“Just try to relax,” said Seth as he adjusted his lantern. He and Shon sat facing each other on wooden chairs separated by a small three-legged table that held Seth’s lantern, a pair of tweezers, and a metal bowl. It had been two whole weeks since a magical gem had exploded right next to Shon, sending shards of various shapes and sizes into Shon’s right arm as well as the right side of his face. It was one of the most painful experiences of Shon’s entire life, and without the powerful healing magic that Seth had provided, he probably would not have survived at all. 

“What makes you think there are any pieces left?” Shon asked. “Nothing came out yesterday, and the pain is finally gone. We’ve been doing this twice a day ever since I was injured, and while I appreciate it more than I can say, don’t you think at some point we just need to agree that it’s as good as it’s going to get?” 

“True, we’ve probably extracted all the shards of crystal that are big enough to pick up with the tweezers,” said Seth. “I don’t expect we’ll be adding anything to the bowl this morning. But that doesn’t mean we’ve gotten everything. After you left our healing session yesterday, I stuck around to clean up and found a shimmer of green dust on the table where your arm had been resting. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but your right eye sometimes sparkles with green light, especially in the sunlight.” 

“And here I was thinking that Aluanna’s eyes were the only ones you admired sparkling in the sunlight,” Shon replied with a smirk. 

Seth’s face reddened, but otherwise ignored Shon’s attempt to embarrass and distract him. “I’m serious, Shon,” he said. “That crystal was ancient, it was crafted by a dozen powerful mages who sacrificed their lives to create it, and let’s not forget it served as the magical prison of a maniacal necromancer for several centuries before it exploded in your face. We have no idea what effect it could have on you if we leave even the smallest particle in your body.” 

“I appreciate your concern, Seth,” said Shon, “but at this point I think we should just let it be for a few days and see what happens.” When Seth started to object, Shon added, “If it starts to hurt again, or I notice any unpleasant side effects, I’ll come straight to you, alright? I promise.” 

Seth paused to say something, then took another look at the expression on Shon’s face and changed his mind. Seth sighed and lifted his lantern off the table between them. “Alright,” Seth replied, “if that’s what you want. Just be careful with yourself, Shon. And don’t hesitate to come get me the moment you feel any pain return. Even if it’s the middle of the night.” 

“Thanks Seth,” said Shon, standing up from the table. “I appreciate how much you care.” 

After Shon walked out of the room and closed the door behind him, Seth walked over to the window and looked down on the courtyard below. There was already a good deal of activity going on in the center of the stronghold as noon approached. Much of it was from the members of Aluanna’s band who had accepted his offer of free housing within the stronghold, rather than continue sleeping in tents and other mobile shelters in the forest. Aluanna hadn’t moved in to the stronghold herself yet, but Seth was hopeful that someday she would. She visited frequently, supported the members of her band who had chosen to live there, and publicly expressed her gratitude to Seth for welcoming her band so openly. 

Of course there were others from the region who had taken up residence in the stronghold as well. The first of these was Mayor Marissi, who insisted that Seth call him by his nickname Mari. Mari had also been the first living individual who had accepted Seth’s offer to be adopted into his clan, though there had already been hundreds of souls no longer living who had accepted his offer from beyond the grave. 

Another new addition to the stronghold’s population was an odd man who called himself Lord Haughlt. At first he had visited the stronghold only out of curiosity after accepting an invitation from the satyr Toj, and had openly scoffed at Seth’s offer to take up free residence there. His opinion abruptly changed however, after learning about the records that Seth’s clan had maintained within the stronghold that went back hundreds of years further than even the oldest records in Lord Haughlt’s possession. Seth could have sworn he almost caught a smile on the man’s face when he accepted the offer to live there, as well as offer his services as official bookkeeper, accountant of resources, and historian of the homestead. Seth had accepted the offer eagerly. 

Things were going well in the two weeks since they had rescued Shon, defeated the necromancer Gravine, and healed the poisoned minotaur Mendoji who Gravine had been manipulating for decades. So far it seemed that the spirits of his clan had been strong enough to keep Gravine from escaping and terrorizing the area. And although there had been some inevitable personality clashes among the new residents, things had generally been peaceful as folks had chosen their rooms within the stronghold and moved in. After all, there were more than enough rooms to choose from. 

And yet Seth couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that the peace and ease that he was experiencing on the surface was hiding something deeper that he needed to be on the lookout for. He just wished he knew what it was. 

Certainly Shon’s newfound reluctance to continue his healing sessions made Seth uneasy. It had been unlike Shon to so casually use private information and feelings in a conversation, just to try and change the subject. And even if his feelings for Aluanna weren’t exactly a secret, Shon knew that Seth was uncomfortable discussing them. So why resort to a tactic like that? Was there something that Shon was hiding that made him want to avoid the healing sessions? 

Seth told himself he was probably just being paranoid. But he also promised himself that he’d keep a close eye on his wizard friend. 

*** 

Shon closed one eye as he looked into the silver mirror that hung in his room. When both of his eyes were open, the world that he saw looked almost entirely as he was used to, but when he closed his left eye, things changed. He still saw the physical world through his right eye, but he also saw faint lights and images like a transparent layer over his normal sight. And he was still working to figure out what these extra images were and what they might mean. 

When Shon had first noticed the odd behavior of his vision a week and a half earlier, he had assumed that it was perhaps simply the result of trauma to his eye, like seeing a streak of green after looking at the sun on accident. After all, a powerfully magical crystal had exploded in his face, so it seemed reasonable that the trauma of an injury like that would have some side effects. But then he started to notice that the images he was seeing followed patterns and predictable patterns, rather than simply being fixed or random in his vision. 

His first concern was that perhaps the crystal had given him some kind of sight into the unseen world of spirits and the dead, since the crystal had been used to imprison a necromancer. This worry had nearly driven Shon to discuss the matter with Seth, but then Shon noticed something important. The images that he saw were mostly centered on living beings. Especially living beings that were actively thinking. 

Shon noticed that when he looked at anyone with his right eye, they seemed to have a faint aura of light surrounding them, and the aura seemed to be brightest around their head. He also noticed that when individuals were thinking about something so intensely that his ethereal magic picked up on their thoughts, these auras were significantly brighter than usual. Some individuals seemed to have auras that were constantly brighter than most, such as Tarun, Seth, Aluanna, Mendoji, and Toj. Shon didn’t know if this was because they possessed auras that were inherently different from others, or simply that they were the individuals he knew the best. 

In addition to variations in how bright these auras were, there were also differences in the overall shapes of the auras, if they could really be called shapes. The images were always moving and irregular, but they had overall forms that Shon noticed over time, and some would move or connect in different ways. 

For example, Tarun’s aura flickered and swelled like a kind of slow-moving flame was burning around him. Seth’s aura seemed to radiate outwards from him, similar to the light that emanated from his lantern. In fact, Seth’s lantern also seemed to have an aura of its own. Aluanna’s aura seemed to pulse like a heartbeat, and whenever there was music playing, it would share the same rhythm as the beat of the instruments. There were also threads that went out from her aura and connected her to other members of her band. When the band played music, those connections would become stronger and sometimes grow so much that they seemed to share a single aura. 

Some of the most intriguing auras were from individuals he was only starting to become aquatinted with. Mendoji, who he had known as Vdekshi until two weeks before, had an aura that would sometimes fade into almost nothing, then expand and intensify to fill entire rooms, especially when he was alone. The two newcomers who called themselves Mayor Marissi and Lord Haughlt had perhaps the most distinctive auras Shon had seen yet. 

Marissi’s aura seemed to have tendrils that were constantly reaching out to make connections with others within the stronghold. Upon meeting new individuals, these connections would usually take hold and connect not only to himself, but to the other connecting tendrils as well, giving Marissi’s aura the appearance of a moving spider web. Shon wondered if Marissi was perhaps preparing for some kind of future election. 

Haughlt’s aura was perhaps the most inexplicable yet intriguing for Shon. It seemed to tick and pulse to some rhythm that Shon couldn’t find a connection to within the physical world, but it followed a very consistent pattern. Nine faint ticks would be followed by a much brighter tick, and Haughlt’s aura would gradually grow larger with each bright tick. Then after ten such bright ticks, his aura would somehow reset back to its default size, starting the pattern all over again. And if that wasn’t odd enough, the connections that Haughlt’s aura made were even more bizarre. Instead of connecting to other people, they connected to objects like books, coins, bundles of wheat, and the small signs people had begun placing on their doors when they claimed a room in the stronghold for themselves. Like Marissi, the connections that went out from Haughlt’s aura were also constant and numerous, but where Marissi’s connections felt organic and weblike, Haughlt’s were straight, angular, and connected in such complex ways that it gave Shon a headache if he concentrated on it for too long. 

All of these observations together convinced Shon that were not merely a side effect of trauma to his eye, nor were they some kind of residual connection to necromancy from the former prison of Gravine. There was something more that Shon was seeing since his eye had been injured by the exploding crystal, and Shon felt compelled to learn as much as he could from it. 

But his curiosity about his new vision wasn’t the only reason that Shon had wanted to stop the healing sessions with Seth for a while. It was also a matter of personal pain. Shon had been telling the truth when he said that the pain was gone. What he hadn’t mentioned was that it was more significant than just eliminating the pain that the explosion and embedded crystal shards had caused. There was another pain that had finally left Shon, and it was a pain that had become so constant and Shon had become so accustomed to it that he had nearly forgotten it existed. 

The persistent headache that Shon had acquired the day the poison dragon attacked the town of Alderfold had weighed on him from the moment he woke up each morning until he fell asleep each night. The headache was even worse when he reached his mind out to use his ethereal magic, and if he didn’t have a tool to focus his magic like his uncle’s staff or his father’s magical metal wire, the pain made it impossible for him to focus enough to use his magic at all. 

The first time that Shon had noticed the headache had ended was the night before when Seth attempted to extract the last of the crystal particles that still remained in his body, and Shon had felt the roaring headache begin to return. At the time, Shon had asked to take a break for a bit, then left the room while Seth had gone to get them some water. He had then avoided Seth for the rest of the day so he had some time to could think of something to say to put off the healing sessions for a while. 

Shon felt guilty avoiding Seth and being less than honest with him. He felt especially bad about teasing Seth earlier that morning to try and distract him with embarrassment. There was no doubt that Seth had saved his life after Shon’s injury, but he needed some time to figure out what was going on with him, and part of him was afraid that Seth just wouldn’t understand and insist that they finish removing the last bits of crystal before Shon could learn what he needed to. 

So Shon was determined to learn all that he could before the opportunity was lost. As he continued to look straight ahead at the mirror in his room, Shon closed his right eye as well. With both eyes now closed, he could no longer see the reflection of himself of course, but he could still see the reflection of his aura, as well as the faint swirling energy all around him that seemed to be present everywhere, regardless of location. 

At first the constant sight of the swirling energy and otherworldly shapes that floated through it had frightened Shon and made it difficult for him to fall asleep at night, but he was starting to become accustomed to it. He had also discovered that if he truly needed to block out the sight, he could pull the hood of his father’s cloak completely over his head, and he would see nothing more than the usual darkness he was used to experiencing when his eyes were closed. 

Shon opened his right eye again, seeing the room around him and his own reflection in the mirror once again, along with his aura being reflected in the smooth, silver surface. Shon had noticed that the silver mirrors hung in some rooms of the stronghold were the only objects he had found that reflected the energy of a person’s aura as well as normal light. The reflection on a pool of water, for example, would show the image of a person nearby, but not their aura. The long mirror that hung in Shon’s room from head to foot was one of the main reasons that Shon had requested that particular room to be his when he and his companions moved into the stronghold. Of course it didn’t hurt that it was also one of the largest and most comfortably furnished rooms in the stronghold. 

A chair in front of Shon held the items he wanted to use to make some observations that day. First, he picked up a long, thin strip of cloth and tied it over his face to cover his eye similar to the way that Solimar used to do. He felt that the elf had certainly looked more impressive wearing the eye covering than Shon did, but it served its purpose. It would be easier for him to make his observations if he wasn’t constantly focusing on keeping his left eye closed. 

Next, Shon picked up his father’s cloak and fastened it to himself. The aura around his body was covered up as soon as the cloak was in place, leaving only the aura around his head and hands shining like odd beacons in his reflection. He also noticed that the energy swirling around the room now seemed to be moving towards him, rather than floating randomly through the environment. The openings in his cloak seemed to cause three whirlpools of energy where his hands and head were, with the whirlpool at his head producing a more intense whirlpool than the whirlpools as both of his hands combined. 

Shon then picked up Stick, the druidic staff that Uncle Grodin had loaned him when he left Life’s Edge, and which Tarun had returned to him after he and Seth had rescued Shon. There was an immediate shift in Shon’s aura and the movement of energy within the room the moment he held Stick in his right hand. The vortexes of energy shifted so that significantly more energy was pouring into the aura around the staff than the aura around his head. His left hand still had its own aura, but no ambient energy was being pulled into it, as so much of the energy was now directed to the auras around his head and the hand holding Stick. 

After putting Stick down on the bed behind him, Shon reached into a hidden pocket of his cloak and removed the spool of magical wire that his father had placed there for emergencies. The flow of energy shifted again, even more intensely than when he held Stick. This was not too surprising to Shon, since he had already observed weeks ago that the wire extended the range of his magical abilities more powerfully than anything else, and that he could increase the range even more by uncurling more of the wire for a greater length extending outwards. 

What did surprise Shon was the effect he observed when he used both of his hands to hold opposite ends of the wire. The energy in the room began to dance and race around in ways he could’ve hardly imagined before witnessing it. Energy would pour into the aura at his right hand with the force of water rushing down a waterfall. It would then pour back out into the room through the aura at his left hand. This caused a circular flow of energy that pulled in energy from far beyond the walls of his room, and seemed to draw in energy from as far as the horizon outside his window. In the center of this circular flow was the aura around his own head that seemed to be touching and directing the majority of the energy and acting as a hub through which it all passed. 

While all of this was happening, Shon felt as if he could hear every thought from every mind for miles around, and he had the sense that some of his thoughts were touching those minds as well. An increasing distortion began to build within the flow of energy, and Shon dropped the wire before the flood of input became too overwhelming for him to control. 

Things immediately became quieter and went back to normal after putting down the wire. Shon could feel Tarun’s thoughts from the room next to his, and a moment later, Tarun knocked on Shon’s door. “Was that you, Shon?” Tarun asked. “Is everything alright?” 

“Sorry about that,” Shon replied, not opening the door. “Everything is fine. I was just experimenting with my father’s wire. I’ll be more careful next time.” 

“Good to know,” Tarun replied, sounding relieved. “Let me know if you need anything. I’m just in the next room over. 

Shon decided he needed to wrap up his observations for the morning, but he had one more item he wanted to test. Sitting across the chair in front of Shon was the silver staff that had, until recently, held the very crystal that had exploded in his face. The bottom of the staff ended in a sharp point like a spear or javelin, while the top of the staff had four spiraling prongs that split apart and then converged again to create a kind of round cage, where the crystal had been housed. He hadn’t touched the staff since the night that the crystal had blown up while he was holding the staff to keep it safe. 

Shon had told Tarun in private that he wanted to inspect the staff alone, and asked his friend if he would quietly bring the staff to Shon’s room. Tarun had agreed, and now Shon could try something he had been tempted to try since the pain of the shards had left his right arm. He reached down to the chair, and picked up the silver staff. 

When Shon had been young and still living with Uncle Grodin, his uncle had described to Shon what a lightning rod was, and how it could be used to catch lightning and protect homes and other tall structures during a lightning storm. Shon had never really been able to visualize what Uncle Grodin had been trying to explain, until the moment he had picked up the staff. 

The energy in the room was no longer lazily floating through the environment, nor was it even rushing around in a flow that resembled watery whirlpools. In a moment quicker than Shon could perceive, the energy had shattered, gathered, and arced into a storm of lightning that seemed to connect everything with the sharpness and precision of an electric shock, and every spark of energy in the entire storm was connected to a single immense bolt of sustained lightning that was absolutely fixed upon the top and bottom ends of his staff. 

And there was no question in Shon’s mind that it was now his staff. The lightning flowed through the staff and into him as effortlessly as if the staff was an extension of his own body. The combined aura of Shon and his staff grew more and more intense, and Shon began to notice a feeling of heat growing in his right eye and the arm that was holding the staff. The heat was not painful, but it was undeniable. At that same moment, Shon also noticed thoughts and voices shooting through him as fast as a bolt of lightning. And rather than simply hearing the thoughts, the lightning was recording them as memories into his own mind. The sensation was exhilarating. 

Fortunately, Shon found he had enough control over this lightning storm of energy that he could prevent his own thoughts from escaping into the storm unless he directed them to. The entire experience was intense, but not overwhelming. Shon was in control, and when he placed his staff next to Stick on the bed behind him, he did so slowly and deliberately. 

Shon then removed the covering from his left eye, and let it adjust to the light in the room. He then walked out of his room and knocked on the next door down the hall. 

“Tarun, I think we should get Seth,” said Shon. “The three of us need to talk.”