I ate a marble, the one with the gold square, and looked back down below the mill stone. The central clump of rotating magicicles surrounded by the thick ring of magicicles that followed the foundation had reminded me of my own inner core's beginnings, so I was inspired to repeat the process. 

- On a larger scale, under a building, and outside of my body, but it's the same principle, right? As a bonus it didn't require much of my own power.  

Thousands of crystalline "pivot" point in a geometric sphere slowly rotated in time with the flow of the mill stone mass. 

- It's slower than my core, but it is certainly much more massive, which I think will help with the collapse. And if my guess at how far the core will affect magicicles vs it's mass, it should start pulling in some from the river. 

I looked at the flow under the foundation. 

- Should I do something about this, it's kind of awkward being a rectangular foundation. The corners might have a braking effect on the whole system. 

I decided to see what effect it had if I managed to pull the collapse off. It seems like I had improved my skill some from when I had worked on my inner core as I could now control up to 16 points with moderate success. My control increased markedly with less points. Starting with the inner shell of the collapse I pressed in on an even dozen points spread equally around the circumference knowing that it would lever the rest into motion. The whole constellation started to smoothly fold inward dragging a cloud of the free magicicles with it. When the inner shell reached the mill stone mass I switched to pressing in on the middle shell, and the resistance started to ramp up quickly. 

- Nope, this isn't going to work. The resistance is too high, too early. I'm going to have to re-think this. I wonder if this pressure is related to the heavy feeling I get from these magicicles. 

I slowly let the whole structure expand out and back to its resting state. 

- Hmm maybe if I attach some really long levers on the outside, will that even work? I think nukes use explosives to compress their cores.  

I got a quick mental image of what a magic explosion scaled up from a blade of grass to the mill stone would look like. 

“Bad idea.”- Me 

- Ok no explosions. I seem to recall that crystals vibrate. I can make magicicle chain vibrate, maybe I can add energy to the collapse if I get the pivots vibrating… 

I rubbed my nose as I got up and walked back to the mansion as I thought. 

….. 

I walked across the bridge and was headed for the phantom forest, having spent enough time laying in the bed thinking that I got hungry again. I had eaten one of the blue-tinged lizard marbles, which kind of tasted like I was holding a battery against my tongue. 

“Great candy in new Tingly flavour!”- Me 

I giggled at the absurdity of a flavor being described as tingly.  

- I think my time sense is seriously warped. How long was I just lying and thinking that I ended up hungry again? Now I should definitely find a few more soul marbles as well as power up again.  

I turned at the end of the bridge and headed for the lumber mill, keeping to the stone wall, and watching for hungry monsters. 

Not even a dozen steps down the road a bird blew out of the field followed by 1-meter-long feline. The cat was a mottled black and white with tall sharp ears, two bushy tails and six limbs. It leapt and snatched the bird from the air with its front claw, and somehow landed with the bird in its mouth.  As I raise my hands up, the cat growled around the struggling bird, then streaked back into the field and out of sight. 

I was left standing, partially crouched, hands out ready to blast away. I waited a moment the stood up and dusted my shirt off, turned around and headed back to the main road. 

“We're not much into lumber anyways”- Me 

I returned to the bridge then turned and head back towards the ridge. Just as I got to the last crossing on the main gravelled road, a doe came racing around the ridge line, followed by an almost 2-meter tall, heavy set humanoid. 

‘What is up with all the chase scenes today?”- Me 

I held up the last gold marble, building a large charge. 

The humanoid was snub nosed, had long wild dirty black hair, and his skin tone was a yellow tinged dark tan.  The dirty hides covering his torso flexed as his massive legs and arms pumped as he ran after the doe. 

- Put purple pants on him and you'd have a yellow Hulk 

The doe bounced gracefully over the wall and disappeared into the tall wheat field. The hulk looked out at the field, then back at me, snarled and kept running right towards me.  

-I think that doe just MPKed me! 

 

I threw out two leaders, one connected to each end of the gold needle in the marble I held. One leader went deep into the ground and the slow current that ran under the road, the other landed on the onrushing hulks chest. This time I passed the massive charge of magicicles into the gold needle then twisted them into electrical charge. The world turned Violet. 

I blinked, and again.  

“Huh that looks like the sky!”- Me 

Shaking my head, I realized that I was laying on my back, on the road, holding my arm locked out, and I hurt, everywhere. I looked around quickly trying the find the hulk. All that was left was a pile of grey ash that lay on the road in about the position that I last saw him. 

“Did he explode like the lizard?”- Me 

I slowly got up and hobbled over to the pile. 

- Looks like the black whirlpool got to it. Damn how long was I out for? 

I looked at the gold needle marble that was in my hand. A complicated 3-D design in gracefully curved white lines was traced around the needle. 

- I wonder if that's the twist to convert magicicles into electricity, captured in the marble similar to how I was making designs before? I'll have to compare them later. 

I put a little power into the marble, and was rewarded with an uncontrolled shock racing down my arm. 

“Ouch! Stop zapping yourself!”- Me 

- Well now we know that works, but I guess I still have to provide the leaders. But why did I get such a huge result. It should have been only a little bit better since I closed the circuit through the ground. 

I held the marble carefully, aimed a leader into the road, and another onto a wheat stalk across the road from where I was standing. 

- Ok everything is set up the same, but let's try just a little bit of power. 

I feed a trickle of magicicles into the gold needled marble.  

An arc of violet electricity turned the wheat stalk into a carbon black stick. 

- That was about the same level as my normal shot with a minor amount of power. Colour was different from my normal electrical arcs too. 

I set up another arc and concentrated on the process that happened in the marble. 

“That's way cooler than I thought!”- Me 

The pattern imprinted around the gold needle in the marble duplicated what I had been doing instinctively up till now. 

- Aside from the question of how the hell I'm doing that, thinking of it as only a ‘twist’. That was way more power out than I put in. 

I set up a third shot, this time I watched the ground lead closely. As soon as I set power into the marble, a huge mass of magicicles from the flow under the road followed the charge up the leader, twisted through marble and jumped as violet lightening along the electrified leader. 

- Wow, makes me wonder how the mill is going to work out. 

I peered into the marble again, contemplating the white etched curves. 

- I wonder how efficient the conversion is? Did any of the imprint get damaged, or blur, because the first shot was so over powered. If I had a metal staff, I could mount this on it, and I wouldn't be worried about the ground leader hitting me. 

I rubbed my nose as I peered into the gold needled marble. 

….. 

I ran across the bridge, turned the corner, and dove into an open door. I could hear claws skittering on the squares cobbles as the 5-meter-long orange and black monster raccoon raced passed the gates. 

- Sure, let's just stand around staring into a marble after making a huge amount of noise in the   @#$%ing monster infested outdoors! 

I peeked out of the window at the square, the truck sized raccoon had skidded to a halt and was peering around trying to find the two-legged treat that had ran away. I started pulling as much power as I could from my inner system, even roughly shaving off some from the cyclones. I held on hand against the floor and other pointed at the furious raccoon. It did not hold the etched gold needle marble. 

“Just had to drop it jumping over the walls! Today bites!”- Me 

The raccoon heard my muttering, quickly turned in place, and charged in my direction. The sound of its claws grinding into the square's cobbles was like the claw of a back hoe scrapping concrete.  My leader landed on one of the raccoon's ears. The crack of the blue lightening arc, tinged violet along its edges, was deafening. My suit jacket burned off leaving crazed, jagged black lines from my shoulder to my blackened fingers. The burning Raccoon slammed into the wall I was behind, sending a cascade of masonry and rubble raining down on both of us. 

“Stupid monsters in this stupid world!”- Me 

I pushed rubble off my body with my left arm, my right was burnt into uselessness.  The Raccoon faired far worst. Half its face was a charred open mess, while its back and side were smoking burns, it was still twitching under the rubble with the after effects of the lightening. I picked up a chunk of stone and raised it over my head. 

“You better make a big tasty marble!”- Me 

I brought the stone down onto the Raccoons head.