I was sitting about 10 meters away from the edge of the Black Gold door’s vignette, eyes closed, as I ran magicicle leaders out through the air and down into the ground. I had discovered two new bits to the puzzle of this grey after-life.  

The first was the discovery of a network of linked magicicle patterns below the ground. The patterns reminded me of my twists, only in this case in a 2D plain instead of the 3D of my normal magic. The patterns seemed very simple at first glance, till I realized that these simple patterns were actually small sections of a ridiculously huge pattern that then linked to other huge patterns. They were laid out edge to edge on the same plain, a plain that I couldn’t penetrate through. I could recognize some of the magicicles that made up the patterns, but there were many more that I had never seen before. Some were linked together, similar to how models of linked atoms made up molecules in science classes. Others were like streams of water flowing through the curves of the patterns. The more I looked the more patterns I found, and all of it was made of all base magicicles. There was none of the familiar crystalized or liquid magicicle. 

The second was about the door. It was a solid mass that reached up through a gap in the pattern from bellow. My internal sight couldn’t penetrate the mass of stone that the Black Gold door sat on. The patterns that surrounded the intrusion seem to be thicker, surrounding the slightly irregular shape of the rock. The pattern along the border was incredibly dense, complicated and seemed to vibrate with power. 

-It looks like the pattern is containing the rock base from expanding but is not interacting with whatever the its made from. I’ll have to check later if the door and the other parts of the vignette are also impenetrable to my inner vision. 

I raised my head up, keeping my eyes closed. I focused on the leaders I had sent into the sky. 

-Just air till there isn’t anything. 

The grey sky above got very thin quickly after about 100 meters, eventually becoming nothing. Not like the vacuum of space, instead a nothingness that didn’t have space. A nothingness that my leader couldn’t even exist in, couldn’t even reach. I was about to pull my leaders back when I caught site of glint of light which disappeared almost immediately. 

-That was odd, maybe this is where the light for this realm is generated? How am I going to catch sight of a photon? Hmm lens. Photo paper. Didn’t I read something about a big tank of water catching sight of cosmic rays? I can’t twist water, yet, but maybe gas? Good practice if nothing else. 

I moved a few leaders closer to the same area and started to pull more magicicles up the leaders into a linked network, forming a layer of Nitrogen along border of the nothingness. I expanded creating a layer of Oxygen, and finally Argon, the limit of my current air twist skill to filter out gasses. 

-Uglies are going to have to watch out when I can pull enough water out for the air to electrolyze it into hydrogen and oxygen. 

As I was contemplating compressed hydrogen explosions, the thin layer of Argon started to light up with an occasional sparkle. I let the Oxygen layer subside and kept the Nitrogen layer as a buffer behind the Argon, using it to keep the Argon as pure as possible. I narrowed the field down to a circle of about 1 meter diameter, pulling most of my leaders from the ground and up to join the others in the air, stabilizing the wavering layers of gas. The additional leaders allowed me to continue twisting magicicles into a now stable band of Argon surrounded by the much more abundant Nitrogen. When everything had settled into a static state, I moved my focus to the now more frequent sparks. 

I watched as sparks appeared on the border of the argon and the nothingness, more common in the purest section in the middle of my circle. I looked closer, right to the edge of my perception before I finally caught a briefest glimpse of what was happening. I waited and watched catching more of the brief sparks till I was certain of what I was seeing. 

-I’m watching particles appear out of the nothingness. Something is interacting with the argon, briefly exciting the gas which then lights up. I’m also catching glimpses of magicicles as well! Maybe light, gas, even magic is just spontaneously appearing at the border of this nothingness and after-reality?  

I watched, straining to see more, when I noticed a lot of feedback on the leaders. I pulled my awareness back from the Agron and looked at the whole field I had set up. The border between the Nitrogen and Argon against the nothingness was highly agitated and glowing. It was like a bright ring of blue light surrounded by layer of billowing cloud streaming away. 

-I'm going to Thor myself again arn’t I? 

The brief delay as I joked in my head was long enough for the blue glowing ring too increase exponentially in brightness. A heard a massive crack as the blue light turning white raced down my leaders in the sky and into the few leaders in the ground. The bright flash caused me to stop the twist. 

My eyes pulled open, black burnt skin splitting open. All I could see was a white fog. 

-Oh, great you whited out your eyes this time. I bet I look like one of those burnt monks that set themselves on fire. This is really going to hurt when my image starts to repair itself. 

As the pain started to rise and my vision started to clear I realized that the white out wasn’t just caused by the damage to my eyes, but I was surrounded by a swirling cloud of mist. I watched it part around Jessica as she ran towards me. 

-I must have damaged my ears because I can’t hear what she was yelling.  

The pain spiked and I sure I screamed my way down into the darkness of unconsciousness. 

…. 

I awoke laying on my back, looking up at Jessica’s concerned face, which quickly moved to angry when she saw that I was waking up. 

“Fy Faen! What did you just do?”- Jessica 

I opened my mouth and only a croak came out, followed by a coughing fit that nearly caused me to pass out in pain again. When it subsided, I tried to sit up, Jessica quickly helping me. I looked down at the poor state of my suit, more like charred tatters clinging to my modesty.  

-No Lichtenberg marks this time, maybe it wasn’t lightening? 

“What did it look like?”-Me 

I looked towards Jessica where she was kneeling beside me. 

“You looked like a burnt hot dog my science teacher used to show how dangerous electricity could be.”-Jessica 

Her face had turned to stern, mad, with a touch of “I can’t believe what a mess you caused”. 

“I had to perform CPR on you! You weren't breathing and had no pulse!”-Jessica 

I looked at her for a moment then grinned. 

“Beside that we are dead, and don’t have a heartbeat, I’m sorry I was unconscious for your efforts.”-Me 

She looked confused, then blushed. Her brow quickly furled, and she hit me as she got up. 

“Du er en drittsekk!”-Jessica 

She turned around and stormed off. 

Later. When she calmed down, she told me I had been surrounded by a swirling cloud and a bolt of blue/white light had connected the cloud and the sky. When she found me as the cloud dispersed, I looked like a “Burnt moron licking electrical sockets”. Maybe she hadn’t calmed down quite enough by then. 

I explained what I had been doing, how I had caused the unintended effect, and the fact that since my accidental creation of Keraunos, I had always used a grounded leader when I was experimenting. 

“Grounded? You looked like a Christmas goose left too long in the oven.”-Jessica 

I smiled, hoping it looked reassuring. 

“I don’t think that blue/white bolt was just electricity, I think it was more a beam of particles and magicicles mixed. Which is probably why the grounding didn’t work entirely.”-Me 

Jessica crossed her arms and looked at me sternly. 

“If that was only working partially, that was too dangerous. You won’t be trying that again.”-Jessica 

-Now she sounds like one of my mothers.  

“No, next time I’ll be more careful, with a smaller Argon/Nitrogen ring, and more grounding leaders. I’ve got to check to see if it did anything to the ground. Maybe it left a fulgurite or had an effect on the patterns bellow. Hmmm”-Me 

-I wonder if the pattern is controlling the nothingness creation effect? I hope that that bolt didn’t destroy any of the ring around the Black Gold door base. That might be really bad. 

I looked around to see if I could find the spot, I had been in. My thumb rubbing down the side of my nose. 

“Crazy Magician!”-Jessica  

Jessica threw up her hands into the air, turned around and walked away. I looked away from the ground to watch her walk away. A big grin spread across my face. 

I turned back to the ground looking for where I had once again tried to fry myself. 

-I know I return from the damage I suffer here, but I won't when I’m alive. I hope I’m not so cavalier in life. 

I found the spot quickly, the burnt ground making it fairly easy to spot. The grey dust had been blown away leaving the ground where I was sitting scorched. Where the three leaders I had left leading into the ground were black obsidian circles surrounded by scorched whirled marks. The obsidian circles varied the smallest at 1 cm to the largest at about 5 cm in diameter.  

-They really don’t look like fulgurites. More like black dots on the ground. The scorched whorls around them look vaguely like twist spirals.  

I sat down and sent leaders into the ground down to the patterns bellow. Other than maybe a bit more activity the patterns seemed undisturbed, either having regenerated, or not suffering any damage in the first place. 

-Well, that’s one worry gone.  

I checked out the black dots next. Each formed a solid tapering cylinder, each getting smaller as it moved deeper into the ground. The smallest was a short curved spike running only 30cm into the ground. The second started at 3cm wide, spiralled down to a point like a ruler length cork screw. The last 5cm ran straight down for about half a meter before abruptly stopping at a chunk of rock that I could not see into, similar to the base or the door that rose out from bellow the patterns. 

-Looks like I'll be digging by hand again. 

I started on the smallest, pulling the 30cm long shiny black claw out from the scorched dirt. I brushed it off and held it up to get a closer look. The material looked like a dark glass with a lot of long streaks from the 1cm base down to the tip. There was also lots of inclusions, pockets of gases, and specks of material. I looked closer, eventually closing my eyes and running leaders into the material investigating the streaks first. A few of them were actually hollow tubes, but most were discoloured material. Some were tinted different colours, a few were in spirals or in random spalling paths. One looked like a drill bit had bored through, leaving the spoil packed in the tube behind it. I moved on to the inclusions, most seemed to be odd shaped chunks of melted rock, but a few were very different. I found small chunks of what appeared like metals, drop shaped chambers with liquid condensing inside, and crystalized magicicles in long strings.  

-Was the bolt a particle beam? The ground glassed similar to a fulgurite, capturing the passage of the particles. I would be interesting to see if the inclusions are bits of elements, or metal alloys. The crystalized magicicles looked very different from the complex and wild structures in the fulgurites left by my lightening. 

The fulgurites were large, chaotic and a jumbled mess. These were simple, almost like a chain of the most basic forms that the magicicles could crystalize into. I noticed that crystal lines were also of differing lengths. 

-Differing energy states? More power travelling longer. No that isn’t it. The magicicles were crystalizing so it had to be a steady stream. Did the bolt somehow sort the particles by type into lines, when it hit me, or when it started in the halo? OH, hell! I havn`t looked to see if I shattered my core again! 

I quickly dropped the leaders, letting my hands with the claw fall to my lap, and focused inward. I was greeted with a chaotic mess of magicicles, some zipping around, others moving in slowly spiraling arks. 

-What the… If I blew my core into pieces shouldn’t the magicicles be back into the usual sandstorm clouds? 

I moved my focus inward, through the chaos. As I got closer to where my core was normally, the chaos started to move in the same direction. I sighed in relief. 

-That’s a good sign. But what is up with all these magicicles.  

The mess started to become more uniform and clearer, allowing me to make out the beautiful sight of my own personal Orrery. A now very different Orrery. My core was still spinning, the cyclones still stable, and fine mist of liquid magicicle was twisting down from them to spiral around the spinning core. All normal. The accretion disc was not. Were as before it was pretty uniform, now it was a mixed mess of magicicles with the only order being they were all orbiting my core in the same clock wise direction.  

-This is going to take some time to sort it’s self out. I guess I found a new way to recharge.  

“And of course, it has to be incredibly painful process.”-Me 

“Which you probably deserve.”-Adriana 

Her unexpected voice from behind me gave me a start. 

I looked over my shoulder to Adriana standing with Ajay and Lana. 

“Oh cool, is that a dragon claw?”-Ajay   

I looked to Ajay then down to the “claw” then back up to the group. My mental thought process had crashed from trying to go in too many directions at once. 

-Way to keep up your infallible, all knowing wizard image. 

“Ah, No. More the unexpected result of an experiment.”-Me 

“Was that the bright flash we saw? We were two doors away when the sky lit-up from this direction.”-Lana 

I was about to say something when Jessica started talking as she walked over. 

“Yes, the Idiot turned himself into a badly over cooked roast. He looked like one of those black corpses they showed on the war news. It is honestly scary how fast he returned to normal.”-Jessica 

“Really? Are we talking a bit burnt or like total charcoal brickette?”-Ajay 

I stood up and started talking before Jessica, or Adriana, could start in again on my stupidity. 

“It was bad enough. You said two doors away? How bright was it?”-Me 

Both Jessica and Adriana gave me a look as I tried to forcibly change the topic. 

“It lit up the whole sky! I thought it was lightening at first, but Lana was looking towards it and said it was white and in a straight line!”-Ajay 

“It was very bright and didn’t look like any lightening I have ever seen. It was more like a scene out of anime, like an orbital laser.”-Lana 

“We came back as soon as we saw it.”-Adriana 

I looked out into the grey distance. 

“Will it bring the guards? The Uglies?”-Jessica 

“I don’t know. We are not that far from the outer ring of guards, and they are not the politest of the bunch. We should probably move away for now.”-Me 

“We could show you some of the cool doors we found.”-Ajay 

I nodded to Ajay then looked towards Adriana.  

“Any further out?”-Me 

“We only went one door out, but several doors, um, right from the breeze direction. Wish we had paper to make a map. You could get lost quick here.”-Adriana 

“The Glowing Grotto?”-Lana 

“I was hoping for the volcano! It was supper hot. Like make you sweat hot.”-Ajay 

“That one is in too far. Well go for the lake first, then decide from there”-Adriana 

Both Ajay and Lana nodded. 

“What if the others return?”-Jessica 

Adriana snorted, but I interrupted before she could make her opinion on the missing men was. 

“I don’t think Jay will be back for a long time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Everet or Andor have found someone else to beat them up. Dan seems like he can handle himself.”-Me 

I looked down at the small hole I had dug up to get the Claw out. I stomped the dirt back into place till it looked fairly level again. 

-I'll have to dig the other two out later. Starting to feel like I never get to finish anything. 

I looked up to see Ajay excitedly telling Jessica about some of the doors they had seen, Adriana was brushing grey dust off her skirt and Lana was watching Ajay and Jessica. 

-Maybe this bit of chaos isn’t too bad. 

I smiled and got everyone moving again.