Broken Lands

“What do you think he wants?”

Sophia looked up from the pile of books and notebooks to frown at Dav. “Who?”

“Rensyn,” Dav clarified. “I mean, I can understand why he sent us after the possible corpsevines. I can also see why he wants us to level to help us survive. What I don’t understand is why he’s paying so much attention to us at all. It’s clearly not normal; Amy, Rae, and Moti didn’t have mentors before Rensyn grabbed them for our group. So why us?”

Sophia frowned. Dav wasn’t wrong; he’d pointed out something odd. “Rensyn said they always assign mentors to new Called. Could they have had a mentor back when they were new? How long have they had Spheres, anyway? It seems like the first level goes really quickly.”

Dav frowned. “Maybe, maybe not. We’ve basically had three real sources of Wisps, right, the snakes, the beavers, and the vines? Or should we count the metal insects, too?”

Sophia frowned for a moment, then shrugged. “We probably should. It was a lot more Wisps than the moss or the creepums. I just don’t know why those particular things were worth so much more; it seems like the moss should have been worth a good bit, too.”

Dav shrugged. “I think I’m starting to get a feel for it. The ones that aren’t going to be a problem for anyone aren’t worth much, unless there’s a Nest or something like the Shard of Kestii that can be recovered. The moss wasn’t going very far and the snakes weren’t near anyone who wasn’t going out to look for them. That doesn’t explain the creepums, though; they were actively attacking the building.”

Sophia shrugged. “If you’re right, then … maybe the Guide didn’t count them because Aymini and Vramt were there? I’m pretty sure the creepums were annoyances to them, not real opponents. If you’re right, that might explain why the Wisps for the corpsevine came after we reported in; the news mattered, killing the corpsevine didn’t.”

Dav nodded. “Which is why Rensyn told us to run. Why didn’t he just say that, though?”

Sophia shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t think he needed to? The others didn’t seem surprised to get Wisps later.”

“Maybe,” Dav agreed with a frown. “So, did you find what you were looking for? A tarp, right?”

“Oh, yeah.” Sophia had actually forgotten why she started digging through her backpack, but she was pretty sure she’d seen a tarp gp by. That wasn’t the only useful thing she’d seen, either; for some reason, there was a large metal cooking pot. Sophia didn’t think she could blame that one on her mother; she vaguely remembered adding a pot to her kit back when she started delving with the vague notion of cooking in the dungeon. She’d even done it once or twice. “I think this will work better than the tarp, easier to clean and it’ll actually hold … stuff. Do you want to go first or shall I?”

Dav shrugged. “I know what I’m going to pick. I might as well.”

His words were calm, but his body was tense. Sophia could see the eagerness in his eyes, so she grinned and waved him on. She wasn’t about to spoil his fun, even if she was nervous because of Rensyn’s warning.

Dav’s eyes lost focus as he contemplated his Status. A moment later, he groaned, twisted away from her, and leaned over the pot. Sophia was sure she’d hear the sound of vomiting any minute, but she didn’t. Instead, he made a nearly suppressed moaning noise and took a couple of slow deep breaths.

“Are you okay?” Sophia gently reached for Dav’s shoulder. Her fingers tingled before she even touched him. Sophia frowned at the sensation. It felt like extremely concentrated magic, but that didn’t make sense.

Or did it? With Rensyn’s recommendation, Dav was probably taking either Spell Reservoir, which Sophia remembered vaguely noticing herself, or Mana Specialization, which Rensyn warned might cause illness and was therefore probably worse. A quick glance with her MageSight told Sophia that her guess was right: there was a concentrated field of mana surrounding Dav. It stretched less than half an inch from his skin and was so bright that Sophia couldn’t get a good look at it. From the way it felt, there had to be essence, as well, but that wasn’t really a surprise; where one appeared, the other usually did as well.

Sophia hesitated for a moment, her desire to comfort Dav warring with her knowledge that unknown magic could be dangerous.

Sophia snorted at her own overcaution. This was something Dav triggered by choosing an Ability, not unknown magic. The Guide was powerful, true, but the fact that it could grant Abilities meant that it knew what it could and couldn’t do; it wouldn’t harm her simply for being near it. Neither Dav’s clothes nor the floor were affected, as far as she could tell. It was fine.

She set her hand on his back instead of his shoulder, trying to comfort him with her touch. The magic buzzed and tingled but it didn’t do anything; as far as Sophia could tell, it was simply residue from whatever was happening to Dav. “Dav? Are you okay?”

Dav didn’t answer her the first time, but this time he spoke in a strained voice. “Yeah. It hurts, but it also doesn’t. It’s strange.”

Before Dav could properly describe what he was feeling, it ended. The tingling sensation of magic around him faded rapidly as it dissipated into the air.

Dav took a moment to relax before he turned back to Sophia. When he did, she caught her breath. The purple and black marks on his face had spread a bit, but they now seemed to be part of his skin, rather than something that laid over the skin. Of course, that assumed she could still call it skin; it looked almost like shimmering purple scales. “Mana specialization?”

It was really quite attractive, too. Sophia found herself reaching up to touch where the scales crossed Dav’s cheek before she thought twice about it. They felt warm and smooth, firmer than ordinary skin with slightly recessed areas where the scales met.

Dav reached for Sophia’s hand. Once he captured it, he held it against his cheek for a moment, then shifted it to his mouth and kissed the back of her fingers. “Yes. Rensyn said it might cause nausea, but I wasn’t expecting that. Whatever that was.”

Sophia frowned. The nearest mirror was in the bathroom. She didn’t want to tell him to leave, but she did want him to know what she could see.

No, wait. She’d seen a handheld mirror in the stuff she pulled out of her bag, hadn’t she?

Sophia freed her hand from Dav’s loose grip for long enough to check the pile of stuff she hadn’t really sorted yet. Under a shirt that she’d have sworn vanished mysteriously from her closet a couple of years earlier, she found a small mirrored plastic circle. She didn’t remember where she found it, but she definitely did remember that she’d used it for a few months to check her appearance when she was out and about. Once she started routinely delving dungeons, it didn’t seem worth bothering with; it wasn’t like she was wearing makeup then anyway.

She held it out to Dav. “Here.”

Dav took the mirror with a puzzled frown. It didn’t take him long to catch on that she wanted him to look at himself; after all, why else would she hand him a mirror? “A mirror? Why … oh. Um.”

Dav’s left hand rose to his face and traced along his cheekbone, then up his forehead and into his hair, clearly trying to feel where the scales ended. He started moving his mouth from side to side and wrinkled his brow. “That’s, huh. It looks different and it feels different to my hand, but it doesn’t seem any less sensitive and everything seems to move normally. I think it’s just cosmetic?”

Sophia nodded, despite her suspicion that there was more to it than “just cosmetic.” He was right in every way that mattered, since there was nothing to be done even if it did mean something. “The only thing I’m worried about is how people will react to the change. At least there’s an easy explanation.”

Dav nodded, then frowned suddenly as if something unpleasant had occurred to him. “You know, I never did try out that Sight summon. I was worried about what it would look like, but I haven’t tried it just in case it stuck. I guess now’s the time.”

Before Sophia could agree, Dav had already gone through with his thought. It was clearly obvious as his eyes started to softly glow in a light purple light and his pupils narrowed, then lengthened vertically. “Whoa. That’s … did you know that you glow? Everything glows, but you glow more.”

Sophia grinned at Dav. “Check your mirror first, your eyes changed. I think I like it. It makes sense for a sight-based spell, and at least your eyes don’t look like they’re filled with fire and you didn’t get that third eye on your forehead you were afraid of.”

“It sort of fits, doesn’t it? Hah.” Dav’s fake laugh was entirely humorless as he put the mirror down. “It’s like having a beacon out, so I bet it’s temporary. I wonder if it changes each time like the beacons?”

He didn’t try to answer his own question. Instead, he shook his head and frowned at the wall.

Sophia watched for a moment, then realized he was trying to figure out what “everything glows” meant. She glanced at the mirror, then remembered that there was something she wanted to find out about his new sight-based ability.

Sophia started to build a simple spellform. An omnidirectional floating sphere of light was actually fairly easy to make; it didn’t require nearly as many conditions as one that would follow directions after it formed. She still took her time, to give Dav a chance to notice it without her actively directing him at it. She wasn’t sure what he was seeing right now, since everything didn’t glow with magic to her, but it still seemed like a good first thing to check.

“What are you - you’re casting a spell, aren’t you? Is that what you mean when you say spellform?”

Sophia looked up at Dav and found him staring intently at her hands, or more accurately at the pattern forming in the air above her hands. She flushed as she realized that she had once again made the mistake of moving as if it would help her build the spellform. It was a crutch and one she needed to get used to not using. She yanked her hands down, then realized what Dav said. “You can see it?”

Dav nodded. “It’s pretty complex. Is this what you have to do to make a spell?”

“It’s one way,” Sophia agreed. “It’s reliable but pretty slow. I can teach you, if you want.” A single individual spell wouldn’t be that hard, but teaching him everything he needed to know to not only cast spells but design his own was a matter of years, not hours. She was suddenly grateful for whoever decided to stuff her backpack’s extra capacity with material from her childhood. She wouldn’t have considered it important, but it gave her something she could use while teaching Dav.

Assuming he wanted to learn, of course, but who wouldn’t want to be able to cast spells?

Dav grinned. “I’d love to, but we should finish leveling first. Which means I need to stop looking at everything glowing.”

Sophia was surprised to find that she was disappointed when his eyes returned to normal. The purple eyes looked odd at first, but she definitely had to admit that he was right about them: they looked like they belonged, somehow.

Dav blinked rapidly a few times. “It’s odd. It’s almost like literally everything glowed, but I could tell what was brighter. You were the brightest thing in the room, followed by your pendant and your backpack. Strangely, there was one other spot.”

Dav turned and pressed on a spot on the wall that looked like the rest of the wall, except that the wood was slightly darker than the surrounding area. Sophia hadn’t paid any attention to it until then.

A section of the wall opened and revealed a small empty space, like a hotel safe except that it was built into the wall. The rectangle was obvious when Sophia traced it with her eyes, but it wasn’t the only such rectangle in the room; the walls were paneled in a pair of different colors of wood, and the pattern of the paneling made rectangles like that all over the room. “Huh. I wonder if there are more openings or if that’s just to disguise this one?”