FMH: Everything ~ Seventeen

While each of them was extremely intrigued by the new realm of possibilities that they had unlocked, there was no simple or easy way to replicate the unexpected feat of magic that Andre had just performed. If there was, they were certain that so much cross-contamination would exist between classes that they would be practically indistinguishable from each other. There was no way to know exactly what the reason was for the sudden shift, let alone the new Spell formation, but they had some ideas.

That wasn't the only thing they had learned from this patch of flora that the Druid had grown. It was Luke who first noticed it, but the plants were still releasing their strange combination of mana into the air. For just a fraction of a second, he could have sworn that he could see into the Druid’s base world, which appeared like a foggy window into a world full of greenery, before returning to the simple haze of power in the air that his eyes were able to distinguish from the ambient energies.

“I think you did something to the veil between worlds.” When the others looked at him to try to ascertain his meaning, he pointed at the air directly over the plants. “It’s weaker. Look. I can see Andre's world.”

Taylor shook her head at him, immediately dismissing his claims. “Luke, it’s impossible to travel to worlds that are in parallel positioning from any world other than the base world. This is a known fact. If you-”

“You haven't tried it yourself; don't tell me it can't be done. If the air can do it, we can.” Luke scoffed at the claim she was trying to assert. It didn't escape his notice that his teammates traded knowing glances, so he narrowed his eyes and slammed his knuckles together. “You think I'm wrong? Prove I'm wrong, Andre.”

The Druid shrugged and stepped into the small patch of greenery, shuddering slightly as his mana regeneration increased by a minute fraction. Clearly expecting no results, he traced a circle in the air, trailing a wake in the surrounding mana. Once the trajectory was complete, he pushed and strained dramatically, as though he were putting way more effort into the attempt than he actually was. Even so, for an instant, a pinprick of bright green light gleamed through, and Andre leapt back in shock, causing the partial distortion to collapse as he stumbled to the ground.

“It was working!” Andre bellowed at the top of his lungs, scrambling with his hands and feet to stand back up and try again. He rushed into position, fully bending his will and power to create the portal in earnest. It sprang into existence, glowing green light shifting the coloration of the lightly purple-hued world they were standing in. He stepped through the stabilized Scar, and to their perceptions, returned just an instant later. “I walked around for a minute, and it’s real. No doubt about it: that’s The Grove.”

“Not sure if you know this, a ton of mana is leaking over from your world into this one.” Luke traced out the pluming clouds of mana with his fingers. A fraction of a second later, dozens, then hundreds of books attempted to go through the portal, jockeying for position as they zoomed over. Only a few got through before Andre forcibly closed the portal, but it was still enough to make him greatly concerned.

“What do you think is going to happen to them over there? Wait, more than that: how will they mess up my world?” None of them had an answer to the Druid’s query, as this wasn’t a situation that had ever before been deemed possible.

As the mana cloud settled down into its strange behavior once more, Taylor stepped forward to inspect the space where Andre had been creating his portal. With a gentle push of her own mana, another sprang into existence. This one revealed a much more familiar world, one that seemed to be frozen in time, or at the very most, moving in incredibly slow motion. Taylor's forehead wrinkled as she pulled her hand away, closing the portal with a thought.

Another gentle push made the portal reactivate with a *pop*, and she slowly nodded her head. “I think… if I am correct, we just made a synthetic bind point to our world.”

“A bind point? You mean those places in our world where, if we step into one of your portals, we end up in the exact same spot every time?” Zed laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. “I don't know about you, but I think we should split the profit perfectly four ways. I will market your capabilities; you guys can zip across and make artificial bind points. Since no one else can do it, we automatically have a complete monopoly. Sound good to you? Sounds great to me.”

“Bind point…” Andre breathed the words in awe, his turbulent thoughts slipping unbidden out of his mouth as he retreated into meditation in an attempt to parse the information he had gained. A few minutes later, he opened his eyes slowly and relayed his conclusions. “This has to have something to do with our unique bond to the world. Something about who we are, or what the Earthen Node has changed in us, is causing the influence of our base world to impact other worlds. Probably because we're so closely tied to it that everything we do is a reflection back onto it, even across dimensions.”

“It could also be the fact that we have such incredible Mana Channels now,” Taylor offered as she flashed a sidelong glance at Luke. “Perhaps our mana is infused with our Essence, now that it can stream through us so cleanly. Maybe our power is just so pure that it-”

She was interrupted by a *snort* from Zed. He was trying and failing to hide a disbelieving smirk. “What kind of a children's fantasy novel do you think you live in? ‘I'm just so pure that everything falls into my lap’. Let me break it to you, sister. To be in that kind of story, you need cute little birds fluttering around you and tweeting. Not heavy, leather-bound books that are trying to break your bones in an attempt to gobble down the mana that you're considering so ‘pure’.”

“Well, I don't see you coming up with any good ideas.” Taylor snapped her retort back at him.

“I had good ideas. I said I would be your marketer!” Zed rubbed his thumb, middle, and index fingers together on both hands, miming an influx of cash. “Being an Ascender is great, but cold, hard coins are going to be what really gets us what we want in life. Money is power-”

Luke's fist stopped in the air less than an inch before it would have crushed Zed's face to a pulp. The wind generated by the incredibly swift motion, combined with the absolute terror it generated in the Bard, sent the man to his back as he rolled away in reflexive fear.

The Murderhobo peered down at him, an intrigued expression on his face. “Doesn't appear so. In my experience, power is power. I own three banks, and I still have to go in person to pick up my purchases from merchants, because someone with power over me is making my life hard for no good reason, other than the fact that they think I am defying them. Get strong enough and take what you want from life. Don't wait for it to be handed to you.”

“Maybe it isn’t direct power, but passive income is still helpful.” Zed wheezed gently as he hopped to his feet and brushed himself off. “Money is another kind of power, isn't it? Indirect power?”

“It’s a pale imitation,” Luke leaned in and whispered, as if he were sharing a great secret. “Two of the bankers didn't want to sell their banks to me. They still did in the end. Afterward, they were able to convince the third to sell without me having to show up.”

Zed's eyes went wide as he thought over the implications of the outrageous admission. “I knew there was something fishy about you being a proper businessman!”

Ignoring the rest of the conversation, Luke went to inspect the distortion in the air for himself, setting up a few meters away from the spot where the other two Ascenders had originally opened their portals so he wouldn't get a false positive from his experiment. His fist lashed out, and the membrane of the world *popped* with a single punch. He poked his head through, finding a portion of the Hollow Kingdom, and exhaled some tension he shouldn't have been holding. “Good. Now, even if something happens to Taylor, as long as we have Andre or myself, we can escape this world.”

Small smiles appeared on the faces of each man in the group, even as Taylor frowned at each of them suspiciously. “Did you think I was going to trap you here or something? Why are you all so relieved that you can leave if you want? I would always open a portal if you asked me to!”

“No reason, Taylor. Of course we know you would,” Zed consoled her as he cast a knowing look at the other two. “Now, we have spent a lot of time here already. Is there any other test to run, or can we continue on with our quest?”

“I have one thing I want to test.” The other members of the group turned in surprise when Luke spoke up, but they were too slow to stop what he was doing. He was holding a water skin in each hand, the special light blue ones that indicated they were filled with liquid mana. His hands swept toward each other with the clear intent to pop the containers against each other to release all of the mana in a single burst.

“Luke, no!” Taylor screamed in fear as her eyes went wide.

Zed’s eyes also went wide, but in pure excitement. “Luke, yes!”

The bags burst, but the mana didn’t rain to the ground like other liquids would have. Instead, upon being released in an area of reduced mana density, it expanded into an immense fog in less than a single second. For a long, terrible, terrifying moment, everything went silent.

Luke promptly shattered the calm before the storm, his fist shooting into the epicenter of the fresh cloud of power as words erupted from his mouth. “Rift Hunter!”