Once most of us had caught our breath, Luna stood up and faced us. Her ears were flat on her head, her hands were balled into fists, and her tail had wilted behind her. ("I'm... I'm sorry I put us in danger like that...")

  Maxwell sighed and wiped the sweat still coating his brow. "You let yourself get baited into attacking, but ultimately we were going to fight it anyway."

  "It was lucky that you attacked it with lightning. It seems you were able to divert the attacks with your own magic. We would have been in much bigger trouble if she had been spraying fire at us the entire time instead," Piper added.

  Aria looked over to the side. I followed her line of sight and saw the broken crossbow lying in a heap near some of the dead changelings. "I'll have to bring the pieces of that crossbow back up with us. Once I had less room to maneuver, I had to drop it and switch to my daggers and my usual bow. The enchantments on it weren't helpful enough to make up for how unwieldy it was to use."

  ("That's... that's it? You guys aren't going to scold me for nearly getting all of us killed!?") Luna asked in a pained voice.

  I crouched down so that I could be closer to eye level with her. "Luna, do any of us need to scold you about this? It's obvious that you know you made a mistake. Learn from it and don't let yourself be taunted into attacking before we're ready again. Regardless, we all decided to come here to kill it. It's unfortunate that you may have increased its strength against us, but what would the alternative been? You can't just avoid using magic when we fight on the off chance something like this happens again."

  She looked down and nodded, but it didn't feel like she took my words to heart. I stood up and pulled her against me. It wasn't the warmest hug since I was still wearing my armor, but it still seemed to lift her spirits a bit. As I held her, I watched the curling mana roiling inside her like a miniature sun. With some effort, I could sharpen my new mana senses or let them dull and fade to the background, but like the bloody rabbits, the changeling queen seems to have permanently altered my umber hound form's physiology in some way. Deep inside her, I could see her pulsing heart. The center of her magic was sending mana throughout her body like a river with pulsing waves that increased the flow. It was surprising to see how much it resembled the meditation Celeste had described to me. Perhaps it wasn't just a metaphor she had taught me, but an actual observation of how mana worked.

  ("Are you okay?") Luna asked, looking up at me.

  I nodded and pushed a lock of hair out of her face. "I'm just getting used to the new changes."

  Luna's eyebrows rose. ("I completely forgot! The changeling queen, what did it give you?")

  I looked up and scanned the surroundings. "Mana sight, something akin to my blindfold, but stronger and more granular. I can see the magic flowing through everything like the waves that Celeste described. I can also feel it in a way that I hadn't before. Like I can taste and breathe the loose floating mana all around us."

  ("I would have thought you would have gotten something related to transformation,") Luna remarked, her mind finally being pulled away from the lead-up to the battle.

  I shrugged. "What I get from monsters isn't always straightforward, but I think this change is rather helpful. I could do some of this with the blindfold, but my ability to see and feel mana is a lot stronger than it ever was. I probably won't need the blindfold anymore, unless I'm actually trying to hide my eyes."

  Luna smiled up at me. ("It would be nice to see more of your face again, when possible.")

  I looked over at Maxwell, who had already gotten started cutting the fairy wings from the dead changelings. There had been hundreds of changelings in this fight, and none of them had gotten away once the lightning magic had moved into the pillars. A lot of the wings had been damaged in the battle, but it would still be a lot to take back. I tilted my head when my eyes trailed over the pillars. They looked strange to my new magic sight.

  "I want to take a look at this glass," I said, letting go of Luna and stepping up to one of the broken pillars along the side of the room.

  Luna followed me closely and carefully picked up one of the broken shards of glass that Aria and Iris had destroyed with their combined attacks. I lifted up a larger chunk of it and turned it around in my hands. Unlike a lot of the other dungeon materials, this rock didn't have any mana flowing through it. Which was strange, because it was what had housed all of that lightning that had been pinning us into the arena.

  "Luna, can you put some electricity into one of these shards?"

  Her eyes looked up at me before flicking back down to the clear glass in her hand. The air began to crackle a little and then the shard lit up with the glow of her lightning. I stared at it intently and watched the mana flow through the shard's channels. It was fascinating to watch the mana flow through it, the pathways looked... artificial somehow? Too ordered, with straight tracts of mana moving through the glass like a lattice. It was damaged though, so the mana leaked until it fizzled out. The glass had broken into sharp pieces that disrupted the circuit. I wondered if other kinds of mana could flow through it as well as lightning did.

  Once all of the lightning mana had leaked out and the crystal stopped glowing, I turned to face Luna again. "Do you think you can push some fire mana into it without activating anything?"

  ("I'll try,") she said, refocusing on the glass shard. I watched, engrossed, as the different mana aspect filled the shard through the broken channels and coalesced inside it. This time, the shard took on a warm yellow glow as it filled with fire mana. ("It's glowing. What kind of material is this?")

  "I don't know, but we should take back as much of this stuff as we can." I looked over at Maxwell, who was distracted with his slightly gruesome work of organizing the dead bodies of the changelings. "Maxwell, come over here a moment. Actually, Iris, you too. I want you to try something for me."

  Iris perked up. She had been talking with Aria while helping Maxwell move stuff around. But she carefully made her way over and around the piled-up changelings. There was a slight pang of worry as she walked through all these corpses completely unfazed. This didn't seem all that healthy for a teenager, but she seemed less bothered by the grisly sight than I did.

  "What do you need?" Iris asked curiously as she came up to the broken pillar we were standing next to.

  Aria and Maxwell followed over less eagerly, but they seemed curious as well. Aria crouched down next to the base of the broken pillar and carefully trailed her finger along a part that still showed the hole she punched through it. "I was quite impressed by how well that went in live combat. I knew it was pretty impressive when we were practicing it before, but watching it destroy these things was something else," Aria said with a smile.

  Iris bobbed her head in excited agreement. "It was! I couldn't believe how much stronger your arrows were!"

  "Check this out," I said before handing Maxwell the shard of glowing glass.

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  He took it and turned it around in his hands. "This looks interesting. What is it?"

  "I'm not entirely sure, but it's absorbing Luna's magic. The changeling queen gave me improved mana sight, better than what the blindfold gives me, and I can practically see the mana flowing through these hunks of glass like water moving through canals," I told him.

  Luna had picked up a few smaller pieces of broken glass and was charging up each one with distinct kinds of magic while trying to use different intensities. Because each shard was broken up in unique places, each one varied in its ability to hold onto the magic. Iris had followed her example and had pushed a bit of wind magic into one of the smaller shards, and like the ones Luna had charged, it began to glow a bluish green color.

  Piper stood up from where she had been resting and came over to us, since it was obvious the glass shards were holding our attention. "What's the lightshow coming from over here?"

  I turned and held out another shard of glass. "Be careful while holding it, but this glass is able to hold onto our magic somehow. These broken pieces are leaky, but when put together like the pillars had been before, they could probably hold onto the magic for a lot longer."

  Piper's eyebrows rose as she examined it. She pushed her own healing magic into the shard, and it began to glow a warm red light. Her brows furrowed as she looked down at the shard before glancing over at Luna. She was so focused on examining the different shards that she hadn't even noticed Piper's attention.

  "Luna, this might be an odd request, but can you take the mana out of this shard once I've put it in?" Piper asked.

  Luna's ears perked up and she looked over at the red glowing stone. Piper passed it over to Luna, who frowned as she tugged on the mana inside. The mana suddenly became excited and flooded Luna's body in a wave, causing her to let out a surprised eep sound in response. She quickly dropped the shard and took a step back while the fur on her tail puffed up.

  "Luna! Are you okay?" Piper asked in worry.

  She shook out her hand and looked up at Piper with a slightly embarrassed expression. ("I'm okay, it just felt really weird. It felt a bit like magic backlash, like I lost control of a spell. I wasn't trying to cast anything though. It just happened when I tried to pull the mana into myself.")

  Piper rested her hands on Luna and squinted her eyes in concentration, a look that I've started to associate with her using her diagnostic magic. Her face progressively looked more confused as time went on.

  "What's wrong?" I asked. I looked at Luna's face in concern, worried that something bad had just happened.

  Piper frowned before stepping away and crossing her arms. "There's nothing wrong with her... I don't think. She just seems overcharged with healing mana. It's something that I've only been able to observe in myself. I intentionally put myself into this state when I'm fighting. It's how I'm able to absorb so much damage and heal so quickly. I've never been able to do it for others, though. Usually, people can only absorb so much of my magic before it gets rejected."

  "Does that mean that I..." Iris picked up one of the glass shards that Luna had charged with fire mana and pulled it into herself before any of us could stop her.

  Iris shivered as the mana in the small stone shot into her. I watched with concern as the mana flowed through her body violently, without anywhere to go or anywhere to stop. Iris didn't look hurt, but as the mana rapidly cycled through her body, it didn't look safe either.

  "Iris, cast a spell, something on the other side of the room. Try to use up all the mana you just absorbed," I told her seriously.

  She bobbed her head and looked in the other direction before holding her hand out. She was startled when the area she had targeted suddenly exploded in a fiery pop. Thankfully, all of the mana that had been energetically running through her body was gone, sucked into the spell she cast.

  "That was weird," Iris said with a furrowed brow. "I tried to spin up a vortex, and it just exploded as fire instead."

  I ran my fingers through my hair as I let my beating heart calm down. "Iris... That was really dangerous. After seeing Luna's reaction, why did you pick up one of the stones filled with fire magic? It could have killed you or something."

  Iris's ears went back, and she smiled awkwardly. "I thought that it might give me fire affinity..."

  I frowned. "Why would you think that?"

  She looked over at Piper. "Well... When Luna absorbed Piper's magic, she got an effect that only she can use with healing magic, right? Well, I thought that if I took in fire magic, maybe I would get fire affinity. It kinda let me cast a fire spell... but it didn't feel right. Something felt weird about the mana..."

  I nodded and sighed. "Well... at least you're okay. When you absorbed that magic, I could see it running through your body without anywhere to go. You didn't have anywhere to store the mana, and it looked like it was only getting worse. I was afraid that it would hurt you, assuming it hasn't already, if you held onto the mana any longer."

  "Let me look at you," Piper said as she came over to Iris. "That sounds like it could have done some damage."

  "O-okay," Iris agreed.

  Piper crouched down and rested her hands on Iris's shoulders before scrunching up her face again. After a moment, Piper shook her head and stepped away. "She looks fine. Whatever she did, it didn't seem to leave any lasting damage, at least. We should be more careful when messing with this stuff, though. Your description of what happened is consistent with things I've heard about mana poisoning."

  "Mana poisoning?" Iris asked, suddenly more concerned.

  Piper nodded. "In some situations, people can absorb mana into their bodies that they can't use. Over time, it causes stress on the body and causes a sickness with really odd symptoms. It doesn't usually appear in magic users though, so maybe casters can expel the incompatible mana through spellcasting. It's good that you were able to get rid of it before any symptoms could develop."

  "How long would I have had?" Iris asked, concerned.

  Piper shrugged. "No idea. Usually, the buildup of incompatible mana is a lot slower. This was a lot of mana all at once. It's possible it could have gone haywire inside you if you didn't expel it all right there."

  I stood up and looked at all of the broken shards of glass. "I think we should take as much of this stuff back with us as we possibly can. I don't think we'll be able to find this place again once we leave, and this stuff is too interesting to leave behind."

  "I agree," Maxwell said. "It looks like we're going to be here a while, though..." Maxwell frowned as he looked around at the large piles of broken glass and the remains of the pillars. It was a good thing Celeste gave me that larger storage ring...

  Hello! Interesting new finds in the dungeon! I wonder what all of this will be used for? I hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading!

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