Shard

  The m, Niphru woke up to the sounds of Dawn taking a shower, making him wonder if she had eve or if he had simply been asleep deeply enough to miss her.

  Figuring it was unimportant, he headed onto the baly and began abs mana, as he had been staying at a low overload for some time now, and he hoped to improve his body as well.

  Eventually, he heard the shower stop, and headed baside while redug how much maook in. Momentarily, Dawn emerged from the bathroom and headed toward the kit to prepare breakfast. Fortunately, she didn’t appear tired, so she must have gotten some sleep, and he had just been too deeply asleep to notice.

  As he ate, Niphru asked, “Were you going to go back out a with roup again today, or were you pnning on staying in?”

  “Oh, I nning on practig with the group today; were you still aiming to go out again after all your work?” replied Dawn as she paused in her meal.

  He replied, “Yes, I ’t wait to show off what I’ve managed! It will be good to see everyone again, too, even if we didn’t get too close so far.”

  Dawn nodded as she resumed eating.

  A short while ter, they both headed out to the on area outside their residence, walking a short way around the spire to meet up with everyone else.

  The first to react was Richard, who excimed, “Hello again, Niphru! We were starting to get worried about you! Are you doing okay?”

  In response, Niphru nodded before stating, “I was busy practig with my force magic; I kept thinking I was about to succeed in my goal with it but kept ending up just short. I do it now, though!”

  He the into the air, but didn’t e back down, instead standing on an invisible ptform around the level of everyone’s heads.

  Miana hummed to herself upon seeing this occur, while Viera remarked, “Well, I wasn’t expeg to see a flying fox today. I see how that would be difficult to learn.”

  Thomas also respoo the unusual sight, “That is impressive, Niphru! Unfortunately, I don’t think any of us will be able to copy you, we just weigh too mubsp; And that is ign the ability to use force magic to begin with.”

  Miana nodded before speaking up, “I see that being quite useful if you have to fight. Typically, when your oppo jumps, they e back down immediately after.”

  “I hadn’t sidered that yet; I was just focused on being able to keep myself from falling, as well as making it easier to move around,” Niphru remarked as he dropped back to the ground.

  Following this, the rest of the group brought up their progress in their practice over the past several days, leading Niphru to ask several questions about his own attempts at basiipution.

  During this eime, he tinued abs mana at a slow pace, feeling his reserves getting more heavily overloaded as time went on. Curious, since he hadn’t checked before, he used his telekiic grip to remove the mana stone from the pouch around his o look at it. Unlike usual, it seemed like it was faintly shining.

  Oddly—and armingly—once he focused on it, the crystal began drawing in energy at a rapid pace, actually abs all of the ambient mana in the area, dragging more in from outside. Despite his best efforts, he found himself uo even slow it dow aloop it, even as his instincts screamed about the dangerous amounts of mana he was abs.

  Dawn jumped up, feeling the panic over their bond, and rushed over to try to help, listening as he stuttered out an expnation of what was going on. Simirly, upon hearing what was happening, the rest of the group began trying to block the ining energy or draw it into themselves.

  Despite their best efforts, mana slipped from their grip, or even found itself torn from them as Niphru’s mana stone began to glow more and more brightly, soon being the brightest light on the floor. As the glow increased, the crystal seemed to soften, edges being more rounded as time passed. Eventually, crag noises began, this time from Niphru himself as he fell to the floor in pain.

  Before his visio dark, Niphru noticed his perspective slowly moving upward.

  Eventually, he awoke again, finding himself ba bed, Dawing beside him. Standing up, he almost toppled over, his legs too long for his muscle memory. Looking around as Dawn stirred, he additionally found himself surrounded by three orbs of foxfire rather thawo he expected, each slowly spinning around the two of them.

  As he returo full awareness, he noticed that he was missing the pouch he had previously worn around his neck, and instead was wearing a harness with bags oher side. Quickly spreading his senses outward, he found that his mana stone was not iher of the bags but instead in Dawn’s grasp.

  Jumping down from the bed, he actually colpsed this time, bashing his head into the floor as he tumbled, much to his annoyahough it didn’t hurt. Fortunately, no onessed his ck of coordination, so he prete just didn’t happen as he stood up again.

  From looking at the bed, he figured that he was now almost half again as tall as he had been before the events before he had passed out. Fog baward, he found, surprisingly, that nothing seemed to have gone wrong, his mana-seelling him that he had slightly higher internal mana than before, but nothing overly-trated, nor g. Likewise, he didn’t feel any pain anymore.

  Oddly enough, however, he felt two faint bonds besides the oh Dawher of which had been there before. As he paid attention to them, the two seemed to shift unfortably before suddenly snapping together and merging with one another.

  Dawn finally finished waking up, quickly turning around before panic flowed through their bond for a moment, ending as she saw him standing beside the bed. She practically flopped out of bed in her haste to reach him, scooping him up into her p as she tightly hugged him, pressing her fato his fur.

  “I was so worried! You just fell over and started growing, and the ma going into you and your mana stone, and we couldn’t stop it, and your stone even cracked several times before it stopped, and it has been days without you moving at all!” Dawn excimed in a rush, muffled by her position.

  After f Dawn and reassurihat he was okay, she finally remembered she was holding his mana stone, and she set it down for him to look at. Uhe lumpy stone before, it was now a nearly perfect orb, with small lines crossing each other on the inside, showing that it was slightly transparent. After a moment of iing it, he levitated it into one of the pouches on his harness and followed Dawn to the kit to help with breakfast.

  Unlike what he expected, however, it appeared his grip was much strohan before, causing several minor acts as he assisted with the cooking. Fortunately, it was difficult to damage potatoes or scrambled eggs by squishing them, so breakfast was still fie the few mistakes.

  Shard