength, it's pretty clear that the interaction of Power and Resist Energy causes the spell's protection to extend to those "secondary effects" which are normally completely unimpeded by its presence.

For your final test, you reshape the Power Armor into a low-intensity Power Ball, and fire it off at the Stalchild Shadow Alex has ready and waiting.

Once again, the unfortunate Timmy reacts to the Power Ball as if it were a solid projectile, as well as a vaguely divine and paralyzing one. This impact is the weakest yet, though, not even knocking the monster's bleached skull off by ninety degrees - more like seventy or eighty.

While Timmy is staggered, you consider your next step. It's immediately apparent that you're not going to be able to test how all of the elements interact with Power today; just getting through the Earth Magic phase used up over half of the mana you decided to allot to these experiments.

That's a little disappointing, but it is what it is. And while you're scheduled to visit that Urahara guy in Karakura next weekend, it's not like there's anything stopping you from coming back the weekend(s) after that to test out a few more elements.

In any case, with Earth's particular interactions with Power tested and tentatively confirmed, the next element on your list is Darkness.

The nature of Dark Magic and its alignment with corruption, curses, disease, and undeath means that it doesn't readily lend itself to buff spells - very much the opposite, really. Still, you do know a few spells that manage to be beneficial to the target, while still counting as Dark Magic: Darkvision; Death Knell Aura; Deathwatch; and to a lesser extent, the Spells to Hide From Animals and Undead, which technically count as "Dark" due to the associations with deception and stealth. The Spell of Silence also works, since while it's usually detrimental to the target, you can - and have - used it to enhance your stealth capabilities.

That said... you do know a remarkable number of curses. And while some of those are nasty things you'd never consider casting on yourself, some are quite minor: the Itching Curse comes to mind; and the Spell to Bestow A Curse, while more potent, is also extremely flexible.

Might it be worth taking a minor curse onto yourself, to see how such an expression of Dark Magic reacts to your Power?


On second thought, no, it's really not worth it.

It takes a special kind of lunatic to curse themselves for the sake of gaining power - or in this case, to learn about it - and while you can accept that your personal point of view is a little off from what most people would consider "normal," there are limits.

Plus, you haven't exactly forgotten what happened the last time you tried to curse something. True, the circumstances are different: you're not in a haunted and monster-infested ancient ruin; you aren't riding a combat high; and you aren't currently bent on defeating and hence destroying a Hylian monster.

But the memory of the Mother Gohma screaming as your curse-gone-wrong tried to EAT it, or whatever the heck it was actually doing, remains strong all the same, and makes for a fine deterrent to the idea of mucking about with curses - much less casting one on yourself.

Seeing that Timmy has recovered from the Power Ball's stunning effect and is once again closing in on you, you resume your evasive maneuvers, making good use of the limited space within the Ring as you ritually cast your first spell of Dark Magic.

Given that you're out in the open on a sunny day, the Spell of Darkvision has basically no effect, unless it's to make the hollows of Timmy's skull and the shadows cast by the walls of the arena a bit easier to see through. Activating Maximum Power and Power Armor doesn't change that, as far as you can tell, and then you fire off a Power Ball charged with the spell's remaining mana, it doesn't have any obvious visual cues or additional effects on Timmy.

You go over your shortlist of spells, make a choice, and a few minutes of chanting later, Timmy stumbles to a halt and begins looking around the arena, fleshless face managing to project bafflement as the Spell to Hide From Undead takes effect.

When you turn on Maximum Power a moment later, Timmy recoils, but quickly recovers and starts to advance on you once more - and then keeps on coming when you let the golden glow gutter out once again. The fact that your spell just failed tells you that Maximum Power counts as an "attack" as far as magic is concerned, or perhaps as an attempt to turn undead - either way, it's that divine and purifying element at work.

Useful to know.

You eventually re-cast the spell, and then trigger Power Armor, which makes Timmy twitch, but doesn't renew hostilities. This tells you that using Power in GENERAL isn't an "attack," it's just certain applications.

Such as the Power Ball you throw at the Stalchild. As with Darkvision, you're uncertain if Hide From Undead provided any particular benefit, or if the spell gave out before the Ball reached its target.

While Timmy staggers and twitches, you check your reserves again, and sigh. That last batch of tests brought you to your previously decided threshold - slightly below it, in fact - meaning you should stop the Scientific Trials here if you want to have a decent cushion of mana when you visit the Shuzens later.

And it will be "later," as even with all the ritual casting drawing things out, you haven't been running these tests for even a full hour yet. Factor in the time you'll need to clean up the magical residue of your numerous castings and invocations of power, say goodbye to Kahine, and then teleport to Japan, and it'll be half past six in the morning when you get there - at the latest!

Part of you wants to switch places with Shadow Alex and have him do some Power experiments on your behalf. It's true that, as an alternate version of you summoned through and marked by Shadow, his energies are subtly different from your own, in ways that would skew some of your results, but he'd at least be useful as a measuring stick.

Another part wants to take advantage of the fact that you're on a tropical island again and just chill for an hour or two, maybe take a swim in the lagoon. You could even take a nap - it's around one in the afternoon back home, after all, so your (slightly buggy) internal clock thinks it would be a good time for a siesta.

Or maybe there's something else you could or should do, while you've got a couple of hours to work with?


Though it's only been a week since you left, the call of Bali Ha'i is difficult to resist. Tropical sun, sand, and surf combine to create an almost irresistible allure, especially when you've got nowhere you really need to be for the next couple of hours.

But before you call an end to the day's Scientific Trials, there's one more thing you'd like to test. Since you've already reduced your reserves as low as you're comfortable with making them right now, you ask Shadow Alex to trade places with you. Then you watch through Mage Sight and Mental Sight as he experiments with mixing mana and mental energy.

...

Somewhat disappointingly, nothing happens.

Wielding the energies in tandem does nothing except make it more difficult to focus on either task - not to the point where Shadow Alex can't do it, but enough for the added complexity to be noticeable. Casting a spell and then injecting mental energy into its active matrix likewise returns an apparent null result, and as for creating a psychic construct and applying mana to THAT...

"Before I could messing around with it, I'd need to know how to create something like that in the first place," Shadow Alex notes wryly.

It's in your mind to question why your alter-ego, whose core motivation is to get as strong as possible without crossing the line into outright stupidity and/or malevolence, would skip out on exploring a whole field of abilities you know you have potential for. But then you're reminded that, in spite of all those "memories" you saw when facing him, Shadow Alex isn't actually FROM another world - whether he's created via the Mirror of Shadows or the Heart of Courage, he's a dark reflection of you, your suppressed thoughts and feelings, and your capabilities.

After a few minutes of poking and prodding to no effect, your doppelganger drops that phase of the investigation and moves on to testing out mixtures of mana and spiritual energy.

Whether it's because your soul is stronger than your mind, or because you've spent the last few months working with two out of three Hyrulean priests, and thus have an idea of how to actually use spiritual energy in a manner other than brute-forcing your energy at a target, this set of tests shows some actual results.

Combining raw mana with unshaped spiritual energy still doesn't do anything, and injecting spiritual power into a spell after it's been formed is likewise pointless, but when Shadow Alex channels spirit into a spell AS he's casting it, your Spiritual Sight suddenly starts picking up the spell matrix more clearly on the spiritual plane. It's not what Koron or Madam Lanora did to cast spells, but it looks an awful lot like Elder Terok's method of making miracles.

Is this how Priests of Din cast their spells?
Not quite, but it's close.
At the very least, you think it's another step in that direction.

You'll definitely have to discuss this with Elder Terok at your next lesson.

Mixing mana and spirit in that manner has another effect, one you might not have considered were you not on Bali Ha'i, and in the presence of Kahine. When the spiritual energy is added to Shadow Alex's magic - a simple Spell of Light, as it happens - the matrix and its effects suddenly become much more clearly visible on the Spiritual Plane, where before they'd been little more than a dull haze.

"Be careful with that trick, Little Magic Man," the volcano-spirit advises you, while frowning slightly at Shadow Alex's spell. "It'll give magic some extra bite against a spirit, but it'll also let the spirit get a handle on forms of mana it couldn't otherwise touch. Even if you use it to cast a spell meant to help, they may not thank you for it."

Duly noted.

With that last batch of tests done, you call an end to the Scientific Trials. Thanking Shadow Alex for his help, you ask him if he'd like to stick around and hang out on the island for a while longer.

He actually looks conflicted, which surprises you, at least until he explains his reasoning.

"This would be a reasonably good time to see how long I can stick around, before the Heart of Courage shuts down," Shadow Alex says.

"Then why the long face?" Briar wonders.

"I just would have preferred to spend the time doing something constructive, instead of lounging on a beach in the South Pacific."

"...somebody needs to learn how to take a break," Kahine mutters, shaking her head.

"...am I supposed to scold him for overdoing it, or let it go because he's not actually Alex?" Briar murmurs. "Gaaah, I just know that this 'magic twin' thing is going to be a pain..."


You shrug. If Shadow Alex wants to spend the next couple of hours pursuing Science or some other goal more "constructive" than kicking back on a tropical island, it's no skin off your nose - at least, not as long as you get a mental copy of whatever he gets up to, in addition to his observations about your own Scientific Trials.

You say as much, and get a thumbs up in agreement.

Beyond that, you have no further comment on the matter. After all, you have no need to tell yourself what to do.

With that resolved, you turn to Kahine and ask her if she's planning to stick around a bit longer.

"Actually," the volcano spirit replies, "now that the fun and games are over, I was planning to take one last walk around the island, to check in with the little spirits and make sure they aren't panicking about all the strange visitors we had or all the magic that was flying around. And once everyone was settled, I thought I'd go back to sleep."

You glance at Shadow Alex, who meets your eyes and responds, "I'll keep the noisy experimentation down."

You nod, wish Kahine well in case you don't see her again before you leave, and then turn to your partner.

"Hey, Briar?"

"Yeah, Alex?"

You point at Briar with the index finger of your right hand, pushing it forward slightly as if prodding the empty air between the two of you. At the same time, you release the cantrip you spent the last minute subtly weaving, giving your partner a tiny telekinetic poke on the nose.

"You're it."

While she's still sputtering, you turn around, plant your hands on the top of the audience box, and leap over the side. The fall is not too long, the sand-covered arena floor readily absorbs a portion of the landing shock, and the forward roll you enter at the moment of touchdown bleeds off the rest. When you regain your feet a moment later, you've lost little of your forward momentum, and are already halfway into a run.

"Yeah, you'd better run!" Briar yells after you. "If you'll excuse me, Kahine?"

You don't hear the spirit's reply, beyond the obvious laughter.

You spend a good half-hour playing tag with your partner, ranging across the beach, the nearby grasses, and into the forest. Although Briar remains fairy-sized to catch you the first time, the obvious danger in playing tag with a human-sized opponent sees her adopting her larger form. While she's a larger and hence slower target this way, the physical conditioning your partner has been undergoing since joining you for lessons at Lu-sensei's give her a different kind of speed than fairy size and wings allow.

The island also seems to be helping her out, as she leaves no physical trails, and if you don't keep her in sight at all times, she immediately seems to disappear.

Then again, that may just be a Fae thing. Nature LIKES them.

Tracking difficulties aside, the run is also good practice for dealing with all sorts of natural hazards while staying on the move. You're careful not to overreach yourself, but you do try to push your abilities.

Gained Parkour E (Plus) (Plus)

After three or four turnarounds, a mutual halt is called. Briar reverts to her usual size and drops onto your shoulder, while you head for the lagoon. Getting there doesn't take long - benevolently morphic geography is just so convenient that way - and after a quick change of clothes, you wade out into the water. Briar doesn't join you swimming per se, instead spending the time flying along the surface of the water.

You've paddled around the lagoon for a half hour or so and are floating on your back, considering getting out and taking a nap, when you notice that Briar has flown oddly high overhead, and seems to be looking out to the ocean.

"Do you see a ship, Briar?" you call up to her, idly curious.

"Actually, I think it's another island."

"Oh, okay."

"Only... it seems to be moving."

...
...


With a sigh, you right yourself in the water, and crane your neck to see if you can see what Briar's looking at.

Yup. There's definitely something out there that looks like a small island, all craggy stone and scattered greenery, surrounded by a misty haze - morning fog? Volcanic murk? Hard to say; whatever it is, it's still far enough away to make any details not already obscured by the vapors fuzzy to the unaided eye.

If this were your first time on Bali Ha'i, you'd think it was just a neighboring landmass, maybe more actively volcanic than Kahine's true body, and give it little if any more thought.

But this isn't your first visit, and you have no memory of any mass of that size being that close to this side of Bali Ha'i.

You turn and swim for the edge of the lagoon nearest the Ring of Trials, until you hit the shallows. Wading the rest of the way to dry land, you focus on weaving a Message Spell, trading most of the duration for range and then designating Kahine and Shadow Alex as the recipients.

"I'm at the lagoon," you say to empty air. "Briar spotted something that looks like another island off-shore, and it's moving closer. I could use some advice."

You send the spell off, then cast the Spell of Prestidigitation and start drying yourself off.

You haven't quite got the water out of your trunks when you notice that Kahine has appeared atop one of the larger rocks in the area. Her attention is turned away from you, one hand raised to shield her eyes as she peers out to sea.

"Kahine!" you call over to her. "What do your fiery eyes see?"

"I'm thinking island turtle," she replies. "Or perhaps island whale."

"...island WHAT?" you and Briar exclaim in synchronized disbelief.

"What's going on?" Shadow Alex asks, as he runs into view. "What'd I miss?"

You jab your thumb in the direction of the offshore object, and manage to find the words: "Kahine thinks our unexpected visitor might be an island turtle or island whale."

Shadow Alex stares at you, then out to the smudged shape at sea, and then back to you. "...island WHAT?"

"See, that was our reaction!"

"I mean, I suppose it COULD be a kraken," the volcano spirit adds, lowering her hand as she turns her head towards the rest of you. "But those beasts prefer colder waters, and the shell looks wrong anyway."

"...I thought the kraken was a giant squid," Shadow Alex manages.

"They do have tentacles," Kahine agrees, "but they're more like crabs or lobsters. Or maybe a nautilus with claws, if you know what those are."

You try to picture that.

...

For once, you regret having such a vivid imagination and keen visualization skills.

"Well, whatever it is," you say, as you pull your shirt out of your pocket and then over your head, "is it supposed to be out there?"

"If it really is a kraken, then no, not really. Like I said, they prefer colder waters. As for the island turtles or island whales... eh, maybe. Beasts that big sleep a lot to save energy, and that means they drift wherever the wind and waves take them, so one COULD have gotten pushed into the area." She pauses, frowning, and looks back out to sea. "Which way did you say it was moving, Briar?"

"It's been coming more or less straight at us since I noticed it," your partner says.

"...monkey turds," Kahine grumbles. "That means it's awake, and moving under its own power. So either it's really hungry, or something woke it up."

"Don't look at me!" Shadow Alex immediately proclaims. "I was distinctly not making noise!"

...the speed at which he says that, and his defensive, slightly shifty air, makes you wonder if Shadow Alex's makeup also contains some of your repressed guilt over certain past incidents.

"Could it have noticed my Power experiments?" you pipe up. "From THAT far away?"

"Maybe?" Briar ventures. "You were being pretty loud...?"

"I did say it remind me of whalesong," Kahine mentions. She doesn't seem any more convinced of that than Briar, though.

Well, then. For whatever reason, you've got a giant turtle, whale, crab, and/or squid thing incoming, living proof that the ocean is home to even greater and more terrible beasts than you already knew existed. And how the heck things like this manage to not only survive, but stay out of general knowledge in the modern world, when all the merchant marines and navies of the world SHOULD notice...

Leaving that aside, at the rate the creature is moving, it should make landfall in fifteen to twenty minutes, which begs the question of whether or not you should pick a good spot to wait for it to arrive, or go out and meet it, whether to investigate, try to make contact, or even attempt to shoo it away. Kahine would kind of prefer not to have a giant ocean-going monster coming ashore on her island. Of the three creatures, it seems that only island whales are truly confined to the water, and even they are capable of ravaging the coastlines to feed themselves; island turtles and krakens, meanwhile, have been known to strip small islands bare to sate their impossible appetites. Bali Ha'i is big enough to survive such an encounter with most of its ecology intact, but Kahine is getting ready for a fight all the same.

Of course, being the spirit of a volcano, there's only so much she can do without waking up her true body, which has the potential to be just as bad for the island's plants and animals as a visit by a hungry leviathan. If you can think of an alternative, Kahine would probably thank you - and if this monster really is here because of something you did, you owe her the assistance.