[Sig – 13 years]

Aunt Rachel had Mr. Richardson talk with me about some stuff regarding dating, trusting him with this since he's a child psychologist who deals with youth with traumatic backgrounds. Specifically, it was about stuff I need to keep in mind when dating Xander.

She was concerned I might unknowingly trigger his PTSD and felt it best if someone who had experience dealing with kids who had it talk with me.

One of those things he discussed with me was kisses. Aunt Rachel hadn't thought of it, but Mr. Richardson was very clear that I shouldn't try to initiate a kiss with Xander, no matter how much I might want to. At the time, I hadn't really thought about kissing him much, but now I kind of want to.

Not a big make out session like I sometimes see high schoolers do, but maybe a quick peck on the cheek.

Because of what happened to him in the past, Mr. Richardson said I should let Xander lead anything physical between us. That includes even holding hands, not just hugs and kisses, and anything else. It seems to be okay for me to hug him as long as I ask first, and it might even be fine for me to hug him without asking first if he seems to be in a good enough mood for it. We haven't kissed yet, though.

Not that I think about kissing much. It's just sometimes, I want to do it. And when we were alone and private, I thought Xander might be comfortable enough to be okay with it, but I didn't want to ask in case it made him feel like he had to.

Which is why I asked if there was anything he wanted to do. Rather than a kiss, he gave me a hug, but that's fine, too! His hugs are awesome! Then my tail curled around him (not intentional on my part, it just did) and his own started wagging even harder.

Even if what I hoped for didn't happen, I'm still happy. Xander seems to be, too, as his face looks a little bit brighter as we chow down on dinner. It did all throughout us making it with Carter and Austin.

I was on wing duty as that was a lot easier and Xander might not trust me to make garlic bread. He was insistent that I do wings and not the garlic bread, which Austin ended up making. We have garlic bread with cheese melted on top as well, and that tastes pretty good.

"Want some help cleaning up?" I offer once we're all done eating.

"No," Xander answers. "I can clean all of the dishes in a few minutes with magic.

"Oh, right!" I say. "You do that, don't you? You clean your clothes that way, too, right?"

"I use a different spell for clothes."

"That's not what I-okay!" I laugh. "Yeah. Want some help making dessert?"

There's no way Xander isn't going to make something fresh for us.

"No, thank you," he says. "Y'all can go have fun while I do that."

"Alright!" I say. "I wanna check out the maze tag!"

Some of the boys want to go swimming while others want to play a game in the theater, but there are six of us who want to play maze tag. Carter, Tate, Bo, Austin, Seph, and me. It's a shame no one else does, but at least we can split this into even teams!

"Oh!" Xander softly exclaims. "Before y'all go off, here."

He starts handing strength-limiting bracelets to us.

"Wait," Luke says. "These are bracelets? Not anklets like what you gave Tyler and me?"

"Yeah," Xander says. "Yours was designed to make it so that your classmates could tell if you were using it or not."

Seph bursts out laughing, so I guess there's some sort of history there. I guess when you're as powerful as Luke is, classmates might not want to be on an opposing team during PE. Him having that would make sure they not only don't have to deal with his superior strength, but also that they can see that he's limited down to their mana level in strength output.

What is funny about that, I'm not sure, but there's definitely some sort of story to it.

Those of us going to play maze tag put on our bracelets and head to the gym, then to the table with the stuff for the game. Xander has pinnies, AR guns, AR glasses, and a console sitting on the table here. The glasses and pinnies are in blue, green, and purple, just as I expected.

For whatever reason, Xander's averse to warm colors.

"Nine of each color?" Seph asks.

There are nine pinnies and nine glasses in each color, and even the guns come in sets of nine. Each gun has markings on it in the colors of a team.

"Yeah," Carter says. "With there being eighteen of us, excluding Xander, this means we can split into two teams of nine for all of us to play. Or three of six. The pinnies are probably for if anyone of us brought our own glasses to use, so that we don't have to rely on them matching our team's colors."

"But Xander didn't know there'd be eighteen of us," Seph says. "Weren't some of us random invites?"

I guess a couple of brief conversations with Xander isn't anywhere near enough for him to know a little about how Xander's mind works. Well, that makes sense considering I'm his boyfriend and I don't. But I know enough to answer this question.

"You were probably planned," I tell him. "This seems to be Xander wanting to throw a party and trying to invite everyone he thinks would attend a party he throws. By that, I mean his friends, and then people he thinks his friends would want to invite, if we could bring others. And not gonna lie, I definitely would've asked about inviting you. You were cool, when we met, and I've been wanting to see if we could hang out again, whether on another hunting trip or just to hang out."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously!" I say. "But I don't have your number and I'm not sure if Mr. Fuller would give it to me, so I've been trying to figure out how to get it."

"Oh," he says. "Yeah, I can give it to you!"

We trade numbers real quick, then I grab a pair of blue glasses.

"Tate! With me!"

"Alright," Tate laughs.

"Austin, you're with me," Carter says. "Seph and Bo, you two join forces."

We pull on pinnies matching the colors of our glasses, then set up the game. It's basically laser tag, but with better point-scoring ability. This being AR means we don't need to hit specific items on a vest someone is wearing but can tag anywhere on them. The scoring is a lot more dependent on where on their body someone is hit as well.

The scoring system is detailed enough that a heart shot earns more than a slightly-off-of-the-heart shot. A critically-damaging brain shot is worth less than a fatally-damaging brain shot.

Once we've set things up, we head to different parts of the maze to begin our trip through it. This isn't really a maze in the sense that the goal is to get from the entrance to the exit, just in that there are definitely different paths which can be taken within it.

There are strips of glow lights set up throughout the passages, enough to let me see by within. The glasses won't let me turn on low-light viewing for this game, which means it was probably setup specifically to prevent us from having clear sight.

While snow leopardkin apparently don't have excellent low-light vision, the three wolfkin playing with us probably do. Oooh! That makes it one on each team, which is probably why Carter split us up that way.

Though it's fun even with having to rely on the strips of glow lighting to see by. There are openings in some of the walls to let me see as well, and it's through one of those that I spot Seph.

"Score!" I duck underneath it right after getting the points notice in my vision. "Haha!"

"Darn!" He exclaims. "Wasn't fast enough! Ack! Ha! Got ya!"

Seems someone else is here, too. I quickly hurry away, soon finding a spot where I can climb up to a higher level. Well, it's probably actually meant for someone to drop down into the lower level for, but I manage to jump up and grab onto the blocks just right to pull myself up. Mostly.

Okay, it takes me three attempts to actually manage to support myself on the sides of the holes, but then I make it up onto the higher level. From here, I run through the passages and get tagged by Carter while barely tagging him, pass by Tate twice, and find a pit of foam blocks.

The area up here isn't flat – Xander really made the levels varying in height and elevation. Some spots up here, I actually have to go down to pass through, but it doesn't quite take me all the way down to the floor. Either it helps act as a wall for something in the lower areas, or it might force someone to duck or crawl as they go through it.

Either way, it's fun to navigate!

The pit is on the ground level, though I can't see a way out of it down there. I can jump down into it from up here and will need to climb back up to exit it through one of the three passages leading off of it.

But it's the perfect ambush point, so I jump into the pit partially just to jump into it. The blocks are so soft, and they give easily! They're definitely several feet deep, though I know there's also magic in them and the padding below to enhance that. It enables the pits to be shallower than otherwise when safety is taken into consideration.

In other words, I won't risk breaking my back because it's too shallow because the height requirement is lower due to the magics used.

"Snow to Bull," I murmur as I bury myself into the pit, using the names we assigned ourselves in the system when setting up the game. "Do you read me?"

I probably don't need to murmur as it seems like there's an additional quieting enchantment going on. Even my snow leopardkin ears aren't hearing as well as they were outside of the arena, though they're not quite down to human levels. The magics in the glasses also don't actually project the sounds transmitted anywhere other than into the wearer's ears, so there's no chance of someone else overhearing me from Tate's end or him from mine.

With the foam blocks mostly covering me, my voice is probably muffled even further for those outside.

"Loud and clear," he snickers. "What's up?"

"I wish my tail was prehensile," I say. "I can't use it like another limb!"

"That's what you're buzzing me about?" He laughs. "Gotcha! Ha! Take that, Carter!"

"I've buried myself in a foam pit."

"You found one?" He exclaims. "Where is it? I wanna jump in!"

"Don't jump on me!" I tell him. "Lure someone here so we can both get points on them!"

"Roger that, Snow!" He says. "Backup is on the way! Where ya at?"

I quickly figure out how to send him my location, but it's not just a matter of giving him it and his glasses will give him the route here. Despite that, there's still a feature which makes this doable.

The glasses apparently record our paths through the maze and even generates a map based on that… sort of. It seems it only actually records a specific location if I've been down that passage three times total. There are a few areas marked out from me passing through them a few times or backtracking up here.

I use those to create directions for Tate, in case he's able to recognize their locations as well.

"Oooh!" Tate says. "We can share our mapped data! Oh, crap! Retreat! Retreat! Snow! I've got Wolf and Cake on my tail!"

That's Carter and Austin. Seems they've managed to meet up and found him and are probably going to score a lot of points. We can't see how many we've earned in total, even if it tells us how many we earn from shooting someone when it pops up. I hope they don't make our team come last from however many shots they'll manage while chasing him.

There's a cooldown on tagging someone, but chasing after him means they might get a few hits in.

"Sending you our location!" Tate says. "Come in from behind and get some points!"

Tate doesn't send me anything, which means he's probably doing that to throw them off his scent. At least, for what he's actually doing: bringing them to me.

Thinking that someone is going to come up from behind them will probably slow them down a little, including on shots.

Tate continues pretending like he's expecting me to come up behind them for about thirty seconds, then I see him charging towards the foam pit from the tunnel.

"ESCAPE COMPLETE!" He jumps into the pit, making sure to angle away from me.

He must've spotted me.

As he flies over the pit, he twists his body and aims his gun at the entrance he came in through. Carter and Austin come into view just as he does and I shoot both of them while moving minimally, in the hopes that they're too focused on him to notice me.

"Wait-what?" Carter looks around, quickly spotting me. "Snow!"

"Ha-ha!" I wiggle myself deeper so that he can't shoot me. "Can't shoot me now!"

"We'll see about that!" His voice comes closer.

"Crap!"

I can't move out of the way in time to avoid him landing right on me. A grunt escapes me from the impact, though it's cushioned somewhat by the blocks between us.

"Gotcha!" Carter jams his gun into the blocks and shoots. "Huh?"

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"Hah! Moved on ya!"

Carter shoots me then and I tackle him, wrestling him a little. With the bracelets making it so the amount of strength we can put out is the same as if we had Austin's level of mana with our muscles, we're actually somewhat even. He's a little bit stronger than me but I manage to flip him over.

"Now!"

Tate shoots Carter right in the face and I move my head behind Carter's to reduce the chance of Austin getting a lot of points. Austin and Tate join in the fray, turning this into just a wrestling match in the blocks. It's not as easy as if we were on solid ground, but it's still fun and we all get a few points before losing our guns.

As we wrestle like this, I suddenly get a notification informing me of a headshot by Archer… which is Bo, who I cannot see anywhere.

"Bo?" Carter exclaims.

Judging by Tate and Austin's reactions, Bo got all of them as well. I let go of Carter and we all try to find Bo, but he's already out of sight… and the moment the timer on points from me is down, there's a notification that Arrow got me.

"Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!" Bo lets out an evil laugh… from underneath the blocks.

"What?" I try to spot him. "When did you get here?"

"I was here the whoooooole time!"

"Where's Seph?" I ask.

"Dunno," Bo says. "Oh! He got you guys, too?"

"All of us, I think," Tate says. "Seph? Where are you?"

"Up here," Seph says, and we all look up to find him grinning from atop the arena. There's no roof over the blocks pit "Got lost on my way to find Bo and found a way up here. There are only two real levels, but you can also get up on the roof!"

He shoots all of us again, then jumps down from all the way up there, landing on his back at an angle. After sinking down a little, Seph joins in on the wrestling in the pit. We all end up losing our shirts by the end of the goofing around, but that's from trying to escape the grips of others.

"We should probably get back to the game," Carter says while we all take a breather.

"Yeah," I say. "Probably… but we'll need to find our shirts and guns first."

A message pops up in my HUD letting me know that I can say "Gun: Return" and the gun will return to me. Accompanying that is a note that it'll only summon to me the gun currently synced my glasses.

More than likely to avoid people using the feature to try and disarm someone else. It's only natural that Xander would put in an anti-theft feature for this. Being able to just take anyone's gun would be extremely unfair.

"Did anyone else get that message?" I ask.

"What message?"

"Xander's set includes spatial magic… you can summon the guns back to you."

"Oooooof course he did!" Carter laughs.

We rummage through the pit to find our shirts and manage to locate all but mine and Seph's, and only two of the guns. All of the shirts came off with the pinnies still over them, so those were found together for all but the two missing ones and Carter's pinnie. At least we have a way to quickly retrieve the guns we can't see, since those are actually important.

"I've got an idea," Carter says. "Hold on!" He gestures with his hands in an upward motion. "Or… not?"

"What'd you try?" Austin asks.

"Telekinetically lifting the blocks," Carter answers. "They must be warded against that."

Probably a measure meant to avoid someone moving them out of the way from someone jumping in as a "prank" that could actually end up hurting someone. It does have some downsides, though, but I'd rather be safe with something like this or not.

The last thing anyone needs is someone saying it's just a prank while doing something which could break someone else's back.

"It's not like I was going to end up shirtless in an hour or so," I say. "Then spend the rest of the night that way. The plan was to go swimming after this and dessert. I'll just let Xander know that some shirts and pinnies got lost in the pit while wrestling."

We split up with a five-minute wait so that we can actually distance ourselves from each other a little, then resume the game. It's fun and we refrain from wrestling in the foam pits and ball pit… mostly. Carter's shirt disappears as well, due to wrestling Seph in the ball pit.

Which is how we learn that putting someone into a headlock for thirty seconds or until they yield also earns points. Xander might not like physical contact with people, but he sure factored in how much we love wrestling each other into the programming for this game.

Half an hour after the massive wrestle-fest in the first foam pit I found, a small message icon pops up in the corner of my vision. Carter's not saying whatever it is? Or is this someone else?

Oh, it's Xander letting me know that desserts are ready. I ping the others for a group comm with the glasses.

"Dessert time?" I ask. "Xander just sent me a notification on my glasses saying it's ready."

"I think we all got that," Seph says. "I got one, too. Let's go see what he's put out."

We head to the front and put away the two remaining pinnies. We ended up losing more, and Tate's shirt vanished at some point as well. He was wrestling Carter in a foam pit towards the end, apparently.

When we enter the rec room, Xander has the leftovers from dinner spread out on a table; a table with plates and bowls of fruits, vegetables, and dips; a table with different ice creams, dry toppings, and sauces; a table with pies, cake, and cookies; and a table with chips, pretzels, cheese puffs, popcorn, and the like.

"That's… not dessert," Seph is as confused as I am.

"The desserts are on those tables," Xander points to the ice cream and baked goods tables. "But parties should also have other snacks, I realized, so I made more. Um… not all of them were homemade. Some of the other snacks were store-bought. But I made the chips."

The stuff bought at a store were probably purchased by Ms. Katie for this in anticipation of there needing to be snacks for a party beyond just dinner and dessert.

"Ah," I say. "By the way, we were wrestling around in the ball and foam pits and some of us lost our shirts and pinnies in them."

"We tried finding them," Carter says. "But that didn't work. Telekinesis to move the blocks and balls didn't, either."

"They're magicked to avoid that," Xander gestures with his hands and the missing shirts appear in front of their owners. "There you go. The balls and foam blocks will also return to the pits if they're removed from them. It's just to make handling them easier. And to avoid people moving them out of the way as someone else is going under."

"Aaaaaah," we all say.

I had guessed that last part, but not the first part. At least where I was, the balls and blocks never left the pits they were from.

"Y'all can get desserts and snacks if you want," he says. "They'll be out for the whole party. Oh, and the tables are enchanted to keep any food on them in stasis. This way, we don't have to worry about putting them away so they don't get bad."

"Specifically food?" Seph asks. "You can set up an enchantment like that, where it only affects food?"

"It makes it safer," Xander says. "And it was simpler than trying to design it to ignore people. Putting that on a container is easier than a table since it's enclosed."

"That's pretty cool," Seph says as I sling my shirt over my shoulder. "Do you, uh… never mind."

"Just ask!" I clap him on the back. "Xander'll tell you if he doesn't want to answer something."

"Um…" Seph gives me a nervous look, then looks at Xander. "How'd you learn to enchant?"

"The dork taught me a little," Xander answers. "And I look up stuff, too. And then I look at how magic reacts to itself and to mana and how mana reacts to itself and magic and make adjustments. That's more for optimization, though."

Xander has a look on his face that says he wants to know why Seph wanted to ask that, but he doesn't ask for some reason.

"Hey, Seph?" I say, and Seph looks at me. "Why were you interested? Thinking Adrian King was teaching him?"

"Maybe a little," Seph admits. "I mean, Mr. King's been involved in basically everything Xander's done."

"I've been making enchanted things since before I met Grandpa Adrian," Xander says. "It can be considered largely self-taught, he told me. Even now, it's mostly me looking stuff up and figuring them out that way, or by looking at other enchantments and figuring things out."

"Ah," Seph says. "So who's 'the dork'? Another kid?"

"One of my second-cousins," Xander says. "He's a genius who attends that special academy Grandpa Adrian set up for supergenius kids. He's mostly stopped the illegal stuff."

That last comment makes me laugh. He said it so casually, like it's normal for people to stop illegal things rather than to just not do it in the first place. With everything I've heard about Greyson, it's not surprising that he won't fully stop breaking the law.

"Ah," Seph says. "I've been hoping to learn enchantments, it'd help me with making stuff to sell. They'd sell for more that way, but the beginner enchanting books are… they make my head spin a little. I've been trying, but it ain't easy."

"Oh!" Xander's face lights up. "I read that some parties are crafting parties, but I wasn't sure what kind of stuff we could do to craft. Parties where they make an item there, like painting a piece of pottery, or do a painting, or something. If you want, I can do a crafting lesson. Some enchantments are super simple and can be learned really quickly. I even have enchanting pens that don't need your own mana and enchanting fluid cylinders."

"You don't need to do that," Seph fidgets a little.

"I was just gonna enchant some stuff for a bit, anyway," Xander tells him. "We can see who all wants to do that. The group from the theater is arriving now and the pool group is on their way here. They were showering off after the pool."

The boys who were at the pool are still in their trunks, while the guys who were in the theater are still in a state of full dress. That makes sense, but I don't put my shirt back on. There's no point when I'll be swimming after that. Besides, the temperature in here is comfortable!

"What would we be crafting?" Luke asks once Xander proposes the idea of him teaching a little bit of enchanting to anyone who wants to learn and do that for their next activity rather than return to playing. "Since you said something simple, would it be something like a magitech light?"

"I could do that," Xander nods. "I've got the materials."

Does he just carry random materials for making magic items on him at all times now?

Who I am kidding, of course he does! Xander likes doing things with his hands and is usually crafting something if he's got nothing else to do. Having a wide variety of materials on him at any given point in time probably makes it easier to just start working on something when he's bored.

"Count me in!" Luke says.

We all want to learn how to do whatever it is Xander's going to teach us, so we all get our snacks and dessert, then move to the tables.

"Alright," Xander says once we're all seated, with him standing in front of all of the tables. "Who knows the difference between enchanted items and magitech?"

[Luke – 13 years]

Seeing the difference between Xander's lessons on how to make a magitech lamp versus mine will be really neat, which is why I'd asked about that. It'll also help me out for the next time I teach a lesson on magitech.

I didn't actually expect him to be able to do something like this on the fly and figured it would just be something like enchanting a piece of leather or something. Those pouches of his must really have a lot of stuff inside.

"Luke," Xander says, and I put my hand down. "What do you think the difference between them is?"

There's no way he called on me for no reason, not when others had their hands up. This is definitely because he wants to hear from an actual magitech engineer what they think the difference is.

"Enchantments add an effect to an item," I say. "While magitech is tech which uses magic. It's an attempt at sort of replicating the scientific process via magical means. And the distinction between magic and science is that magic only seems to follow some actual laws because you can use spell formulas and enchantments and stuff to get generally consistent results.

"I say 'generally consistent'," I say. "Because magic will randomly decide to just do its own thing. When I do a lesson on magitech lamps, I sometimes show an enchanted cube to the class where the color is wrong. Why is the color wrong? Because it is. Magic decided that instead of the blue it was supposed to be, it'll be bright pink. The enchantments and materials are the same, the color is just different. Or a magitech lamp randomly changes colors for eighty-seven seconds for no reason, simply because that's what magic did despite the rules set through the magitech not telling it to."

"Or a puppy pops into existence instead of a fireball," Xander says. "Yeah, enchantments and spell formulas and stuff like that aren't really forcing magic to obey. Instead, it's just telling it 'hey, can you move this way and act like this', and then magic decides whether or not it does."

I want to hear more about this puppy. How does one get a puppy instead of a fireball?

"As for your answer…" he hesitates for a few moments. "Half-points because you're partially correct. Enchantments change the nature of an object via magic. Magitech is when effects are created via magical interactions as a form of technology, excluding things like an on-off button or drawing on a mana crystal or something like that. They might include enchantments, might not."

That's slightly different from the version I've heard is the correct one. I'd challenge that notion… except this is Xander. He can see the difference.

Anyone who argues about the differences in magic with someone who actually see magic itself needs to be absolutely certain of their argument.

"What do you mean by them changing the nature of an object?" Sig asks. "Isn't enchanting something just adding an effect to it?"

"Yes and no," Xander answers. "There are two types of enchantments. The first type, I call 'temporary' enchantments. They don't last as long and sort of match up with what you say. Um. Maybe 'pseudoenchantments' would be a better term? They imitate being an enchantment and add an effect to an item. The enchantment itself has to remain on the object for it to remain that way because it's the enchantment which actually houses the effect, not the object.

"A real enchantment, however, doesn't need that," he says. "Once it's set, it's permanent… until the object is damaged too much, anyway. It can add an effect to an item, but it alters the item's properties to have that effect.

"The reason the materials you use for an enchantment matters is because of this," he continues. "Most enchantments which take the materials into consideration actually partially affect the object itself. That's because it's easier to set the enchantment when there are less differences between it and the object. This isn't a strict requirement. You can make a normal glass marble hold a stasis pocket if you try, it's just easier if you use something like pocket hare leather.

"Anyway," he says. "That's the difference. Pseudoenchantments are temporary and only use the object they're on as a base or to partially hold the enchantment. Permanent enchantments create a fundamental change to the object so that the object itself actually has that magic as its own. Magitech is an item which has interacting parts in order to create an effect as a form of technology.

"And the lamp we're making," he says. "Is an enchantment, not magitech. It's a single object which houses the magic rather than moving parts and connections and such."

That's a shame as I was really hoping to see the magitech lamp that he makes, but I guess this works as well! I do know how to make these on my own and the ones I use for the demonstration in lessons are ones I made.

Xander pulls out some stuff from his storage, and S.G. helps distribute it to all of us. Our tools are extremely simple… a block of wood 3" on each side and an enchanting pen. No rules, protractors, stencils, nothing. Just the object we're enchanting and the pen.

Not even a pen with multiple enchanting fluid types, just a pen.

"This is the enchantment you'll be doing," Xander says as light weaves itself together behind him to form a large version of an enchantment. "The magic lamp I'll be showing you is a simple one, which just has a set color, will turn on or off with three taps, will have any part of it which is covered be off, and will allow you to turn on or off individual sides with two taps."

"That's simple?" Bo asks. "Seems complicated to me."

This is definitely a complex enchantment, even if not an extremely complex one. I have to agree with Bo that this isn't simple.

"It doesn't change colors," Xander says. "And you can't adjust the brightness. Or other features I ain't remembering right now. Anyway, just draw this on the cubes. Here, lemme adjust the layout."

The cube-shaped enchantment unfolds itself so that it's spread out in the same shape one would make in order to cut out a piece of paper to fold up into a cube. Minus the flaps for taping, that is.

Four squares in a horizontal line, plus a square to either side of the second one down. Xander adds in red-colored lines so we know where the edges are, and he makes sure we know not to draw them.

He walks us through what each part of the enchantment does and what its purpose is. The one he's presented to us is a lot simpler in looks than the one I know, with only about a third of the markings. Despite it having a much simpler-looking enchantment, the one displayed contains several longevity ones, including increased durability, waterproofing, fireproofing, and bug-proofing.

How in the world does he consider this to be simple?

I realize as I draw the enchantment how. Despite how complex the enchantment is, it really is simple to set into place.

Once I put in the final section, the one which causes the enchantment to set itself onto the cube, they glow for a few moments, then return to being just silvery-blue lines on it. I tap the cube three times and… it begins to glow a gentle green.

The design he gave really works, yet it's so much simpler than any I've ever seen before. I've seen him at work on improving stuff before since he helped me out with my generator, but this is even more than I thought.

My generator probably didn't have much which could be simplified, or his knowledge of enchantments is superior now to back then. To remove two-thirds of the markings on an enchantment while changing others yet have it function all the same, that's just insane.

"Ha-ha!" S.G. lifts his glowing cube up in the air. "It works!"

"Good job," Xander says, and I realize that he was working on a pen of some sort while we were working. "Luke got his done, too. Also, I realized that there's no real way for any of you to distinguish between the different ones, so I made a special pen. Y'all can use it to write your names on them."

"It won't affect the enchantment?" S.G. asks.

"It's mostly a permanent enchantment," Xander says. "The cubes were made of a wood from an oak tree with light magic properties, so they can house it pretty easily. I think Luke's the only one other than me here who's skilled enough as enchanting to actually make it permanent. But the markings now are just looks. The enchantments are set into the material and don't use them anymore. You've altered the properties of the cube, but it's only temporary since it's not a good enough job to make it so. It should still last years unless the cube gets too damaged, though."

In the time it took for me to set the enchantment in place, Xander created a pen which we can use to write on the cubes and not affect them. If it works like I think it does, whatever we write will still be visible when the cube is glowing, but not otherwise affect the light output.

"Oh," S.G. says. "Well, it's cool! Lemme see the pen!"

After S.G. puts his name on his cube, I use the pen to write mine on mine, finding a good spot in a corner to add it.

Since there's time for me to wait until everyone else is done, I grab some snacks, then S.G. and I start playing table soccer. There's a table for it set up in here and it's been awhile since I've played.

"Go 'till the others are done?" S.G. asks.

"Let's," I respond. "Then after, I want to try the maze tag!"

"If you enjoyed the zombie shooter Xander made," S.G. tells me. "You are going to love the maze tag."

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