"What was that?" Xin'ri snapped. "Why did everything just go dark? That wasn't mentioned in the instructions."

Sophia's gaze snapped to the fox-eared woman. "It's not dark. But I think we need to get you out of here." Her concerns about the direction could wait; they obviously needed to get Xin'ri out of the conduit, then figure out what was going on. If they were lucky, she'd recover on her own. If not, maybe Sophia could figure out what went wrong. Either way, they'd figure out what the next step was once they were out of the conduit.

"I'm going to pick you up. It will be faster than trying to guide you out," Dav told Xin'ri. He barely waited for her to nod before he scooped her up in a princess carry.

It wasn't a long walk to the exit. Sophia wanted to hurry, but she made herself take the first few steps slowly, in case the floor was treacherous. She wasn't sure what to make of the lightning-streaked glass, but it seemed to have good traction, at least. As soon as she was confident, she started to jog. It was a little too far for a sprint, especially since Sophia couldn't be certain exactly how far it was. Distances in the conduit were deceptive.

This time, the distance was deceptively short. Sophia took no more than a dozen steps before she found herself at the softly glowing exit. She slowed to let Dav and Xin'ri exit ahead of her, then followed them through.

The other side of the archway was actually dark, despite the mana and essence that glowed behind them, having leaked through the archway. It seemed like more than before they'd entered, but Sophia pushed that concern to the back of her head and pushed mana into her magelight.

Their surroundings were stone, just like when they entered, but other than that they looked quite different. Both mana and essence floated in the air, tiny sparks and bits of floating glowing rock that showed just how saturated with mana the air around them was. The ornately carved archway was surrounded by strange nearly organic-looking crystalline growths, while the floor was covered in bits of stone and broken crystal. The scene through the archway was also quite different; instead of glowing light, it seemed to show a star encased in a prismatic crystal sphere that emitted stone as well as light.

"I can see!" Xin'ri's jubilant cry revealed her relief. She started to twist in Dav's arms, and he supported her as she stood on her own.

Sophia frowned, but tried to keep it to herself. Sight in the conduit depended on being able to see mana, which Xin'ri normally could. Not being able to see was a bad sign. "How is your shield doing?"

"Uh," Xin'ri temporized as she pulled open her Status. Worry crept back into her voice as she spoke. "Oof. I only have sixteen left. That's well below the guidelines in the instructions. They said that you need to head out at half and that getting below a quarter could be dangerous. This isn't much below a quarter, so it probably isn't too bad. The records say that death or permanent disability is unlikely as long as it stays positive and the numbers are to give a margin of safety."

Sophia was pretty sure Xin'ri was grasping at straws. She was almost certainly right, at least about what the records said, but this was exactly the sort of case where "unlikely" was all too likely. Sophia was pretty confident that the records didn't talk about anything that could wipe out more than a quarter of a first-upgrade person's Shield.

She wasn't about to say anything like that, though. It would just be cruel. They needed to figure out what happened to Xin'ri and see if they could fix it before they started talking about hypotheticals. There was an easy place to start. "Xin'ri, you can see the magelight. Are you seeing the mana, too, or just the light it gives off?"

"Of course I'm…" Xin'ri paled as she looked at the magelight. It was obvious she'd seen something she didn't want to.

Or rather, that she hadn't seen something she expected to.

"Dav, can you heal…" Sophia trailed off as she caught the green glow that had already started to emanate from Dav's form where he stood right behind Xin'ri. She grinned. "As usual, you're ahead of me. Xin'ri, do you have anything in your kit that could deal with, ah, overstimulated mana sight? That seems like the first thing to check for, like flash blindness or when you walk into a dark room after being outside in the sunlight?"

Manasight didn't work like regular vision. That was true no matter what flavor of manasight it was.

There were a lot of different ways to sense mana, just like there were a lot of different ways to sense the world, but with the premium humans placed on sight, most humans preferred to see it. It just worked better. That made the various analogies with vision make more sense. It was possible to be temporarily manablinded if you depended on manasight; because you thought it was sight, too much sensation would make it shut down just like too much light would make it hard to see.

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She'd had it happen more than once. Being manablinded was a natural risk when being trained by someone with a lot more mana, and all of Sophia's teachers when she was a child were far more powerful than she was. They'd done their best, but mistakes still happened.

It normally recovered quickly, though, so the fact that Xin'ri still couldn't see wasn't a good sign.

At least, that was true if the manasight here worked the same way as the manasight back home. Sophia thought it did, but the Guide was weird. Who knew what it had done?

On second thought, that was a good thing to check. Back home, the Voice would list temporary manablindness as part of your Condition. There didn't seem to be a similar section of the Status here, but that didn't mean it wouldn't show up in the Status anywhere. "Xin'ri? Can you check your manasight ability in your Status? See what it says?"

"It's not manasight," Xin'ri muttered as she pulled up the screens. "It's Integrated Mana Perception, and … huh. My Status says the ability and its slot are temporarily unavailable. That's all it says, but … temporary. That's great news."

Xin'ri was clearly relieved. Sophia was, too. They didn't know how long Xin'ri would be hurt, but evidence that she would eventually recover was invaluable. Sophia couldn't suppress a sliver of doubt that it would happen on its own; it was possible that there was a way to fix it that they didn't know but that the Guide counted as "temporary." Sophia wasn't about to say that out loud, however. There would be time for that in the coming days or even weeks. They could wait and see.

"I hope you don't mind if I keep trying to heal you," Dav said with a grin. "It won't hurt anything and I can keep this going for a long time."

"Keep what going?" Xin'ri turned to look at Dav then froze in realization. "Oh. Your healing. It makes you glow. I thought that was light, but it's not. It's mana."

Dav lifted a shoulder in a partial shrug. "It's not something I can control. I glow when I'm healing. At least this way if you see me glowing, you know you're healing, right?"

"Right." Xin'ri repeated the word with determination. Sophia was pretty sure a small smile flitted across her face as well.

Sophia nodded to herself. That was as handled as it could be until Xin'ri recovered. A distraction would be good, and even a glance at her surroundings told Sophia that she had the perfect distraction. She'd put it out there as a question, even though she already knew the answer. "So, do you guys think we're back where we started, or are we on the other side of the conduit, wherever it goes?"

Dav grinned at Sophia instead of answering. It was obvious that he realized what she was doing. Or maybe that was his communication ability carrying the weight of nonverbal communication again; either way, he knew to wait for Xin'ri.

Xin'ri looked around like she hadn't even noticed their surroundings in her joy at being able to see and concern about not being able to sense mana. "Hm. This really doesn't look like where we entered, does it? The floor looks like it's buckled there, and I know there weren't loose rocks everywhere. I was also expecting Scout."

Xin'ri paused and looked in the other direction. "There's no corridor, either. This is definitely the other side of the connection. I don't know where this is; Issvako's notes didn't say and I never asked Othala that."

"Ci'an, Taika," Dav's voice echoed in Sophia's head as he included her in his telepathic message. "We've repaired the conduit, but it may be a bit before we can return. There were some complications and we're on the other side of the portal now."

"But you are all right?" Taika's mind-voice was worried. Sophia was a little surprised he was awake. "Complications sounds like a nice way to say something went wrong."

Sophia chuckled at that. He wasn't wrong.

"Xin'ri is injured and we can't return until she's recovered," Dav answered easily. "I expect we'll explore here a bit. If things start to look dangerous, you two ought to be able to travel here … uh, you can see mana, can't you?"

"I can!" Taika sounded gleeful.

"Mana vision is not a normal Night Owl ability," Ci'an answered calmly. "And no, I can't currently see mana. I didn't want to risk not being able to reach Night Owl. I believe I saw the ability as an option when I was picking other abilities, and I have plenty of Wisps."

A moment passed before Ci'an continued. "I can now see mana, but only in my Night Owl shape. It is apparently another vision-based ability, like many Night Owl abilities. We will come join you after I let Lan'ti know what's happening."

"You don't have to come," Sophia offered. "There isn't anything dangerous here. It's probably just another ruin."

"I want to come," Ci'an countered. "Plus, you're my team. Teams stick together. We separated because you could handle the conduit better than we could and we weren't needed, but that's not true once we're past the conduit. We should be together. I know I'm a better scout than either of you."

It was hard to argue with that. Ci'an was a better scout than any of them except Taika even before she became a Night Owl. Afterwards, Sophia didn't even have to think about scouting in the wilderness. Ci'an and Taika simply took care of it. The only reason they hadn't been doing the same in the ruin was that Lan'ti's people had their own system and they were following it.

It wasn't really the best place for an owl to scout anyway.

"Be careful and keep an eye on your shield, both of you, especially if you see a large rock in the way or a glowing repair; that area seems to be more dangerous and will deplete your shield faster than elsewhere. You really want to stay above half," Dav warned them. He'd obviously given in even faster than Sophia. His mouth curved in a grin. "We'll look forward to when you get here. I'm not sure we'll wait for you, though, so you might want to hurry."

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