Chapter 474 – Not Without Cost

“I’m fine,” Sophia protested. She was already feeling better; she just needed to rest after dealing with that much mana. “Just … next time, come talk to me. There has to be a safer way to let Bunny talk to the World Tree.”

She could talk to Cliff; maybe he could talk to the World Tree? Or maybe she could reach the World Tree through Scion of the Towers? She hadn’t tried, really. Dav could probably bring Bunny into the link, which might let her connect the two. 

Probably not, though. The others couldn’t hear Cliff over Dav’s link so it probably wouldn’t work. She might be able to relay messages, but would that really be enough?

Still, there had to be a better way.

“We all felt your pain,” Ivorha interrupted with a concerned tone. “I know you were raised away from the Lifeweb, but you should know enough about it by now to know that something that strong would be felt by more than you. The only reason others haven’t come to check on you is that I am here; they know that with a member of the Watch present, the matter is being dealt with.”

Leo climbed up on the couch next to Sophia and leaned against her. He was obviously looking for comfort, so she draped an arm across his back. He cuddled closer, then lay down with his head in her lap. She had to shift slightly so that his crystal horns weren’t poking her in the side, but once she did, she was able to rub his scaly shoulder just above the wing.

Leo was trembling. Sophia wasn’t sure how else to help him, but at the minimum she could give him the physical contact he so clearly wanted and let him know that they were both safe and it was over in a far more convincing way than simple words.

“The pain was momentary,” Sophia maintained. “I’m fine now.”

“And is your Sphere?” Ivorha pushed. “That’s the true danger of that room.”

Sophia turned her attention back to her hand. Her armor Ability was definitely not active, but there were definitely scales there, right in the area where she felt mana burn her when she first grabbed Leo.

Had it affected her elsewhere? She couldn’t really check under her clothes until she was back at the inn, but she could pull up her Ability.

Armored in Arcane Scales

You passively exude mana that reinforces your skin with magic-resistant scales. While the scales can be partially suppressed, they cannot be completely dismissed. Your scales provide unparalleled defense against magical damage but require additional mana to aid them against other forms of damage. You may expend even more mana to manifest your scales in a secondary suit of scaled armor as a layered defense.

Sophia nodded slowly. That would explain it; there was an extra line in the Ability description, ‘While the scales can be partially suppressed, they cannot be completely dismissed.’ She now had scales on her hand. There were probably scales on her back, too. It wasn’t a bad look, really, so she wasn’t about to complain. It was a small cost to recover Leo, and truthfully she wasn’t sure it was even a cost. 

The next thing to check was obviously the other Ability she used.

Translucent Aura

Your plumes deflect and diffuse the magic imbued in attacks within your aura. You can concentrate plumes together to enhance their effect. Attacks initiated by people and objects marked with your Arcane Signifier are ignored unless you direct your plumes to stop them. Other attacks may be permitted by commanding your plumes.Your plumes will degrade more quickly if they attempt to defend you against environmental mana.

Once again, a single line was added to the description: ‘Your plumes will degrade more quickly if they attempt to defend you against environmental mana.’ That was far more of a benefit than a cost, because it meant that her attempt to broaden what the Ability did by using it a little differently worked. It seemed entirely likely that she could have gotten the same effect in any significantly magical environment, as long as she used Translucent Aura to protect herself or others.

A quick search through the rest of her Abilities didn’t reveal any changes other than a significantly higher amount of Thread than she remembered, but when she dove into the Sphere space that required a meditative trance to reach, she found the real damage. Her Sphere … no, her Grand Talent looked like it had been beaten up. Bits of its structure stuck out at odd angles like loose threads and places that should have been smooth were lumpy. It looked almost right, but it was the almost right of someone covered in bruises and cuts, possibly even a broken bone. 

She layered a little thread over one of the damaged areas in the hope that it would fix it. As she more than half expected, it did nothing; if she just laid Thread as if everything was the way it was supposed to be, it wouldn’t bond properly and … well, she wasn’t certain exactly what would happen. She was certain it wouldn’t improve her Abilities the way it was supposed to, though, and it might be worse than that. 

She was going to have to slowly find the tears and pulled Thread and replace them properly. It looked like all of the damage was on the outer layer, so she shouldn’t lose too much, but it was going to take a lot of Thread. Most of the new Thread could come from what she’d apparently gained from saving Leo, but the time and effort was just going to be something she dealt with.

It was entirely possible that fixing her Sphere might return her Armored in Arcane Scales Ability to what it originally was, a purely summoned Ability. It was also possible that it might change it in another direction; Ability modification from inside the Sphere was possible. She needed to look into that properly now instead of putting it off for the rise to the fourth upgrade; directing a change would be far better than accidentally ending up with a different Ability.

Sophia drifted back to normal consciousness to find Dav and Ivorha talking. Leo had fallen asleep at some point while she was looking at her Sphere; his draconic head was still in her lap and he was breathing evenly, clearly no longer terrified.

Dav glowed with a pale green light. Sophia doubted his healing made that much difference for either of them, but she appreciated the thought. He was doing what he could, even if he didn’t know how effective it was. It might even have a positive effect on Leo; Sophia wasn’t certain if he was hurt or not. He shouldn’t be, but with Dav’s healing, she knew she wouldn’t have to worry about it.

“Are you really all right?” Dav was the first to notice that Sophia was aware again.

Sophia nodded. “My Sphere is going to need some attention, but it’s all fixable. I should have enough Thread to deal with it. It’s just going to take time.”

Dav visibly relaxed, but Ivorha froze.

Sophia turned her attention to the four-winged bird with a frown. “What’s wrong? Leo is fine, I’m fine, it all worked out.”

“Is your Blessing fine?” Ivorha twitched his upper set of wings uncomfortably. “I shouldn’t have brought you here, I should have taken you to the Clan and let someone more suited to it figure out how to retrieve your brother, there has to be someone who can walk in there without being hurt.”

Sophia wasn’t certain if anyone could manage it that much better than she had; the magic was extremely intense. At the same time, there were Archons at significantly higher upgrades; if she went based on what she’d heard about the World Tree, there were probably Archons at the tenth upgrade. Either way, Leo was her brother and her responsibility. “I wasn’t going to wait, so no, thank you for bringing me to Leo. With that said, what do you mean by blessing? I’m not a priest.”

Ivorha blinked at Sophia, then sighed. “I should have known. You had to be taught about the Lifeweb; I knew that. Why did I assume you knew about Blessings?”

Sophia shrugged. She had no idea what he was talking about; no one had mentioned it, or if they had, she hadn’t realized it was anything different from the blessings of a deity, which was what the Suras meant when they used that word.

“If you don’t have a Blessing, then …” Ivorha shook his head. “Then you did not sacrifice it to save your Sphere. I don’t know how you did it; stepping past the door is enough to make the unlucky have to repair their Spheres.”

That was easy enough to explain. Unlucky was the right word for it; while the strongest currents of mana didn’t usually approach the outer walls, Sophia could see some lesser mana waves drift fairly close. If someone without her resistance stepped into one, it probably wouldn’t be a good thing.

She couldn’t explain why the mana in here messed with Spheres, though. Her initial assumption was that it overloaded things, but that didn’t seem to match what she saw in her own Sphere. Overloading should burn things, not pull threads out of place. Mana was a type of energy, and energy tended to turn into fire when bad things happened. For magic that meant magical fire … or sometimes decay or death, but that was just magic being magic. Overloading something meant fire. Pulling threads was definitely not fire. 

If it was pushed on from the outside, however … yeah, now that Sophia thought about it, it was possible that it didn’t overload it so much as put pressure on it. That would certainly explain some of the damage she saw. It wouldn’t explain the pulled threads unless it also sometimes acted like a vacuum or maybe just like different pressures on different threads.

Sophia didn’t really like the explanation, but it did work and that meant it was possible. It did mean she’d need to watch out for possible contamination as she cleaned up her Sphere; the most likely reason a mix of magic would work differently on something she thought was the same was if it wasn’t all the same. 

“I should take you to the Chief,” Ivorha said slowly. “You are Et’Tart but you have not been presented. He will offer you a Blessing, I am certain.”

“I was presented to the Clan when I was a child,” Sophia protested. “My Clan. I don’t know if we were once one Clan, but I am Suras; you are Archon and your Clan is an Archon Clan. I am not going to leave my Clan to join yours simply because we share a name and might once have been related.”

“Every Et’Tart must be presented to the Chief - wait. You were presented to the Clan?” Ivorha tilted his head to the side. “Are you certain? Only the next Chief is presented to the Clan.”

Sophia shuddered, then shook her head. She was very grateful she was not the next Clan leader, just like she wasn’t going to have to take over from her father if he decided to abdicate. The Unified Realm would likely pass to Jenna in that case, and the next World Shaman was far more likely to be Xavier than Sophia. She wasn’t interested and he was. “We aren’t led by a Chief.  We have a Council of Elders, ceremonially headed by the World Shaman. I told you, we’re not the same Clan.”