Izzy couldn’t focus enough at first to be embarrassed. He felt a giant hand grab the back of his tunic and lift him into the air. He was thrown towards the trapdoor, projectile-vomiting in a spiral as he rocketed towards the hole in the roof. Izzy landed just short of the trapdoor and slid the rest of the way.

  He tumbled into the hole and fell down a few stairs as the disorientation started to ease. Groaning as he righted himself on the stairs, Izzy was surprised to realize that he was much less harmed from the toss than he’d expected. The books and Yelric had explained that magic would have a general strengthening effect on his body, but Izzy was pleasantly surprised by the lack of pain from a tumble that could have cracked bones.

  His forehead still stung from the rock, but that had been a much more concentrated application of force.

  “Aw man,” Izzy complained, taking in the state of his clothes. “Eventually, I’d like to go more than 24 hours without falling unconscious, vomiting, or bleeding.”

  He wrinkled his nose at the vomit all over him and was reminded of the unfortunate state his body had been after core absorption. This definitely wasn’t as bad, but this time he wasn’t coming down from the high of injecting a high-voltage ball of magic into his body.

  Plus, and this was the important part, he’d just gotten this set of clothes. This had him considering getting a Water shard enhancement so he could wash his clothes just to keep from him needing to replace clothing every two days.

  “Maybe they make clothes that are self-cleaning with an input of magic?” he mumbled to himself.

  Izzy saw that he had yet another notification, but he dismissed it in favor of walking back up the stairs to look for Yelric, when he heard Yelric speak again in that terrifying tone from before.

  “Stay down Izzy,” Yelric growled, “She is messing with the spatial magic in the area, that’s why you went all dizzy. You haven’t learned to shield your magic from such an influence, especially not one this powerful.” He paused for a second, a guttural sound coming deep from within his throat. It sounded like he was resisting throwing up as well. “I’m even struggling to stand upright. Stay inside, the shop will shield you from the effects.”

  Izzy got to the top few steps and managed an angle to see the top half of Yelric without Izzy’s head breaking the threshold of the roof. Yelric’s shoulders were hunched up like he was cold, but his hands were clenched into fists, the fur sporadic and standing on end. His gaze was locked on the giant hole in the side of the keep.

  Izzy stood watching Yelric for a few moments trying to think of something to say or do. Before Izzy had a chance, Yelric’s body gave a shudder and then relaxed some.

  “Stay put Izzy,” Yelric said, finally peeling his eyes away from the Keep. “I think She is gone and I want to go make sure nobody needs help. This shouldn’t take long; go to the main shop area and watch for customers while I’m gone.”

  With that, he turned, made a few large arm movements followed by extremely fast tutting, and the air shimmered in front of him. Yelric walked into it and disappeared. A moment later a blue-white portal opened, it flashed once dimly, and then dissipated.

  Izzy stood, mouth agape for a few more moments. He knew Yelric was powerful, but Izzy was sure he had just seen something of a trump card. Yelric had first made himself invisible and, while focusing on what had to be an immensely expensive spell, cast a portal and used it.

  He finally shook his head, stepped back, and pulled the trapdoor shut. As he did, the same warm, amber light of the main shop permeated the stairwell, lighting his way downstairs. He stepped through the door at the bottom and shut it behind him, a small click sounding.

  Izzy tentatively opened the door again and found that it once again led into the office that housed the entry of the hallway leading back to the workshop and other assorted back rooms.

  Leaving the door open, Izzy went to the corner of the counter by the cookies. He snatched one up absentmindedly and plopped into one of the plush seats at the corners of the counter to open his notification.

  Izzy furrowed his brow at the message. The feeling hadn’t entirely left him and he felt thrown; literally and figuratively. There had been something extremely violating about whatever had done that to him. He had only just gotten his powers and to come into contact with something that so completely suppressed him was disturbing.

  As Izzy read and munched, he noticed this was the first time in five days that he wasn’t with somebody, studying, or passing out from exhaustion. His chewing slowed as his mind raced with information; it wasn’t the information of everything he learned, but of his recent memories. His heart caught in his throat as the reality of his situation hit him like a cricket bat to the face.

  It all came back to him in an overwhelming moment: the fall into Xhansarim, his inexplicable rescue, destroying a creature with a magically enhanced thrown rock, the healing spell, his introduction to Yelric, the studying, the magic core absorption, the feeling of power, the rock he moved with his mind, and the near omniscient presence of something sinister he had just experienced on the roof.

  Izzy felt his pulse start to race, both from his heart and his magic core. He dropped the cookie and gripped the armrests of the chair, his wide eyes unseeing. Izzy felt his awareness thrust back out into The Void, lightning crackling through his mind as he felt like he’d gone weightless.

  It was all too much.

  He wasn’t on Earth anymore. This wasn’t just a video game, it was his new reality. His friends and family were out of reach, the fate of the people with him in Bermuda was unknown. He’d leapt at the chance to distract himself from all the craziness, but being pushed to the edge by the mysterious spatial entity forced it all to come crashing back.

  He leaned forward, clutching his head in his hands, electric pulses coursing through his body. Izzy started to smell burned leather, but it wasn’t enough to snap him out of his episode. Something had been welling up inside of him and it needed release.

  Helplessness, disorientation, frustration, and desperation had been growing despite Izzy’s slowly increasing acceptance of the world in which he found himself.

  The pulsing reached a fever pitch in his ears and in his mind, the entire visage of The Void flickering in and out replaced with a blue-white canvas of energy. All the energy he had absorbed in The Void wanted to be used; wanted to escape or be spent. Wanted to be powerful. In his mind, he was screaming at the top of his lungs as the energy swept over him.

  Just as he felt he was going to drown in the energy, a force gripped him and steadied his imagery. The energy stopped pulsating and physical sensation came back to him in a flash.

  Pulling himself from The Void, the image of Yelric resolved in front of him. The sickly smell of burnt leather hit him with full force, tinged with the freshness of ozone. He looked at the hands gripping his forearms, the giant hands of the firbolg steaming and deformed as electricity arced over them. Izzy took in the kindly face with a stupid grin plastered onto it.

  “I… halp…” Yelric said, not seeming to notice both hands were nearly destroyed.

  Yelric leaned back and Izzy noticed mud and globules of molten glass dropping off and collecting on the floor.

  “Oh…” Izzy said, clutching his chest. “Oh man… I’m so glad it was one of you guys and not actually Yelric.” Izzy looked at the Scintilla with relief. “Can Yelric fix that? I’m so sorry, I don’t know what happened just now.”

  The fake firbolg paused for a second, taking in the sight of its melting forearms. Still with a big grin on its face it looked back to Izzy. After a moment it spoke again.

  “Nope. No fix,” it said slowly, shaking its head.

  Just as Izzy was about to start apologizing again, the copy began to disintegrate before his eyes. Starting from the already damaged forearms, the body of the entity started turning back into dirt and sand. It flowed out of the arms and soon was quickly tumbling away from the rest of the upper body.

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  It eventually toppled over, no longer structurally stable enough to hold itself up. As it struck the ground, it was as if somebody popped a balloon with sand in it, and the rest of the Scintilla disassociated.

  Izzy just knelt in shock, staring at the dirt and sand pile. He almost lost himself again in his thoughts when the smell of burnt leather finally made it through the haze again. Izzy looked back at the chair and saw that there was a charred outline of a person as if a shadow was sitting in the chair.

  The tingling on his skin confirmed to Izzy that he had lost control and his intrinsic magic had manifested and scorched the chair. The Scintilla must have sensed the surge in magic and came to investigate, catching Izzy’s arms and absorbing the magic before it could get worse. A new notification pinged.

  His power had manifested as his lightning body shell and had recognized that he had destroyed something or someone. It had only progressed by 1%, but it had progressed.

  Embarrassment and frustration came over Izzy, his heart starting to pound again. Before it could take over this time, Izzy flung himself to the ground into the meditation pose from his practice with Yelric. The centering exercises quickly calmed his heart and magic, though the frustration lingered in the back of his mind.

  “Why am I so on edge?” Izzy thought, his pulse strong but steady in his chest as he sat cross-legged. “Sure, it’s been a crazy few days, but I’m managing. I have Yelric and Rajir, and I’m learning my magic to protect myself and to do other amazing things. I’m going to be okay, I just need to practice more. Clearly this is just a control problem, and I haven’t had my powers long enough to really keep it tamped down! It’s just user error, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with me.”

  This was the position that Yelric found Izzy upon his return, the smoking chair and pile of sand and glass undisturbed since Izzy started meditating. Izzy cracked an eye open to look at the shopkeeper in the doorway to the back office.

  “Hmmm…” Yelric intoned, lacking all emotion.

  He reached down to the pile, the entire surface rippling once after his palm touched it and he made some gestures with his hand. As Yelric moved past Izzy to get to the chair, Izzy watched the pile of sand break apart into seven smaller piles, grow up into stumpy little humanoid figures, and march their way into the back office and out of sight.

  Opening his other eye and twisting around, Izzy saw Yelric examining the chair with a MACK, the crystal weaving back and forth as Yelric took in the damage.

  “Izzy, I have a lot to explain to you, but I think it will have to wait,” he said, shaking his head as he took in the readings. “I don’t blame you for losing control. Anybody would with the five days you’ve had, but now we need to keep you moving forward on your path with your Space magic. I think the stress of practice earlier combined with the disruption from She caused some sort of reaction in your mind and magic.”

  “Sorry about the Scintilla,” Izzy said, after a few moments of silence between them.

  Yelric turned around with a sad smile on his face. “Don’t worry yourself over them. They are time-consuming to make, but relatively inexpensive. Technically under our contract I could charge you for it, but I won’t; with what you’ve gone through I should have seen this coming.”

  “Is it going to happen again?” Izzy asked, looking down with disgust and concern at his hands. “Was I underprepared for this?”

  “Of course you were underprepared,” Yelric said, turning fully to face Izzy. “You said you came from a place with zero magic; we still haven’t really talked about what that means. This is your first full day with magic and you took the hardest road, of course it is going to be bumpy. We just need to get you more accustomed to the stresses and appropriate releases that come with magic, particularly your lightning.”

  “I felt like I was going to pop,” Izzy said, thinking about the episode. “Like something was building inside of me and I had to let it go or I’d go insane. Is that going to keep happening if I don’t use my magic?”

  “Yes,” Yelric responded, then he added after a pause, “and no… Some people do feel a sense of stored magic after a time of not using it, but with the appropriate control and practice they can make it so their cores don’t absorb any more ambient magic. You haven’t had that chance, and I suspect there are a few other Space core users in the city that struggled with the same thing you just did. Hopefully, none of them had only just absorbed their cores today and were able to stop the disruption of their cores and either stopped the ambient absorption or found a way to release it safely.”

  Izzy felt like pushing this line of questioning on the phenomenon was not in his best interests, or appropriate, at this time. Izzy got himself off the ground and grabbed another cookie, trying to act so relaxed that his mind believed that he was.

  “So,” Izzy said through a mouthful of cookie. He hadn’t noticed before, but it was quite tasty. “What did you find out? Did you go invisible and then portal somewhere?”

  “I did,” Yelric responded, turning back to the chair with his MACK. “I found out that the people we saw in the street, the Champions of Altanir, Beliandor, Innianor, as well as the one from Tilamis who was already here, have all been abducted by a mysterious figure. I didn’t go around asking questions; I’m known here as a well-connected entrepreneur and I am not ready to give up that fa?ade. I heard enough to know that it is She.”

  “Uhhh…” Izzy responded, confused. “She who?”

  “Exactly,” Yelric said, his voice dropping to a growl. “Who indeed? I won’t bore you with the details just yet, but know this; She and I have crossed paths before and when we did a lot of people died and went missing. She is chaos made physical.” He straightened up and put away his MACK, physically indicating his intention to move away from the topic. “Well, this chair is shot. Your magic has disrupted it and I can’t do anything with it except tear out the leather and use the wood for a fire.”

  Yelric turned back to a blushing Izzy, his face bright with embarrassment.

  “Again Izzy, it isn’t your fault,” Yelric reassured Izzy. “Listen… I need to go do some snooping and you need to practice more with your magic. We’d talked before about you joining the Pathfinder Guild and I think that would be a really good opportunity right now. They are probably looking for every possible able-bodied person; you’ll get dropped into guard duty most likely, but that should be fine for now.

  “There are still sporadic aberration attacks happening on the people restoring the city, but it shouldn’t be anything you can’t handle. You have,” Yelric paused, a smirk cracking his face, “your ‘unlimited powah’, don’t you?”

  Izzy grinned and rolled his eyes. “You think that is enough of an offensive spell to deal with those things?” Izzy asked.

  “From what I saw, most definitely!” Yelric said, nodding. “Magical creatures like that are typically susceptible to spatial magic attacks. More natural creatures like bears and wargs not so much, though it does work on them. Lightning tends to hurt just about anything, right? But inherently magical creatures rely too heavily upon their body and magic since they have such weak souls. The Law of Body and Soul isn’t as prevalent for them.”

  Izzy recalled reading about this particular Law and had found it intriguing. If he hadn’t performed such an advanced healing spell, he would have probably had a harder time understanding the concept. Generally, magic and weapons could harm the physical form housing a person’s or creature’s soul, but since the soul wasn’t physical it was much harder to harm.

  Also, since the body was a physical interpretation of the soul, modifying the body against the person’s or creature’s willpower was not only difficult, but was nigh on impossible and tantamount to voodoo. The greater the willpower or soul, the less likely it was that one could modify the body. Since there were only a few unconfirmed anecdotes of the manipulation of a body without the consent of its owner, it was described as a Law.

  This didn’t extend to magical manifestations or similar monsters because of their weak souls or complete lack of one; with no governing willpower, the body was much more susceptible to manipulation than naturally occurring beings.

  “That’s good,” Izzy said, nodding. “If I really had to push myself, I’m not sure how that would go for me or anybody around me.”

  “Indeed,” Yelric agreed. “I don’t see much happening on guard duty, a lot of the fighting is randomly on the outskirts of town now.”

  Izzy left Yelric in the front and went to clean up from his ordeal, switching out his clothes and using the wonderful and magic indoor plumbing to clean himself off. After a few more centering exercises he was starting to feel a little better. He made his way back out into the shop to head to his date.

  “Okay,” Izzy said, happy with the opportunity to do something fun. He snagged another cookie from the counter. “I’m going to go see Elana and then head to the guild early tomorrow. While I check out the guild, anything I should be asking about or looking into?”

  “No,” Yelric said firmly. “At least, not that you should be seeking yourself. First and foremost, you should focus on the task the guild gives you. As I said, it will probably be a guard duty. Take it seriously, these first few tasks they give people are usually garbage jobs to weed out the attention and thrill seekers.”

  “Sounds good!” Izzy said, trying to get excited, but not too excited. “I… uh… I don’t need to worry about another episode, right? If I’m protecting people, I don’t want to be wondering if I am actually the danger.”

  “Probably not,” Yelric said thoughtfully. He indicated the chair and said, “Looks like you expended the disruption pretty thoroughly. That being said, stay focused and use the breathing techniques you learned. Eventually you’ll do them naturally even in the heat of battle.”

  “All righty then,” Izzy said, doing his best Ace Ventura. He was starting to actually feel more like himself after the chat with Yelric and the cookie. He made his way out from behind the counter and started for the door. He thrust one fist into the air as he made it to the door. “I gotta go see about a girl!”

  Yelric shook his head as the door closed again, his grin fading. He wondered at the young man who had turned his world upside down in the matter of a week. Yelric was confident that there were more than a few things he still didn’t understand about Izzy, his powers, and where he came from. Eventually, they’d get to the bottom of it together and they’d both be better off for it.

  Yelric turned to the ruined chair and cushion.

  “I liked that cushion…”