Somehow, I didn't know that when István concentrates really hard, he sticks his tongue out.

I guess the explanation could be that I'd never seen him concentrate hard enough. Maybe it was like some sort of concentration gauge: the harder he concentrates, the farther out he sticks it.

Either way, it was an amusing anecdote for a man who otherwise was the absolute picture of poise. Even when he was down on his knees scribing the insanely complex seal Celistar was instructing him in. He'd been spending almost as much time ogling the details as he had actually working on them, to the point where we had to get him back on track once or twice.

He was using this device he'd evidently made that allowed him to more or less 'spray' whatever tincture he used for seal creation directly on the ground. Seemed a lot less taxing than dragging some sort of catalyst around the hard way.

The resultant product took up a space at least ten meters wide. It seemed a bit excessive for one person, so when Celistar mentioned that it was normally used for groups, it made sense.

The thing was, it was usually powered by groups of six or more as well. Not just a random six people, six who were trained to maintain a smooth, constant flow of Nebula against each other. Obviously, we didn't have those qualifications, either in quantity or quality.

That'd be down to me.

Steeve had reappeared with Yuèyīng, both of them having seemed rather uncomfortable to be inside the city limits, which they were still staying well away from.

Surprisingly, they seemed to get along really well. After examining the goings-on, Steeve had laid down in a ring, her head resting on her tail. Yuèyīng then sat inside the ring like a nest, if nests had fur and the ability to defy physics. They both seemed fine with the arrangement, so who was I to judge?

With a flourish, István finished up his work, standing up and wiping his knees off. Not that there had been any dirt on them; the action seemed more ceremonial than anything.

Celistar walked over and set her hand on it. It lit up starting from where she touched and slowly spreading across. She gave an appreciative nod to István. "Excellent work."

"It is my standard," he replied, with a smile and a bow.

"Now comes the hard part," Celistar said, looking at me. "You need to supply a regular, controlled source of power at each of the six areas marked out around the perimeter." She pointed at the one closest to her, a circle breaking up the line of the larger circle the seal had been formed inside.

I gave a bit of a nervous laugh. Hard part indeed. Even with all my improvements, controlling my output wasn't my strong suit, unless you wanted me to control it to 'all of the output'. That I could do.

I held out my hands, feeling like doing so would help with the visualization I was going to need to do to pull this off. The six nodes of Nebula formed easily enough, compact and dense enough to be almost opaque. I could see immediately that they wouldn't work for the intended purpose, though: there were little curls and wisps of mist wafting off of them, uncontrolled Nebula at its finest.

There had to be a more stable way for me to build it up that allowed for it to not just rush away.

There was a series of crunching noises off to my left, sharp cracks that sounded like someone chewing on ice. Looking over while carefully maintaining my hold on the existing power, I saw Steeve was crunching on what looked like a rock, only it was lightly glowing, similar to the light sources we'd seen in the cave where we 'tactically acquired' the BeetleMechs. Those had lit the cave the entire time we were in there, and even appeared in several places in the interior. I also remembered the office building itself being some sort of power source, with similarly glowing walls.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

As I'm sure was the intention, the little fox had jogged my memory. I just needed to recreate one of whatever those were, but, uh, more betterer.

I let five of the six dissipate. This got me an eyebrow from Celistar, but it seemed she trusted me to figure it out. Of the one remaining, I directed the power from the ones I'd released. It streamed across the circle like a thick, if oddly motivated, fog. The fog from the nearest ones arrived first, and I set about compressing it down into the shape I was visualizing.

A sort of pattering sound, like rain, emerged from within the now tightly packed ball of fog. It was completely unreadable with normal sight, but with mine I could see little pinpricks of brightness, points of higher concentration. I pushed the energy towards them, hoping to accrete more of it into place.

They grew larger in an irregular manner, as though they were precipitating out of a super concentrated solution like the candy Gran made for us once when Grandpa had traded some work for an entire bag of sugar. She'd carefully heated, before leaving it in a clear jar. It'd been fun to watch it build itself around the sticks she'd hung in place as the remaining water evaporated.

Doing my best not to drool at the memory, I pushed even more Nebula into place, and the sounds inside the cloud of it intensified. A feeling of criticality pushed back at me, and all at once I pressed down at the cloud with all the force I could muster.

There was a thump I could feel in my feet, and the remainder of the Nebula fog dissipated. In its place was a jagged looking, milky stone that was a golden-white hue.

"That's a spirit stone!" Celistar said, looking at it excitedly. She cleared her throat, "At least that's what we called them. I'd always thought they were created by the Will of the World, but to see you make one out of pure Nebula was enlightening."

There were some scraps, pieces of condensate that hadn't made it into the whole, scattered around the base like shards of ice. István nearly left forward, deftly scooping them up before looking back at us.

"Do you mind if I use these?" He asked, the barest hint of a blush on his face. It was like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Gran would not be impressed.

I, on the other hand, could not have given fewer shits.

"Go ahead, knock yourself out."

The other five proceeded much the same way, and we soon stood in front of a completed seal, almost vibrating with power.

Well, actually vibrating with power. I could feel the faint pulses through my feet. Additional layers had appeared above it when it powered up, ghosts of the complicated lines below them, something that had István hovering as close as we'd tolerate to the edge to examine.

Qīwù was sullen and upset, sitting and pouting in a way I would have called immature had Liam had done it. It was clear to me that she really didn't want to take ownership of any of the errors she'd made so far.

Besides, to hear her tell it, this wasn't even a punishment. She didn't like any of the 'fun' fighting critters the rest of us were having, everything was uncomfortable, et cetera.

Who wouldn't want to go to the epitome of comfort, if that's how they felt?

"Remember," Celistar said, guiding the younger woman into the center of the seal. "Report back what I told you, and there will be no further repercussions."

"Whatever," she said dismissively. It was like all her respect for the Ancient One had evaporated, something I didn't see coming.

Celistar held her hand out and the seal whirred to even more life than it'd already had, the ghost images spinning about each other in a complicated geometric dance I didn't even try to follow with my eyes.

Not that I needed to, I could just crib notes off István, if his furious writing in his notebook was anything to go off of.

The pulses grew closer and closer together, with light rising first from the 'spirit stones', as Celistar had called them, before propagating outward into the rest of the seal.

"May the winds blow in your favor," Celistar said, before closing her hand. A crack rang out, followed by a breeze strong enough to nearly lift me off my feet, and the girl rocketed into the air. She quickly became nothing more than a speck in the distance, looking almost like a comet as the winds surrounded her with a density rivaling the Nebula I'd used to power the whole mannerism.

Celistar looked almost sad for a moment, but quickly turned away, looking at me instead.

"I should have been there to guide them." Her sadness turned into a frown.

"Shit happens," I said, "You either get a shovel or you wallow in it." I shameless stole a phrase my grandfather told me many times.

Her laugh rang out like a wind chime, fitting for someone from a Stormwind Circle. Maybe less so for a Moon Fairy.

"Say, why is your sect Wind-based instead of Moon?" I asked.

Her face lit up like she'd been waiting to answer it.

A thunderous roar behind us rudely interrupted her as she opened her mouth to answer.

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