You can always ask Dave what he was talking to later.

Fortunately, you were prepared for this very situation. You take the Old Man Shoes out of your pocket and take a knee to start untying the laces of your right sneaker, before removing it and slipping its old-fashioned counterpart on. Then you switch feet and repeat the process, before tucking your sneakers into your pocket and standing up.

"Does it actually make a difference when you use magic?" Dave wonders about halfway through, watching you change your shoes.

"I haven't noticed one," you reply, pulling the laces tight. "But then, I don't wear these shoes too often."

Might be an interesting experiment, for one of those theoretical lazy afternoons when you have nothing else to do.

Better to be safe than sorry, you suppose, as you voice the question.

"Different methods, similar end results," Balthazar replies.

"That would be a 'yes' in Balthazar-talk," Dave adds after a moment.

You figured as much, but it didn't hurt to be clear.

With everyone ready, Balthazar begins the lesson. There's a relatively extensive discussion of the theory behind Disenchantment first, a topic which - unsurprisingly - touches upon the processes involved in actually crafting a magic item to begin with.

"It's important to keep in mind that while Itemcrafting and Disenchantment are opposite sides of the same coin, they aren't truly OPPOSED to one another," Balthazar notes. "Being skilled at one art doesn't impede your ability to learn or use the other; if anything, they're complementary. A talented Itemcrafter knows how things are put together, and has an easier time picking out which portions of an enchantment can be broken off without compromising the rest. That can be very helpful if you're trying to remove a curse from an otherwise useful item, or just for preventing damage to the underlying object as you remove the magic from it. Similarly, a practiced Disenchanter knows how things are taken apart, and can readily recognize combinations of reagents, formulas, and spell arrays with potentially disruptive or even destructive effects. That can prevent accidents that would waste time and materials, or help you catalyze desirable results."

You frown and raise your hand, and when Balthazar nods, you inquire what he meant by that last part.

"Take that snake blood you had yesterday," the sorcerer replies. "If you were to use it in its raw state, any spell or enchantment it was empowering would carry traces of the blood's dominant affinities, which could make the magic less effective against certain targets, or for certain purposes. But if you were to mix a second reagent with the blood, something that countered one of its affinities, you could effectively strengthen the others."

You turn that over in your head. Alboa's Blood had moderate affinities for Darkness, Poison, and Water, so if you were to use it to augment a Spell of Poison, the Poison Element would obviously make it stronger, while Darkness's links to death and endings would also be complementary - but Water is a cleansing agent, a purifier. Physically, mundane water would DILUTE a mundane poison, and that carries over to the mystical side, so equal potencies of Darkness, Poison, and Water mixed together would be... about as powerful as just Poison. If you were to add the correct Fire reagent, though, you could theoretically cancel out the Water affinity, while leaving the Poison affinity and the better part of the Dark affinity intact. The end result of that would be a stronger Poison Affinity - not the qualitative equal of a major reagent like Alboa's Fangs, but better than its natural state.

You voice your speculations to Balthazar, who confirms your reasoning - though he adds that you'll have to keep the differences between your respective magical traditions in mind before putting the theory you've discussed into practice.

"After all, Merlinean Sorcery wouldn't try to enhance the Elemental properties of the blood to make a more potent poison," Balthazar says, as the yellow symbol that looks like a 4 with a long tail attached flares briefly. "We'd utilize Transformation instead." That's the cue for the glyph in the adjacent arc of the Circle to brighten beneath the Grimstalker's Bow.

Well, yes. Though for further confusion, your tradition generally classifies spells that produce and/or enhance poison as part of the School of Necromancy, due to their direct impact on life and life-force - the underlying theories emphasize the elements so much because of their cultural prominence in Hyrule...

Anyway, you're starting to drift off topic, and Balthazar realizes it, bringing the lecture back to the matter of breaking down magic items.

Gained Disenchantment F (Plus) (Plus)

Before Balthazar gets to the practical, do you have any questions on the subject?


Your first question to Balthazar is how different magical traditions interact when it comes to the process of disenchanting items.

"There's no easy answer to that, unfortunately," your fellow sorcerer admits. "Sometimes there's no problem, even when the styles involved seem completely incompatible. In other cases, two schools you'd think were practically the same tradition clash violently."

You are reminded of the meltdown of the Grimstalker's Sword.

"In the end," Balthazar goes on, "you have to rely on your own understanding and experience, hope for the best, and prepare for the worst - which is another reason for having a barrier like this up." He gestures at the Merlin Circle beneath and around him, the flames flickering a little higher at the movement. "Not only does it help focus my energy and keep potential external variables from becoming an issue, it symbolizes that this is my domain, that the laws of Merlinean Sorcery are dominant here, and whatever lies within the Circle must obey them."

Pondering the implications of that statement for a moment, you venture, "So location's a factor as well?"

"It can be," Balthazar agrees. "If you're trying to create a device of elemental power, for example, you'll have better luck if you perform the rituals in a sympathetic environment. By the same token, if you're trying to dispose of such an item, it's almost always better to remove it from its native environment first. Ideally, you'd cut it off from its element entirely, but that can be tricky sometimes."

"There isn't always a volcano in easy reach when you need to dispose of an item of Water, and sometimes it's just as impractical to travel to the Arctic or the open ocean to weaken a weapon of Fire," you note, nodding.

"And sometimes you have to destroy the Trident of the Deeps during a major storm on the coast, because it's the only way to stop the insane half-human cult leader from raising an unholy army to destroy the entire New England coast," Balthazar answers in much the same tone.

There is a beat.

"That's... a suspiciously specific example," Dave says slowly.

"Massachusetts, 1928." Balthazar shakes his head. "Why do they ALWAYS use squid...?"

A part of you knows a sudden empathy for the older man. You believe it's the one most closely attached to Briar.

Rather than get into a discussion of grudges against cephalopod-kind, you question Balthazar about some of the specifics of reagent interaction, but he responds that this is a somewhat advanced part of the process, and advises you to focus on mastering the basics first.

Fair enough.

Dave has a couple of questions of his own, focusing more on what spells are used during disenchantment, and how they're applied.

Aside from the obvious Magic Circle, Balthazar says that the bulk of the work is done via a ritualized and modified application of Dispel Magic, while you have a Spell of Arcane Sight or something similar going, so you can see what you're doing. The main difference in Dispel Magic's use is that, instead of hitting the target fast and hard as you would in combat, you go slowly and lightly, focusing your spell against one section of a magical array at a time, sinking past whatever defenses it possesses and gradually pulling it apart from the rest.

With the questions answered, Balthazar moves on to the practical demonstration. Telling you and Dave to watch closely - at which you notice Dave's Mage Sight stirring to passive mode, and quickly do the same - the Merlinean Master gathers his magic and reaches towards, and into, the Grimstalker's Bow. Lines of magical energy surge into view across the surface of the weapon, and under Balthazar's direction, a ghostly replica of the Bow takes form in the air above it, precise in every detail.

Then the bow part of the illusion fades away, leaving only the glowing array, which you note grows larger and more complex in the process, as line previously hidden within the material of the Bow are exposed. At another command, the array "unfolds" itself, going from a three-dimensional matrix to something closer to a flat diagram - and then that diagram unfolds itself again, individual lines opening like books or blooming flowers to reveal long lines of winding, spidery script, alien symbols, and complex diagrams that had been hidden within.

Over the next hour, Balthazar slowly works his way through the script. Some parts, he reads off to you and Dave, explaining their meanings and functions in some detail - a section of poetry praising the valor of an ancient Fae warrior is part of the anchoring array for the Spell of the Magic Weapon, for example - while others he just summarizes. A few are left alone entirely.

It is an informative experience.

Gained Abjuration B (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Disenchantment E
Gained Item Crafting C (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Local Knowledge (Faerie) D

The ghostly array gradually loses bits of itself as Balthazar works, but the greater part of it remains intact until the very end, when the removal of one final piece causes the mostly intact sections to simply come apart. As the phantom image bursts into motes of light, there is a matching flash of light from within the Grimstalker's Bow, accompanied by a musical, almost sorrowful sigh.

Then all the lights fade, and the fire of the Merlin Circle dies down. All that's left is a well-made bow, painted with a rainbow residue of magical energies that are rapidly breaking down under Balthazar's final spell.

"And that is that," the man says, as he ends his magic.


When you suppress your Mage Sight and take in the Fae-crafted bow that Balthazar is picking up off the floor, it appears no different to the naked eye. There are no scorch marks or stress fractures, and the only discoloration of the wood is entirely due to the dim, multicolored light of the Merlin Circle; once that's died off completely, the bow looks entirely unchanged.

But when Balthazar re-strings the weapon and draws on it, testing the pull, it just seems off compared to the last time he did so. And is it your imagination, or does the bow bend a little less farther, and creak a little louder in the process?

Regardless, Balthazar has fulfilled his end of the bargain, and you've completed yours.

The four of you exit the basement and head back up the store proper.

"So who's likely to buy that thing?" Dave wonders. "And would it be safe for them?"

"You haven't met the folks I have in mind yet," Balthazar answers his student. "New York's big enough to have a few collectors with an eye for Fae artifacts among the magically aware wealthy and well-connected, though I probably won't deal with them directly. The Cabana's a little too common for most of their tastes."

"An intermediary, then?" you guess.

"Maybe two or three, depending on how it goes," he agrees. "Which isn't a bad thing. Changing hands a few times will help make the bow harder to track."

Not hugely so, you know - certainly nothing compared to the effects of disenchanting it - but extra layers of precaution are always nice.

Still, that is your business in the Big Apple done for the day, and just in time for you to head home to grab lunch.

Thanking Balthazar and Dave for their time, you and Briar see yourselves out.

After lunch, you once again leave the house, this time heading out into the desert to raise a Private Sanctum, summon Batreaux, and get on with practicing the Spell to Walk Through Space. This is one of two spells you think you can definitely get down before the raid on Silbern on Saturday, but you need just a bit more space than your Mirror Hideaway can offer to safely test it.

The idea of accidentally materializing inside - or HALF-inside - a solid wall of glass is not an appealing one, and as skilled as you are at wielding Summoning Magic, there's no sense in taking needless chances.

At first, you try teleporting just a few feet-

*Blink*

-and only overshoot by about twice your intended distance. Your second attempt is better-

*Blink*

"Whoa!"

-except that you manage to re-enter the Material Plane with your foot right under the edge of a rock half-buried in the sand, and nearly trip yourself when you turn around to face Batreaux.

Third time's the charm-

*Blink*

"Hiss!"

-although that lizard probably doesn't think so.

After a couple more relatively slow, space-out teleports proceed without incident, you take a deep breath and go for broke.

*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*

"Urgh," Briar groans from her place on your shoulder. "Get-

*Blink*

"-ting diz-"

*Blink*

"-zy, here-"

*Blink*

"-Alex..."


You pause in the middle of your staggered teleportation sequence to allow Briar a chance to recover her balance and - hopefully - settle her stomach.

"Alright there, partner?" you ask.

"Ugh. Just... gimme a minute..."

"Alright, but if you feel like you're going to lose your lunch-"

"-I won't make a mess on your shirt," Briar replies, as she takes to the air and - much more slowly than usual - flies a short distance away and begins circling a point in space.

You wait a bit.

"Okay. Okay, yeah. That's better. Whew."

"Crisis averted?" you inquire.

"For the moment, anyway."

"Glad to hear it. So, what was the problem? Too many teleports too close together? One of the safeties in the spell not properly calibrated for Fae senses?"

Briar thinks it over, and answers, "Definitely some of the first, and maybe a bit of the second. Honestly, though, I think the main problem is that lunch was less than an hour ago, and I might have eaten more than I really should have."

"...'No rapid repeat teleportation for at least one hour after eating'," you muse absently. Although it's half-joking, the remark prompts a thought about upcoming events. "Does that mean we should only have a light meal before sending Shadow Alex and Shadow Briar to join the raid on Silbern, then?"

"That would be a good idea regardless," Batreaux interjects. "Going into battle on a full stomach is generally ill-advised. Even if one has the GASTRIC FORTITUDE required not to be violently ill from such intense activity, every bit of energy going towards aiding the digestion is energy NOT available for the battle."

"And if you puke after getting hit in the stomach, knocked on the head, or zapped with a curse of nausea," Briar adds, "all that energy AND the food just ends up wasted."

"Yes, quite."

The Spell to Walk Through Space has worn off by this point, so you re-cast it and take a few steps across space to see if you can sense any of the possible shortcomings that made Briar feel unwell.

*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*

Nope, you feel fine. Whether that means the spell is properly calibrated for humans, that you just have a better head while under the influence of space-time bending magic than Briar does, or that you ate proportionately less than she did at lunch... well, who knows?

"Up for more tests?" you say, offering your shoulder.

"...okay," Briar replies, flying back over. "But if I say stop-"

"-we stop," you agree.

*Blink*
*Blink*

"Still good?"

"Still good."

*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*

"And now?"

"Still good."

*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*

"Urgh," Briar groans, before you can say anything. "Okay, yeah, stop."

You do so. "Right, so for now, we'll move on to some other spells, and maybe come back to Walk Through Space later, once lunch has had time to digest."

"Ask me again in an hour."

You'll do that.

Looking at the remaining spells you wanted to focus on before going up against the Quincy army, you think you might want to skip Regenerate. Briar has objected to you injuring yourself for the sake of magical experimentation and/or expediency in the past, and if she's experiencing one type of stomach distress already, summoning up a suitable test subject might set her off.

Then again, you really DO need to practice this spell if you're going to use it. Maybe there's some creature you could call that wouldn't... well... BLEED so obviously?

The Spell of Foresight is another option. The easiest way to test that one would be to create a solid barrier between you and Batreaux and then have your master attack you: spells; summons; melee; or all of the above. He would likely start with purely non-lethal attacks, but given Foresight is meant for life-or-death combat - and high-level combat, at that, being a ninth-tier spell - that might not be sufficient.

It's a shame you can't simply put on a blindfold or cast the Spell of Blindness on yourself and run tests that way, but Foresight is actually thwarted by that sort of physical disability. Annoying, how such powerful magic can be rendered useless with such comparative ease, but then again, anything that can successfully blind a magic-user with access to ninth-level spells is likely to be a powerhouse in its own right.

Or just very, very sneaky...

As for testing out how Foresight works when cast on another person, you think you might have to summon a proverbial guinea pig for Batreaux to go after. Even in her human-sized form, Briar is a bit too squishy for you to feel comfortable about using her as a test subject in a live-fire exercise, and she'd object to it besides.

Granted, depending on who or what you summon, there might be protests anyway. Or the magic might not work properly, as summons aren't really there and hence aren't in true danger - perhaps a called ally, then? But that would be putting someone in danger, which, again, you're reluctant to do...

The last option would be to work on the Lesser Spell to Create a Demiplane. You've certainly got the time for it, but this spell wouldn't really give you any options for the upcoming battle; you're mostly studying it now because your latest deal with Navi has given you some insight into the mechanics of demiplanes, and it makes sense to focus on learning the spell when those details are still fresh in memory.


It doesn't escape your notice that a spell which lets you glimpse personal danger in the immediate future and a spell which lets you dance around local space with little more than an act of will should have EXCELLENT synergy with one another.

On top of that, a standard casting of the Spell of Foresight lasts for a couple of hours, meaning even if you give Briar another whole hour to digest her lunch, you've have plenty of time left over for experimenting with the two spells in tandem.

It's almost like Nayru Herself is telling you to do it.

I didn't actually say anything, but it IS a good idea.

On the one hand, more Power to him. On the other, temporal manipulation just feels like cheating, somehow.

We're not apologizing.

After discussing the options with your associates and stating your decision, you cast the ninth-tier spell, give it a moment to settle, and then try looking into your fu-

!

-you shift your head to (narrowly) avoid the magical equivalent of a spitball that Briar just cast at you.

Glancing down at your shoulder in minor annoyance - or at the minor annoyance on your shoulder, take your pick - you mutter, "Really, Briar?"

"What? You saw it coming in time to react, didn't you?" She raises her hands. "Successful test!"

...you just had a brief flashback to that unfortunate maid and her even more unfortunate hand cart from Ghostbusters.

Shaking your head, you turn to Batreaux and declare that you're ready for the next phase of testing.

At his nod, you create a Wall of Ice between the two of you, of sufficient thickness and with enough color to make it opaque.

A Wall of Stone would have been possible, too, but then you'd have had to cast another spell to get rid of it later. The ice, at least, will melt on its own, once the magic fades.

You wonder what Batreaux will come up with to test you-

!

-and then you whirl about as a Wizzrobe teleports to a point that HAD been behind you.

In the darkness beneath the robed Hyrulean sorcerer's pointy hat, his glowing yellow eyes blink a couple of times in surprise, and then narrow as they regard you intently for a moment.

"You look familiar," the sorcerous summons muses. "Have we met?"

"Not that I can recall," you answer, with two layers of honesty.

And that's when a pack of Bokoblins comes charging around the corner of the Wall of Ice, hooting and hollering and waving relatively large and solid-looking sticks with bundles of cloth wrapped around the business ends.

You catch a few words of Goblin, most of which can be summed up as, "Bash!"

Gained Goblin F (Plus) (Plus)

The next few minutes make for an interesting exercise.

On your end of things, you're limiting yourself to using only the Spell of Foresight and your physical abilities, and even then, not all of the latter. You don't draw your sword, for instance, not even while keeping it in its sheath, and you never really try to strike at your opponents. You do catch and redirect their weapons a few times, and make like you're going to trample one of the Bokoblins if he doesn't get out of the way - he does - but that's about the extent of it.

There are only four Bokoblins, none of which are all that big, and while their crude clubs would certainly leave bruises and might be able to crack bone without the protective padding, its presence makes them rather less dangerous - just, not harmless. The goblinoids do their best to surround you, keeping at least one of their number in your "blind spot" as much as possible, but they don't have the numbers or the individual size necessary to really make it work. There's space enough between any two Bokoblins at any given moment for you to leap between them, dodging clubs as you go, and you do that a number of times, to much shrieking and complaining and what sound like accusations of others not doing their jobs.

The Wizzrobe is the wild card in this. As his sort generally do, he blinks in and out of existence at irregular intervals, appearing in different directions each time and sending a wave of force rushing at you. Those attacks are fast enough to keep you on your toes, particularly when the Wizzrobe starts showing off a few non-standard tricks like splitting the wave into two, making it spiral instead of advance along a straight line, or turning it into something akin to a shower of Magic Missiles.

As if the Bokoblins' padded clubs weren't indication enough, the tiny, short-lived puffs of sand kicked up by the Wizzrobe's force-blasts and the way their auras hum against your magic senses hint at their having been rendered non-lethal in some manner. You would guess that he's either pulling the spells so that they generate the lowest amount of force possible, or spreading the force out over as large an area as possible, so that it deals less damage to any given point. Maybe both, depending on the particular spell.

On a side note, the longer the test goes on, the more surprised you are that not ONE of the Hyrulean monsters has tried to attack you for real. You wonder what's up with that. Did Batreaux just manage to summon a "good" batch of monsters? Or does he have something on these guys that's helping him to keep them in line?

You wonder as you glance at your teacher, who's come around the other end of the Wall of Ice-

"Squeak!"

-with a flock of glowing-eyed Keese hovering over him like a fuzzy stormcloud.

"PREPARE YOURSELF!"


The addition of a storm of squeaks, batting wings, and fuzzy, oddly bouncy flying bodychecks to your evasive practice is the tipping point. It's not that the Spell of Foresight suddenly fails or anything like that; the magic keeps ticking along just fine, giving you the weirdest sort of third-person perspective of your position, as Keese circle around to swoop at you from behind. The problem is that there are now so many hostiles on the field that your pure physical abilities simply aren't enough to avoid all of them.

Having to dodge in three dimensions proves difficult, too.

Being rammed by the Keese isn't too bad - between the fluff, the bouncing, and the bats' high-pitched calls, you have the distinct impression of being bombarded by plush squeaky toys - but when one of the Bokoblins finally catches you with a direct hit to the ribs, well, padded or not, a couple pounds of wood and cloth swung at speed is enough to knock the wind out of a person.

That Bokoblin, incidentally, raises his club with a cry of, "Boko!" and begins doing a victory dance while his buddies cheer him on.

The Keese back off to give you a moment to catch your breath, after which you confer with Batreaux to confirm that the failing wasn't due to the spell, just your own (in)ability to make use of the information it was giving you in a timely manner.

All in all, if your grasp of the Spell of Foresight is sufficient to register even nonlethal threats like this, you think it's safe to say that you've got that particular application of the spell down. The next step, then, would be to see how well you can anticipate threats to another person.

Seeing as how you've already guessed that Briar wouldn't care to be the guinea pig for this experiment-

"You are correct."

-you call up Shadow Alex.

"Magical guinea pig on demand, that's me," your dark side doppelganger says sarcastically as the summoning resolves.

"The title is 'lab assistant'," you remind him.

Shadow Alex sighs. "You couldn't have just summoned Timmy again?"

You tilt your head, considering the suggestion. The Stalchild made a reasonable target dummy, and its inability to speak wouldn't be an issue with testing this particular spell - you don't need verbal reports, just a target that can understand your instructions and respond to them in a timely manner. Still...

"How many times did we have to re-summon Timmy, again?"

Your lookalike thinks back, and frowns. "Okay, fair point; he WAS kind of breakable."

While you cast Foresight again, Batreaux ducks back behind the Wall of Ice, leaving the Keese to drift about idly in the misty interior of your Private Sanctum. The Bokoblins and Wizzrobe have already vanished, the spells that held them here having finally run down, and you're curious to see if Batreaux will re-summon them or call up something new to (safely) threaten Shadow Alex.

Spell in place, you mentally poke at the threads of information flowing into your head. It belatedly occurs to you that having two or more Spells of Foresight running at once might be problematic, but if so, it's far better to find out now and adjust your plans for using the magic going forward than to discover the issue later, while you're in the middle of a war zone.

"Are you ready, my student?" Batreaux calls over the Wall, whose sub-zero surface appears to be steaming slightly in the summer heat.

"Ready / ready!"

"Then, FORWARD, MY MINIONS!"

And with a clicking clatter of bones, a mob of Stalchildren rushes around the Wall of Ice.

"Oh, look," you say. "It's Timmy."

"And he brought friends," Shadow Alex adds.

Indeed, there is a certain eager intensity in the way the lead Stalchild charges at you, eyesockets burning bright and rag-padded bone club held high, that suggests it's going to find this particular summoning very cathartic.

And then the Keese descend.


You decide not to interrupt the Bokoblins' celebration. Such low-level Hyrulean monsters don't get a lot of victories when they go up against anything stronger than, say, your average terrified Hylian villager, and few of those wins would be under such benign circumstances.

Let them have this. Maybe it'll encourage the originals to be better Bokoblins? Or at least to use non-lethal weapons when attacking people?

...

Okay, you're probably reaching.

Whatever lesson the goblinoids take away from their summoning has absolutely no impact on the clacking collection of cadavers that come charging around the Wall of Ice at you a few minutes later. While the blaze of light in his eyesockets shows that Timmy is the most obviously eager to have at you, the other five Stalchildren are keeping up with him without issue.

The undead, by and large, need no encouragement to attack the living. Once again, however, you find yourself wondering how Batreaux convinced them to stick to less-than-lethal methods.

And then the skeletons swarm you, and idle thoughts go out the window as you try to keep Shadow Alex from getting beaten over the head with a bone.

A couple of problems immediately make themselves evident.

For one thing, while the Spell of Foresight is giving you flashes of imminent harm about to befall your lookalike before it actually happens, these warnings are coming in at very short notice. Accurately conveying the nature of the danger and the direction from which it's coming, over the noise of the mock-battle, and in a manner concise enough for Shadow Alex to register and react to in time, is not easy.

Some of the trouble, you think, is down to your lack of experience in the role of oversight - which incidentally gives you a whole new insight into and respect for what Briar has to deal with as your partner - but just as much is an unavoidable part of the chaos of combat. There's also an element of inconsistency in your spell, with some warnings registering two or three seconds ahead of time, while others only manifest as the attack is being made.

With another source of data to compare and contrast to, you can see similar issues with the Spell of Foresight you have running on yourself. Together, they suggest that your grasp of the magic is not as complete as you had hoped, even in its personal form, though it's close enough to be functional for that purpose.

On that note, the second overall issue with the Spell of Foresight is what you feared: trying to parse two instances of the spell at one time is difficult. You can DO it, but it's tricky enough that, without greater experience directing allies in combat - even an ally that thinks and reacts so much like yourself - you find yourself devoting too much attention one way or the other at any given moment.

If you were actively striking back, you'd be taking hits, and Shadow Alex would be taking more of them.

And this is just with the Stalchildren. The Keese are circling overhead and occasionally swooping at one or the other of you, but on the whole seem content to be a lurking menace - Batreaux's instruction, or a personal preference, you cannot say.

But then Batreaux gives the word, and the bat-like monsters descend en masse.

Once again, you feel like you're being attacked by stuffed animals-

*Whup!*

-except when one of the Stalchildren reaches out with its club and, rather than trying to smack your skull or your ribs like two of its friends are doing, brings the bony bludgeon across at shin level, and connects.

"What the-?!"

"What was- WHOA!"

And a moment later, you find both of yourselves on the ground, surrounded by victorious Stalchildren.

Timmy's victory pose is similar to that Bokoblin's, as is the support of his peers. They lack only the rousing victory cry - because of course, Stalkin don't have lungs, tongues, or vocal chords to make such noises with.

But the Keese provide, their chittering and squeaking carrying a distinct note of amusement.


Turnabout is fair play. You blasted Timmy to ash multiple times during previous summonings; him managing to take your feet and Shadow Alex's out from under you is nothing more than karma come knocking.

And really, if that's all it takes to settle this particular debt and the hard feelings that go with it, you'll take it.

Would that other grudges were so easily cleared...

You keep testing the Spell of Foresight after this, of course. First you have Batreaux call off his Keese, so that you can try to get used to monitoring two castings of Foresight at the same time, while dealing with a relatively manageable number of enemies who can only really maneuver in two dimensions.

This does make things easier, and gradually - with several breaks for your tutor to summon a new batch of monsters when his spells run out - you start to get the hang of monitoring parallel Foresight spells. Perhaps in recognition of the fact that Shadow Alex will be facing distance fighters in a couple more days, or possibly just out of a personal desire to be thorough, Batreaux takes advantage of the periodic re-summons to mix up the number and types of monsters he brings forth; in addition to Bokoblins and Stalchildren armed with padded clubs, you face Octoroks who spit water rather than stones, Leevers that drill up out of the desert sands and whirl about like tops, Peahats that drop their aggressive little seedlings from above, that same Wizzrobe and several of his friends-

"There are two of you, now?" the one that you're assuming is the same summoned spellcaster you met before says.

"Wow, you weren't kidding. They DO seem familiar, don't they?" one of the robed newcomers says.

"Especially that one," another notes, pointing at Shadow Alex.

"I didn't do anything!" he protests, as you and the fairies regard him with suspicion.

-and another band of Bokoblins, only this time armed with bows and blunt-headed arrows.

And after dealing all of those, Batreaux ups the ante again, and Keese once more darken the already misty interior of your Private Sanctum.

After about an hour of this, and more bruises than you like to admit, you call a halt, wanting to get back to testing the Spell to Walk Through Space.

"Do we have to?" Briar sighs.

"Yes," Shadow Briar says firmly. "I need to know if we can deal with it, or if I'm going to have to work my wings extra hard on Saturday to keep up with this guy." She indicates her partner.

"...okay, fair." Your partner settles on your right shoulder. "Alright, Alex. Hit me."

You pause, and then slowly raise your left hand, as if to swat at your shoulder.

"Very. Funny."

You try.

A moment of focus to gather your mana, another to shape it, and then-

*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*

"Hanging in there, Briar?"

"Holding steady."

*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*

"Still good?"

"Keep going."

*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*
*Blink*

...okay, maybe your grasp on that spell isn't quite as perfected as you thought, because after THAT many teleports in rapid succession, even you're feeling kind of disoriented.

"Still with me, partner?"

"Ugh. Yeah, but... starting to feel it, though."

"Head or stomach?" you inquire.

"Just the head, so far."

That fits with what you're feeling.

Before you can say anything, the Spells of Foresight both thrum a warning:

-You see the exterior of your Private Sanctum, a slow-roiling cloud of impenetrable mist that somehow persists in the middle of the California desert under the afternoon sun in the middle of summer.

You see a pickup truck rumbling to a halt on the edge of the fogbank - a Dodge Ram 1500, you note, with enough obvious wear that it's either from one of the earlier production runs, or has seen a lot of hard use with poor maintenance. The driver is a boy in his late teens, of above-average height and with a build just south of actual athleticism. The front passenger is a girl of similar age, lesser height but more obvious fitness, and quite pretty besides; you've spent enough time around Cordelia and Mrs. Madison by now to recognize a cheerleader when you see one. In the back seat are two more girls, who may or may not be cheerleaders themselves, and in the bed - where they really shouldn't be, you know - are another girl and a couple more guys.

You see every last one of them staring wide-eyed at your Sanctum. Some pile out of the truck and move towards the cloud, gesturing excitedly, while others remain in or on the vehicle, wearing expressions of unease.-

Ah. Damn.

As befits its purpose, your Private Sanctum does a good job at flying under the supernatural radar: scrying spells can't penetrate it; most other forms of common Divination Magic would have to be almost on top of it to pick up anything; and between its being a fifth-circle ritual and your control over your mana being as good as it is, you can minimize - if not quite ENTIRELY erase - the signature of the spell when you cast it, to avoid drawing attention that way. It's also opaque to mundane vision and hearing, at least from the outside.

But it DOES still look like a patch of fog, which can be attention-getting all on its own. You THOUGHT you'd teleported far enough away from the local roads to avoid notice, but it seems there's no predicting teenagers.

Maybe you should come up with a spell for that...?

But that's a matter for another time. Right now, you have potential witnesses to worry about.

What do?


Although you give a moment's thought to dismissing your summoned allies, dispersing your Private Sanctum, and teleporting out of here before the new arrivals can see you through the fading fog, your sense of civic responsibility rears its head.

The fact that these older kids don't know better than to keep away from an obviously unnatural phenomenon in the region around the Hellmouth is a worrying sign. Either they're completely ignorant of the dangers that lurk in the shadows of Sunnydale, or they're over-confident in their ability to handle whatever mystery they've happened upon.

To be fair, the most common supernatural peril in this town is being attacked by a corpse-demon, and it's the middle of the afternoon. If there's one of those parasites within miles of your chosen testing ground-slash-training site, it's most likely holed up in a cave or the basement of some abandoned shack, nervously watching the sun's rays as they slowly crawl along the floor while it waits for night to fall.

But there are plenty of other supernatural dangers in and around town, and some of them are arguably worse than things that will eat you, kill you, and wear your corpse as a new suit - in approximately that order.

These kids need a lesson in why NOT to go poking their noses into strange phenomenon.

All this flashes through your mind in a second or so, and you turn to the others to warn them you're about to have company.

"What sort?" Shadow Alex demands.

"Bunch of joyriding teenagers, from the looks of it," you reply.

"And... you're not ending all your spells and running for it," he notes.

You shake your head.

"You're going to freak them out."

"Going to try," you admit.

Shadow Alex grins. "I want in."

"Me too!" the fairies chorus.

You look from your clone, to the fairies, to your master.

Batreaux shrugs, his expression sheepish. "I would not object to SCARING SOME SENSE INTO THEM - for their own good, of course."

Of course.

Knowing that you have only a few seconds before the edge of your Sanctum is breached, you work quickly.

"Briars, spot for us." You indicate the direction the intruders are approaching from.

"On it!"

"Mwahahaha!"

And off they fly.

To Shadow Alex and Batreaux, you say, "I'm thinking spooky noises, followed by something horrible shambling out of the mist and a Scare Spell to encourage them to run away."

"Not Fear?" Batreaux inquires, in the way teachers do.

"I want them to exercise some healthy self-preservation, not in a blind panic that could get them hurt."

He nods. "As I do not have a fairy spotter, I will handle the 'spooky noises'."

"Dibs on being the horrible shambling thing," Shadow Alex says at once.


While you had hoped to play the role of Big Scary Thing yourself, Shadow Alex called dibs, and the dibs calling will be respected.

Besides, if you look at it in a certain way, it's technically still YOU doing that bit - a fringe benefit of clone spells.

Since time is of the essence and everyone knows their roles, you signal for them to get on with making the magic, while doing just that yourself. Closing your eyes, you reach for your bond with Briar and invoke one of its more powerful functions.

An image akin to a Spell of Scrying fills your mind's eye, the sensor hovering just behind and slightly above Briar as she and her own shadow hover just beyond the edge of your Private Sanctum and study the approaching intruders. As you had foreseen, the two guys and the girl who were riding in the back have climbed down and started moving towards the manifestation of your spell, while the driver and the other three passengers remain in the cab.

"-sure you should be doing that?" the driver calls, leaning out of the window. You notice that he hasn't undone his seatbelt, a state that is shared by the girl riding shotgun. The pair in the back are standing up, and from the looks on their faces, at least one of them might have tried to exit the vehicle herself if their friend in the front wasn't in the way.

"Come on, man!" one of the guys approaching your point of view calls back, gesturing in the direction of the grey fog as he speaks. "Look at this! Have you ever seen anything like it?"

"No, which is plenty of reason to leave it alone!"

"Ah, don't be like that..."

"Yeah, where's your sense of adventure?" the girl on foot adds.

Oh?

Oh-HO! Adventure, is it?

Well, if it's an adventure she wants, far be it from you to deny her. You gather and shape the mana of the Scare Spell, scaling it up slightly so that you can affect all seven teenagers - but then you hold it at the moment of completion, waiting for the opportune moment to unleash your power.

As if on cue, you feel the tingle of mana moving behind you, around you, and then ahead of you as Batreaux completes his spell. While your own ears pick up nothing, your other perspective allows you to hear an eerie groaning.

ReDeads, unless you miss your guess, or at the very least inspired by them.

All three of the approaching teenagers stop cold, clearly having heard the sound.

"Um," the one who hadn't spoken before ventures uncertainly. "Did anyone else hear that?"

"I didn't hear anything," the first boy denies.

"Then why did you stop?" the girl asks.

"Why did YOU stop?"

"Because I heard something that sounded like-"

And that's when Shadow Alex's spell resolves, and you let your own magic loose, as some THING shambles out of the impenetrable fog.

"-HOLY SHIT ZOMBIE!"

Maybe your evil twin was inspired by Batreaux's choice of background music, because it really does look like a walking corpse of the non-bloodsucking variety. It's basically the teenaged form you've used as a disguise in Karakura, but the skin is withered, cracked, and grey, reddish-brown hair has turned stark white, and the eyes are similarly devoid of color. Head lolling at an angle and shoulders slumped, the sinister semblance of your sometimes-self shambles forward, trailing arms reaching stiffly for the nearest warm body.

"Braaaaiiiinssss," you hear your duplicate and your duplicate's duplicate groan in tandem.

Screaming ensues.

Three on one, a group of untrained teenagers could potentially take a zombie, provided it was just the standard walking human corpse, and not one of the many varieties with "special features" that experienced necromancers can never seem to resist brewing up. While it's untiring, a zombie isn't that much stronger than the creature it was in life, and is slow, clumsy, and mindless besides; alone, its only true advantage is its sheer physical resilience, which is admittedly such that your average unarmed civilian would have serious trouble actually damaging the thing. Even a fair number of martial artists would find it problematic to punch through a zombie's lifeless, leathery flesh and start doing enough injury to the thing to put it down.

Unless they tripped it, of course. Slow, clumsy, and stupid makes for pretty easy takedowns, as long as you don't get grabbed in turn.

But maybe these kids don't know martial arts, maybe they've seen too many horror movies, or maybe your spell just worked to perfection, because none of them even try to fight.

The boy that backed up turns and runs for the truck, whose passengers are collectively shrieking in terror.

The other boy stands there, screaming, until the girl - who is no quieter - grabs his arm and pulls. She's not that much smaller than him, and fear seems to lend her strength, because she drags him backwards and halfway around, away from the illusionary zombie-

"Rrrraaaarrrr!"

-which growls in frustrated anger and lurches towards them.

Snapped out of his moment of frozen terror, the boy joins his friends in running.

"START THE TRUCK, START THE TRUCK, START THE TRUCK!" the fleeing girl screams.

The engine is already rumbling to life.

"GO, GO, GO!" one of the girls in the back seat yells, hitting the driver's shoulder.

"WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!" the boy who's just reached the truck hollers as he runs around to the back, fumbles uselessly at the still-raised tailgate for a moment, and then gives up and hauls himself over and into the cargo bed.

To his credit, the driver doesn't put his foot to the gas until ALL of his passengers are aboard.

This gives Shadow Alex time to have the phantom zombie stagger almost the entire way to the truck.

Given that proximity, it is perhaps unsurprising that, as soon as the last pair are aboard-

"WE'RE IN, WE'RE IN!" the girl screams.

"GET US OUT OF HERE!"

-the driver floors it-

"Ah, hell," Shadow Alex and Zombie Teen Alex swear in unison.

-and tries to ram the undead abomination, as befits the brand name of his truck.

A common failing of low-level Illusion Magic is that direct interaction between the target and the thing(s) they're being made to see tends to break the spell. Whichever spell Shadow Alex chose for this little display seems to have been one of those, because Zombie Teen Alex flickers, wavers, and vanishes - but not, you note, before the "impact" of the accelerating vehicle drives him back, down, and "under" the truck.

A good effort by Shadow Alex to sell the scene.

"OH MY GOD OH MY GOD-"

"WHAT DID YOU DO?!"

"YOU KILLED IT?!"

"IS IT DEAD?!"

The truck, which had started to turn away from your Private Sanctum, halts once more, passengers looking out the windows or over the side walls - though not leaning over them to do it - to try and spot the zombie.

Through your link to Briar, you sense mana moving - not hers, but close by, and identical but for an edge of Shadow.

So when something underneath the truck reaches out an arm and howls in wordless fury, you aren't surprised.

"OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD-"

"NOT DEAD! NOT DEAD!"

"GO, GO, GO!"

You can't say the same for the target members of the audience.

This time, the Ram doesn't stop.

Is there any spell you wish to cast on the truck before it gets out of range?


As the Ram does its best to emulate the proverbial chiropteran out of the hot place, it occurs to you that, even now, those teenagers - none of whom registered as magical through Briar's borrowed senses - are almost certainly trying to convince themselves that they didn't ACTUALLY get attacked by a zombie, much less run the thing over, because of course zombies don't exist outside of movies and video games.

They're probably ALSO trying to convince themselves that whatever they DID hit, it wasn't a person or even person-shaped, and possibly not even an animal, either.

...are there legal penalties for hitting an animal while driving?

You shake your head. Not the point.

The point is, your little audience are going to do their best to repress the heck out of this encounter, which would defeat the purpose of trying to scare them off from poking their noses into supernatural phenomenon. You need some way to make the lesson stick, something they can't shrug off as, oh, hallucinations brought on by exposure to some weird gas cloud and the heat of the desert in summer.

Though that WOULD be a halfway reasonable rationalization.

The simplest idea that comes to mind is to produce a bit of "evidence" on the front of the truck, to make it look like they really did hit something, and that whatever it was both got the worst of the encounter and could not have been a normal creature.

As you run through your list of spells, you are mildly frustrated and bemused to realize that, for all the magic at your command, you don't have a spell that can conjure realistic zombie blood-spatter on demand. To be fair, it's a very specific magical niche, and if someone DID create a spell precisely for that purpose, you'd have to wonder about their activities. A lot.

While you're figuring out what spell to use for your special effects, you cast a Greater Spell of Scrying to follow the Ram's driver. You're going to need eyes on the target for this next part, and possibly for a while to come.

The image of the fleeing pickup and its passengers replaces the sensory input from Briar, and you start hearing raised voices again:

"WHAT WAS THAT? HUH?! WHAT WAS THAT?" one of the guys in the back demands of his friends, and perhaps the universe in general.

"I DON'T KNOW! I DON'T KNOW!" the girl in the back screams in reply.

"THAT WAS A ZOMBIE!" the cheerleader in the front seat shrieks.

"I KNOW!" the driver yells back.

"YOU HIT A ZOMBIE!"

"I KNOW!"

"THAT WAS SO COOL!"

"I KNOW!"

What's this, now?

...hm. So those two, at least, might be dealing with their run-in with the supernatural better than it initially seemed. Or they might be getting overconfident.

Either way, they're all clearly still worked up, so you should probably avoid splashing the front of the truck with Conjured matter. The Spells of Creation aren't really meant to hit moving targets, much less to keep their creations contained after the moment of impact, and if you aim the spatter at the grille but hit the windshield instead... well, like you just observed, they're all clearly still worked up. The added shock and sudden loss of visibility might go very badly.

Illusion it is, then.

Given the situation, you decide to go with the Spell of the Major Image: you can aim it precisely enough to avoid issues; it's got a long enough base range that you'll only need a couple more spell levels to keep it running even if the truck ends up all the way back in Sunnydale while you're still out here in the dunes; and its spell level is low enough that the increase should be within your ability to conceal. You will have to keep concentrating on the spell, both to maintain it and to make sure it reacts properly to outside stimulus to stay believable, but you've got Batreaux and Shadow Alex to handle any other spellcasting that needs doing.

You spare a quick word for your companions, explaining your plan.

"Right," Shadow Alex replies. "I'll bring down the Sanctum and tell the fairies what we're doing."

Batreaux nods. "I shall dispel the traces of our activities here."

And you will get on with decorating the front of the Ram with a sort of reddish-green smear, speckled with bits of grey, and running down the front of the truck as if something hit hard and was pulled underneath.

Gained Painting F

You have to say, if it wasn't for your skill at working magic, this probably wouldn't be believable at all. As is? It looks at least as realistic as stuff you've seen on TV.

Something in the back of your head pokes you, as if to make a suggestion.

You ignore it with the skill of long practice.


You've still got a few hours until you need to be home for supper, and you doubt it'll take the teenagers that long to get around to discovering and trying to clean off the zombie gunk staining the front of the Ram. And given that you still haven't quite got the hang of the Spell of Foresight OR the Spell to Walk Through Space at this point, you'd like to get in as much additional practice as possible before you call it a day.

With that in mind, once Shadow Alex has dispelled the Private Sanctum and recalled both Briars, and Batreaux has finished dispelling the residual traces of your practice session here, those of you who are generally land-going move on top of a large but low-laying rock. Shadow Alex casts the Spell to Create A Gust of Wind a couple of times to blow away your tracks, and once that's done, you and Batreaux each place a hand on your doppelganger's shoulders, while the fairies land on yours.

Then Shadow Alex teleports the lot of you to another location in the desert - well, on the edge of it, anyway. You're standing outside the collapsed gate of that ruin of a once-haunted house that the Madisons drove you to for a cleansing ritual some time ago.

"Okay, I'll bite," Briar says after a moment. "Why here?"

"We don't exactly have a long list of potential teleport sites around town picked out," Shadow Alex replies. "And this is the only one I could think of that came with some actual cover."

He has a point there. Maybe you should do some scouting one of these days?

Leaving that aside for now, you check on your Spell of Illusion, making sure it didn't wink out of existence when you did, and then find a spot to get comfortable, because you might be here for a bit.

As you watch through your Spell of Scrying, the teenagers gradually stop screaming at each other. A lot of questions are fired back and forth, shouted out of and into open windows as they keep on driving, but not many answers are forthcoming. Out of seven individuals, four agree that they saw a zombie, while two - the girls who were sitting in the cab's rear seats, and thus didn't get the best look - are rather doubtful of that claim. One suggests it was a prank set up by the boys, with one of their friends made up to look like a zombie and with a fog machine to generate the cloud, and that sets off a bit of an argument involving wind, vapor dispersal, and the lack of any electrical outlets in the middle of the freaking desert.

Incidentally, the last member of the group, the guy who was the first to run back to the truck after seeing Zombie Teen Alex, has sort of curled up in the back, arms curled around his knees and head and refusing to talk to anybody.

You feel a little bad about that.

About five minutes on, the driver settles the argument by pulling to a stop and declaring they'll go back and take another look. There are some protests - mostly from the girl and the still-talkative guy in the back of the truck - as well as suspicious looks from the two girls in the rear seat, but the Ram turns around and begins making its way back to the site.

In short order, they notice things have changed, and the truck slows to a stop some distance from where it had first parked.

"Where's the fog?" the driver asks of the universe.

"Where's the ZOMBIE?" the upright guy in the back demands nervously.

The cheerleader leans out of the passenger-side window. "Look, there's our tracks!"

And then, to much protesting from three of the others, she gets out of the truck, followed shortly by one of the other two girls in the cab. They trace out the path the truck took coming and going, but there's nothing.

The doubtful girl turns to say something to those still in the truck, and blanches when she sees the phantasmal gore smeared across the grill.

Instantly, another round of shrieking pandemonium ensues.

"OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT?!"

"WHAT?! WHAT?!"

"THAT! THAT!"

"WHERE?! WHERE?!"

"ON THE HOOD!"

Gathering his courage, the driver gets out of the truck, walks around to the front, and stops, taking in the sight.

"...oh, gross."

Coming up behind him, the cheerleader asks, "Is that-?"

"Zombie stains," he replies. "And... zombie BITS, ugh..."

"...wow, I do NOT envy you cleaning this."

The boy turns slowly and gives the girl a most expressive, disbelieving Look.


You decide to take the opening, and to keep things simple.

The driver and the cheerleader stagger back in alarm as the red, green, and grey smeared across the front of the Ram begins to bubble and steam, emitting faint sparks of blue and wispy tendrils of black smoke. The "meltdown" is slow at first, but rapidly accelerates, until the zombie spatter seems to be burning with an otherworldly blue flame, which fills the air above the hood of the truck with a small cloud of darkness.

With the exception of the guy still curled up in the back of the truck, the rest of the teenagers flinch backwards at the sight of the unnatural fire and smoke - the latter of which almost seems to be taking the shape of a skull...

Then the illusory fire burns out, having consumed all of the slime and detritus, the smoke ceases to rise, and the cloud wavers, scatters, and fades away with a sigh of blowing wind.

Or, from the perspective of your audience, perhaps the sigh of a damned soul, denied its vengeance.

For a moment, all is still.

"I say we get out of here before anything else happens," the girl riding in the back of the truck asks. "Who's with me?"

"I support this notion!" the boy standing next to her says at once, raising a hand as if he were in class.

"Seconded," the girl sitting alone in the cab exclaims.

"Ditto," the cheerleader chimes in.

"Motion carried," the driver concludes, moving for the door. "Tammy, hurry up, we're leaving!"

The previously doubtful girl moves faster to catch up with the others and get back in the truck.

You figure you can probably leave them there, and end your Spell of Scrying.

"Right," you say, turning to your companions. "So where were we? Private Sanctum 2.0?"

"Actually," Shadow Alex says, "given we just had one batch of unexpected visitors, what do you say we skip town entirely? We DO have a time-accelerated demiplane we could be doing this in."

You pause, a little startled by the suggestion - mostly because you're still getting used to the idea that you not only have access to the Gate Spell now, but that there are actual destinations you can travel to that way. And then you wait a little longer, to see if the Spell of Foresight has anything to say about the idea.

When nothing comes back - like, for example, opening a portal into the middle of a lesson Balthazar is giving Dave that involves flying plasma - you nod. "Or we could do that."

Since you're about to cast a ninth-circle spell and don't want people or things getting a good look at it, Shadow Alex calls up a variation on Private Sanctum, reducing its duration to a couple of hours - time enough for the magical signature of the Gate you're about to open to disperse naturally. This, combined with the minimized area of effect, makes the Sanctum spell much less powerful than usual, bringing its signature below the threshold that your not-evil twin can conceal.

Once your screen against scrying is in place, you open up the Gate, letting Batreaux guide Shadow Alex through the breach in space-time while the fairies zip ahead. You follow and close the portal behind you.

You spend a few more hours, subjective time, working with your chosen spells. Batreaux calls up various combinations of Hyrulean monsters to test your Foresight spell, gradually introducing more dangerous specimens to test how the threat level interacts with the magic, and also to give you something closer to realistic combat conditions.

The first time you start actively fighting back, you almost immediately lose track of the information the Foresight spell on Shadow Alex is sending you. Working that out costs you time and a few bruises.

At the end of the afternoon, you still haven't quite mastered the spells. You can use one instance of Foresight without issue, whether it's targeting you or an ally, but having two running in tandem is still distracting and mildly irritating. As for the Spell to Walk Through Space, you can use it continuously for its entire duration without disorienting yourself to the point of nausea - though doing so still leaves you feeling a bit unwell - but Briar still has a tendency to start making distressing noises about halfway through such an intensive session of rapid teleports.

On the positive side, you think you've identified the issue. You just need to alter the spell formula a bit so that the spell isn't aggravating her Fae senses every time you blink between spaces. That'll give you something to work on tonight, and you can test it again tomorrow.

Tomorrow, incidentally, is the last day before Auswahlen.

Aside from one last test of these spells, do you have any final preparations you'd like to make?


After you have dismissed your allies, returned to the Earthly Plane, and gone home for dinner, your resolution to do some magical theorycrafting runs headlong into a Zelda-shaped obstacle - or vice-versa - which touches off a sudden realization.

In two days' time, a part of you is going to walk into a war. Not only that, it's a conflict between two groups that - at least as far as you've been able to infer - don't operate according to the rules of modern warfare.

As the guy who warred with Hyrule in multiple eras and conquered it something like half a dozen times, Ganondorf knows a thing or two about the old school of warfare, and thanks to what you've seen in your dreams and through actively delving into his memories (before you wrote that off as a bad idea), so do you.

Based on those partial recollections and the bad blood that you've been told several times exists between the Quincy and the Shinigami - as well as the reasons for it - the upcoming battle promises to be ugly, by any metric.

And for all his pragmatism, Shadow Alex doesn't have any more experience with open warfare than you do.

You were intellectually AWARE of all of this, of course, but when Zelda jumped you inside the front door, the UNDERSTANDING hit you along with her modest weight.

Also, you think you sister's been growing a bit recently, whether in physical terms or just in sneakiness. You can usually brace for impact better than that...

Anyway, the moment of clarity pushes you into reconsidering your agenda slightly. Rather than heading to your lab or your room for some intellectual exercise, you instead head into the kitchen, dragging a little-sister-shaped limpet along in your wake, and offer to help your mom with dinner.

Mom considers that, then shrugs and asks what the two of you would like.

Gained Cooking D (Plus) (Plus)

After a more traditionally home-cooked meal than is usual for the Harris household, you spend the next couple of hours playing with Zelda, with Briar and Moblin pitching in. Only after your sister has succumbed to a case of the yawns and allowed your folks to put her to bed do you head downstairs to take apart the formula for the Spell to Walk Through Space and start working out where improvements could and should be made.

Given that you've been awake for almost sixteen hours straight when you start your research at eight in the evening, it is a little disconcerting - though hardly surprising - that you start feeling tired around ten o'clock. Normally you can squeeze in another hour or two before you start yawning, but the "extra time" you racked up in the demiplane is showing one of its drawbacks.

You push through, of course, but it's probably just as well that most of the intellectual heavy lifting was done by that point. Just because you CAN work while sleep-deprived doesn't mean it's a good idea to do so, especially when you're mucking about with magic - even just the theory.

After all, you're going to test the revised versions of your spell tomorrow, and this IS a high-middle-tier magic that involves bending the fabric of space and time rather more directly and literally than many other spells. With such a thing, even little mistakes can be catastrophic.

Not that you think you made any, or that Briar thinks you did, but it's always better to be safe than sorry.

Calling it a night as far as work goes, you head upstairs and find your father surfing late night TV: news; sports; a movie; a cop drama. Your mother has the morning shift tomorrow, so she's already turned in.

That earlier realization comes back to you, and you ask your father what he's doing tomorrow, aside from minding Zelda.

"Mostly that, before lunch," he replies, and you nod, knowing that looking after Zelda is a full-time job all by itself. "Though if you could be up to keep an eye on the little princess while I drive your mother to work...?"

"Sure, no problem."

Tony nods. "I'll take Zelda with me to pick your mother up when her shift is over, and we'll do lunch somewhere. I'll probably spin by Rory's after dropping them off. What are your plans like?"

You admit that you're going to be doing more magical testing tomorrow morning, shaking the bugs out of a couple of spells. The idea of being back in time for lunch with the family appeals, and you add that you'll definitely be back for that.

"It's the food, isn't it?" your father guesses, nodding.

"It is a factor," you agree.

Then you ask your dad if he'd mind you tagging along to the garage in the afternoon.

"No problem, but clear it with your mother first, just in case she has something else planned."

You'll do that. For now, however, you're going to go read for a bit, and then call it a night.

"'Night, Alex. Briar."

"'Night, Dad."

"'Night, Tony."

You finish off Volume Five of Twentieth Century Sorcery around eleven-thirty, and decide not to crack open Volume Six, instead putting the book up on the shelf, climbing into bed, and wishing Briar a restful sleep before turning off the light.

Your own repose that evening is somewhat restless. While the magic imbued into your Restful Blanket can cause you to experience vivid dreams that reflect some physical affliction you're currently suffering from, and your body's magically aided efforts to fight it off and recuperate, that isn't what you experience. Instead, you see images of conflict, where katana-swinging figures in black take on white-clad archers, a fair number of whom are wearing corrective lenses of one sort or another. Various Hyrulean monsters circle the combatants, their features rather more distinct than the Shinigami and Quincy, and there, lurking at the edges, is a large, broad-shouldered, red-haired figure in a suit, behind whom looms a vast, porcine figure shadow with angry red eyes.

Your limited experience with the art of dreamwalking is enough for you to be... semi-consciously aware of what you are seeing, and to take action, if you care to. But what SHOULD you do? It might be healthier to let this relatively mild nightmare run its course and work through some of the feelings that gave rise to it that way...


While you're far from being an expert in the subtleties of dreamwalking, it seems a reasonable assumption that a focused effort towards a specific end would accomplish more than simply flailing around randomly.

With that in mind, you will your avatar towards the man in the suit, one of the two figures that seem most likely to meaningfully react to - or even interact with - your awareness.

For a moment, nothing happens. It's been the better part of a year since you significantly exercised your dreamwalking abilities, and that year has been busy enough that you haven't had much time or desire to practice.

In other words, you're rusty.

But slowly, the fuzzy edges of your awareness come into clarity, and your point of view shifts in accordance with your will rather than the flow of the dream.

Gained Dreamwalking D

As you turn away from the melee to approach the tall man, the noise of the battle fades away. It doesn't disappear entirely - you can still hear the clash of spiritual steel against blade-like energy projections, the flight of Quincy "arrows," and the battle-cries and screams of combatants both nearly human and utterly inhuman - but it retreats into the background. Similarly, while the looming presence of the Boar continues to tower over the conflict, it also seems to slide away from the focus of your attention, leaving you plenty of room for you to confront your older image.

When you come to a stop, you are quite literally standing in the shadow of the beast, but there is light enough from somewhere that your vision is not impaired in the least.

You look up at yourself.

And the other you looks down in return. He is not quite so tall nor as massively built as Ganondorf, you think - though that might be due to the absence of any armor - nor are his features so distinctly and purely Gerudo as the Thief-King's. This isn't HIS face, it's what YOURS might look like a decade or two into the future, the Gerudo hints blending with traces of both your parents and the marks of your bond to Briar.

You pause for a moment and glance up, half-expecting the thought of your partner to summon her - but no familiar glow appears.

When you look back at your older self, you note that he seems to have had the same reaction.

"Are we thinking each other's thoughts?" you wonder, not without some concern.

"I think it's just the fact that we're so similar on the inside, our thoughts and reactions are basically going in the same direction."

That's somewhat reassuring.

On a side note, Older You is a bit scary when he speaks. Even at normal conversational levels, his voice is big and deep and rumbling, and when combined with his size and only somewhat restrained aura of supernatural power, it helps sell the impression that you're looking at a (well-dressed) mountain or a storm that decided to go for a walk.

It's very cool, but it's also kind of intimidating to be on the receiving end of.

Are you really this overwhelming to other people?

Putting that concern aside for the moment, you face down your aged-up lookalike. "So what is this? Ordinary stress-induced bad dream? Minor prophecy? A bit of both?"

"Feels like a bit of both," Older Alex says, tucking his hands into his pockets as he looks around. "A part of us IS about to go and do something dangerous, which will have a more significant and direct impact on a lot more people than anything else we've done in this lifetime so far. Even if we won't REALLY be there in person, worrying about what's going to happen, what we're going to see and do, and how it's all going to play out is... normal."

"There's a word we don't usually hear in relation to ourselves," you muse.

He smirks for a moment. "On the other hand, we know enough about Divination Magic at this point to know that the invasion of Silbern is the kind of event that sends ripples back and forth through time. Even with all the precautions the Wandenreich took to hide themselves, and whatever the Shinigami are doing to keep their plans and preparation under wraps, seers all over Japan have probably been having a rough month."

"And since part of us is going to be directly involved in the incident, we get previews," you conclude with a sigh.

Older Alex makes a deep, wordless sound of agreement.


"So," you begin, "have you got any homework for me? Like what we gave to Xander?"

There is a chuckle like a rockslide. "Nice try, but no. I'm not actually a you from the future, I'm just your mind's IMAGE of a you from the future." Older Alex pauses and frowns in thought. "Or maybe more correctly, your mind's image of a Shadow Alex from the future..." Trailing off, he shakes his head, reddish mane waving almost like a flame. "You get what I mean."

Yeah, you do. Well, it was worth a shot, and it also answers the question you were going to ask him about sending information the other way.

Although on that note...

"We should think up a temporal password, just in case that actually happens at some point," you say.

Most people would say that taking security precautions in anticipation of encountering a temporally displaced duplicate of yourself, or someone posing as such, is unnecessary.

As ever, you are not most people. To you, time travel is not an idle fantasy or impossible to prove theory, but established fact, however rare and obscure examples of it might be even in Hyrule's long, storied, and occasionally downright bizarre history.

Older Alex nods. "Useful for security purposes, and in case of emergencies."

The two of you bow your heads for a moment, considering options. Something short, so that you can rattle it off quickly if the situation requires it, but not so obvious that it could be readily guessed by people who've observed you, or even by those that know you personally, if you're being really para- that is, security conscious. Something Hyrulean would work for fooling would-be imposters from Earth, but could get you blindsided by a being that knows of Hyrule; you know that the Goddesses' "interference" in Earthly affairs and your own actions have ruffled some celestial feathers, and it's not impossible or even all that unlikely that at least SOME of the Powers have tried looking into where the golden trio came from and how you got connected to them in the first place.

Whether any of those beings could get past Din, Nayru, and Farore to actually LEARN anything about the Land of the Gods and its history is another matter entirely, but it IS possible.

The only other real reason not to use a code based on your knowledge of Hyrule is because that would be the expected thing.

If, for the sake of argument, you chose a different source for your security measure, should it be something mundane or mystical? English or Japanese? Or maybe you should look for inspiration from Faerie instead?

Honestly, you are just a bit spoiled for choice here.

After sorting that out, your gaze trails past Older Alex to the shadow of the Boar looming in the distance behind him. Struck by another of those sudden realizations, you glance over your shoulder at the still-warring silhouettes of Quincy and Shinigami for a moment, before turning back around.

"How do you suppose the Boar will react to this when it happens, do you think?" you question your counterpart. "Actually," you add, looking closer at your totem's representation, "how is it reacting right NOW?"

Echoing your previous motion, Older Alex half-turns and cranes his neck about to look over his shoulder at the Boar.

Great red eyes gaze down at the two of you, and close briefly as the humungus hog lets out a short, dismissive snort like a hot gust of storm-force wind.

"I don't think he's too bothered by us," Older Alex replies, turning back to you. "The whole war thing, though..."

There is a great clamor from behind him, thunder booming in a titanic torso and steel-strong hooves crashing against an unseen surface.

It is a sound of anger, of energy, and of anticipation.

"...he's looking forward to this, isn't he." It is not a question.

"Yup."

The Boar rumbles in agreement.

...well, he IS something of a martial totem.


You and Older Alex raise your heads, look one another square in the eye, and state your choice: "Correct horse battery staple."

The Boar oinks in puzzlement.

...huh?

Got me.

The answer is, "Five hundred and fifty years."

...this is more temporal nonsense, isn't it?

Definitely feels like it.

Gained Temporal Password
Gained Time Affinity E (Plus)

If Older Alex isn't actually you from the future, his presence is a lot less useful than it could have been, and the Boar is what it's always been. As such, you turn your attention to the other elements of this partially prophetic dream, pondering what portion of it you should try to discern some meaning from.

After a moment, you direct your attention to the phantom figures of the Quincy. Whether as the hostile force Shadow Alex will be facing or the small civilian population you'll be trying to smuggle to safety, the spirit archers are the central focus of the upcoming incident. Any last-minute insights you might be able to gain about them would be helpful.

As happened when you approached Older Alex, your mental focus on the Quincy causes the rest of the dream to fall away as they themselves grow nearer and clearer in your mind's eye. This naturally causes a number of details to become more apparent, the foremost of which is the fact that not all of them are using phantasmal energy bows like the one you saw Souken use when he was helping you test how Spell Immunity worked against Quincy power. A few do, others are armed with bows made from what appears to be silver - wouldn't that be impractically heavy? - and you catch sight of what you're pretty sure is a crossbow, but you also see a variety of melee weapons: ranks of troops carrying polearms; officers wielding varying styles of sword - though not a one of those Japanese that you can tell, and you don't think that's a coincidence; and one guy whose hands are lined with bands of spiky silver.

And then, there are the guns. Handguns, rifles - one figure seems to be toting CANNONS around, while another wearing the uniform of the Sternritter has a freaking GATLING GUN on his arm, which... what?

Souken told you the Wandenreich had developed new weapons and techniques during their thousand-year seclusion, you knew that they'd kept in contact with the modern world, and you can see how guns might appeal to a culture that were originally distance fighters - doubly so, when what you know of the Shinigami suggests that THEIR focus is primarily close combat. For all of that, though, you hadn't considered that the Quincy might have figured out how to make spiritual equivalents of Twentieth Century weaponry, let alone the sort of weapons usually found in emplacements or on vehicles!

Aren't isolationists supposed to be conservative or stagnant or something?

Putting that question aside, you try to pick out other relevant details, but they prove elusive. The rank-and-file Soldats are virtually indistinguishable from one another, as not only are they wearing the matching uniforms you saw while spying on Silbern, they've also donned what appear to be gas masks. The Sternritter are wearing hooded cloaks, and a few of them have their faces covered besides. There's another unit or order of Quincy, the polearm-wielders, whose faces are exposed, but they're somehow distant from the rest and cast into shadow by something you can't see.

As for Yhwach, he is there, far in the back of his army, laid out on the bier you discovered with your scrying spells, but surrounded by an aura of spiritual energy far beyond what you detected that time, an aura of power strong enough that it might well be visible to the naked eye, and growing stronger each second you look at it, as moaning streams of light - of SOULS - rush towards it from all directions.

The battle intensifies. Bodies fall. The loosed souls grow in number and density, swirling into the pillar of power that rises about the Sealed King-

And the next thing you know, you're blinking your eyes in the darkness of the early morning.

A glance at the clock shows it to be a bit past four, your usual wake-up time.


The idea of taking a day off from your usual early morning wakeup routine is tempting, but after laying in your bed for a few minutes, turning the idea over in your head, you finally sigh and get up.

You were already planning to dedicate a good portion of the day to relaxing and gathering your strength for what's to come, but you DO have some tasks you'd like to finish up before that.

With that in mind, you wake up Briar-

"Mmmph," the fairy responds to your telepathic prodding. "G'way. Wanna sleep."

"We've got work to do, Briar."

"S'too early..."

-get dressed, and head down to your lab, where you call up the Mirror Hideaway and step inside.

Aside from testing out your revised and (hopefully) improved version of the Spell to Walk Through Space, one of the things it occurred to you to investigate today was how that same spell interacts with the Spell of Mind Blank - or more specifically, its absence. While your Mirror Hideaway doesn't have the internal space for you to feel comfortable conducting a series of rapid-fire teleportations inside of it, slower and more considered jumps ought to be fine, especially if you have the Spell of Foresight running in tandem... although on that note, it occurs to you that you should probably test how Walk Through Space interacts with THAT spell and its absence, as well.

As you cross into the Mirror Plane, Shadow Alex's remark about making use of the time-accelerated demiplane comes back to you, but for the moment, you have to dismiss the idea. Not that you couldn't open up a Gate from your Mirror Hideaway to that demiplane, you just couldn't go BACK that way; you don't have any planar keys for the Mirror Plane, and even if you did, your Mirror Hideaway doesn't last long enough to make use of one.

...you suppose you COULD try to make the Hideaway permanent and then create a key attuned to it, but that would make the spell too powerful for you to hide, even with the concealing effect of Ambrose's wards, and you'd have a permanent portal to the Mirror Plane inside your house besides, which would be asking for trouble from within as well as without.

You've managed to use the Mirror Hideaway without incident for almost a year now, but part of that is down to the fact that it IS a temporary spell. Every time you cast it, you're technically creating a new location along (or within) the border between the Material Plane and the Mirror Plane, and one that's probably far removed from your previous castings, due to the relative movements of the planes in question. On top of that, in order to pose an actual threat to you, a native of the Mirror Plane would require the ability to sense the Hideaway's existence and/or the magic you were throwing around inside, the proximity and speed to GET there before you left and ended the spell, and some means of intruding upon or passing through the extradimensional space.

That's a fair number of qualifiers, and if the Mirror Plane is like the other planes directly adjacent to the Material, then it's probably infinite in size, or near enough to make little practical difference. That makes the chances of a single creature possessing all the necessary attributes to be dangerous turning up whenever you cast Mirror Hideaway... small.

It's not IMPOSSIBLE that something could still find you, but the odds of it are far lower than they would be if you created a permanent connection. Permanent portals can't help but attract attention; they're too powerful, too useful, and too dangerous for it to be any other way, which is why they're so often hidden away and made difficult to access.

Putting those speculations aside, you cast Walk Through Space and start carefully teleporting about your Hideaway, using the proven but imperfect version of the teleportation spell.

*Blink*

And pause.

*Blink*

And pause.

*Blink*

And pause. "Feeling anything, Briar?"

"Not really?"

Hm. You did suspect that the speed of the transitions was a contributing factor, but you don't think you can go faster in here safely, at least not without some precautions that will have to wait, for the sake of Magical Science.

You finish the relatively slow series of teleports that this casting of the spell allows you, and then repeat the process with your revised version.

It makes no difference that either of you can discern.

Following this, you cast the Spell of Foresight, both to see if its addition makes a difference and because its addition makes you feel a little safer about pushing your limits in this confined space.

First, the flawed Spell to Walk Through Space.

*Blink*
Stop.
*Blink*
Stop.
*Blink*
Stop.

"And now?"

"Still good."

*Blink*
Stop.
*Blink*
Stop.
*Blink*
Stop.
*Blink*
Stop.
*Blink*
Stop.
*Blink*
Stop.
*Blink*
Stop.
*Blink*
Stop.
*Blink*

"Urgh," Briar complains. "Okay, wait."

And stop.

You let your partner recover, then cast the revised version of Walk Through Space.

The results are encouraging, in that Briar doesn't complain once.

Following this, you dismiss yesterday's lingering Spell of Mind Blank and do another relatively high-speed test with the imperfect Spell to Walk Through Space - which results in Briar getting distressed at about the same rate as the last such casting - then take another break and follow that with your improved combat teleportation spell - which once again fails to make your partner nauseous.

These results are even more encouraging, but you're going to hold off on declaring the revised Spell to Walk Through Space a success until you can fully stress-test it, which will have to wait until later.

You've spent most of an hour in the Mirror Hideaway at this point, and used up a good portion of the available ambient mana. After renewing the Spell of Mind Blank, you take another half-hour or so to do some of your morning exercises, then exit the planar pocket, end the spell keeping it in existence, and head upstairs in search of breakfast.


Since neither of your parents are up yet, you prepare breakfast for you and Briar: a bowl of cereal, with a few sugary grains set aside for the fairy; a couple of pieces of toast with peanut butter, a small corner of one again going to your partner; a glass of apple juice and another of milk each, thanks to conjured cups; and a banana divided similarly.

Not for the first time, you spare a moment's thought to wonder where Briar puts everything she eats when she's at her usual size, let alone the sort of compressions that must occur when she eats at human size.

You're in no real hurry with the meal, and by the time you've finished, your dad has come downstairs in his housecoat and pajama pants, while the sound of your mother moving around upstairs can be heard.

"Morning, Alex," your father greets you, rubbing his eyes.

"Morning, Dad," you reply. "Made you some toast," you add, pointing at the four slices set to one side of the table, already buttered.

"Thanks." He takes one and takes a bite out of it as he ambles over to the fridge. "You got room left for eggs and bacon?"

"Is this a trick question?"

In all honesty, you're capable enough in the kitchen that you can prepare simple egg recipes and fry some bacon, but your folks prefer that you not do it until at least one of them has come downstairs. It's mostly so that they can get in their full eight hours (and then some) without the scent of heated protein tempting them to rise early, but there is still a bit of parental concern, regardless of your size, maturity, demonstrated skill, and magical aid.

Give them another six months, a year at the outside, and you figure they'll get over it. There's no rush.

While your father handles the stove, you pour out cereal and drinks for two more, and refill your juice while you're at it, then get an orange from the fridge - not quite the last of those, you note, although it's getting close - and start peeling and cutting that up.

Your father is just putting the finishing touches on some omelettes when your mother comes downstairs, showered and dressed for her half-day at work, to find breakfast waiting for her. She refuses the offer of eggs in any form, but does accept some bacon to go with the rest of it, and the three of you sit down together while Briar flits back upstairs to check on Zelda.

It's a nice, quietly domestic moment that you are reluctant to disturb, but you DO have to ask your mother for permission to visit Uncle Rory's garage with your dad later in the day.

She has no issue with that, and then asks about your plans for tomorrow - because of course, you'd already told your parents that you'd be out of the house for the events in Karakura and elsewhere. There was no sense at all in leaving THAT to the last minute.

Incidentally, what did you tell them?


While you didn't go for total disclosure about the Quincy situation, you decided that exercising a measure of honesty with your parents was the best policy, just in case the circumstances developed in a manner that prevented you from returning home on time or otherwise kept you out of contact with the family longer than intended.

You did your best to cushion the blow, but...

Standing across the living room from the couch where your parents are sitting, you search your mind for an explanation.

One comes.

"Imagine being so allergic to peanuts that you could die just from being in the same state as one. The people I'm helping have the hereditary spiritual equivalent of this hyper-allergy to peanuts, and a peanut situation is about to kick off in their state. I am not allergic to spiritual peanuts, and will be far away from the peanut epicenter in any case, but I can still help these people manage their peanut condition by moving them to another state, where the peanuts can't reach them."

From your shoulder comes the sound of a tiny facepalm.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA-

...wow. Just... wow.

Your parents take that in.

"Alex," your father says then, looking you dead in the eye, "are we going to have to worry about an outbreak of spiritual elephants?"

-HAHAHAHAHAHA-

Oh, yeah, they're definitely father and son.

Your mother joins Briar in reintroducing her hand to her face.

I know your pain, dear.

You picture the Shinigami you've met - and glimpsed - thus far, wearing elephant masks.

You try very, VERY hard not to laugh.

"The... spiritual elephants... will be going after the source of the peanuts, Dad-"

His grin breaks as he blinks. "Wait, there are actually-"

"-and like I said," you continue quickly, "I'm keeping my distance from that. Not my circus, not my elephants." You make a definitive sweeping motion with one hand.

"But there ARE spiritual elephants?" your father presses.

"Tony," your mother sighs, "just... forget about the elephants, okay?"

"...you realize you are LITERALLY asking me not to think of-"

"Yes, Tony, now shut up."

"Shutting up, ma'am."

...yeah, that could have gone better.

The long and short of it is that your parents know you're going to be spending the better part of the weekend helping the Kurosakis and their distant relatives deal with a supernatural threat. They're pleased that you're helping others, especially in a manner that doesn't involve putting yourself in danger, but being your parents, they're still going to worry about the Peanut Situation, and that is a name you're never going to get away from, isn't it?

Anyway, parents gonna parent, which is why your mother is asking about your plans again.

Patiently, you recount that there haven't been any developments that would require you to change your plans. You'll head out in the morning, going down to Brazil to pick up the Muhlfelds - they're several hours ahead of California time - and get them squared away in your demiplane, while helping Balthazar deal with any issues that cropped up moving the Archers. Once that's as settled as it can be, you'll move on to Karakura - provided the sun is up by then - and get on with moving the Kurosakis, the Ishidas, and their more distant kin to safety.

Somewhere in there, Shadow Alex is going to go off and link up with the Shinigami, Ambrose, and the reinforcements the latter was broadly hinting about bringing, but you haven't mentioned this part to your folks before, and you're not about to start.

If all goes well, the threat should pass within a couple of days. The Shinigami will have the element of surprise, a partial but accurate map leading to their primary target, and a couple of magic-users, in addition to whatever preparations they've made that you aren't currently privy to.

If all doesn't go well, you've got a week after A-Day to wait and, if necessary, come up with another plan.

Your mother isn't exactly thrilled at the idea of you being away from home for a week straight, but she is willing to allow it in this situation.

"Trust in the elephants, Jess," your father advises sagely.

You don't blame her for swatting him.

Is there anything else you want to talk about with your parents right now?


As a final point on the argument, you remind your folks that you will have adult supervision during the Peanut Situation, name-dropping Balthazar Blake as a responsible, trustworthy authority on the supernatural that they've actually met. The Kurosakis will also be there, and you suspect Akkiko will stick her nose into things at some point as well.

Ambrose will also be involved, but you don't even TRY to claim him as adult supervision.

You finish by thanking your parents for understanding your desire to do good, and having enough trust in you to let you go off for a couple of days (or more) and actually do it.

"Not a problem, kiddo," your father says. "Just try and keep the 'save the world' impulses to a reasonable level."

Your mother nods. "Always remember, in a crisis situation, the first person you have to save is yourself."

Since it's a medical professional saying that, you should probably listen.

You finish your omelette and juice about there, put your dishes in the sink, and head upstairs to brush your teeth and take a quick shower. After you've cleaned up, dried off, and dressed, you head back downstairs, glancing in your sister's room as you pass it to see if she's awake yet; the answer proving to be no, you go on your way and give your mother a hand with the dishes while your father is in the shower himself.

You've mostly finished that when Tony comes downstairs to drive your mother to work. There's an extra omelette and some leftover bacon set aside for Zelda if she gets up while your parents are out, but it proves unnecessary; when your father returns some twenty minutes later, your sister still hasn't gotten out of bed.

As it's still shy of seven in the morning, you let her sleep. Handing over all responsibility to your father, you head down to your lab-

"I thought you said you were going out," Tony asks in puzzlement.

"I am," you reply, before explaining your recent, albeit temporary acquisition of a very safe and highly advantageous location to do magical experimentation, and how you can go there from "inside" the house.

"But you can't come back the same way?"

"Not yet, anyway," you admit. "At least, not without drawing more attention to the house than those wards could hide."

The man shudders. "Yeah, let's avoid that as much as possible."

-where you re-summon a very temporary version of the Mirror Hideaway, cast a Gate once you're inside, and then step through to the demiplane. Batreaux, Shadow Alex, and Shadow Briar join you in due course, and the magical experimentation resumes.

After running through the remaining teleportation tests that you didn't feel safe conducting in the close confines of your Mirror Hideaway, you confirm that your revised version of the Spell to Walk Through Space doesn't irritate Briar's stomach, inner ear, magical sensitivity, or whatever it was that was making her nauseous after an extended series of rapid-fire jumps. You also prove that Mind Blank and Foresight don't interfere with Walk Through Space, and vice-versa; if anything, the first two spells only make the latter more effective, as your enemies are denied the ability to see where you're going before you actually get there, while you in turn can glimpse their reactions (or lack thereof) to your sudden changes of location - provided, of course, that the enemy isn't ALSO under Mind Blank, something that Shadow Alex proves could be a bit of an issue.

One person bouncing through space-time while invisible to Divination Magic is a tactical advantage.

Two of them doing so at the same time, even when they're on the same side, is a potential hazard, although thankfully, the safeguards built into the spell and your own skill at Summoning Magic make it unlikely in the extreme that the nastier sort of teleportation accident will occur.

You MIGHT have a problem using Walk Through Space around less-skilled teleporters, though. Batreaux mutters something about "rocket tag"...?

Learned Spell to Walk Through Space

With that settled, you turn to the other three spells you were still looking at. By this point, you've pretty much accepted that you're not going to get the Lesser Spell to Create a Demiplane down before the attack on Silbern, but that's fine; even if you HAD, it wasn't exactly going to contribute anything to your combat effectiveness. Mostly, you picked that one because you were caught up in the rush of having actual demiplanes to study to help your understanding of the spell along, and also because the demiplane you're currently on makes it a lot more practical to spend a couple of hours trying to cast the spell yourself.

The Spell of Foresight is at the point where you can keep one instance of it running without issue, which is good enough for it to be useful in combat. The only thing keeping you from calling it fully learned at this point is that you're still having issues using two instances in tandem, a problem that experience will sort out.

You could take some time now to work on that, but there's also the Spell of Regeneration to consider. While your grasp of the theory is good, your only practical test of the spell was that one Bokoblin who ended up growing an extra finger as a result. You're still not sure why that happened, whether it was down to a flaw in your casting, a complication brought on by the Bokoblin's own monstrous nature, or even an interaction between your respective links to the Curse of Demise - because Hyrule's monsters are basically lesser incarnations of the Curse, which is one of the reasons why they're effectively ineradicable, even WITH Link taking out small armies' worth of them wherever he goes. Those are just the likeliest explanations; it could have something else entirely. Regardless of the actual reason, the incident has left you a bit hesitant to summon more injured Hyrulean monsters to experiment upon.

You could still summon other creatures, of course, but the mundane mortal residents of Hyrule are difficult to lock onto unless or until they develop magical ability, and the issue with summoning practitioners is that they tend to be rather more mentally adept than the average commoner, and have the training and awareness required to tap into their memories of being summoned. Put all that together with a misfiring Spell of Regeneration, and you could easily end up inflicting harm rather than healing it - emotional harm rather than physical, to be sure, but still harm.

Plus, even in the best-case scenario, Hyrule's history makes it likely that magically adept and educated mortals who found themselves being summoned by an exceptionally powerful young male Gerudo-blooded sorcerer would be prone to leaping to certain conclusions. And you don't really have a means for preventing them from talking... well, not unless you were to CALL them up instead of summoning, and then resorted to memory erasure or a Geas. But even that could still come back to bite you, if magic wielders with significant, lasting injuries were to disappear and return healed and unable to speak of what happened.

"Unfortunately, we cannot be assured of success if we turn to the servants of the Goddesses in this manner," Batreaux says, when you suggest that recourse. "When we LOWLY mortal beings ASCEND to such GLORY AND GRACE, we're healed of the physical afflictions that troubled us in life. And while later injuries DO happen at times, magical healing is quite available, so the odds of FINDING a wounded celestial before their hurts were treated are... small."

That's inconvenient for your purposes, but it is nice to know that the Goddesses are making sure their people have health care.

Why wouldn't we?

Given all the potential problems with summoning or calling Hyruleans, perhaps you should look to Earth instead? Magic isn't nearly as widely available there, and there are just so many people on the planet that you could potentially call up patients whose miraculous healing would go largely unnoticed.

It WOULD be nice to get in some practice on the specific tweaks necessary for the Spell of Planar Binding to be able to call up "mere mortals." You ARE due to make that Circle of Mortal Summoning for Vira the Half-Vire Fae, eventually...

Alternately, you could reach out into the wider multiverse, but Goddesses only know who and what you'd end up calling forth then. One of the dangers of dealing with extraplanar beings is that a lot of them have the power, or at least the connections, to track the people who call them, and call them up in return.


Thinking it over, you decide that your current grasp of the Spell of Foresight is sufficient for your impending needs. Shadow Alex will be able to use it to protect himself when he heads into Silbern tomorrow, and you'll be able to employ it to watch for breaches of the demiplanar refuge of the Earthly Quincy. That's enough.

With that in mind, you decide to focus this morning's efforts on getting in some practical experience with the Spell of Regeneration. You have every expectation that Shadow Alex will do his best to avoid being hurt, but you have to admit that the Quincy will probably be doing their best to cause him harm - him, and all the other invaders of their sanctum. And while you - and thus he - do have access to some fairly potent healing spells, Regeneration covers a particular niche you're currently unable to do much about without calling in outside assistance, something there simply won't be time for if an emergency arises.

Dismemberment and organ damage are nasty that way.

Given the attendant issues with summoning Hyruleans as practice dummies for healing magic, you turn your attention to Earth instead - at least until it occurs to you that "animal testing" is a thing, and that you do know the Spell to Summon Nature's Ally.

With that in mind, you shape the magic, selecting the most practical variables-

*Poof*

"Arf?"

-and summon up a small pack of mixed-breed dogs, all of whom have old, visible injuries of one sort or another. One's missing most of his left ear, another's lost her right eye, and the third looks like his tail was amputated at some point. Scars are fairly abundant, and they've got enough enough missing teeth between them to account for a fourth dog, albeit with similar dental issues.

"Not going with rats or mice?" Briar wonders as the dogs look around curiously.

"With respect to Pinky and the Brain, I've never tried to work with rodents before," you reply. "Dogs, I at least have experience with." Then you cast the Spell to Speak With Animals. "Hello."

Five ears - some of them a bit ragged - perk up in your direction.

"Talking human!" one of the male dogs barks in surprise.

"Suspicious!" the other male growls.

"Calm," the female whuffs with a note of command. Between that and the way the other dogs settle, you figure she's probably the pack leader, an impression that's reinforced when she continues, "What do you want, strange human?"

By way of partial explanation, you cast a Spell of Light.

"Light! Light in his paw!"

"Suspicious!"

Even the leader looks unsettled by the display, her ears pinning back.

"As you can see, I have magic," you say. "I'd like to use it to try and heal you."

"Magic?"

"Heal?"

The leader regards you. "Why?"

"If you mean 'why do I want to help?' It's because I need the practice," you admit honestly. "If you mean 'why us?' You're the first dogs I found."

If these were dogs you'd just encountered on the street or in the wild, they probably wouldn't trust you, but summoned creatures are usually no worse than neutral towards their conjurers. Calling spells are more hazardous, since you're bringing forth the actual entity and exposing it to potential harm, but the temporary nature of a summoning spell offers a degree of safety that can make even creatures that would normally ignore or attack you willing to hear out a proposition. Nature's Ally adds to that by defaulting to summoning animals already inclined to be sympathetic to you.

Between that and your experience at handling dogs, it's not difficult for you to coax these canines into letting you cast spells on them.

The male with the missing ear goes first, and not only do you successfully regrow the missing cartilage, skin, and fur, you manage to make it more or less identical to its opposite number.

"My ear! My ear! I can feel my ear!"

He seems to appreciate it.

"It itches!" the dog adds, before bringing up his hind leg to scratch. "Ahhh, yeah..."

Heh.

The dog's scars, on the other hand, don't disappear. You're not sure if that's because they're already healed and thus not subject to the Spell of Regeneration, or if you're just not getting it right.

Having seen the results of your first attempt, the second male allows you to have a go at fixing his tail. It grows out readily enough-

"Feels weird!"

-but you can't be sure whether or not it looks like it originally did, and so you wait to see what the dog thinks of it.

He stares at his new tail, which wags back and forth a few times-

"Grrr... tail!"

-before the dog tries to catch it, chasing himself in a circle.

"Gonna get you, tail!"

"Get him!" the other male howls cheerfully. "Get that tail!"

You and the pack leader trade wry glances, and then she pads forward to let you have a go at fixing her eye.

This process is a bit more unsettling to watch, as the closed, scarred, and deflated-looking eyelid over the empty socket gradually balloons outward and opens up, briefly revealing a swelling mass of oozing... whatever the medical term is for the stuff eyeballs are made of. Ugh. Soon enough, however, the eye has fully formed, and the "ooze" seems to "harden" into a complete eye, which blinks several times and rolls about in confusion.

"I can see?" the female whimpers in wonder. "I can see!"

And then the dignity of an alpha bitch goes out the window as she starts barking as excitedly as the other two.

Gained Conjuration B (Plus) (Plus)

That worked out rather well... except for the part where these are just summons, and the REAL dogs are going to be left wandering around hurt. That... actually bothers you more than you were expecting.


It's not even a question. You cast the Spell to Create a Magic Circle, adding extra mana to lay the summoning diagram down in lines of shining magical energy.

"Calling up the real doggos to heal them, huh?" Briar guesses.

"Any objections?"

"Heck no. They're all good dogs, aren't you?"

"Little talking light!"

"Grrr, hold still, tail!"

"Little talking-! ...I mean, yes, we are good dogs."

"...maybe not the brightest," Briar admits, the sound of a wry smile in her voice, "but still good dogs. And good dogs deserve good things."

That was basically your reasoning. However-

"What about good cats?"

-you can't quite resist the impulse to tease your partner.

"No such thing," Briar replies without a moment's hesitation.

Grinning, you turn your attention back to your spellcraft. You laid the Circle down the normal way rather than via a ritual, because it occurred to you that with the summoned forms of the dogs already here, you could use them to help focus a calling spell on their true selves. The trick is making sure that a) the dogs stay close to you without mussing up the array, and b) you finish casting Planar Binding before the Spell to Summon Nature's Ally lapses.

Fortunately, a) the dogs are willing to listen to you (and maybe a little nervous about the glowing lines of power besides), and b) you not only extended the duration of the summoning spell that brought the dogs here, just in case they were slow to trust you or there were problems with healing them, you were able to treat them pretty quickly.

On a related note, one of the drawbacks of the Spell of Regeneration is that it's already a ritual, if a short one, so you won't be able to use ambient mana to offset its casting cost whenever you use it. That will be something to keep in mind going forward, and not just during Auswahlen.

In any case, the dogs are content to stay close and keep their paws off the conjuring circle while you work.

When you complete the Spell of Planar Binding, a curious thing happens. Although it should still have been several minutes before the Spell to Summon Nature's Ally gave out, the three summoned dogs blur and vanish as if they'd been dismissed. You feel something rush around and through the Circle just before it fills with the familiar light of the calling-

"Arf?"

-and you find yourself facing the three dogs once more, all of their "healed" injuries back.

"Hello again," you greet them.

"Talking human!"

"Suspicious!"

"Calm," the female orders.

...well, this is familiar-

"Wall! Invisible wall!"

"Trap!"

"Calm!"

-and while the dogs' reaction when they find out that they're stuck inside the Circle does complicate matters a bit, between your practiced skill at handling puppers, your still-active Spell to Speak With Animals, and Briar's contribution, you manage to convince the canines that you want to help them. Again.

In short order, you've done so-

"My ear! My ear! I can feel my ear!"

"Gonna get you, tail!"

"I can see!"

-with much the same results as the first time.

I wonder if Hecate noticed this...

Oh! Oh! I should let Ammy know!

Gained Amaterasu's Favor F (Plus) (Plus)
Gained Hecate's Favor E

You play with the dogs for a couple of minutes, letting them get used to their recovered body parts and whatever internal healing the Spell of Regeneration provided, while also going over them with your active senses and a few analytical spells to determine the full extent of your magic's effects. Once again, you don't appear to have undone any of the dogs' existing scars, but they seem to be moving easier in general, as if a bunch of little injuries and accumulated stress damage had just gone away.

"My mouth feels funny!"

"Ow! Teeth!"

"New teeth!?"

"New teeth!"

"New tee- ow, bit my tongue!"

Also, their missing teeth are slowly growing back in, which didn't happen with their summoned selves for some reason. In the face of this evidence of delayed recovery of missing body parts - which, now that you are reminded of it, is how the Spell of Regeneration is supposed to work - you run another scan, looking for abnormal growths.

Nothing registers on your probes, which... honestly only does so much to settle your worries. You don't exactly have a lot of experience with cancer, so you can't say for certain what it would feel like to Ki Sense, or if the Spell to Diagnose Disease is capable of registering it. You might have to do more reading on the subject...

At the very least, the overall positive readings and lack of obvious tumors seem a reasonable indication that you haven't given the dogs an advanced form of cancer.

So, successful test.

Checking your mana reserve, you see that while repeated castings of Regenerate in addition to your other spellwork have taken their toll - bringing your internal energies down by a solid quarter - you're still well short of the point where you'd have to stop to ensure that you could recover your full strength for tomorrow without dipping into your supply of restoratives.

Though you do make a note to let Shadow Alex cast the Summoning Magic from this point on.

With that in mind...


You've sent the dogs home-

"Bye, strange healing human!"

"Tail!"

"Thank you."

Gained 1 Gratitude Crystal

-and are about to ask Shadow Alex to summon the next batch of test subjects when a thought occurs that has you instead asking your dark side to conjure some holy water for you, while you take out the Incense Burner and some of the Gold Incense you always carry around.

"Why do you want to talk to the Goddesses all of a sudden?" Batreaux wonders.

"I had a thought about calling up some endangered animals," you reply, as you load the Burner. "Healing a stray dog is fine and all, but when you look at the big picture, there are a LOT of dogs in the world, stray or otherwise. They don't really need the help, you know? Endangered species, on the other hand... well, every individual they lose is a big deal."

Batreaux frowns. "Alright, I'm following you so far." And then, having made the natural connection, he continues, "But where does invoking Farore come into it?"

Yeah, not that I mind, but...

"I just want to make sure there won't be any negative long-term side-effects from my magic," you reply, casting a cantrip of flame to light the incense.

...oh! Okay, then. Nayru, I need to borrow your eyes.

Only if you promise to give them back.

Ha. Ha. Funny girl. Whatever, I promise; now gimme.

Gained Farore's Favor B

What follows is a technical violation of the rules of the ritual that wouldn't be possible if you weren't so good at Divination Magic or on such good terms with the Goddesses, and which you almost certainly wouldn't be permitted to get away with if you cast the Spell of Communion on Earth, regardless of the other factors. Rather than asking a series of questions of the Goddesses, you instead petition them for a short list of Earthly animals on whose behalf you could safely intervene, and that really NEED the help. In response, Farore recites a list of species names-

Keep 'em coming, Wise Girl.

-pausing between each.

Shadow Alex takes notes, and you end up with fifteen different kinds of animal.

...this is a short list?

...yeah.

That is... honestly depressing, when you stop and think about it.

Then you shake your head. If these animals need healing, standing around feeling maudlin about Earth's ongoing ecological problems is wasting time they may not have to spare.

Of course, even with Shadow Alex taking care of the summoning, you can't afford to cast the Spell of Regeneration on fifteen different animals right now. With other spells, you could rearrange parameters or spend some additional mana to increase the number of targets, but you can't modify Regenerate that way: it's right on the edge of your ability to cast at all; it's a ritual besides; and it doesn't have any aspects you can trim out to free up energy.

As it stands, if you personally do no other magic for the rest of the day, you could cast the Spell of Regeneration... twelve more times, before your mana fell to the point where you'd have to stop, in order to be fully recovered tomorrow morning without aid. You'd like to save at least a couple of those castings for an actual human trial, and since you'd be splitting them between summoned and called targets, that leaves just six animals that you'd ACTUALLY be healing.

...and you're getting depressed again.

The only way you might increase that number right now is if you were to request Batreaux (who isn't a healer himself) to take over the summoning and calling portion of things, and then have Shadow Alex and Briar join you in healing the animals. Shadow Alex would have to practice casting Regenerate on the summoned shades of the creatures first, of course, and Briar can't cast the spell at all; at best, she could drop a dose or two of her fairy dust, and treat relatively minor injuries thereafter.

Honestly, you're probably better served having Briar talk to the animals and keep them calm.


It's eight hours to lunch, you've got three mostly full tanks of mana, a short list of endangered animals, it's not that well-lit-

You reach into your pocket, pull out the Cool Shades, and put them on.

-and you're wearing sunglasses.

Hit it!

Huh?

You explain the change of plans to your companions, and it's the work of mere minutes to convince Batreaux to take over summoning and calling. There's a slight hang-up when you express a concern over whether or not your tutor can cast a spell to summon mundane animals from Earth rather than some celestial or infernal variant - he is, after all, a more traditional Hyrulean sorcerer than you are, not a druid - but Batreaux merely chuckles and waves your concern aside.

Talking Shadow Alex into spending his precious mana to help a bunch of strange animals either takes more time than conferring with Batreaux or exactly the same amount, depending on how you count. Regardless, once that's done, and the Briars have had a chance to voice their own approval-

"But what's with the glasses?" your partner wonders.

-you get on with the task.

For his first effort, Batreaux summons up a trio of wolves. Like the stray dogs you just treated, the wild canines bear an assortment of injuries, but you note that most of them are a bit more serious in nature than the clipped ear or stubby tail the two male dogs had. One has clearly suffered a nasty impact, which has broken his left hindleg and possibly dislocated that hip - maybe some of the ribs, too - the second has some nasty and fairly recent burns, and the thid looks like he's just escaped a fight with a wildcat, or perhaps something worse.

Thanks to the built-in safeties of standard summoning spells - which can be summed up as "trust and cooperate with your summoner" - the wolves are in a reasonably accomodating mood, and don't take much convincing by the fairies to allow themselves to be treated.

While you and Shadow Alex are attending to that, Batreaux finishes drawing a summoning array, and then launches into calling up the true wolves who these projections are patterned after - wolves who prove rather LESS inclined to trust and cooperate any of you when they appear within the Magic Circle.

Thank some ancient and long-dead mage for that barrier.

It takes the Briars a while to talk the wolves around - no surprise, given how injured they are - but eventually they agree to let themselves be treated.

Nobody gets bitten, although there are some warning growls. Those stop very quickly once the first wolf's pain goes away, and he starts running around the demiplane, howling for joy.

After the healed wolves are sent on their way, Batreaux summons a pair of predatory birds whose species name you wouldn't have been able to call to mind if it weren't on Farore's list. Each has a broken wing - on different sides of the body - which you figure is just about the worst sort of injury a bird could sustain.

Like the summoned wolves before them, the birds are quite willing to be treated-

"Ow!"

-although Shadow Alex gets pecked on the hand when the one he's working with complains about the bizarre feeling of the bones in its wing re-setting themselves.

Informed by that reaction, Shadow Alex takes a few minutes to conjure some stiff leather gloves for the two of you before continuing. While he's doing that, Batreaux begins the ritual to call the real birds to the demiplane.

Once more, the real birds are disinclined to trust strange humans, but the Briars successfully talk them around, and the healing goes well-

"Ah!"

-minus some objections.

Still, they too are properly grateful once healed.

And so it goes from there. Mammal and reptile, land-bound and flight-capable, furry and feathery and leathery and scaly. Sometimes the animals are fairly small, like the exotic frogs, and other times they're big, like the RHINO that appears with a hacked-off, bleeding horn and a number of lesser but still ugly injuries.

THAT one was upsetting on a number of levels, but you had a living, healed rhino at the end of it. There may have been some undignified running away when, upon finding himself miraculously made whole, the massive mammal chose to express his CONSIDERABLE dislike of humans, but nobody got gored or trampled, and if you prayed for Bad Things to happen to the people responsible for the state the rhino was in when it arrived... well, you're sure the Goddesses will forgive you.

'Forgive', hell. If you were older, I'd be giving you a list of legs to break. As a START.

He's a Chosen One, Farore, not a hired thug.

...I don't know, Link HAS broken quite a few legs over the ages...

Don't encourage her!

Eventually, however, you are forced to call a halt. Six rounds of summoning and calling and twenty-four individual animals treated over the better part of two hours have depleted your reserves low enough that you don't feel comfortable continuing.

Gained Animal Sheddings
Gained 6 Gratitude Crystals
Gained Zoology D

That just leaves the human trials... though before that, what will you do with Farore's List?


You ask Shadow Alex to hand over the list of the endangered animals. He does so without issue, and as you accept the sheet of paper, you look upwards and elsewhere.

"One day in the future, Lady Farore, when I'm older and there aren't so many apocalypses going on, I'll want that other list."

I'm going to hold you to that, Alex.

Gained Farore's List
Gained Poacher Promise

With that said, you pocket the list and proceed to the last phase of today's testing.

You've cast the Spell of Regeneration on mammals, avians, and reptiles, and at this point it's working without any issues that you can detect. You have mastered it, for all intents and purposes, save the final one: human testing. That's basically a formality at this point - there is, after all, little practical difference between casting a healing spell on living mundane animals and casting it on living mundane humans - but it's one that you feel is worth observing.

Before you ask Batreaux to summon a patient, however, you and Shadow Alex tap into the ambient mana of the demiplane, which has gone largely untouched through all the ritual spells you've cast so far this morning, and slowly take on your idealized adult form(s). Once you've changed - clothes as well as bodies - you give Batreaux the nod to proceed.

The current state of your mana reserves will allow you to cast the Spell of Regeneration twice more without compromising your ability to recover to full strength by tomorrow morning, so Batreaux only tries to summon two humans: one for you; and one for your shadow self.

*Poof*

"Oook?"

Instead, he gets a different sort of primate, with reddish-brown fur, long arms, and short legs - an orangutan, unless you miss your guess.

As the ape looks around curiously, Batreaux sighs. "I had a feeling that something like this might happen."

"Having trouble with the threshold of mundanity?" you inquire.

"Indeed. Adapting arcane summoning methods to, ahem, 'ape'-"

Briars groan.

"-existing divine spells that summon animals is one thing," Batreaux continues without missing a beat. "Brute-forcing a non-existent spell to summon mortal humans with no ties to the supernatural, and all the protections that implies? Tricky."

"Oook?"

In unison, the two of you pause and glance at the orangutan, which has wandered over to Shadow Alex and given him a curious poke in the side.

"...can I help you?" your doppelganger asks in bemusement.

"Oook."

"He wants to know if you're real or a projection," Shadow Briar translates automatically. Then she does a double-take in mid-air. "Wait, you NOTICED that?"

"Oook-oook."

"What, really? Neat!"

"Briar?" you ask of your partner.

"The orangutan knows magic," she replies with some surprise.

You blink, turn back to your fellow primate, and look closer. There's the aura of the Summoning Spell that brought him here, and beyond that...

Huh. He does know magic. And not nature-flavored divine magic, like you might expect from an animal smarter than the average bear, but something with an arcane element to it, that particular feeling of lore, secrets, and books that you've picked up around Ambrose.

It's not terribly powerful, but still, the question has to be asked: when, where, and how did an orangutan become a wizard?


While Batreaux tries to sort out where his summoning went sideways, you introduce yourself and your evil twin to the orangutan, and then inquire as to his identity and how it is that he came to learn wizardry.

Through the Briars, you learn that the orangutan was once human, and worked as a librarian at the Clock Tower. This is evidently a prestigious but also somewhat perilous posting, for the libraries of the Mages' Association contain everything from mundane research materials to heavily warded spellbooks to semi-sentient animated grimoires, and a Librarian - the capitalization feels merited - must be able to organize, access, and defend the entire collection without getting himself killed, cursed, or worse, while also safely navigating the treacherous waters of Magus society.

Evidently, it is not uncommon for positions within the library to be held by wizards. Access to the "public" research of the Association is a great boon to the studies of many wizards, and as they are technically outsiders to Magus culture, they are (in theory) neutral parties to the many rivalries and occasional feuds found therein, and accordingly less likely to mislead a researcher or outright deny him access in retribution for some petty grievance or as part of a political ploy - particularly when their own access might be revoked in response. Similarly, since wizardry is not commonly inherited, most wizards don't have established lineages whose wealth and influence they can leverage to make trouble for others or shield themselves from the consequences of their actions, so they usually try to avoid giving offense.

Usually.

A wizard IS still a wizard, and more than one upstart seventh-generation Magus heir has evidently learned the hard way that sneering down your nose at a "commoner" with access to reality-bending powers and authority over the books you need for your upcoming exam is neither healthy nor a route to academic success.

In any case, the Librarian explains that there was an incident some years ago involving an out-of-control magical reaction that ran amuck through several of the Departments within the Clock Tower, and during the general chaos and confusion, he found himself transformed. Once the initial shock wore off, he discovered that being an orangutan had certain advantages over being a bookish middle-aged man, such as greater reach, the ability to easily and rapidly navigate the library's towering shelves, and arm strength some three times that of a human's - and that before the use of Augmentation Magic to enhance it even further. Some of his co-workers attempted to turn him back to normal, while others tried to get him fired, locked up, and/or cut open, but after a series of failures and a great many broken limbs and faces-

"What was that?" you ask Briar.

"That's what he said," your partner replies.

"Oook," the Librarian adds, donning an expression that is less a smile and more a showing of teeth.

-they gave up and let him be. Certain parties likely hoped that his body would gradually "take over" and cause the Librarian's mind to deteriorate to the level of an ordinary ape, thereby causing his magic to dwindle in the same manner and giving them an excuse and an opportunity to be rid of him, but apart from picking up a different set of instincts and a new appreciation for bananas, the Librarian remains who he always was, merely in a different package.

...huh.

Gained General Knowledge (Mages' Association) D

"A FASCINATING tale, sir," Batreaux chimes in, "and one that helps to explain how it is that you appeared here today."

"Oook?"

Your master explains that the lot of you are located on a demiplane, and that he was attempting to summon a human from Earth.

"Or in the more technical sense," he continues, "I was trying to summon 'a mundane intelligent primate from Earth.' The 'mundane' part of the equation failed to take, obviously, but the rest of the spell succeeded, after a fashion."

The Librarian nods. "Oook."

"On that note, I believe I am prepared to make another attempt. Though before that-"

Batreaux raises one hand and gathers his magic, but is interrupted by a warding gesture and another round of ape noises.

"He'd like to know if he could stay to observe," Briar interprets.


After the advice you've received from Ambrose and Balthazar to avoid contact with the Mages' Association, part of you is understandably uneasy about letting someone who works directly for the Clock Tower sit in on one of your spellcasting sessions, but rather than give into the impulse to mind-wipe and dismiss the summoned Librarian, you restrain yourself and think it through.

First of all, he IS here as the result of a summoning spell gone slightly awry. The ACTUAL Librarian is likely still back at the Clock Tower, doing his job and unaware that he has been summoned; unless he's got very particular training - training you don't see any obvious signs of in his aura, for what that's worth - the odds are against him consciously remembering this encounter, and by quite a bit. They'd start going up if you summoned him again, so it's certainly a risk worth keeping in mind, but right now, it's a minimal one.

Second, if the Librarian DOES gain access to the memories of what he experiences here, what reason does he have to reveal them to anyone? You've offered no threat to him, the Mages' Association, or their library, and done nothing that breaks the organization's policy of keeping magic concealed from the mundane masses-

The events of the World Tournament flash before your mind's eye.

-at least so far as HE knows. On top of that, going by his account - and provided that the Librarian was honest with you - he IS a neutral party within the Clock Tower, which means that not spreading tales should be second nature to him. Based on those factors, the Librarian has no particular reason to share what he learns here with anyone; in fact, given the rather competitive environment the place seems to engender, he has good reason NOT to.

Knowledge is power, after all, and knowing something that others don't gives you power over them.

Third, the Librarian's a wizard. Wizardry doesn't suffer Magecraft's flaw of losing power if its existence becomes too widely known and practiced, but that doesn't mean wizards are any less prone to keeping secrets. Which ties back into Item Two.

And fourth, assuming the Librarian DOES remember this encounter and tries to track you down, he's going to have a lot of trouble getting anything useful out of the attempt. Tracing the "path" of summoning spells is not an easy task, involving as it does the crossing of planar boundaries and great distances besides, and even if the Librarian managed it, that trail would lead to a summoner who is himself a summoned being, and demiplane he can't enter (given you're the only local source for the keys), and which offers no direct links to either you or Batreaux, as neither of you created it. As for investigations aimed at you, your current transformation obscures your actual appearance, and your tested and verified Spell of Mind Blank will neatly thwart divinations anyway - including any attempt by the Librarian to analyze your magical signature here and now. Briar is similarly protected by the powerful spell, thanks to being your familiar, and the Shadows are likewise shielded by proxy when they don't physically exist.

That said, you make a mental note to have Shadow Alex start casting Mind Blank on himself when he and his partner DO exist. Just to settle your mutual paranoia. You'll suggest it to Batreaux for when he's present on Earth in the future, as well.

Further reassuring you on that front is the fact that, while the Librarian's aura does indicate proficiency with Divination Magic, it's not especially strong. Third-circle for certain, perhaps reaching the fourth tier with the right rituals, but that's not nearly enough to make him a threat. That could change if he contracted a third party with the right skills, but such assistance would not come cheap, which is another disincentive for him.

All in all, the risk in letting the orangutan stay strikes you as minor and entirely manageable - but that doesn't mean you have to do it for free.

You state your terms, and the Librarian considers them for a moment before replying, "Oook-oook, oook?"

"Just general observations?" Briar clarifies.

You nod. "I'm mostly interested in getting an outside opinion."

There is an "Oook" of agreement.

With that settled, Batreaux begins another modified Spell of Summoning. You note at once that it's more powerful than the previous one, suggesting that your master has added some additional factors to improve the target-selection and effective reach of the magic-
Oh ho, this looks like fun!
What the-?
Prismatic Entry!
*FLASH!*

-and then your train of thought derails as, instead of the puff of smoke you've grown used to seeing, Batreaux's Spell of Summoning produces a burst of kaleidoscopic light. When you blink away the glare-

"Behold!" a young girl's voice declares. "In the Name of Love and Justice, I have crossed space and time to answer your call! Evildoers beware, for Magical Girl Kaleido Ruby is here!"

-and stare in mute bewilderment at what Batreaux has wrought this time.

The girl is probably around twelve or thirteen years old, of Japanese heritage, and with emerald green eyes and long brown hair worn up in twin-tails. She's wearing one of the stranger costumes you've seen in person, a fanciful, two-layered dress with a gold-trimmed red outer layer and a fluffy white skirt underneath, red glove-sleeves that leave her shoulders bare, thigh-high high-heeled red boots, and a split cloak of pale rose. Held before her is a device straight out of a magical girl anime, a two-foot-long rod topped by a five-pointed yellow star within a circle, flanked by six white, feathery wings; rod and wielder both BLAZE in your Mage Sight with a prismatic aura of magical energy, which is also emanating from the girl in the visible spectrum, creating a flashy and otherwise entirely pointless display.

She also has cat ears and a tail, for reasons that escape you. Though they do add a certain... something, to the overall look.

For a long moment, there is only silence.

Then the girl blinks, and her expression shifts from energetic innocence to confusion, followed swiftly by dawning realization, profound embarrassment-

"Rrrruuuubyyyy...!"

"Uh-oh."

-and then considerable anger, as she shifts her grip on her magic wand from a stylish one-handed pose of triumph to the sort of two-handed death grip you'd normally expect to see from someone trying to choke the life out of someone that desperately deserves it.

"What did I say?! Huh?!" the magical girl growls at her emblem of office, which is... thrashing like a living being under her clenched fingers. "What did I say about forced transformation sequences and the costume and the SPEECHES?!"

"Aaack!" the magic wand replies, in a female voice somewhat older than its wielder's. "I'm sorry, Master! I didn't have any choice! You were being summoned, and I couldn't let an innocent young girl be taken against her will and left defenseless in another world! That's a classic setup to all KINDS of bad ends in the doujins!" There's a pause, during which the disturbingly flexible head of the small staff rotates as if looking around. "Although now that I take a look at these people, I'm not quite sure which genre we've been pulled into... but better safe than sorry!"

The girl's expression has leveled out a bit. "And the speech?" she asks flatly.

"...I mean, I'd ALREADY transformed you, and a magical girl SHOULD always make a dazzling entrance and introdugaaaack!"

Batreaux looks your way, and shrugs helplessly. "Another partial success?"

"Oook," the Librarian comments, regarding the girl - no, make that her WAND - with some wariness.

"He says, 'if this is what you call a success, I don't want to see your idea of failure'," Briar says.

So, you've accidentally summoned a magical girl and her talking wand. What do you want to do with them?


Before the magical girl can get too far into attempting to murder her wand (again), you clear your throat.

Green eyes look up, and the winged star twists in your direction.

"Yyyyes, Mister Tall, Dark, and Mysterious?" the wand says slowly.

"Yeah, that's me, Mister Tall," you reply wryly, before pointing at Shadow Alex. "That's Mister Dark - please don't blast him, he's not actually evil - the gentleman in the robe is Mister Mysterious-"

"A pleasure, ladies," Batreaux says with a short bow.

"-and this fellow is the Librarian."

"Oook."

"Oh, hello, again!" Ruby chimes. "I haven't seen you in a while! How's the monkey business been working out?"

The orangutan sends the wand a flat look. "Oook."

"'Not a monkey'," Briar translates.

"He's not a monkey, Ruby," the girl sighs.

"Yes, yes, I heard you both-"

"...huh?"

Hm?

"-but 'ape business' or 'orangutan business' just don't roll off the tongue."

The magical girl rubs her forehead. "Just... stop talking, Ruby."

"But, Master-"

"I will put you in the Box, Ruby!"

"Yipe!"

With that, the wand falls silent.

The girl waits a moment, clearly suspicious, but then turns to the Librarian and bows apologetically. "I'm sorry about Ruby, sir. She's... Ruby."
And proud of it!
The wand wriggles, but remains quiet.

"...oook, oook," the Librarian says with a simian sigh.

"He says, 'It's not your fault, little one. She's always been like that.'"

There is a pause, and when it stretches long enough to confirm your suspicion that Kaleido Ruby can't hear Briar, you quickly repeat the statement.

"Thank you for understanding." Kaleido Ruby straightens up and looks around. "If I may ask, where exactly are we, and why am I here?"

"As to the 'where'," you state, "this is a temporary demiplane located along the Border Ethereal, adjacent to Earth."

Emerald eyes blink in momentary astonishment. She hides it quickly, but the girl definitely was NOT expecting to hear that.

"As to the 'why'," you continue smoothly, "my associates and I have been experimenting with a summoning ritual that hasn't gotten all the bugs worked out of it yet."

"How so?"

"Our first attempt got the Librarian, here. Our second try brought you."

Kaleido Ruby considers that, and you hear her murmur, "...some sort of spell to summon magical primates...? Wait, no-" she raises her voice and her wand, not quite aiming the latter at you "-have you been trying to summon humans?"
Gasp! What nefarious purpose could they have for such a spell?
She's quick.

"As a matter of fact, yes, we have," you admit. "We have a new healing spell that's ready for human trials."
...huh?
Now Kaleido Ruby looks bewildered. "Are... are you suggesting that you went to all the trouble of creating a World Seed AND devising a ritual for summoning humans, just to get some test subjects?!"
That... uh, that doesn't really sound very villainous at all.
"Oook?!" the Librarian adds.
Really, sacrificing that much time and energy when there's a perfectly viable, ethically questionable-slash-bankrupt alternative?
"What she said," Briar summarizes.
It's downright philanthropic by Magus standards! No, it's insane!
"World Seed"? Given the context, that's probably some specific terminology for demiplanes, and the fact that the Librarian recognized it hints that your "magical girl" may, in fact, be a Magus, or at least have connections to them. That's... interesting.
Then again, going by the design of that summoning circle, these guys might not even BE Magi. At least not from any tradition I've heard of. What a weird formula...
"It's more that we already had access to this demiplane, for a completely separate purpose," you answer. "Testing the summoning spell here was just more practical."

"...okay, that makes a little more sense," Kaleido Ruby admits, "but if you needed people to test your healing spell on, why not just... go to the nearest hospital and find some patients? A hypnosis spell or two should have been plenty."
Oh, Master. You try so hard to be so cold, it just makes you more adorable when your true feelings emerge~!
That seems... a little cold for a magical girl, and reinforces your suspicion that she has Magi training. Though at the same time, that slight pause, that subtle fidget... she's not quite as comfortable with the idea as she tries to sound, is she?

"Unfortunately, the healing spell is a bit TOO powerful for us to easily hide," you admit. "The more power we threw around trying to do that, the more likely we'd be to attract attention."

"Plus," Shadow Alex adds, "the hospital most convenient for our purposes is located in a town with a major demon problem, which-"

Kaleido Ruby blinks. "Did you say-"

"What was that about-" Ruby the wand speaks up suddenly, head quirking up.

"Oook-"

"-DEMONS/OOOK?"

Gained Simian E

"Yes," you and Shadow Alex reply in unison. Then your doppelganger adds, "It's also overseen by a rather experienced warlock, so you can understand why we didn't want to take any chances."

"I wouldn't want to, either," Kaleido Ruby admits.

"I'd protect you, Master!"

"That's about half of what I'm afraid of."

The wand droops. "...that hurts, Master."

Ignoring Ruby and the fact that she's talking again, Kaleido Ruby looks up at you. "Alright, then. Setting aside... various concerning issues... you basically summoned me by accident, correct?"

"To put it simply, yes, and I apologize for the inconvenience."

"Your apology is accepted," the magical girl says with a gracious nod.

There's a pause.

"...so, how long will this spell keep me here?"

"No more than a quarter of an hour," Batreaux informs her. "Though I could dismiss it, if you would like?"

"Actually, would you mind if I stuck around to watch what you're doing?" Kaleido Ruby asks with a bright, hopeful smile. "Summoning Magic isn't exactly my family's specialty, but we DO have a certain interest in the field, and passing up an opportunity to learn from some obvious masters would be, well, foolish."

She's laying it on a bit thick, there, but what do you say?


"Very well," you agree, before holding up your hand, index through ring fingers raised. "On three conditions."
Careful, Master...
"And those would be?" Kaleido Ruby asks evenly.

"First, an exchange of information. Specifically, I would like to hear your observations of our next attempt at the Spell of Mortal Summoning."

The magical girl and her wand exchange glances.

"...okay," the former agrees.

"Good. Second... seeing as how you were summoned here, I have to ask: do you have the training necessary to consciously recall this experience; or will Ruby be able to remind you?"

Kaleido Ruby winces. "To the former, not so much."

"But to the latter," her wand continues, "absolutely!"

You nod. "I'll leave that to you, then. As for my final condition - would it be possible to get an autographed picture?"

Kaleido Ruby blinks.

Ruby does... something... which gives the impression of a blink.

The Librarian blinks.

Briar facepalms, while her Shadow cackles.

"It's just that I have a younger sister," you explain, "and she'd probably never forgive me if I passed up the opportunity to get an autograph from a real-life magical girl."

"Oh-ho-ho!" Ruby the wand chortles in glee. "Of course, of course! A true magical girl ALWAYS has time for her fans!"

"Ruby, no," Kaleido Ruby groans.

"Ruby, yes! Secret Device Number Ten: Magical Ruby Prismatic Printer, Activate!"

And then the wand partially transforms, part of the handle opening up and unfolding to reveal an electronic-looking device that really shouldn't have been able to fit where it was - but space-time bending magic is clearly at work, so you ignore that. With a cheerful beep and a faint click, and a piece of photographic paper shoots out from the device, reminding you somewhat of a Polaroid camera; on the front, you can see an image of Kaleido Ruby, posing as glamorously as can be managed by a pre-teen wearing a ridiculous costume and surrounded by cheesy visual effects.

Befitting the name of the "Secret Device," the picture is in full, life-like color.

Getting the magical girl to actually sign the picture takes a little coaxing, but she ends up scrawling her assumed name along the bottom of the picture, using another Secret Device that her wand helpfully provides.

"You had better be grateful," she mutters, pride and embarrassment fighting for control of her expression.

"I am, and I'm sure my sister will love it," you reply, as you tuck the photo away.

...for some reason, your remark seems to make her a little bit happy and a little bit sad, all at the same time.

Gained Kaleido Ruby's Autographed Photo

With that done, you let Batreaux get on with his third attempt at the ritual. Mana moves, formulae are incanted, the summoning circle glows-

*Poof*

-and another human form appears before you. Unlike Kaleido Ruby, this one is an adult, a guy you'd estimate to be in his very late teens or early twenties, and dressed as if for an outdoor hike somewhere fairly warm: hat; sunglasses; t-shirt; shorts; footwear that bridges the gap between shoe and boot; that sort of thing. He's also got a small backpack and a couple of pouches, contents uncertain beyond the water bottle stuffed into a side-pocket of the former. His aura is devoid of any magical signature beyond that of the spell that brought him here, and he's laid out a touch awkwardly on the ground within the circle, with a left leg that looks like it's been mauled by something about mid-shin. He's tried to bandage it, but...

The injured outdoorsman looks around, eyebrows slowly rising above the reflective silver of his glasses as he takes in his surroundings and the figures therein. "What the-"

"Mind your language, please," Ruby interrupts. "There's a minor present."

There's more than one, but the wand doesn't know that.

Mr. Hiker does a double take. "Did- did that STICK just TALK?"

"I am not a stick! I am a magic wand!"

"Oook," the Librarian comments.

"'Call a stick a stick,' he says."

"Oooh, you-!"

"A monkey?"

"Oook!"

"'Not a monkey'," Kaleido Ruby, the Briars, and both you and your Dark Self state.

"...um, sorry?"

You take that as an opening to move along before things can get out of hand, and explain to the hiker where he is, how he got here, and why you've summoned him. Between the whole "suddenly elsewhere" thing and the talking stick, he seems inclined to accept that magic is real-

"Either that, or I'm going into shock," he notes lightly. "Don't think I lost that much blood, though..."

-although convincing him that you only wish to help takes a bit longer.

"I've read some stories, big guy," the hiker, who's asked you to call him Dave, says guardedly. "Nothing comes for free, but magic's supposed to cost more than just money."

"That's a good attitude to have," you commend him. "Don't lose it. In this case, though, the price you would be paying for our help is being the first human subject of a tested but not fully proven healing spell."

He frowns, considering that. "So, if this goes wrong, is my leg going to fall off or something?"

"That's extremely unlikely. It's far more probable that the spell will simply heal your injury wrong, leaving your leg looking disturbing and yourself in pain."

Dave looks down at his mangled lower leg. "Not much change, then."

"Also, since you aren't actually HERE-"

"Wait, what?"

Explaining how that works takes a bit of time, as does the follow-up of your plan to call the real Dave, and how THAT sort of magic differs from the kind you used to summon him. In the end, while the hiker is still wary and more than a bit confused by all of this, the idea of getting his leg fixed is too good to pass up.

It seems that while he did think to bring a cellphone in case of emergencies, it's not getting any bars where he ended up.

With that settled, you crouch next to Dave and carefully remove the bloody bandages and shredded sock, so that there's nothing obstructing the wound when you cast the Spell of Regeneration. Briar provides a basic pain-killing spell, and then helps you clear out the wound.

Up close and exposed, the damage is nasty, but fairly confined, looking like something clamped its jaws on Dave's leg and then just didn't let go, tearing the flesh more as he fell and tried to fight free. It's an ugly sight, and seeing it on a fellow human being just makes it worse, but you keep your stomach under control and your hands steady as you inspect the wound.

Silver linings: you can't see any exposed bone.

"What happened?" Kaleido Ruby asks clinically.

"Stepped on a damn bear trap," the young man says sourly, his voice tight with anger. "Buried just off one of the main paths in the middle of a damn national park. There were KIDS on that trail. Who the hell sets up something like that?"

Hmmm...

A good question, but not what you should be focused on just now.

Gathering your will and your mana, you extend your hand to the ragged, bloody mass of meat, and cast the Spell of Regeneration.

At first, nothing happens, but then you see the edges of the wound slowly closing, and some of the, well, "meat" of Dave's leg filling back in.

"Man, that feels weird," he mutters.

"Any pain?" you ask.

"I don't think so...? I mean, you DID hit me with that 'feeling no pain' voodoo, and everything's been kind of fuzzy since then, but that feeling's going away now."

This is a hopeful sign, and once Summoned Dave appears to be fully recovered, Briar ends her pain-killing cantrip and you have the man stand up and walk around a bit.

He reports no problems, and your own observations bear that out.

You appear to have learned the Spell of Regeneration, but the final test remains...

On a side note, are you going to investigate that bear trap?


Now that you know it's there, you can't in good conscience let that trap go uninvestigated. On that note, you ask Batreaux if he could bring the trap mechanism along when he calls Real Hiker Dave.

"Given the blood connection, that should be entirely doable," your teacher admits grimly.

That's good.

...okay, no; not GOOD, more like "convenient for your purposes," as with the trap on hand to serve as a focus, some straightforward Divination Magic will show you who or what set it, and where they are now.

You'll hold off on plotting retribution until you have that information in hand, and have a better idea of the form it should take.

While Batreaux is casting the Spell of Planar Binding, you turn to the Librarian and the Rubies. The former, you know, is probably going to disappear before your tutor completes this ritual, making this is your only chance to get the feedback you wanted from him.

"So, what are your thoughts?"

Much ooking ensues, with considerate pauses for Briar to translate. After the first couple of sentences, you notice Kaleido Ruby frowning in confusion, clearly not following-
Whoops!
-but then, abruptly, her aura shifts, and an expression of surprised comprehension appears on her face.

From the look of things, Ruby the wand just started translating Simian for her Master.

To summarize, the Librarian is somewhat impressed by Batreaux's success in summoning a mundane human, particularly one he had no pre-existing connection with. The fact that it took him three separate attempts DOES lessen the impact a bit; it would have been much more of a spectacle if your tutor had succeeded on the first go, though of course, the Librarian wouldn't have been there to SEE it, so he's content that Batreaux erred at least once.

And really, the manner in which Batreaux failed is noteworthy in and of itself. There are many cautionary tales about the horrible fates that have befallen magic-users who were too free and careless with Summoning Magic; that your master could fail twice, each time not only avoiding such a catastrophe but moving a step closer to his intended goal, is praiseworthy.

Though the Librarian admits that if he weren't present as a summoned entity himself, he might have been less sanguine about the whole affair.

"'After you've seen one overconfident idiot dragged screaming into the Dungeon Dimensions, you never look at Summoning Magic in quite the same way again'," Briar quotes.

On that note, some of the technical terminology the Librarian uses is unfamiliar to you, but it makes sense in context. You make mental note of those labels for later investigation. These so-called "Dungeon Dimensions" in particular sound concerning...

When the Librarian has finished speaking, you turn to the magical girl and her wand.

"I'm going to be honest," Kaleido Ruby admits. "Most of that was way over my head. About the only thing I'm really sure of is that Mister Mysterious isn't a Magus, and that there's someone else here that I can't see or hear."

You nod. The latter conclusion is no real surprise - the pauses in the Librarian's assessment of the spell were much too long to be him waiting to see your reaction, and he spoke directly to Briar at a few points besides - but as to the former...

"What do you think he is, then?"

The magical girl sends a thoughtful frown in Batreaux's direction. "He's definitely some kind of arcanist," she muses. "I don't think he's a witch, though, unless that invisible person is his familiar?"

"No," you say simply.

"Right. So, not a magus, not a witch... likely not a wizard, his style's too freeform, and he's not using any material reagents besides-"

"Oook," the Librarian says with an approving nod.

"-and since he managed to give an existing spell a new function, he's probably not a warlock, either. Not unless his patron is FAR more permissive than any I've ever read about," the girl adds, before nodding. "I'm going to say he's a sorcerer... and I think you and Mister Dark might be sorcerers, too."

Oh?

You restrain the impulse to do a double-take. "What makes you think that?"

"Stylistic similarities in your spellcasting," she replies. "I can't read your aura through whatever warding effect you have up, but you used the same language for your incantations that he does, you also didn't use any reagents or focuses, and I noticed a couple of effects on the hiker that you DIDN'T cast, which suggests the invisible person was helping you treat him - implying they're not YOUR witch's familiar, either. And you were testing a new healing spell, which... I don't want to say is IMPOSSIBLE for warlocks, but I've never read of any that could just heal people to that extent. Not without doing... really horrible things, first."

So, she's not just smart, she also pays attention.

Before either of you can say anything more, the Librarian's aura shifts in a distinctive manner; when you glance at the transformed wizard, you see his form is starting to fade out.

"Thank you for your time and your input, sir," you say, nodding.

Briar waves. "Bye, Mister Librarian!"

"Oook-oook," he replies, waving back.

And then he's gone.

"...huh," Kaleido Ruby exclaims. "So that's what it looks like when a Spell of Summoning ends?"

"Pretty much," you admit. "Some of the nastier types of summoned creatures will leave unpleasant traces - dark smoke, bad smells, disgusting ooze, that sort of thing - but the vanishing is universal in my experience."

Which is certainly convenient when a summoned monster is "killed," as they're effectively self-cleaning.

It takes a few more minutes for Batreaux to finish calling Real Hiker Dave, but when he's done, his success is total, bringing forth the man and the trap that snared him. You're a little surprised to see that it really does look like the sort of saw-toothed snap-trap you've seen in the Looney Tunes and other cartoons. It's spattered with blood from catching Dave, and you can see ragged bits of sock and flesh hanging off a couple of the teeth, ugh...

There are some leaves caught in the steel jaw as well, and a bit of dirt besides. Aside from all of that, though, the trap is in excellent condition, suggesting that it's either of recent manufacture, or has been extremely well-cared for.

You're hoping it's the former.

On a positive note, you sense no magic about the thing.

Leaving that aside for the moment, you focus on calming down Hiker Dave and getting his agreement to let you heal him. As with your previous round of animal-based summons, the man's reactions strongly echo those of his summoned self, to the point where you catch Kaleido Ruby giving Called Dave a funny look every time he says or does something that Summoned Dave did.

In fairly short order, you have the man healed, and have moved on to investigating the trap he stumbled into.

Learned Spell of Regenerate

Given the diminished state of your reserves, Shadow Alex steps up to cast the Greater Spell of Scrying. While not as ideal as, say, some of its owner's blood, the trap nonetheless allows for a solid connection, one that should almost entirely offset the difficulty of trying to scry your intended target from another plane.

Shadow Alex completes his incantation, and a screen of light appears above you, large enough and properly angled so that everyone present can see what's on it.

And that "what" is the interior of what looks like an old-fashioned hunting lodge, with walls made out of logs, a fireplace made up of many different stones laid together, and the sort of decor that would make Uncle Rory jealous. A brown bearskin rug snarls eternally on the floor in front of the currently dark fireplace, while another bear's head occupies a place on the wall, alongside those of various deer, a couple of wolves, several boars, and a large cat of some sort.

Nothing human, at least not that you can see, and nothing obviously supernatural, either.

Seated in a chair before the fireplace is a burly sort of man in his mid-thirties, clad in well-worn jeans, a dark shirt, and hiking boots. He also has a pair of workman's gloves on, and is doing maintenance on another trap nigh-identical to the one before you, which is laid out on the small table pulled up in front of him.

Shadow Alex extends his senses through the Spell of Scrying, frowns, and says, "He feels like a normal human."

This is another of those things that you can't really call "good," so much as fortuitous.

...kind of.


"I hope to meet you in reality someday."

There's a number of things you might have liked to say to the Librarian, but the rate at which he's disappearing only allows you time for a few words, so you limit yourself to speaking the ones that feel most appropriate.

In reply, the orangutan nods, waves to Briar's farewell, and vanishes with a final simian cry.

"He said, 'Until then'," your partner informs you.

And that is that.

After healing the damage to Real Hiker Dave's leg, scrying upon the owner of the trap that caught him, and finding the individual in question to be an apparently mundane human, you are equally reassured and troubled.

On the up side, you aren't dealing with a demon, a magic-user gone bad, or some other supernatural predator.

On the down side... you aren't dealing with a demon, a magic-user gone bad, or some other supernatural predator, but rather a human who is either dangerously unconcerned with the safety of others, or actively malicious towards them.

If you'd been dealing with a supernatural menace, you could have just smote it. Dealing with human evil is a bit more complicated.

Regarding that, you ask Shadow Alex if he got a sense of the man's character.

"Hang on a minute," your not-evil twin replies, before casting the Spell to Detect Evil. He frowns at the results and glances down at the trap, before shaking his head and casting the Spell to Detect Good - the incantations are practically identical, save for a few words that flip the philosophical axis the magic reacts to. After examining the trap and the image of its owner a second time, Shadow Alex shakes his head. "Nothing and nothing."

So either the trapper isn't evil OR good, or he just isn't significant enough for the weight of his deeds to register to these spells. That's annoying, but not terribly surprising; these ARE just first-circle spells, after all, there are limits to what they can do.

The spells' lack of reaction to the trap is entirely unsurprising, and mildly reassuring. Despite the harm they can cause, mechanisms like this aren't evil in and of themselves, instead lacking the capacity for moral choice altogether. For such an object to register to the Spell to Detect Evil, it would have to be a magical device intended and specifically empowered to cause unnecessary pain, despair, and death, or a mundane one that had been used for such vile purposes so often that the taint had seeped into the very metal. The sort of death and horror such a thing would require...

Shaking that off, you turn to Hiker Dave and ask him if he's heard any rumors about people going missing or even just getting hurt in the park he was walking through.

"Not that I'd heard, no," is the man's answer. "And I'm out there two or three times a month, more when I can find the time off; I think somebody would have said something."

He might be surprised what people will and won't say, at least when supernatural forces are involved, but that's not the case here, so the absence of any reported incidents is a potentially hopeful sign. It's also a little frustrating, since the lack of even a local "legend" means the Spell of Literary Vision is unlikely to return any results. You've managed to push the limits of that magic before, such as the time you read the "epic" history of the donation box at the Hakuba Shrine, but in that instance you were leaning on the historical significance of the Shrine as a whole - a centuries-old place of power, the residence of a kami, and home to a family of skilled priests, who by all accounts are heirs to a long line of similarly favored servants of the divine. There's nothing like that here for you to take advantage of.

Fortunately, you have other spells you can turn to. You could cast Commune to get the Goddesses' input on this situation, although you do wonder if this is really the sort of problem that needs their attention. Another option would be to Gate to the park and cast the Spell to Locate An Object with the range opened up; you know that the guy in the cabin is working on another trap basically identical to the one that caught Hiker Dave, so even a general search for traps of that type could lead you right to the guy. It'd also turn up any OTHER traps of that sort he might have left laying around...


You had originally planned to test the Spell of Regeneration's effectiveness on humans by summoning someone with terminal organ damage, treating them, and then wiping their memories of the experience and erasing your magical signature to cover your tracks.

Batreaux summoning a hiker with a mangled leg wasn't quite what you had in mind, but you can't really blame your teacher: he was having enough trouble locking in on a regular human as it was; and unless you target a specific individual - which wasn't possible in this case - there's always a certain degree of randomness to Summoning Spells.

Hiker Dave is who you got, and he was a valid subject for your purposes - but he's also brought you a problem that has you reconsidering the other parts of your original memory-modification plan.

The intelligence you've gathered thus far points towards the owner of the bear trap being a mundane human, and while it's technically possible that he's actually some kind of supernatural being using Abjuration and/or Illusion Magic to mislead Shadow Alex's probes, you tend to discount that.

Shadow Alex would have noticed if there was a Spell of Nondetection or a Spell to Mask From Divination up, even if he blew through it like a Goron hitting a Chu while rolling at top speed, whereas Private Sanctum or Mind Blank would have no-sold the Scrying Spell outright.

...you suppose the trapper COULD be under a Greater Magic Aura, but being able to cast that spell would make him powerful enough that he ought to have registered to Detect Evil or Detect Good... unless he was morally Neutral, of course, but then he wouldn't be malicious, just dumb or careless. And a spellcaster with access to fourth-tier magic likely wouldn't be using mudane bear traps anyway... unless he needed the victim caught without magical means...?

You stop and take a moment to tell your paranoia to go sit in a corner.

...

As you were thinking, the trapper appears to be a mundane problem, and while you could personally take care of him, your mana is getting low, Shadow Alex's isn't much better off, and it really would be less of a hassle for you and the chain of evidence if this guy were to be dealt with by the mundane authorities, who you'd have to hand him over to in any case - unless you chose to kill him, which currently seems like a disproportionate response.

As it happens, you have a mundane person who could go straight to said mundane authorities and alert them to the fact that someone has set up at least one dangerous trap in the middle of a national park, in a location where it's likely to hurt people.

You express this to Hiker Dave.

Kaleido Ruby frowns.

He expresses no hesitation about calling in the park rangers once you've sent him back, although he does question what you'll be doing in the meantime.

"I'll definitely be looking into the matter later," you reply, "but it's been a busy morning for me. I'm just about tapped out, magically speaking, and I've got a major commitment tomorrow that I need to rest up and prepare for."

Now Hiker Dave frowns. "Even though you know that there might be a serial killer on the loose?"

Kaleido Ruby grimaces.

"I'll see your potential serial killer and raise you a supernatural cold war that's about to go hot," you retort bluntly.

That earns a pair of double-takes, as well as what you assume is Ruby the wand's equivalent reaction.

"...okay, yeah, that does seem like it should take priority," DAve admits. "Um... just out of curiosity, where exactly is this war about to break out?"

"I would like to know that as well," Kaleido Ruby asks, half-raising her empty hand like she's in class.

"Seconded," Ruby adds.

"Not anywhere on Earth," you answer, half-honestly.

True, there's the matter of the potential Earthbound Quincy casualties, but if all goes well, Yhwach will be stopped before he can invoke Auswahlen. And if not... well, Hiker Dave isn't a Quincy, so it doesn't immediately concern him.

Kaleido Ruby, you're not as certain about. That prismatic energy surging through her aura isn't precisely blinding, but it's definitely making subtler details hard to pick out. On the other hand, you did get the impression she was a Magus underneath the magical girlyness, and from what you understand, Magi and Quincy aren't supposed to get along.

...then again, Quincy and Shinigami aren't supposed to get along, and Masaki and Isshin are married with children.

The last thing you need to do before sending Hiker Dave back to Earth is give him a quick once-over with the Spell to Dispel Magic, to remove the lingering mana of the Spell of Regeneration.

"You're really just going to let him go?" Kaleido Ruby interjects, once again wearing that frown you noticed earlier. "No memory erasure, no hypnosis, just 'thanks for being our magical guinea pig, kindly don't tell anyone about'?"

Hiker Dave stares at the magical girl suddenly proposing to use mind-altering magic on him. "Wait, what?"


"Though just to be sure," you say aloud, looking at Kaleido Ruby, "does the word 'Quincy' mean anything to you?"

The girl frowns. "The fruit?"

"I think Mister Tall means the spirit archers, Master," her wand says.

"...Ruby, are you telling me that there's a group of people out there that named themselves after a FRUIT?"

"I don't know if they actually named themselves AFTER the fruit, Master-"

"But they do exist?"

"-well, yes."

The magical girl rubs her forehead, as if the whole idea gives her a headache.

While she's doing that, Magical Ruby cranes her "neck" around to regard you. "So why are you bringing up the Quincy, Mister Tall?"

"That war I mentioned is kicking off because someone was planning to kill most of the Quincy and Quincy descendants living on Earth."

"What, again?" Ruby exclaims.

"...yes, again."

"But that's not just evil, that's BORING! Uninspired, unoriginal, a complete hack-job of an evil plot!"

"...anyway, I'm part of a group trying to prevent those people from getting killed, or at least to save as many of them as I can." You gesture at Hiker Dave. "I can tell that he isn't a Quincy, but I can't get a good look at your Master through that aura of yours."

"And that's by design," Ruby replies smugly. "But there's no need to worry; my Master doesn't have Quincy heritage."

"I don't?" Kaleido Ruby inquires.

"You're sure?" you ask.

"Yes to both. Quincy souls are distinctive, and I know what they look like. Master's is not one of them."

That's a relief.

"But enough about my awesome self for the moment," Ruby continues. "If somebody is going to try and kill a lot of innocent people, it's a magical girl's duty to stop them!"

"Huh?" Kaleido Ruby says. "Whoa!"

"Who is this villain, Mister Tall?" Magical Ruby demands, floating towards you with such force that she drags her master along behind her. "Tell me, so that Master can take my shaft firmly in hand and cry out for all to hear as we unleash great gushing streaaaack!"

"Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!" the now blazingly red-faced magical girl shrieks, as she once again tries to choke the life out of her weapon.

"Indeed!" Batreaux intones with sharp disapproval. "That is MOST unbecoming language to use around a young lady, Miss Ruby! You should be ashamed of yourself!"

"Shame is for the weaaaack!"

"A large part of the supernatural world actively enforces secrecy about their comings and going," you explain to Hiker Dave. "Wiping the memories of mundane witnesses is standard procedure."

"Like the Men In Black?" Dave manages to say.

"You aren't the first to make that comparison," you reply, smiling faintly, "and yes, pretty much exactly like that, just with supernatural beings instead of aliens." Then you turn to Kaleido Ruby. "And to answer your question, miss, no, I'm not going to alter Dave's memories or enforce his silence."

"And why not?" she asks. "You just pointed out, it's standard procedure."

"For magi, yes. As you already concluded, I'm not a magus. But quite aside from that, I want Dave to go to mundane authorities and tell them that someone's being careless with deadly traps in that park. He can't exactly do that if I wipe his memory of this encounter, now can he? Even altering them or putting him under a Geas might get in the way, and then other people could get hurt before I have a chance to check on the trapper again."

The magical girl magus frowns.

"Besides," you continue, "let's say that Dave tells the park wardens everything that happened to him. 'I stepped on a bear trap, but was summoned to another world by three strange men, one of whom cast a spell to heal my leg, while a magical girl, her talking wand, and an intelligent orangutan watched. And then the healer's dark twin cast another spell to track down the owner of the trap, before they sent me back to tell you about it.' What do you suppose their reaction will be to that?"

"They'd think I was nuts," Hiker Dave says.

"At least until they saw the blood on your leg, and what's left of your sock," Magical Ruby notes.

Everyone looks down at Dave's shin.

"Not a problem," Shadow Alex says. He casts a Spell of Mending, pulling most of Dave's shredded sock back together, and then follows up with a Spell of Prestidigitation to clean out all the blood. "Not completely perfect," he adds after a moment. "I think you left some of the sock behind when Mister Mysterious called you here, but at least this way, it only looks like you tore it on a twig or something."

Hiker Dave stomps his foot a couple of times, and then joins the rest of you in looking questioningly at the Rubies.

Kaleido Ruby huffs and looks away, folding her arms. "Fine. Don't come crying to me when the Association comes down on all your heads."

You won't.

With that, you have Batreaux send Hiker Dave on his way.


You saw nothing, you heard nothing, you know nothing, except that Kaleido Ruby is not a Quincy. That's all you wanted to know, and it's all you NEED to know.

By the time Kaleido Ruby has calmed down and stopped trying to choke the life (or animation) out of Magical Ruby (again), the Summoning Spell keeping the two of them in your demiplane has just about run its course. They remain long enough for you to see off Hiker Dave, but once that's done, the magic is down to less than a minute.

Rather than start a discussion that would invariably get cut short - and could potentially set Master and/or Wand off again - you limit yourself to thanking the two of them for their patience, and wishing them a pleasant day.

And then the magical girl and her talking wand disappear. Where the Librarian simply faded out, Magical Ruby sets off another display of prismatic light and sound to cover Kaleido Ruby's disappearance.

"How much do you want to bet that the wand makes her master go through a full-blown transformation sequence every time she wants to use it?" Briar asks.

No bet.

"No bet," everybody else except Batreaux says at once.

"Yeah, that's about what I figured." Your partner sighs. "That poor girl."

With your planned tests completed and your mana reserve dipping low enough to be concerning, you call an end to today's magical experimentation. Batreaux clears away his summoning circle, congratulates you on your work with the Spell of Regeneration, and says he'll see you tomorrow.

"Until then, rest well, gather your strength, and do your best not to linger overmuch on the thought of what you" - he aims that at Shadow Alex, before turning to you - "or a part of you will be doing tomorrow."

"I'll try not to worry," you tell your master with all earnestness.

"I have Sleep Spells on standby," Briar adds.

And so it is with an ominous chuckle that Batreaux dismisses himself.

After that, Shadow Alex opens a Gate back to Earth, dropping the four of you that remain on Bali Ha'i, where you remain just long enough to change back into your normal self, clothes and all, and for your Shadow to ritually teleport your small group back to the desert. Then the two Shadows dismiss themselves, leaving you and Briar to make your way home.

Thanks to the accelerated time of the demiplane, it's just a bit past nine when you get back. You're halfway to the front door when girlish cheers and Moblin's excited barking leads you to circle around to the backyard instead.

You find your dog and your little sister playing fetch with his Haunted Ball, while your father sits in one of the lawn chairs with a book.

"Alexth!"

"Bark!"

As soon as they realize you're back, you are immediately drafted to play with them.

As you mock-wrestle the Haunted Ball from Moblin's toothy grip, you absently peer into the interior, and catch sight of the Poe within. The first time you saw the imprisoned spirit, back in the Ring of Trials, it was pretty clearly freaking out about being trapped inside a dog's chew-toy. While you seriously doubt that the Poe has truly accepted its confinement, it does at least seem to have gotten past the "flailing in wild panic" stage; even though Zelda and Moblin have been throwing it around for a while now, the ghost is sitting - floating? - with its lantern in its lap, radiating resigned annoyance.

Perhaps sensing your scrutiny, or maybe just reacting to your shadow falling over it, the Poe looks up, glares at you from underneath its hood for a moment, and then goes back to sulking.

You shrug and toss the toy across the yard, much to Moblin and Zelda's delight. While they're chasing the Haunted Ball, your father welcomes you back and asks if you encountered any new situations while you were out.

At once, your thoughts turn to the signed photograph sitting in your pocket.


"I hope to meet you in reality some day."

"Gasp!" Magical Ruby gasps. "What's this? Has Mister Tall been charmed by my Master's innocent allure?"

...

Okay, maybe you shouldn't have repressed those twenty-odd seconds of memory, because if you DID remember them, you might not have left yourself open like that.

Kaleido Ruby regards her wand in disgust. "That's it. We're leaving."

"Now, Master, there's no need to-"

"And when we get home, you're going straight into the Box."

"-I mean there's no need for that! Please, Master! I'll be good! Not the Boooox!"

And then, with a theatrical burst of light and sound, they are gone.

Eh, it can wait. It's not like the the photo is burning a hole in your pocket or anything, and you ARE planning to talk with Zelda about your impending absence. An autograph from a real-life magical girl seems like just the sort of thing to restore the smile to the face of a little sister upset that her big brother is going off to do Exciting Things without her.

After all, you could be gone for a week or more. That's practically forever in Zelda-time.

Putting those thoughts aside for the time being, you reply to your father's joking inquiry that nothing major came up. You finished your projects, helped out some injured animals, met a couple of interesting people, and may have helped lead the law to a budding serial killer.

Having been calmly nodding along at the list, your father pauses. "Unpack that last one for me, Alex."

You summarize the events of your "human trials" of the Spell of Regeneration.

Your old man winces at the mention of a guy with his leg caught in an old-model bear trap.

At your inquiry, he says, "Never seen a person or an animal caught in one of those, myself, but my old man got his hands on one once when I was a couple of years younger than you. Never did figure out where he found the thing... anyway, he messed around with it a couple of times, and let me and Rory watch." He shakes his head. "It did scary things to a watermelon. Hate to think of what it would have done to an actual bear, much less a person."

You consider that for a moment, and then ask your father if he thinks that experience might have played a formative role in Uncle Rory's disturbing fascination with taxidermy.

"Pretty sure it was a factor," he agrees.

Anyway, Tony is pleased to hear that you didn't get involved with a possible psycho in person, and instead just alerted the local authorities to his activities. He's also rather impressed by your description of the Spell of Regeneration, to the point where he's getting that thoughtful, slightly avaricious gleam in his eye you've seen a few times before.

What he actually says next, however, is, "You didn't think to ask your mom to help you find people who could have used the help?"

"Well, for starters, the spell is REALLY powerful..."

You spend a while talking about the various elements behind your decision to use summoned test subjects first, pausing every now and then to wrestle with Moblin, Zelda, or both for possession of the Haunted Ball, before throwing it again.

And so passes a good half an hour, before Zelda gets bored with playing fetch and goes inside to watch TV for a while.

When do you want to have that talk with your little sister?


Yeah, having full parental support available sounds like a good idea, just in case Zelda doesn't take the news terribly well.

...which is not to suggest that you're just going to rile her up and leave her for your mother to deal with while you and your dad skedaddle to Uncle Rory's garage. After all, that would be wrong.

Tempting, but wrong.

Putting the discussion on the back-burner for the time being, you follow Zelda inside to see what she's planning to watch. It turns out to be one of those shows with colorful not-Muppets periodically breaking into childish songs and encouraging the audience to sing along with them. Even leaving your abnormally mature mindset aside, you're still a couple of years older than the intended target audience for this show, and you're seriously considering just slipping back out of the living room and leaving Zelda to have fun singing slightly off-key musical accompaniment.

Then the music gives you an idea.

While you do leave the room, it's only to go upstairs and fetch something from your bedroom, after which you return. And the next time the slightly creepy puppet-people start singing-

*Whistle*

-Zelda breaks off in mid-chorus, staring at you in surprise and delight as you try to play along with your Fairy Ocarina.

Gained Ocarina F (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)

Naturally, the instant she gets over her astonishment, Zelda joins in, and then Moblin starts howling along as well, although that might just be Briar goading him into "singing along."

You didn't think you sounded THAT bad...

The song ends, but Zelda insists that you stick around and try to play along with the show's closing theme.

You make the attempt, but where the songs sung within the show are usually just covers of popular children's songs, and so at least a little familiar, the opening and closing themes of the show are original compositions - and not ones you've paid much attention to. This has an unavoidable impact on your musical efforts, which gets Moblin howling again.

Given that, you decide not to try playing along with the next show's introduction song.

Zelda just asks if she can try playing the Ocarina instead.

After asking Briar to clean out and disinfect the mouthpiece, you let your sister have a go.

This time, Moblin doesn't howl along, but rather whines, lies down on the floor, and puts his paws over his ears.

"Hey!" Zelda objects. "That'th not funny, Moblin!"

"Owooo!"

After the brief musical interlude, Zelda settles in to watch the rest of the next show. It's an animated one this time, but again, it's meant for kids your sister's age, so it largely fails to hold your interest. There's no sing-alongs in this one, either, so you leave Zelda be and return your Ocarina to your room, stopping by the bathroom to clean it out again.

You read a couple of chapters of Volume Six of Twentieth Century Sorcery, but when you're just a few pages into the third, Zelda comes thundering up the stairs on her way to the bathroom.

As she passes your bedroom, your sister calls out: "Hurry up, Alexth! We're gonna go get Mom!"

You glance at the clock, and yes, it's coming up on twelve o'clock.

You mark your place, close the book, and head downstairs.

The drive to Sunnydale Memorial Hospital isn't a terribly long one, and it being summer in Sunnydale, there's less traffic even at midday than there otherwise might be. Maybe seven minutes after leaving the house, your father pulls into the parking lot and turns off the engine.

"Alright, now answer me this: do you two want to wait here in the car while I go get your mom; or would you rather come in with me?"

"I wanna go!" Zelda exclaims enthusiastically.

"Alright, but you have to remember to be quiet and not run around, Zelda. The doctors and nurses are busy people, the patients need their peace and quiet, and there's a lot of places in a hospital a little girl shouldn't go. Okay?"

"Okay," Zelda sighs.

"What about you, Alex?"

You glance from your father to the hospital. The shape of the building is somewhat irregular, with a central structure that stands five stories tall, maybe six if you count the rooftop garden, lunch, and smoking areas that your mother has mentioned - you wonder absently if somebody took a cue from Lu-sensei regarding the first, if it was the other way around, or if it's just a coincidence. The wings, meanwhile, range from three to four stories tall, forming a U-shape around a courtyard with a number of trees planted in it.

You've been here before, of course, but as always, you give the hospital a cautious once-over with your mystical senses. Magically speaking, you detect no active wards or traces of recent spellcasting, just as always; and just as always, a strong aura of life and death hangs over the place, with quite a bit of undifferentiated spiritual energy besides. Not enough to suggest a ghost or a haunt, but if someone were to tell you that they saw phantoms moving about the halls at night, particularly around the time when a patient died, you'd believe them.


"Hey, Briar?"

"Yes?"

"Mind taking Moblin for a short walk?"

"Sure. Come on, boy, we'll get you away from the scary ocarina..."

Moblin whines and follows your partner out of the living room. Under different circumstances, you might try to make a joke about the sight of your large dog trailing after your tiny fairy companion, but right now you've got a sulky little sister to settle.

Turning back to the girl of the moment, you ask Zelda if she'd like to try again.

"Why?" she mutters, glancing in Moblin's direction. "It wath awful!"

"It was also your first time trying to play the ocarina," you point out. "Most people are just as bad the first time they try to do anything."

"You weren't," she shoots back.

She's almost certainly recalling how you gave the Fairy Ocarina an experimental whistle when you unwrapped it back at your birthday party.

Oh, the downsides of exceptional competency.

"I had prior experience with music," you assert. "Maybe not ocarinas in particular, but still."

You don't mention anything about cheating with magic or getting divine support, because Zelda would surely complain about it and ask you to help her the same way(s). While mystical cheating is a very useful skill to have, you have to know when and when not to use it to get the best effect. The Goddesses, meanwhile, wouldn't exactly object to giving a little girl some encouragement, but they would likely be happier if she tried without their active blessing mixed up in it.

Besides, if you encourage Zelda to resort to magical assistance for one thing, she's assuredly going to try to use it on everything she can get away with, and that'll just hurt her in the long run. Best to nip the impulse in the bud.

You eventually coax Zelda into trying to play the Fairy Ocarina again. Of course, by that point, the closing song of the puppet show is over - which almost sets off a second round of sulking - but you talk her into trying to play along with the opening theme of the next show.

That goes about as poorly as before, but the off-key and out of synch notes don't bother you nearly as much as they did Moblin.

"See?" you offer, when the music coming from the TV ends and Zelda stops playing. "You can do it."

"...maybe," Zelda says noncommittally.

Gained Ocarina E

You don't see any particular benefit in just sitting in the car with Briar for the next however many minutes, and your dad could probably use a couple of extra pairs of eyes to keep track of Zelda anyway. Even with a promise to be on her bestest behavior, she has a way of getting into things...

As you walk into Sunnydale Memorial, keeping one eye on your sister, you allow the other eye to wander a bit. It's been a while since your last visit to the hospital - not since your last flu shot, back in September - and you figure your sensory skills have improved enough in the interim that it's worth taking another look at the auras in this place, to see if you glean any new insights about how they interact.

Corruption first, since a good chunk of that is halted at the threshold. A hospital doesn't enjoy the same protections as a home, of course, let alone YOUR house with its active warding schema, but as a place where life and death are so strongly represented and interconnected, there is something there all the same. If nothing else, you can easily see how certain spells and rites would be able to take advantage of the hospital's almost liminal position as a site of birth, death, and everything in between, and it makes you curious what a center of healing with open and active religious affiliation would feel like. You know there's a chapel in here, somewhere, but having the whole building consecrated would be something else entirely.

Probably impractical to keep up on a Hellmouth, though.

In any case, no great revelation occurs, and you move on to Fairy Sight, more for the sake of completion than because you expect to find anything - and sure enough, aside from Briar's presence, there's not even a hint that any of the Fae have been here recently. Between the Hellmouth's influence, that not-quite-threshold, and the abundance of sterilized steel (and hence, iron), it makes sense that Fae would tend to avoid this place.

Next up, the elements. "Death" isn't an element within the standard Hyrulean system, and is considered either an absence of Life, a transition to Spirit, or the influence of Time, depending on who you ask and whether you're defining it as a process or a state of being. Within your personal variant of the tradition, however, Death is simply the Dark aspect of Life, the other side of the coin to the Light state of existence most people think of, with Shadow forming the "edge" between the two faces. Seeing Life and Death together, then, is nothing too unusual to your way of thinking; what IS curious, though, is how balanced they are here. Usually one aspect is strongly dominant over the other, typically with Death as the "shadow" that trails after Life, the potential for cessation that is and must always be there. Only in graveyards, battlefields, and other places where death has occurred do you typically see the reverse, and this in-between state is something else again.

Gained Elemental Sense E (Plus) (Plus)

Once more, you don't gain any great insights, but this you put down to a lack of sensory acuity rather than a lack of anything new to learn. Life, after all, occupies a more elevated position within the elemental hierarchy than the purely physical elements do, and you're thinking of how it interacts with the highest circle besides. Your Elemental Sense just isn't developed enough to make out that much detail; at best, you manage to give yourself a bit of a scare as the auras of Life and Death loom larger in your mind's eye, almost like the shadows of two great beasts stalking a grudgingly shared territory and watching for interlopers.

You close off that sense before it gets out of hand.

"Watcha looking at, Alexth?" Zelda wonders.

Um.


"I was just thinking," you reply.

"About what?" Zelda asks curiously.

"Well..." You cast about for a safe, mundane topic. Fortunately, being inside a hospital, there are a number of potentially entertaining distractions. "For starters, how about those weird metal bowls?" You indicate a cart an orderly is pushing past, which has a dozen or so large-ish metal objects piled on top of it. "Don't they look kind of strange?"

"...yeah, they do," Zelda agrees, peering at the things intently.

Your father and Briar start laughing. Even the orderly snickers as he rolls on by.

You and Zelda regard them in confusion.

"What'th tho funny?"

"Kids," your old man wheezes. "Th-those... those aren't bowls. They're bedpans."

Zelda doesn't get it.

You do.

"...ah. Riiiight..."

"What'th a bedpan?" Zelda wonders. "Come on, Alexth! I wanna know!"

"Yeah, Alex," your father manages to say evenly. "Don't leave your sister in the dark."

Oh, you're going to get him for this.

Reluctantly, you explain-

"Ew, gross!" Zelda exclaims in disgusted delight.

-and yeah, that's about the reaction you were expecting.

You are saved by your mother showing up-

"Mom! Guess what we thaw?"

-and then you are promptly doomed by Zelda, who has all KINDS of questions about bedpans.

Your mother gives you and your father a bemused look, at which point Tony goes off laughing again.

Your mother and the cheerfully babbling Zelda lead the way back out of the hospital, while you trail along at the end of the family group, partly to try and stay out of the bedpan-centric conversation, partly to make sure you don't lose your father at some point, and partly because you want to try and finish up those scans you started on your way in.

With demonic taint, Fae essence, and elemental energies accounted for, you take a quick look around on the magic- and ki-based spectra. You aren't really expecting to see much this way, and are mainly just using Mage Sight and Ki Sight for the sake of thoroughness. Your expectations are met; while all the Life-aligned energy you noted gives the hospital potential as a magical site, none of that potential seems to have been accessed. Likewise, while there is plenty of life-force drifting about due to the presence, actions, and emotional states of all the staff, patients, and visitors, there are no active uses of ki that you can pick up on.

True, you're only seeing a small part of a couple of hallways and the adjacent rooms, which is a long way from ruling out ALL possibility of magical or ki activity just on this floor, much less in the entire hospital, but it's a start.

Then you switch over to your spiritual senses-

!

-and immediately have to fight down the urge to flinch.

You were right about the phantoms. Just looking down this one hallway with your Spiritual Sight active, you can make out half a dozen transparent humanoid figures drifting about - though at this time of day, they're not even that detailed, appearing more like silhouettes or even oddly distinct heat-hazes. The most clearly visible are wearing bedclothes or full hospital gowns and lurk within or near particular rooms, likely the places where they died, but you spot one shade dressed like the orderly you passed earlier, moving down the hall as if pushing a cart and pausing to enter each room it passes.

Not one of these lingering presences is proper spirit, much less has the power to manifest as a ghost, and you honestly doubt that even all of them together would have enough energy to properly interact with the physical world, assuming they could even muster the will to try - which is even MORE unlikely. These aren't people or even fragments of people; they're just the echoes of people's last moments of life and the earliest moments of their deaths, snapshots of the period between the cessation of physical existence and the soul's proper passage to whatever fate it had earned.

This isn't even a critical care ward. And THESE are just the shades strong enough to be apparent in the the middle of the day, when the sun and the purifying Light it represents are at their mutual peak of power. From the shadows clinging almost everywhere, you suspect that this ward will get a lot more crowded as the afternoon wears on into evening. Goddesses only know what the rest of the building must be like.

It IS pretty shady...

You make a mental note to talk to Ryuken about this at some point, to see if it's normal to have this much spiritual residue in a large hospital, or if it means Sunnydale Memorial is overdue for some kind of cleansing.

Closing your spectral eye, you hurry after your family, hoping that you haven't ruined your appetite.


Leaving the not-yet-haunted hospital behind, your family pile back into the car and drive off to lunch.

When the question of where to eat comes up, Zelda immediately votes for her favorite fast food place, but your parents both seem to be in the mood for something a little slower and less greasy. Rather than split the family vote - for all the good that would do - you opt for a compromise, suggesting that you go eat where your parents want to, and then if Zelda's still hungry afterwards, you can grab her some fries.

"And thome Coke!" Zelda immediately insists.

"You can get Coke at the other place, Zelda."

She regards you suspiciously. "...okay."

Crisis averted, it seems.

Lunch is grilled chicken and baked potatoes all around, with generous toppings for the latter and a bowl of salad ordered at the insistence of your mother and Briar. The greens themselves you have no real issue with, as long as they're fresh and crispy, which these are; the available salad dressings, on the other hand, don't really meet your fancy.

Zelda seems perfectly happy once she gets her Coke, an order of fries from the kids' menu, and some of the chicken. She grimaces a bit when Mom badgers her into having some veggies as well, but she does eat them - albeit slowly, grudgingly, and with exaggerated chewing.

Though that stops quickly when your father idly mentions that they have ice cream, and that MAYBE you could do dessert as well. No dummy, Zelda catches on to the unspoken threat of no dessert for little girls who don't mind their manners and finish their lunch.

You briefly consider having that planned talk with Zelda over lunch, but decide to let it slide until a bit later. There are only half a dozen other people in the restaurant besides your family, but even so, there's no sense in risking a scene in public.

Between your sister's usual daily schedule and the larger-than-average meal of the day, you aren't surprised to see her nodding off in the car on the way home. You give her a few gentle prods to keep her awake, which gets your hand swatted in return, and then devolves into a short, frantic war of hand-slaps that rouses Zelda from her impending nap, and gives her enough of a second wind that she charges into the house, calling dibs on the TV.

"She'll be out inside of half an hour," your father predicts.

"Fifteen minutes," your mother counters.

"Winner picks dinner?"

"Done."

Shaking your head, you let your folks know about your plan to talk with Zelda. If they both think she's going to check out soon - and you tend to agree - you figure it's best to let her nap and explain things to her later.

"Thank you for not setting her off before naptime," your mother says.

Also, that.

Besides, you and your father were going to spend some time at Rory's garage after this - though again, for the sake of avoiding any temper-tantrums, it's probably a good idea to wait for Zelda's energy to give out.

Your father tends to agree, and so the lot of you get out of the car and head inside.

For the record, your father won that bet, with Zelda making it twenty-two minutes before giving up and going to her room for a nap. Dinner will therefore be barbecue burgers.

The two of you wait another ten minutes or so to make sure she's all the way out, before leaving the house and driving to the garage. Uncle Rory is in, along with one of the other guys, but the place is otherwise empty.

Is there anything in particular you want to do at the garage?


You give your father and uncle some time to talk, and spend that looking over one of the two vehicles that are actually in for work. One of these is a red Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale sedan which has had its hood removed and the engine ratcheted up on a set of chains. No points for guessing what's up there. The other...

You do a double-take at the sight of a somewhat beaten-up Dodge Ram 1500, parked atop a jack.

"What's that one in for?" You are pleased to note that you kept your voice level and only mildly curious.

"Ah, some idiot teenager brought it in the other day," the other worker, John, informs you as he shakes his head in annoyance. "Swore up and down that he took it off-roading and hit something, and it hadn't been running right since. About the worst thing we've found, aside from the crapload of dirt and rocks we fished out of the drivetrain, is that the shocks need replacement - assuming the kid can scrounge up the cash." John has been a source of worldly advice to you in the past, and provides that service again now, advising you that, "When you get a car of your own, Alex, you make sure you take care of it. Leave stupid and expensive stunt-riding to stupid rich people."

Good advice, you think, although...

"If they're rich, aren't they just eccentric?"

"Nah, that's if they're rich and crazy. Stupid is stupid no matter how much money you have."

Feeling reassured that your prior mystical theatrics aren't going to bankrupt a member of the target audience, you spend a while looking over - and under - the Ram, letting John point out the problem area in the back, as well as general wear and tear that isn't an issue yet, but likely will be in the future.

When you pull yourself out from under the truck, you see Tony and Rory have come out of the office and are looking over the Oldsmobile.

"-he do, shove a pillow into this thing?" your father wonders as you head over.

"That, or there's a very unhappy chicken running around town," Rory replies with a shrug. "Hey, Alex."

"Hey, Uncle Rory. How's business?"

"Slow, but still going well enough. What about you? All that" - he waggles his fingers at you in what you assume is meant to be a "magical" manner - "business going well?"

You glance over your shoulder at John, making sure that he's pulled himself back under the Ram before replying.

"Got a big project starting tomorrow," you admit. "I'll probably be out of town for a few days helping some people."

"Oh?"

"Something about spiritual peanuts and elephants," your father advises.

"...say what?"

"It's in Japan, don't worry about it."

"That just gives me MORE questions," Rory complains.

Before they can get too far, you bring up the matter of bear traps. This, of course, requires a brief segue to explain WHY you're bringing it up, which you explain to your uncle by stating that you met someone in the course of (finger waggling) business and rather literally helped him out of a trap he was caught in.

Rory winces. "Was it one of the recent models, at least?"

"It had teeth," you reply frankly.

"...Christ, I'm glad I had a light lunch," your uncle mutters. "Is the guy still alive?"

You nod. "I've been working on a new healing spell that can regenerate limbs and organs, if it has to. He walked out under his own power."

Your uncle looks seriously impressed at that - and then he gets that same faintly avaricious light in his eye that your father had, which leads to you quickly adding that you can't use that spell in Sunnydale without drawing a lot of attention.

Rory shakes his head. "Damn town just HAS to ruin every good thing... what about OUT of Sunnydale?"

"Rory," your father sighs, "please don't try to make my son into a shady back-alley doctor."


"Yeah, that would be false advertising. I'd be a shady back-alley faith healer."

Your father and uncle look at you for a moment, then at each other.

"Rory, no."

"I mean, if he can ACTUALLY heal people-"

"Rory, stop."

"-that WOULD be a good way of drumming up belief and donations, you know?"

"Rory, you are NOT going to try to turn my son into a cult leader before he's even in his TEENS."

Given some of your long term plans, you are tempted to ask, "What if I turn MYSELF into a cult leader before I'm in my teens?"

But it's a temptation you manage to fight off, partly out of respect for your father's apparent wishes, partly because now really isn't the time, and a little bit because that which is not explicitly forbidden will probably get you in less trouble when and if you go ahead and do it.

And then, proving that he is indeed your uncle and that some things just run in the family, Rory says, "But it's okay if he's a teenager?"

Your father sighs and makes as if to reach for the nearest wrench.

"Okay, okay! It was just a thought!" Once your father has stopped pretending to threaten great violence on him, Uncle Rory turns back to you. "So, bear traps. I'm guessing you heard about my first encounter with them from your old man?"

You nod, but add, "I wouldn't mind hearing your view of it, though."

Rory nods and recounts the experience your father described, of their father bringing home a steel-jawed bear trap from somewhere-

"He found it at the junkyard?" Tony exclaims in surprise. "Seriously?"

"That's what he told me," Rory replies. "Not that I took him at his word, because it WAS the old man-"

That gets a grunt.

"-but I had a chat with Mr. Jones - you remember, right? The watchman? Anyway, he said Pops paid him the usual twenty bucks for a few minutes to pick through the scrap, and there it was."

"What the heck was he even planning to DO with it? He wasn't a trapper, and I'm pretty sure those things had been banned by then."

Rory gives his brother a disbelieving look. "Tony, it was POPS. Do you REALLY want to try and figure out what went on in his head?"

"...not really, no."

-and then setting it off in their backyard for kicks. And while that was dumb, dangerous, and various other things that probably shouldn't be repeated in your hearing, and definitely not where your sister or mother can hear them, your uncle admits that it did get him curious about the subject of animal traps, which in turn led him to his hobby.

"I never really got into the trapping side of things, myself," Rory admits. "Some of that might have been location, though; I found out pretty early on that Sunnydale has a reputation as a lousy place to set up traps."

"Too many trappers going missing over the years?" you venture.

"Less 'missing', more 'turning up mauled to death and/or caught in their own traps'," your uncle replies frankly.

Oh, lovely. Demons with a poetic sense of vengeance. That's just what the world needs.

"Combine that with the way animals tend to get yanked out of traps, and how the TRAPS get wrecked or just disappear, and you can see why this town isn't a popular spot for that sort of thing."

"And yet, we host a biennial taxidermist's convention," your father muses.

"We do?" you and Briar ask together.

"We do."

"We do!" Rory grins. "You should SEE some of the exhibits. I mean, I'm okay with small-scale stuff, but some of these guys work with deer, dogs, big cats, bears - some of those pieces, you'd swear were alive."

And doesn't that just give you a pleasant mental image?

You tool around the shop for a while after that, poking at odds and ends. Rory gives you his own opinion of the Dodge Ram, which more or less lines up with John's, although your uncle adds he's about half-certain the truck's owner did run into something wiggy while he was out joyriding - just not in the literal sense, given the lack of impact damage, smears, or other traces on the vehicle.

"Might do him some good in the long run," Rory muses. "Scare him off from being a complete idiot."

"You don't think he might try to trick out his ride, turn it into some kind of Road Warrior-esque demon-slaying machine?" your father asks.

"Nah. The truck's not in the best shape for that sort of thing, and the kid hasn't got the budget or the dedication to make up for it."

"Not a gearhead, I take it."

"Nope, just some kid so desperate to NOT have to rely on Mom and Dad to drive him everywhere, he grabbed the first vehicle he could afford that wasn't an obvious clunker."

"Not trying to impress the chicks?"

"He's not impressing ANYBODY with that old crate."

Eventually, you, your father, and Briar clear out and return home. It's coming up on three o'clock, and as you approach the front door, it becomes clear to you that Zelda is awake once again.

Time for that conversation, you guess. But how to put this without setting off the Little Sister Bomb...?


Without missing a beat, your uncle nods and says, "Yeah, that had kind of occurred to me, too. Which is another reason why I think you should come to the next one; just in case."

He has a point, there, much as you might wish otherwise.

Anyway, the next convention isn't until September, so there's no urgency.

You consider your options as you enter the house-

"Welcome back!"

-and don't lose track even when the Little Sister Missile reveals itself. Though that's at least partly because this time, she was aiming at your father, who takes the hit like a champ and promptly turns it into a grapple, lift, and slow spin.

You let the two of them play for a minute while you close the door behind you and take your shoes off, Zelda shrieking in delight as your father turns about with her scooped up before him in both arms, rather skillfully keeping Zelda's head or kicking feet from bumping into or catching on anything in the hall. Once they've calmed down and Zelda has been returned to the floor, you tell her you have something important to talk about.

"Ith it a prethent?"

No, it's not a present.

"Ith it another party?"

Not that, either.

"Hmmm... are we going vithiting?"

Not quite.

Kneeling down to Zelda's level, you gently explain that you're going to be away for a few days, like you were last year.

"...ith there another kung fu tourney?" Zelda demands. "No fair, I wanna go!"

Mentally kicking yourself for referring to the World Tournament, you quickly assure your sister that it's not another tournament, and ask if she remembers Karin and Yuzu.

"Yeah! They were fun." She frowns. "But you thaid you weren't vithiting?"

You're not. It's just that the Kurosaki twins, their family, and some of their more distant relatives are in trouble, and could get badly hurt-

"What!"

-so you're going to help them to make sure that doesn't happen. But it will require you to be out of town for a while, starting tomorrow.

Now looking worried, Zelda asks, "Can I come to help?"


The situation you're going to be heading into tomorrow comes with a number of potential dangers. The whole Quincy-Shinigami war can be... not dismissed, but at least set aside, as it will be going on elsewhere and you have precisely zero intent of getting mixed up with it in person, if you can possibly manage it. That said, you're essentially going to be confining dozens of people you barely know - many of whom you don't know at all - in a single location, out of fear that their lives and the lives of their families are in danger. And at least two of those people are sympathetic to the enemy they SHOULD be hiding from.

It's going to be a tense situation, and even in your personal best-case scenario, you are expecting Words to be Spoken In Anger before all is said and done. Dragging along a not-quite four-year-old girl who isn't really involved in the entire mess and doesn't have anything to contribute beyond moral support and a cheerful nature would not be a productive or professional use of your power, and that's not even getting into the greater dangers that could crop up, if things go a lot worse than you're expecting.

But while the refusal comes to your lips almost automatically, it doesn't get any farther than that. You know your little sister too well to think that she'd simply accept being told, "No."

"Let's say that I did bring you along, Zelda," you offer instead. "How would you help?"

"I could play with the twinth!"

"You could," you don't quite agree, "but it's not just going to be the Kurosakis who are there. There's going to be a lot of people - a lot of strangers - most of whom are my age at the very least, and some of them aren't going to be very happy."

The mention of strangers made Zelda wary, as it rightly should, but it's the part about unhappy Quincy that has her speaking up. "Why not? You're helping them, right? Why wouldn't they be happy?"

"Because their families are in danger, Zelda. People get really upset when that happens, and when they can't do anything about the danger, they don't always handle it well. Sometimes that means they blame the people who are just trying to help them." You can see that she doesn't quite get it, so you reach for an example. "Say you're at preschool, and you see some of the other kids playing with something dirty that could make them sick. What do you do?"

"Tell them to thtop!"

"But what if they don't listen to you?"

"Then I go get a teacher," Zelda replies, with the patience of a young child humoring someone who's being silly.

"Okay, so the teacher comes and takes the thing away, makes the other kids wash their hands, and maybe puts them in time-out for playing with something like that instead of coming to get her right away. So now you've taken away their toy, got them in trouble with the teacher, made them have to wash their hands, and maybe got them put in time-out. How do you think they'd feel?"

"But I wath jutht-!" Zelda's defensive protest trails off abruptly as a look of realization crosses her features. "...oh."

"Yeah," you agree, nodding. "'Oh.' You would have been doing the right thing, but they wouldn't have been happy with you for doing it. The same sort of thing is probably going to happen to me."

Especially when word of the involvement of the Shinigami gets out. They've killed off most of the Quincy population twice before now, and even if they're unlikely to actively pursue the hat-trick with Takamagahara's eyes on the situation, they're undoubtedly going to kill a lot of the Wandenreich in the process of subduing them. That's bound to ruffle some feathers among your rescued Quincy.

"Uuuu... then I thould come along and tell the big dummies not to be mean to my big brother!" Zelda bursts out. "An' if they are, I'll kick 'em in the thinth!"

...

Damn it. That's cute, heartfelt, and not at all the reaction you were aiming for.

Also, a part of your mind is conjuring up images of Zelda kicking people dressed like Souken, Uryuu, and Ryuuken in the shins, and it is not helpful. Funny, yes, but not helpful.


"I'm not going to do anything to them, Zelda," you say patiently. "When people get sad and hurt enough to try to hurt others, it's only because they think it'll make them feel better. I know that, so I'm not going to be hurt by what they say, and I'm definitely not going to hurt them back. They're already sad, hurt, and scared; I don't need to make it worse."

Some of your argument or the reasoning behind it seems to go over Zelda's head - or at least past it - but the bit about not hurting people who are already hurt does appear to sink in.

"Besides," Briar adds then, "getting back at people who try to hurt my partner is part of my job. So if there are any shins in need of kicking that Alex can't or won't deal with, I have dibs."

"Gotta rethpect the dibth," Zelda sighs.

The dibs are important, yes.

Getting back to the matter at hand, you ask Zelda again if she can think of anything she could do to help if you brought her along - anything that isn't playing with the twins, or kicking people in the shins for being jerks.

"Ummm... I could give you hugs?"

Awww.

...actually, on that note, you reach out and give your sister a hug, which is returned.

"Hugs are good," you agree, as you release Zelda, "but as much as I like them, I won't really NEED them over the next few days. And when you're doing a big job like this, it's important to take only the stuff that you think you're going to need; otherwise you end up bringing everything and the kitchen sink, and it just gets in everybody's way."

"But you've got a magic pocket?"

"It can only hold so much, and I'll be using some of that space for stuff I definitely need," you reply. "Besides, I can't put little sisters or other living things in there. It just doesn't work."

Zelda frowns and thinks very hard, but is finally forced to admit that she can't think of anything she could contribute that you absolutely have to have. She's obviously bummed about that, which makes you think it's time to bring out the bribe.

"Now, there is something I DO need you to do, Zelda."

She looks up, hopefully.

"I need you to stay here, stay out of trouble, and keep an eye on Mom and Dad-"

"We do need watching," Tony agrees from his chair in the living room.

"-and when I get home, if Mom and Dad say you did a good job, I'll have a present for you."

Hope turns a bit mercenary. "What kind of prethent?"

"Well, it just so happens that I met an honest-to-goodness real-life magical girl today-"

"WHAT?!"

"-and I may be able to get you her autographed picture. If you're good."

"I'll be good!" Zelda promises immediately.

"Pinky promise?" you ask seriously, extending your littlest finger.

"Pinky promithe!" Zelda replies in kind.

You lock fingers, shake on it, and the deal is made.

Of course, Zelda immediately starts asking you questions about the magical girl. You own up to Kaleido Ruby's name, as well as the name of her talking magical wand-

"The wand talkth!? ...wait, they're both named Ruby? That'th... confuthing..."

-and Briar spots you some simple illusions-

"The'th pretty."

-on the old argument that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Is there anything else that you feel needs doing?


Following your talk with Zelda, you spend the remainder of the afternoon with your family, doing normal, non-magical stuff and just generally taking it easy. A little TV, a little more playing with Zelda and Moblin, a bit of helping prepare for dinner - which is barbecue burgers, as planned.

Briar shifts to human size to join you for the meal. This isn't her first time sampling one of your father's culinary masterpieces, which is somewhat reflected in the number of patties Tony prepares, as well as the number of fresh vegetables that get sliced up for toppings, but mostly in the way your parents don't react with more than a brief blink or a raised eyebrow at your partner's appearing from (to them) thin air.

After eating, there's a lazy period of sitting around in the backyard, not doing much of anything except digesting. That's followed by the cleanup, an evening movie, and then Zelda being shipped off to bed. Even with the promise of "bethtetht behavior," Zelda is a little fussier than usual about going to bed in light of your impending absence, but your parents take it in stride, letting her stay up a bit later than usual in exchange for her brushing her teeth, having a bath, and changing into her pajamas.

When Zelda nods off somewhere after nine, the previous preparation makes it a simple matter to take her upstairs and tuck her in.

You spend the remainder of the evening reading, getting through a large part of the latest volume of Twentieth Century Sorcery before calling it a night near eleven-thirty.

The next morning, you awaken at a few minutes past four, and lie there in bed, staring up at your ceiling in the pre-dawn darkness as you ponder the day to come.

Your reserves are full, and in a little bit, you're going to make use of that, going down to your Mirror Hideaway for your morning exercise routine and spellcasting session - you'll be renewing the Spell of Mind Blank, at the very least, and perhaps setting up a few other defenses.

After that, breakfast, a shower, and a change of clothes, you'll have a few hours to kill before you need to head down to Brazil. The Muhlfelds are about four hours ahead of you, and your plan calls for you to leave around nine o'clock - which will be just after lunch for them. Their family is small enough that you can get them all to the timeless demiplane with a single casting of the Gate Spell, though you'll probably have to go through with them to help them settle in. The place IS a bit eerie, and would be only more so for people who aren't as familiar with magic (or the people casting it) as you are.

Once the Muhlfelds are hidden away, you'll be heading to New York. It'll be a few more hours before Balthazar starts sending the Archers to the demiplane, but you'll feel better about being in position to lend a hand with any situations that might develop AS they're happening, rather than having to find out about them first.

After all, there ARE a couple of known Wandenreich sympathizers among the Archer's family tree.

How long all that will require to take care of, you can't be certain, but once it's done, it will be time - and hopefully not PAST time - for you to head to Karakura. You do feel a little nervous about leaving the Kurosakis, Ishidas, and other Japanese Quincy on Earth on the very day when Auswahlen goes down, but your divinations have revealed that the event itself won't occur until later in the afternoon. As long as you get everybody out in the morning, they should be fine.

You are going to be keeping your eyes open, though.

Aside from Mind Blank, are there any spells you feel like casting right now?

Also, when will you be summoning Shadow Alex today?


If all goes as planned, you, personally, won't be anywhere near the main event, so you don't need a huge array of combat-focused buffs. You'll include a few, of course, partly as a precautionary measure, and partly because they'll help with what you're most concerned about - namely, ferreting out individuals among your Quincy refugees that might harbor sympathies for the Wandenreich, and be inclined to act on them.

You run through your mental spellbook, considering options. Some, you discard out of hand, while others - like Foresight - are added to a short list just as quickly, and a great many more are examined at comparative length (no more than a minute, at most) before joining one group or the other.

After a few minutes of this, you figure you might be a while making your selections, so you might as well use the time productively. With that in mind, you climb out of bed, head downstairs, and call up your Mirror Hideaway; once inside, you begin your usual exercises. All the while, your mind continues to go down the long, long list of spells you've learned, those you've seen in action but not yet fully grasped, and others you've only heard of but figure you can probably emulate.

By the time you've finished with your calisthenics, you have decided upon the spells most likely to serve your purpose, and so you get to casting them.

First, of course, is renewing the Spell of Mind Blank. Eight minutes of chanting and focus, and boom, you're undetectable.

The next spell on the list is your recently practiced, mostly mastered Spell of Foresight. This one is simply too useful NOT to have running today of all days, but a single casting will only last for about three hours, which isn't nearly enough for your needs. Given that it's a ninth-circle spell, having to re-cast it every three hours could pose a problematic drain on your mana, or else take up valuable time, so it'll be more efficient to increase the spell's duration - but to do that, you're going to have to push your Divination Magic to the limit and then some.

So you do that.

One minute goes by, becoming two, then four, and then eight. Eight minutes creep over to nine, the point where even the most powerful standard spells would stop-

Idly, you consider the significance of the number nine in Hyrulean philosophy. The value of three, the sacred number of the Goddesses, multiplied by itself, and likewise the number of edges to be found in the crest of the Triforce. The number of elements in the standard elemental cosmology, and so of the Sages, though only seven are commonly known and named. The number of tiers in common mortal magic, at least if one disregards cantrips as minor tricks and movements of energy rather than proper spells, as some do.

Coincidences? You do wonder...

-and then you keep going.

By this point, the air around you has filled with energy. It's not the blazing corona of your unleashed Power, but there is light aplenty, the initial motes having gathered into lines, forming the "long form" array that defines the spell and filling it with the characters that describe in exacting detail the forces being called upon, and how they're being utilized. There is also a growing tension not unlike that of your ultimate technique, a pressure that you feel within yourself as much as you do in the way the air about you tingles with potential.

And then, as the tenth minute rolls around, you complete the ritual. The array is whole, the final characters scribed and the complete formula invoked, and its power primed and ready to activate.

"O spell of omens," you intone grandly, "grant me sight beyond sight!"

Did I just hear a cat snarl?

The entirety of the assembly flares once, golden light peeking through the gathered lesser energies that you are more accustomed to seeing in your spellcasting, as the Spell of Foresight slides into place.

Gained Divination A

Then you pause, waiting to see if that flare of tenth-circle magic has breached or bypassed the Divination-blocking aspect of the Spell of Mind Blank, and finally drawn the attention of the natives of the Mirror Plane in your direction.

...

After five minutes where no strange reflections begin moving around on their own, and elemental beings of glass fail to surge out of the walls, floor, and ceiling to accost you, you start casting the next spell on your list.

Fortunately, most of Foresight's mana came from you, personally, rather than the environment. There proves to be enough ambient power on tap for you to successfully perform ritual versions of the extended Spell of Greater Heroism, the similarly enhanced Spell of the Investigative mind, and the likewise augmented Spell to Perceive Cues. It gets noticeably harder to gather the required mana each time, however.

Gained Enchantment C (Plus) (Plus) (Plus)

Fortunately, the next spell you have in mind doesn't require you to tap into external energy. Calling it a "spell" is perhaps being a bit generous, though, as what you're planning to do next is to invoke a magical effect that you don't have a proper framework for. You are confident that your grasp of Augmentation Magic is sufficient for the task you have in mind, but you're going to be brute-forcing this one all the way, an approach that doesn't really allow for the usual advantages of the ritual method.

But nothing ventured, nothing gained, and so you give it a go.

Several minutes later, the new spell settles - and almost immediately, you realize something went wrong. The spell seems to work as intended, heightening your sense of pattern-recognition by a rather remarkable degree, and making certain visual elements stand out vividly in your mind's eye - regular striations within the glassy substance that makes up all the surfaces, patterns repeating in the portal that connects back to your basement, the weave of your pajamas - but it's not powerful enough to be the fifth-circle magic your calculations anticipated.

Some quick investigation confirms that your "Spell of Pattern Recognition" is a mere first-circle effect, and one that will only last about three hours.

You wonder what went wrong...?

Well, regardless, if it's only first-circle, it's a lot less problematic to renew as needed than a ninth-level spell would be, even if you have to go through the whole ritual rigmarole every time.

You have but two spells left to cast, but you leave them for now. One requires a vessel of liquid as a focus element, which you didn't bring in with you; the other requires constant concentration, which will tie up enough of your faculties to prevent you from casting further spells once it's active; and your Mirror Hideaway is low enough on remaining mana right now that you aren't certain you could cast either of them ritually. Certainly not both.

Plus, you've been in here for the better part of two hours, and casting spells for something like a third of that time. Your throat is a little sore, and your stomach is starting to get cranky.

Breakfast calls.

As you exit your Mirror Hideaway, you decide to summon up Shadow Alex before you travel to Brazil. There's no real reason NOT to do it.

That said, you might want to hike out of town first. Your Mirror Hideaway is unlikely to recover enough mana to fuel much further "free" spellcasting before you need to go, so if Shadow Alex wants to assemble a suite of buffs of his own - and knowing your more pragmatic self as you do, you suspect he will - he'll need another location to tap into.

It's not a big deal. Even accounting for breakfast, a shower, and a change of clothes, you'll have at least a couple of hours to work with.


For today's breakfast, you decide to go with waffles - specifically, the store-bought frozen variety. While they're defrosting in the toaster, you think on what spells Shadow Alex is likely to cast on himself in preparation for the attack on Silbern.

Where you'll be spending that part of the day rooting out spies and waiting, your doppelganger will heading into a combat zone. It only makes sense that he'd eschew the heavily sense-enhancing set of buffs you selected in favor of spells offering increased combat power and more direct forms of defense, as well as some mobility-boosters - that is, after all, literally the whole reason you took the time to master the Spell to Walk Through Space the other day!

Shadow Alex will still definitely be using the Spells of Mind Blank and Foresight, though. They're just the sort of magics that are useful in almost any situation - and again, you crammed with the latter spell precisely in preparation for this event. It'd be weird NOT to use it.

Thinking it through a bit more, you expect your not-evil twin will take the opportunity to prepare some indefinite-length or permanent enhancements for his version of your Blessed Blade - though they'd only be "permanent" in the sense that they would persist until that weapon was dismissed along with its owner - just in case he needs to use it. The sword's current and comparatively simple "hit a little more accurately, cut a little more deeply" enhancements aren't really up to the challenge its master is about to walk into.

It also occurs to you that Shadow BRIAR could do with a set of buffs of her own, but even as you consider that idea, you wonder if you really should summon her. Much as you dislike the idea of separating a fairy from her partner - particularly when they're essentially you and your fairy partner - Shadow Alex is going to be heading into a battle between two armies full of spiritually powerful beings. The odds are fairly high that at least some of the individuals fighting on either side would be able to detect Shadow Briar's presence, and even if Shadow Alex will be in another form and using the Spell of Mind Blank besides, exactly how many sorcerers can there BE on Earth who have your level of power AND a fairy familiar?

Not many, you think.

On the other hand, if Shadow Briar were to take her human-sized form, that might deflect some suspicion away from you. Granted, somebody could still realize that she's Fae, but you know from your studies that the Fair Folk are pretty rare on the ground in Japan - a certain dullahan motorcyclist notwithstanding - which reduces the odds of the Shinigami recognizing what Shadow Briar is. The Wandenreich, meanwhile, have spent the last thousand years shut up in their King's private plane; yes, they do still have regular contact with Earth, but you think the chances of any of them figuring out what your Shadow's partner ought to be likewise reduced.

And even if they do figure that much out, there are all KINDS of precedent for mortal magic-users associating with the Big Folk.

That said, if you take this approach, Shadow Briar would likely need a different set of enhancements than the ones you had in mind to augment her/Briar's usual battlefield support role. She's visible to everybody in that form, and that would make her a potential target, so you - or rather, Shadow Alex - would need to share a few more of his defenses with her.

Your train of thought is briefly diverted when your waffles pop up, a little darker than you might have preferred but perfectly edible. As you prepare your meal, you think on what to do you about the partner situation.

Maybe it's the fact that you were thinking of allies and magic, but as you sit down to begin your meal, the notion pops into your head to use a Spell of Sending to get in touch with the Green Entity, and send it a brief apology and explanation for your recent and future travels through its realm under the Spell of Mind Blank.

The poor thing does feel a little neglected...

Your musings come to a halt as you pop a piece of waffle into your mouth, and pause.

You've been eating these things for years, and they're something of a favorite, even when a little over- or under-cooked like this batch are. But somehow, this particular waffle tastes... not bad, exactly, but not nearly as enjoyable as it should.

You are reminded of other waffles you've enjoyed, and recently, when you used the Spell of the Heroes' Feast to conjure up a magnificent outdoor breakfast for yourself and a Fae workforce.

You don't NEED to do it. The benefits of a "Heroes' Breakfast" would be almost entirely subsumed by those of the Greater Spell of Heroism you already have going, save for the increased resistance to poison, and they'd only last twelve hours, besides.

But as you take another bite of your acceptable yet unsatisfying waffle, you really WANT to do it. And you could share it with the whole family...


You decide to go ahead and summon boy and fairy together. Your vast repertoire of spells, occasionally unwieldy though it is, offers a number of options for disguising Shadow Briar - one in particular comes to mind that would do well for obscuring not only her physical form, but also her ties to the element of Shadow.

Besides, you're about to send your not-evil twin into harm's way. It only seems fair to let him and his partner weigh in on the question of making him face that danger alone, before you make a final decision.

Although the prospect of starting the day with a real Breakfast of Champions is tempting, you do have quite a bit of spellcasting to do today; moreover, you've already noted that there'd be little real long-term benefit from Heroes' Feast due to its overlap with Greater Heroism, so you'd really just be wasting mana - and not just that of the one spell, as you'd have to cast at least one other beforehand to obscure the signature of the sixth-circle ritual.

The mature and professional thing to do in this sort of situation is to refrain from spending a limited resource on something that isn't strictly necessary for the task ahead.

Besides, you've already toasted these waffles. No sense wasting them.

You settle in to eat, polishing off the sweet bread and syrup in short order, and washing them down with a glass of milk. To that you add a couple of the breakfast sausages that your dad started cooking when he came downstairs, and then one of the last of the bananas.

You are briefly reminded of the Librarian.

Breakfast finished, you head upstairs to brush your teeth, take that shower, and get dressed. By the time you've finished all of that and gone over your inventory a final time, it's coming up on nine o'clock.

Time to go, then.

Heading back downstairs, you let the family know that you'll be leaving: ruffling Moblin's ears and reminding him to be a good boy while you're gone; assuring your mother that yes, you do have a few changes of clothes; and weathering a round of extra-strength, slightly clingy hugs from Zelda.

Then you head downstairs and cast two spells. The first is the Spell of the Private Sanctum, the duration of which you reduce from a whole day to a matter of minutes, as this brings its signature well below the threshold where the wards on your house can hide it, and also saves a bit of mana. As the basement fills with eerie mist-

"Cool!" Zelda exclaims, because what kind of curious little sister would she be, to pass up the opportunity to watch her big brother do amazing magic?

-you begin a ritual casting of the Spell of Teleportation, aiming for a familiar spot relatively deep in the desert.

Then, with a final goodbye and reminder to Zelda to behave herself, you disappear from your home, and reappear in the shallow bowl where you freaked out a truckload of teenagers just the other day.

What can you say? The place is still fresh in memory, and easy to visualize as a result.

Up goes another, markedly longer-lived Sanctum, and out come the Shadows.

Shadow Alex has barely finished materializing when he starts casting the Spell of Mind Blank upon himself.

While your dark side goes to work, you take out the Bottle you filled with plain old tap water before leaving the house and cast a greatly extended ritual version of the Spell of Tears to Wine upon it. As the clear and colorless liquid takes on a very faintly yellowish tint, you briefly apologize to Nayru for the local, state, and national ordinances that you are about to break.

After all, it's against the law in America for kids your age to drink alcoholic beverages.

Don't make a habit of it.

The law-breaking, or the magic booze?

Yes.

The Briars temporarily assume human size for convenience's sake-

"I might as well," your partner replies with a shrug, when you give her a curious look. "It's not like it can hurt anything, right?"

Fair enough.

-and once Shadow Alex is finished his first spell, you pass the Bottle around for everyone to take a sip of the enchanted wine within.

...

You're not sure you see the appeal, to be honest.

Gained Criminal E (Plus)

As you take a moment to adjust to the spell's effects on your senses and thought processes - and doesn't that statement just explain everything about why Tears to Wine uses alcohol? - it occurs to you that your earlier, technically successful, but at the same time not what you were hoping for casting of the Spell of Pattern Recognition has worn off.

Is there another spell you'd like to cast in its place?

And before you get started, are there any changes you'd like to make to the... extensive... list of buffs for the Shadows?


You decide to add one more spell to your list of buffs, and begin casting a heavily modified version of the Spell to Bestow Insight. Normally, a single casting of this magic only allows you to augment your mind in one particular direction, increasing your aptitude for a single field of ability, but there's nothing that would prevent multiple castings from working together, as long as they were focused on different endeavors. What you want to do, then, is to combine several such effects into a single spell.

You've done such a thing before, with the Spell of General Augmentation, which blends Bull's Strength, Fox's Cunning, and other such spells into a cohesive whole, and your Augmentation Magic isn't that far ahead of your Enchantment Magic. You'll have to make it a ritual, of course, but it should be entirely doable.

So you go ahead and make the attempt.

Making the spell last indefinitely would require an eighth-circle casting, which would require you to use the ritual casting method to boost your power, and leave no room for extra enhancements. Given you'd prefer to conserve your mana - this IS a first attempt, after all - you opt to use the ritual to fuel the casting instead, and instead settle for raising its duration to a matter of hours. That's all you really NEED, and it leaves you three whole spell levels to work with, which should be enough for as many additional energy flows.

As the spell formula takes shape, you assign the first of those flows to your mundane senses, and the second to your awareness of body language and facial expression. The last two, you dedicate to your interpersonal skills, which you augment...

And then you complete the spell, and give yourself a minute to feel out its effects.

...

Yes. That's about what you were hoping for.

While you were testing the limits of your mind magic, Shadow Alex started casting the Spell of Foresight. You can sense that he's following your lead in the matter, pushing his Divination Magic as far as it will go and then some, and the urge to break out analytic spells and monitor the whole process wells up inside you-!

...but, you remind yourself firmly, you have a great deal of other magic that needs doing, and not a lot of time to spare.

Forcing down your information-acquisitive instincts, you start applying what spells to Shadow Briar that you can, beginning with the Spell of Penumbral Disguise, because you really need to see if that one works the way you think it will.

The answer is, it does. Or at least, you wouldn't be able to tell she was specifically a Shadow of fairy, rather than just a random Shadow creature, if you didn't already know. True, a Shinigami might be able to tell something was off spiritually, but considering that one of their captains passed you by the other day without so much as a second glance...

The whole process of layering spells goes on for the next two hours, and the fact that you and Shadow Alex are both casting high-level rituals the entire time eats up enough mana that you have to switch locations no less than THREE times, moving deeper into the desert each time by teleporting as far from your last position as you could see, and hence keep things short, sweet, and stable.

Shadow Alex tests your self-control by repeating his INVOCATION OF AWESOME POWER while casting the Spell to Walk Through Space, and then again, later, when he places an extended Spell of Foresight on Shadow Briar - the only spell other than Mind Blank you couldn't apply to her on an indefinite basis.

Incidentally, you have to leave that one to Shadow Alex as well. By exploiting their familiar bond, he's able to strip the range of the spell down to the point that it would normally only affect himself, use the freed-up mana to increase the duration, and then cast it as a ninth-circle spell for one more push, while still being able to offload the cost onto a ritual.

On a side note, that largely settles your worries about Shadow Briar being identified.

Once the partners are fully augmented, you and Shadow Alex - who's in his adult form now, suited up and ready to go - cast a series of buffs on his shadowy copy of the Blessed Blade. While he's handling the last of those, you voice your earlier consideration about contacting the Green Entity.

The two fairies agree that, given your recent adoption of Mind Blank, as well as all the teleporting and planar travel you have been and will continue to be performing today, sending an explanation-slash-apology to the being is probably wise.

"Staying on the good side of unfathomable eldritch beings generally is," Briar says.

"As long as they actually HAVE a good side," her Shadow chimes in, "and not just a less-awful one."

"And as long as you don't have to do anything terrible in the process."

"Yeah."

Shadow Alex makes a sound of agreement, and so you dip into your reserve a bit and cast the Spell of Sending.

"We haven't spoken lately because I'm shielding myself magically. It's nothing against you, there are just some things I need to hide from."

And off it goes.

You wait a moment to see if there will be a reply-

"SURprisE/SUSpicion/reALIZation/HAPPy/niCE to hEAR fRoM YOU, comPREhenSIon/UndERstANding, reLIEf/nO offENSe, ANNoyINg/iRRitATIng/JERKS/SMiTE thEM?"

...

Okay, ow. Even with the Spell of Mind Blank buffering your mind from the possible psychic impact of the Green Entity's "voice," that horrible hodgepodge of SOUND was almost painful to hear.

Maybe you shouldn't do this again?


Augmenting your interpersonal skills is a no-brainer. You're going to spend the next couple of days or more dealing with a bunch of strangers, most of whom have been told that their lives and their families' lives are in danger, and hence are likely to be more than a little angry and mistrustful. Talking is going to be important.

Shadow Alex could arguably use something similar for when he meets with the Shinigami later, but he's running heavy on enhancements as it is. There really isn't room for anything more, whether on him or his partner.

As for the last portion of your improvised Spell to Bestow Multiple Insights, you figure that buffing your talents for deception will be more productive than making yourself better at scaring people. You do have a couple of known Wandenreich sympathizers to deal with, and probably a few more who either aren't as open about their loyalties, or just don't believe that their distant kinsmen could be responsible for the danger they're facing. If they're already inclined not to trust you, trying to scare them into behaving themselves is unlikely to work, and could easily backfire. A touch of misdirection and subtle manipulation, on the other hand, might do the job.

Guess you'll find out.

Eh, why not? The Green Entity did seem to appreciate this message, and as long as you remember to have Mind Blank up when you contact it - and also to make sure that no one else is around who might be driven to gibbering madness by contact with the many-angled thing from beyond the fringes of logical space-time - it ought to be fine.

And if Mind Blank's considerable but not absolute protection against mind-affecting effects falters? You know the Spell of Restoration, you're on good terms with a couple of Great Fairies and a master sorcerer, and if need be, there's always Ambrose.

You're sure you'll be able to work something out.

"Are we ready?" you ask, looking around.

"Weren't you going to give me most of your restoratives?" Shadow Alex asks.

Oh, right.

You take care of that-

Exchanged restoratives!

-keeping back just under half of your supply of Spring Dew, for emergencies on your end. You also hand over what's left of the Ointment of True Seeing-

Exchanged Ointment!

-just in case Shadow Alex runs into a situation where he needs to use that spell.

No one's mentioned illusions being a technique associated with the Quincy, but they've been in Silbern for a long time, and your scrying sessions only revealed a very small portion of the fortress-city. Who knows what they might have cooked up in the parts you never saw?

"Now we're good," Shadow Alex says as he pockets the last of the bottles and mana-infused Rupees. "Unless Briar wants to add her own set of buffs...?"

"Honestly, I think the magic wine was enough for me. But if you guys think it's necessary, go ahead."

You check the time, and decide against it. You're running a little late to meet the Muhlfelds as it is, you'd rather not worry them by pushing that.

Speaking of whom, you dig into your pocket for your Magic Cellphone, and dial the number Nicolau gave you.

It rings twice. / Hello, / an unfamiliar girl in her teens says in Portuguese.

/ Hello, / you reply as best you can in that tongue, which honestly isn't great. / Is Mr. Nicolau Muhlfeld there? /

There's a pause.

/...yes, he is. Just one minute. / There is the sound of the receiver being moved, and then you hear the girl call out, / Grandfather, why are you getting a phonecall from a boy younger than me who barely speaks Portuguese? /

Those words are followed by a certain... commotion.