I landed among my friends with a smile. “I could get used to this.”
A bit more tinkering gave me a better idea of the ring’s intended uses…and maybe a few other options.
After that, it was time to try out something I’d been waiting even longer to tinker with.
“Patrick, come over here.”
“Sure!”
“Take off your glove.”
He frowned, but complied. “Did I do something wrong?”
Oops, did the social failure thing again. He probably thinks that’s symbolic or something.
“No, no. I want to try out my new attunement and see if I can make you more powerful.”
His expression brightened. “Oooh! Am I the first one?”
I nodded. “Yep, haven’t tried it on anyone else yet.”
I considered explaining my logic about Marissa and Sera having just received similar infusions of mana from other sources, but after considering it, I realized that would just diminish his happiness at being the first one I picked.
He stuck his hand closer. “Okay, let’s do this. Hit me with all you’ve got.”
I grinned, checking my mana watch. 65/84. I’d recovered almost all of my mana while we’d rested, and then used a bit of it again to tinker with the ring. My hand was still hurting, but it was tolerable for the moment.
I turned my Enchanter attunement on. It’d help me monitor his aura to see what happened.
With that done, I took Patrick’s hand. I sent a surge of mana through my attunement into his. The aura around my hand flashed, then glowed white while the attunement was active.
That was unexpected — it didn’t glow like that when I was just enchanting an item. The aura must have been the purification function at work.
From my side, it didn’t feel any different from the usual tingling sensation of sending my mana into an object. As I spent more time, the tingling would give way to burning, and then throbbing along with my pulse.
I didn’t know what it would feel like to him, though. “Does that hurt at all?”
“No, but it’s…maybe a little uncomfortable. It feels like my hand is filling up with water or something and that the water wants to get out.”
Not a bad analogy for what I was doing to the attunement, really. “I’ll just charge it a little more, then—”
His aura flickered, and his knees buckled for a moment. He stumbled away from me, his aura shifting from transparent to crimson.
The rune on his hand changed.
“W…woah!”
Marissa caught him before he could fall over.
I stepped closer. “You okay?”
“Yeah, just, uh, wow. I think I need to spend some of this.”
Marissa helped Patrick stand back up, then he turned his hand upward and cast a blast of lightening into the air.
He took a deep breath and his aura faded back from Carnelian down to Quartz.
His rune shifted back, too, changing to the simpler Quartz style.
I patted him on the shoulder. “Better now?”
Patrick nodded. “Yeah…that was just more intense than I expected. What happened?”
Oh, right. He couldn’t see what I could see. “You hit Carnelian for just a second.”
“Really? That is so amazing! Can you do it again?”
I found myself grinning, infected by his enthusiasm. “Yeah, but I’m not supposed to push someone over their maximum capacity more than once per week. We didn’t really push you to your limit — that’d be temporarily doubling your mana — but I don’t think we should risk breaking any rules until I have a better idea of what I’m doing.”
“Aww. I finally hit Carnelian and I barely got to do anything with it.” He laughed. “But it was still great! Thank you, Corin.”
“No problem.” I subconsciously wiped my hand on my shirt. Touching someone else still wasn’t easy for me. The moment of experimentation had overridden my reticence toward touch, but now the aftermath was hitting me hard.
“It only took me a few moments, so you’re already very close. You should hit Carnelian permanently soon. If you haven’t hit it by next week on your own, I’ll give you a boost once a week until you get there.”
“That sounds amazing! Thanks!” He stretched his arms. “I think I could still use some more exercise, though. You want to practice a bit?”
I shook my head. “Think I need to rest for a few.”
Really, I just needed a few minutes of not dealing with people.
“Maybe one of the other two will spar with you?”
Marissa waved him over. I found a corner as far away as possible and sat down to watch.
Sera sat down next to me in silence.
She was intruding on my isolation…but I found myself being bothered less than I expected.
Maybe it was just because I didn’t need to talk to her, but Sera didn’t bother me the same way that other people did, even among my friends. I didn’t know why, but at the moment, I didn’t really need to think about it.
I did, however, think about other things in those next minutes of silence. Like how much fun it had been to spend some time experimenting with my friends, even if it had ultimately proven to be too intense to continue.
It also made me realize that I’d taken an uncharacteristic risk by tinkering with the ring on the roof. True, I’d nearly blown myself up when I’d first built my gauntlet, but I’d taken what I’d considered to be reasonable precautions.
This time? My main precaution was bringing my friends.
And it’d worked. Even if the ring hadn’t had a built in safety function, Patrick would have saved me. I’d trusted them, and they’d helped me.
That was…a surprisingly good feeling.
Especially after everything I’d been through with the tower.
Jin came back to my mind without an express invitation, and Tristan quickly followed.
There was a part of me that felt like any trust that I formed was just going to be betrayed.
I shoved that part of me aside as hard as I could. One moment of joy couldn’t banish everything that had happened, but it was a good start, and I was going to bask in it for a while.
Adding to my own positivity was Patrick’s obvious awe at the replica of Dawnbringer that we’d been working on. It wasn’t quite finished yet, but it was already obviously Patrick’s favorite thing in the world.
He was having the time of his life just swinging it at Marissa, even if she was deftly dodging or deflecting every strike before it could connect.
It was good that we hadn’t actually finished the sword yet, because I would have had to step in and stop him from using it if the weapon was more dangerous. I didn’t trust shield sigils to stop whatever crazy magic Keras ended up imbuing it with.
Patrick nearly ended up going off the roof, too, before their sparring match was over.
For a while, Sera and I just watched Patrick and Marissa’s sparring practice. After a bit, though, she passed me a note.
Thanks for working so hard to find something to trade for me. With all these items, we’ll probably have something Sheridan wants.
I wasn’t so certain about that. If anything, the intelligent dagger that had…wandered off seemed like the most likely candidate for something that would be considered forbidden knowledge.
“No problem. I’ll keep working on this. And even if Sheridan doesn’t want to help, I’ll keep looking until I find someone who will.”