[Luke – 13 years]

"Hey, Xander?" I approach him at the table he's sketching at. "Is that a dragon?"

Probably a dumb question considering that it looks like a traditional western dragon, but I figured it's better to ask than not. It helps to open the conversation.

"A bad attempt at it," the page he's drawing on suddenly becomes blank. "Don't look at it."

Whether that's just an illusion or he just erased the whole thing with magic, I can't tell. It honestly wasn't that bad of an attempt, and I'm guessing he's spent a lot of time in accelerated personal time in order to work on his skills.

"Some of us were wanting to do the maze tag," I tell him. "The others were wanting to do it shirtless, but that'd mean no pinnies and relying only on the glasses to know the teams. Are there handkerchiefs we could use to tie around our arms or necks?"

In the upper classes like I am, going shirtless when not needing to be formal or shirted isn't a thing. Image is important for us as it affects how others perceive us, so we even tend to need to monitor our attire. It's probably one of the reasons I was so frustrated over clothing choices over the summer.

Though I do wear jeans often now, since I do like the style Xander picked for me. I'm wearing shorts at the moment since it matches the normal dress for everyone else here.

Among everyone here… I'm the only one actually in the upper classes by birth and raising. The others are feeling very casual right now and they're doing physical stuff.

Which makes it normal for them to prefer to go shirtless, especially since it's past seven in the evening. It's as if a switch flipped and a lot of them want to lose their shirts. That actually makes me a little uncomfortable, even if it happens in PE sometimes, when we're running hard enough to work up sweats in a game or something.

This is much different from a workout or a competitive athletic activity.

However, I'm willing to put up with it for several reasons. The main one is that it's what the other party guests are doing so I'd be the odd one out. That would look bad to them, even if they don't think less of Xander for still having a shirt on.

And above all, appearances kind of are important. If I'm not willing to do the same as them, they'll probably think I believe myself above them when I just want to hang out and play with other kids my age.

"Um…" Xander thinks for a few moments, then nods. "Okay, they're there."

"They're… where?"

"On the table with the pinnies," he answers. "I just teleported some there, in the same colors as the glasses and pinnies."

"You just had some sitting around?"

"Not sitting," he says. "They were folded up neatly."

That's not what I meant, but clarifying isn't important since the question wasn't. I want to know why Xander had handkerchiefs ready for use but it's not important to know.

"Ah," I say. "Thanks!"

I return to the gym room and join the others at the table. They're all already shirtless, having removed them before coming in here. I pull off my shirt and follow Parker's way of folding and rolling the handkerchief so that I can wear it like a neckerchief. The two of us are on Blue Team with Knox and Tyler, while Bo, Cooper, Tate, and Isaac make up Green Team. We decide to set this for a thirty-minute game, to give us time to navigate around the maze and find each other.

To make things a little bit more fair, I'm going to suppress my ability to sense the electricity in others. It's not something I'm good at doing but I did figure out how to manage it recently. As everyone else won't have such a sense, it would be extremely advantageous for me to have this and the point of this is to have fun, not to actually win.

I don't want to ruin the fun for others, especially since there's always the possibility it would ruin the chances of us becoming friends. If that chance exists.

"Everyone ready?" Tate asks, and we confirm it. "Let's go find different starting points. Carter said there are a bunch of different entrances."

We split off and wait at our chosen entrances until the game lets us know it's time to start. The moment it does, I head into the maze and begin exploring it. The first person I come across is Tyler, then I manage to tag Cooper. A few minutes later, I tag Cooper again, then tag Tate before coming across Knox.

"Been hit yet?" I ask. "Seems everyone's still down here."

"Not yet," he aims past me. "You?"

"No," I whip around just in time to see Cooper disappearing around a corner.

"Got 'em!" Knox says. "If you keep going past me and take the first left, then pass the next two rights and take that, you'll find yourself needing to crawl. Past that is a hole leading up to the second level. Isaac was up there a minute ago."

"I'll try to get points off of him," I say, then follow the path he directed me to.

When I reach the crawl space Knox mentioned, I drop down and crawl through it. This is a really tight crawl, but I make it through and try to find the hole up to the next level. As it turns out, it's a literal hole in the roof of this passage/floor of the one above.

Which means climbing up, which isn't that easy. I make it up there and almost immediately spot Isaac. He spots me at the same time and we both draw our guns and shoot, and I get a notification that I was hit.

"Darn!" I exclaim.

"Yes!" He exclaims at the same time, then takes off.

I try to chase after him, but he vanishes before I can locate him. The arena is set up to mute things to my wolfkin senses, which means that Xander likely already took into consideration some of us learning the spell when setting this up.

Which is honestly amazing. My tail flicks a little as I think about it. I know games and shows and stuff have people who can transform and that technically, anything is possible with magic, but this is something else. It doesn't take any mana to sustain and I can feel myself able to cancel it and shift back at any time.

And Xander apparently sleeps in this form. I'm definitely going to give that a try, once I finally go to bed!

For now… I'm gonna get shot by Bo.

"Hey!" I chase after him, but he manages to disappear on me. "Dang!"

When I find one of the foam pits, I can't help but jump into it. It's pretty cushioning and as I work my way out of it, I spot Bo again and tag him.

"Yes!"

"No!"

The game eventually comes to an end and when it does, I receive directions in my glasses to the nearest exit point. Green Team managed to win by eighty-seven points, with Tate somehow having earned almost half of them entirely on his own. Knox managed nearly a third of our team's points by himself, too.

"Good game," we tell each other, everyone else wanting to bump fists.

I bump fists with them as well, though it's a bit awkward.

"I think I'll grab some snacks and head to the theater," I tell Tyler as we put the stuff from the game back onto the table. "See what game they're playing."

When we looked in there earlier, they were playing a first-person shooter

"Same," he says. "Feeling a little tired at the moment. Need some rest before more play."

"Same."

Some of the others are joining us for that, while the others are planning on finding something else to do. We all return to the rec room to grab snacks, though, and Xander's focused on some sort of enchanting project.

He's throwing a party but then sticking to himself. Should I change plans? He might reject it though, since he's only accepting me right now.

"Hey, Xander," Tate walks over to him as I try to decide. "Whatcha working on?"

"A pocket world."

"What's that?"

"Like a pocket dimension," Xander answers. "But with its own environment, including regulations to ensure living things within it can survive. Like breathable air. It's a lot more complex than pocket spaces. I got the idea from Fern's space."

That's ambitious, but if anyone can do it, it'd be him.

"Fern?" I ask.

"The human-style name for the guardian spirit of our realm," Bo explains. "We get pulled into a pocket dimension for a trial when we're twelve. Xander got to do it back in August… guess it gave him some ideas."

"-what I'd do with it," Xander's answering whatever question Tate asked him. "But it seems really interesting so I want to give it a try. But it's a struggle. I've been working on it a bit since the hunt and… I'm not doing too great. But I'm making progress. I think."

"I'm sure you'll manage if you keep at it," Tate tells him. "Knox and I are gonna play ping-pong, let us know if you want to join, yeah?"

"Okay."

Tate rejoins us at the refreshments tables, but I keep looking at Xander. That wasn't really an invite and Xander might be feeling left out. Is that why he's by himself? Because no one's directly inviting him?

"Don't," Tate's voice enters my head. "I don't know what you're thinking but I can feel what you're feeling. From what I can feel, you're planning on inviting him to do stuff. He's feeling overwhelmed and stressed right now."

I thought Xander's mind couldn't be felt by others? Am I misremembering?

Once Tyler and I grab our snacks, we make our way to the theater with Parker and Bo.

"He can't," Bo tells me when I ask about Tyler feeling Xander's mind. "Xander's emotions are apparently completely undetectable unless he wants them to be felt. They probably had a whole telepathic conversation during their spoken one. I honestly wouldn't have thought to check if he was alright since he seemed content with what he was doing, but Tate tends to be a bit more empathic. Even without his magical empathy, he tends to be considerate like that. Probably stems from being able to feel others' emotions."

"I just realized something."

"What's that?" Bo gives me an amused look.

"Tate could always tell when someone was coming up near him, couldn't he?" I ask. "That's how he managed to score so many points!"

Everyone else laughs a little.

"And here I was, suppressing my ability to feel people's electrical signals to not have an edge!"

They start laughing even harder now.

[Xander – 13 years]

BOOM!

"You okay?" Tate and Knox both start rushing over at the quiet explosion.

At least I muted it so it wouldn't scare me or anyone who's not in this room. No one more than fifty feet away should have heard it.

"I think so," I stand up and look down. "I managed to put a barrier on my clothes in time."

"Not your clothes," Tate says as he reaches me. "You. That wasn't loud but it sounded strong. Are you hurt?"

"Oh," I say. "It didn't hurt me, I deflected the explosion away. And muffled it with my magic. And shielded everything else."

"You managed to do all of that really fast," Knox says.

"My mind operates many times faster than a normal mind mage's due to my being an exceptionally powerful one who's also exceptionally talented with temporal magics," I tell him. "I can sometimes react really quickly if I realize things are going badly because of that. And I realized too late I was gonna make it explode. Thankfully, Greyson wasn't here. He'd be upset I quieted and suppressed the explosion as much as possible. And that it wasn't a heat-based explosion."

While explosions without heat are loved by Greyson, he also really likes fiery ones.

"What happened?" Tate asks.

"The spatial pocket exploded."

"I'd expect that to have startled you or freaked you out," Knox says. "But you seem… really calm."

"Can I touch you?"

"Uh… sure?"

"Can I grab your wrist?"

"Sure?" He's now really confused.

I grab his wrist and move his hand so his palm is against my chest. Even through my shirt, I'm sure he can feel it.

"Damn, your heart's racing."

"I only appear calm on the outside," I let go of his wrist and he pulls his hand away. "But I'm a little shaky now, too. But it's okay. It used to be worse, the first few times spatial pockets exploded on me. But now I know how to notice it happening most of the time and protect myself so I won't feel pain."

"And you wear those on your wrist?" Knox asks. "I've never heard of expanded spatial pockets exploding before."

"Spatial pockets and expanded spaces are stable," I tell him. "They're not likely to explode. The only reason that one did was because of my failure when making the access gate spell and adding it into the enchantment. It's different from letting us pull things in and out since we ourselves don't actually go in. The access gate is intended on allowing a person to actually walk into the pocket space."

When I pull something from the pocket spaces, my hand remains outside of it, the object simply teleporting in and out. Pocket spaces are fully contained and teleportation is how things move in and out of them.

But once I figure out a pocket world, it would be nice to be able to have a way to enter it that isn't teleportation. Creating an actual physical entrance to it would be a good idea. This would make it easier to move back and forth between it, or to move livestock in or out of it if that's what I decide to use it for.

Or other things I can't think of at the moment. I'm sure there are some.

"I'm gonna get some snacks," I tell Tate and Knox. "Then I think I'm gonna try to join the others in the pool."

"Alright," they say. "If you want to play a game with us, just let us know. Doesn't have to be ping pong."

"I'll think about it," I tell him, then look in the direction of the house. "Dad's home, I'm gonna go say hi."

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"See ya when you return!" Knox tells me.

I use magic to clean up my mess and store everything in my bracelet, then grab Trenton and make my way to the main house. While I am hosting a party right now, it's not really working as a party, I don't think. Everyone is hanging out in different groups. That might be how parties work. I don't know.

This is a learning experience for me.

Regardless, I want to see my dad now that he's back home. Oh. But he's in a suit.

"Hey, Xander," Dad greets me as I approach, and I wave one of Trenton's paws. "Did you end up canceling the sleepover?"

Why does he think that?

"No," I answer. "The others are all doing stuff right now. I wanted to say hi now that you're back home, since I won't see you again before bed."

"Oh," he smiles. "Thanks. How's the party going?"

"I think it's going okay?" I answer. "But I'm not sure. We're not all doing stuff together, there are different groups doing different things. You said not to make it super structured with a schedule for the entire evening and night, but I think I made it too open for people to do what they want."

"There are parties like that," he says. "Were there group activities, too?"

"We all had dinner together," I nod. "And we all made enchanted magic lamp blocks, too. That was a group activity. But they're doing different things at the moment. Some were playing in the maze earlier, some were about to get back to ping-pong when I left, some were in the theater, and some were in the pool. And yes, there are at least four in the pool, with at least one fourteen-year-old."

"Alright," he chuckles. "Are you doing alright? Are you enjoying the party?"

"Um…"

"You can answer either or both," he says. "Or neither, if you don't want to. Any order."

"Oh," I say. "I was enjoying it, yeah. But I got overwhelmed and overstimulated, so I started enchanting. Tate checked on me and we had a telepathic conversation while having a spoken one. He was wanting to make sure I was okay since I was by myself. Sig had wanted to sit with me, but I told him he should play with the others rather than get bored watching me. He said he wouldn't get bored, but I had a feeling he would. So he went to the pool. Then my enchantment blew up."

"Did you shield in time?"

"Yeah," I nod. "I think I'm gonna stop working on that for tonight and get back to it another time."

"Was it the gate for a pocket world?"

"Yeah," I nod. "It's not going well, but I've got a lot of time. It's not as if I know what I'd do with it, I just thought it'd be a good challenge."

All of this is about me. Dad's told me that it's rude to have a conversation be entirely about myself, that it's better to balance it with discussions about other things or the other people in the conversation.

"How did the benefit dinner go?" I ask. "Did you enjoy it?"

"No," he answers. "But don't worry about that, it's not a problem. Are you still feeling overwhelmed and overstimmed?"

"A little, yeah," I answer. "How did you know?"

Sometimes, enchanting for awhile helps me with that. Grandpa Adrian says that the focus on magic seems to have an unusual type of calming effect on my mind which allows it to process stuff it doesn't normally process, sometimes. Not always.

"You didn't hug me," he answers. "You normally hug me if you've been feeling stressed and haven't seen me in awhile, so I assumed that meant you were still feeling too stressed out for physical touch."

"Oh," I say. "I want to hug you, but you're wearing a suit."

Mom starts laughing. She approached as we talked and is now holding hands with Dad.

"If you want to wait about five minutes," he tells me. "I can get changed."

"Okay," I say. "I'll wait."

Dad and Mom head up to their room, and I wait for them until they come back. It takes four minutes and twenty-eight seconds, and Dad is in sweatpants and a t-shirt now.

Once they reach me, I give Dad a hug, then Mom.

"Other than getting overwhelmed," Dad says. "Is the party going fine?"

"I think so," I answer. "The others all seem to be having fun, and all of the rules are being followed. I even had help making dinner! But I made dessert on my own, because I wanted some alone time. That, and the others should definitely spend the party having fun, not doing boring cooking and baking."

"You deserve that, too," Dad tells me.

I don't think I deserve as much as the others do, even if I have been behaving as best as I can recently. Most of the time.

"I wanted some quiet time," I tell him. "Because I'm feeling overwhelmed. Doing it by myself mostly gave me some quiet time. I want to try and play with some of the others now, though."

"Don't forget that you've got board and card games you can play," Dad tells me. "It doesn't have to be noisy stuff."

"I did forget about those…"

"It's okay," Dad chuckles. "Remember to remind yourself that perfect memories aren't the norm and most people forget things all the time."

"I'll try to remember…"

"Alright," he chuckles. "Are you going to head back to the party now? Or do you want to stay out here for a little bit longer?"

"I'm gonna go back now," I tell him. "If Tate and Knox want to take a break from ping pong, I'll ask them if they want to play something with me."

There's no way I'm going to play ping pong.

"I hope you enjoy it," Dad tells me. "Oh, before you go, do you know how much snow we're supposed to get tonight?"

Is the snow amount important for some reason?

"Roughly four and one-quarter of an inch," I answer. "Unless something happens to influence it. It's hard to get good estimates when magic and magical beasts can change things at a moment's notice."

"Alright," he says. "Katie and I are going to watch a movie, let us know if you need or want anything, alright?"

"I'll try," I tell him. "I hope you enjoy the movie."

I return to the rec room in the rec center, where Tate and Knox are still playing ping pong. More food is missing from the tables and the bottles of soda are almost empty, so someone or several someones probably came in and got more to eat and drink.

After refreshing the snacks and drinks which need it, I walk over to the ping pong table, but make sure to keep a safe distance from it.

"Did you want to join us?" Tate asks after the round ends, with a point to him.

"No," I answer as Knox uses telekinesis to grab the ball and return it to the table. "Did y'all want to play a game with me? We have some board games, and I was thinking of Seven Scales. I haven't played it before, but it seems interesting. And it says three to seven players, and there are three of us."

It's a game with dragons as part of the main theme. Even though nearly everyone believes them to be mythological, they show up a lot in fiction and games. A player moves around a board, including sometimes moving backwards, I think, and they have to reach seven different spots – heptagons rather than squares – to receive a "scale".

After acquiring all seven scales, they then have to reach the final spot, also a heptagon, which they're only allowed to go onto when they have all seven scales. The game rules say that the scales "unlock" the gate to the final square, but there's no actual gate there.

Dad explained that it's just a story, not a real gate. It was still confusing when we looked over the rules.

In addition to all of that, we have to play cards, roll dice, and battle against monsters in the game. The game can be played with some different rule sets, and one of the things that is optional, according to the rules guide, is being able to sabotage other players.

"I love Seven Scales!" Knox exclaims. "Yeah, I'll play! Tate?"

"Sure," Tate says. "Someone's gotta make sure you don't cheat."

"I don't cheat!"

That was a lie, and Tate raises an eyebrow at Knox. He definitely knows even without lie-detection magic like me.

"Okay, maybe twice," Knox says. "But in all fairness, y'all weren't paying attention to the game either time and I was just seeing how much I could get away with during that."

"Please don't cheat," I tell him. "And let's not play with sabotages."

"I won't!" Knox tells me. "I was just doing that with them because they'd stopped paying attention. And it was super obvious I was cheating, too, they just weren't paying enough attention to notice. And by 'super obvious', I mean that I once picked up the deck, looked for the cards I wanted, and put them into my hand. And none of them noticed. But I won't cheat with you, promise!"

He's being honest.

"Okay."

I get the game from the game shelf and put it on a table while Tate and Knox grab more snacks and drinks for themselves.

"If you want to get some snacks," Tate tells me. "We can start setting up the game while you do that."

"Okay," I say. "I want some more snacks, yeah."

I grab myself some snacks, then return to the table. The player pieces are differentiated by color, and I pick the one with the green outfit. Their colors don't mean or affect anything, they just make it easier to tell which piece we're playing.

The game takes us over an hour to finish, and Tate and Knox both really get into pretending like they're actually doing what their pieces are supposedly doing. They talk as if they're the ones doing it, anyway, such as "I enter the room… and a gorgon attacks me!" when Knox draws a gorgon monster card after entering a room.

By the end of it, the game is a race between Tate and me. We each acquire our seventh scale (there are little scale tokens to represent them) during the same round, which means we're both heading for the final spot at the same time. It comes down to how good our rolls and card draws are and in the end, I manage to beat him there by one turn! His turn before this one stopped him at the "gate", while mine was enough to let me go past it.

"Damn!" Tate exclaims, but he doesn't seem angry. He's even got a friendly smile on his face. "I was hoping you'd not make it so I could! Hey, Xander? What's that face for?"

"What face?"

"You look confused and unsure."

"He does?" Knox asks.

"Yeah," Tate answers. "I'm not as good at judging his expressions Carter and S.G., but he's looking through the rules again, so I'm fairly certain he's confused. What's wrong?"

"Um… what now?" I ask. "I won, but what do I do? Or get?"

"Oh!" Tate laughs. "It's not that kind of competition for the end! It's more about having fun! Winner doesn't get anything."

He's being honest, but that's weird.

"It's not?" I ask. "But I was looking up stuff for parties and it said that when doing some form of competition, the winner gets something and the loser gets punished. I don't want to punish anyone so I wasn't gonna bring that part up. But I don't see a thing in here for what the winner gets."

"It's not that kind of thing," Tate says. "This is just something to play for fun. There's a winner, yeah, but that's it. Maybe bragging rights. That said, if you do want a reward… how about a high-five?"

"A high-five?"

"A high-five for a good game!"

"Oh," I hold up my hand and he holds up his, then I gave him a high-five, before giving one to Knox. "Okay."

"Just curious," Knox says. "But if there were punishments for losing, and the winner got to pick what it was, what would you pick?"

"I don't wanna punish anyone!"

"It doesn't have to be a beating or anything like that," Tate says. "Since we have to stay within rules and laws and such here, it can't be something like 'streak down the street', but that doesn't mean it can't be something like 'down a shot of hot sauce'."

"Streak what?"

"Streaking is when you run naked."

"Oh," I shake my head. "No, no, no. That's illegal. Well, to do it on the streets. And it's very bad, too, 'cause someone might perv on you or kidnap you or rape you."

"Like I said," Tate says. "Nothing illegal, so that's off the table for possibilities. But it doesn't have to be stuff like that, like I said, it could be something like us having to down a shot of hot sauce or maybe stand on one foot for a minute, or something."

"No standing on one foot as punishments," I say. "That's mean and cruel and abuse and don't do it!"

"You get to pick!" Knox says. "It's not like we have to do it! We've hung out with you a little bit thanks to the testings and hunts, but you never participate in stuff like this. So we're just curious what you would come up with as a punishment for losing a game. It's something you pick, not something we pick."

This is confusing. I don't want to make them do a punishment. Punishments are for being bad. I shouldn't have mentioned them. They're still talking, but I can't understand them. No punishments. No punishments. No punishments. They're not bad. They're not bad. They're not bad.

Both of them suddenly go quiet.

"Uh… Xander?" Tate asks after a few seconds of silence. "Why did you just summon a pair of cucumbers from your bracelet?"

"Loser penalty," I say. "Not punishment. Not punishment. Not punishment. Penalty. No misbehaving so no punishment. But a penalty is okay. Right? It's almost the same thing, but it's not meant to be mean."

"Aaand the cucumbers?"

Cucumbers? Oh. When did I pull those out?

"I was thinking," I say. "If there was a penalty for the losers picked by the winner, then they would have to eat a whole cucumber. Plain. I didn't mean to pull them out."

"That is not what I was thinking you were going to say!" Knox looks and feels relieved. "Whew!"

High schoolers are weird. What did he think I was going to ask him to do with a cucumber? Oh. Maybe he thought I was going to say he had to dip it in hot sauce to eat, instead of just eat it? That's even more gross than eating a raw cucumber. Or dip it in mustard. That would also be a lot more gross.

"I'll do it!" Tate says.

"Same!" Knox says.

High schoolers are definitely weird.

"Okay," I pull out a pair of plates.

"What are those for?" Tate asks.

"To put the slices on."

"What slices?"

"The cucumber slices," I answer as the cucumbers float over the plates, then turn into a bunch of slices, like pickle chips but as regular cucumbers rather than pickled ones. A fork then appears on each plate. "There we go!"

By the time Tate and Knox are done eating the cucumber slices, they're definitely looking like they're finding it gross. I would've found it gross from the start. Raw cucumbers taste weird and have a bad texture.

They are much better off becoming pickles than staying as cucumbers.

Adding hot sauce or mustard to the penalty would definitely have been too much as one.

"Do you want to play another game of this?" Tate says. "Or do something else?"

"I think Carter's coming over," I look towards the door which leads into the gym closest to the side with the pool. "I can hear someone coming from there."

"Really?" They both twitch their ears in that direction.

"I can't hear-" Knox begins. "Wait, now I do. You heard them already?"

"My hearing's better than a human's," I say. "And that's when in human form. That's true in wolfkin form, too, where it becomes a little stronger."

"Huh," he says just as Carter opens the door into the room.

Carter's not in his swim trunks even though he was swimming, he's in just a pair of shorts and his sneakers. His body's dry, so he probably used magic to dry himself off after showering and dressing.

"Hey, guys!" He walks over to us.

"Hi," I say as the others greet him as well.

"Hey, Trenton," he greets Trenton.

I pick up Trenton and wave his right paw.

"Got a question for you," he tells me.

"For me?"

"Yup!"

This seems like it could be bad but his mind just feels curious about something, along with a little hopeful, in addition to his usual emotions. He also feels a little bit happy, which I think comes from whatever he was doing in the pool with the others.

"Um… what is it?"

"The spell formula marbles," he says. "Are you allowed to sell them to others?"

"You can keep the ones for the transformation and tailoring spells."

"No, not that," he says. "I mean like, if you know a spell someone else doesn't, or for your versions of them, which are going to be improved since you can clean them up. Are you allowed to sell those?"

Grandpa Adrian didn't tell me anything about if I could sell them or not. All he said was that I'm allowed to give the other boys here tonight the two I gave those who could cast the transformation spell.

"Oh," I say. "Um… was there one you wanted to buy? Is that why you're asking?"

"Yeah!" He nods. "I was curious about the teleport spell. I heard it costs an exorbitant amount of mana to cast, so wanted to know if yours is actually better. If so, if it was possible for me to buy the marble so I can learn it. Well. If it's within my ability to afford the cost of, both for the marble and in mana for casting the spell."

"Oh," I say. "The cost depends on the distance traveled. Most people who can cast the more standard versions use them for short distances due to the inefficiencies. It even has a cycle set into it to draw back in the mana leaked during casting, to help save on the mana cost. Greyson would teleport thousands of miles with it, costing him tens of thousands of mana in just leaked mana. But that's because, like normal, people in general haven't figured out the proper formula for it."

Though as it turns out, there are mages attempting to improve it on their own, experimenting with different adjustments to the formula. Unable to simply see and sense the mana and magic as I am, however, it's taking them quite awhile.

Spatial magic is one of the most complex types of magic, after all. Grandpa Adrian explained that without senses like mine, it would normally take over one thousand years for a society to advance enough in knowledge of spatial magics to reach a version of teleportation nearing mine. Earth's societies have only been working on spatial magics for a couple of centuries.

"Lemme ask Grandpa Adrian," I tell Carter. "If you use the same version I do, even with your casting skill, you probably wouldn't need more than 100 mana to get from here to your home, or your home to here."

Rather than the thousands the current "common" teleportation spell would have. Grandpa Adrian calls it common, but it's not really common because not many people are able to cast it.

My version of the spell really does remove a lot of unnecessary parts of that one and improves mana efficiency by a lot. Even once someone gains experience with casting the spell and improves their own efficiency at doing so, the cost won't decrease too much.

When considering that basic combat spells cost less than 1 MP, though, spending around 80 to teleport a couple hundred miles isn't really cheap. At least, only when comparing those together. It really depends on a person's mana pool.

For someone with as much mana as me, that distance really is cheap.

"Alright!"

"It's gotten pretty late," Knox says as I summon my phone to my hand. "Would he respond before tomorrow?"

"He's got an avatar paying attention to a phone with the same number I use at all times in order to be available to me at all times."

"Why would he do that?" Knox asks.

"Greyson has theories," I tell him. "Though they're also probably affected by his inability to distinguish dreams from reality. Grandpa Adrian says it's fine as long as I make it so the spell formulas within the marbles can only be viewed by the person who bought them. Also that I should charge $1,000 for the teleportation ones."

"My parents already gave permission," Carter tells me. "Same payment method as last time?"

He must have asked them after getting out of the pool.

"Yeah."

After Carter pays, I hold up my right hand and a clear glass marble forms above my palm. A strong feeling of impressed comes from Knox's mind.

"Whoa," he says. "Mineral manifestation. I can do it for lesser ones like glass, but that speed and immediate clarity is insane. I usually have to clarify the glass after conjuring it."

Clarifying conjured glass just means purging impurities from it. Mineral conjuration – that is, conjuring anything within the "earth" element umbrella which isn't soil or stone – costs a lot of mana. It's also not something that's easy to conjure pure. Even I couldn't create glass without impurities when I first started conjuring it directly.

"I used to, too," I tell him. "But I've created glass a lot the last few months and have gotten better at it."

I return my attention to the marble and begin altering its insides to contain the spell formula, after making sure to enchant it so that only Carter can perceive the enchantment. I don't know why Grandpa Adrian said to do that but he did so I do.

"Here you go," I hand the marble to Carter once I finish. "Are you gonna try to cast it now?"

"Nah," he says. "It was just a thought I had while swimming. S.G. mentioned you tend to teleport into the pool and it made me wonder about learning."

"Oh," I say. "I don't know how good you are at casting more complex spells, so my estimates are based on what I think you can do based on what I've seen. I could be wrong. But if you're able to reach the inner section of the mana training orbs, you should be good enough to teleport."

"I can!" He says. "Barely, but I can! Thanks, Xander! I think I'm done swimming for the night. Y'all're playing Seven Scales? Can I join the next game?"

"We finished a game a few minutes ago," I tell him. "I won, but barely. Tate would've one if he'd rolled one more on his last turn but he didn't, so he got stopped at the gate while my next roll let me go in."

"Nice!" He says. "What's with the cucumber? It smells soooooo strong."

"We asked Xander about a punishment for losing," Tate tells him. "Uh… don't do that. It's a penalty. Anyway, he came up with eating an entire cucumber as it. Sliced into chips, but otherwise raw."

"That was not pleasant!" Knox makes a weird face. "But yeah! Before you came in, Tate was asking if we wanted to do another game of it. What about you, Xander?"

"Um… I'm not sure," I answer. "It took about an hour and an extra player means it'll probably take longer. Also, it'd be four players. And I think I'll want to go to sleep within the next hour, too. It's past my bedtime and I'm really tired so I don't want to stay up too much more."

"We can play cards," Carter tells me. "Those can go faster."

"Okay," I say. "I'm okay with playing that until I go to bed."

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