After everyone was settled down, I checked out what was left of the Ugly. The large pile of grey dust was expected, but the burnt leather was a surprise.  

-The leather armor isn’t part of the soul image then. What about the spear? 

I sifted through the grey dust in the area, finding large wood like splinters spread around. 

-I guess the spear exploded when the ugly was hit. Would have been nice to have a weapon. 

“Hey! I found his bag.”-Ajay 

Ajay walked back towards me, carrying the small bag by its broken strap. The leather strap was burnt through, but the rest of the small bag was ok if only singed slightly on one side. 

-Must have been thrown clear. 

I flipped the long flap open on the floppy leather bag to reveal the contents. The first item was a pale wood stick with notches on its 30cm length. A dark line ran down the middle, fading from black at one end to nothing about three quatres of its length. The second was a small worn leather pouch tied with a frayed bit of rope, it held 4 carved wooden 6 sided dice. Last was a sliver of crystal wrapped in a small scrap of worn leather. 

“This is a very small piece of what the Uglies collect from everyone that goes through their complex.”-Me 

I held the sliver of crystal up with the leather to show the others. 

“What do they do with them?”-Lana 

I frowned and looked grim. 

“I think they eat them. It is the crystalized experience that our souls collect while we are alive.”-Me 

-Not that I’ve proven that yet, but I am 90% sure. 

“The ones I saw before were larger, so I assume that this one does not have much left.”-Me 

As I was talking, I noticed that the air above the crystal was starting to sparkle.  

-I wonder... 

I leaned forward and breathed in. I could taste the sparkles explode on my tongue with a sweet electric taste. 

“Hmm. Tastes like really good wine?”-Me 

Ajay stuck his face close and breathed in before Adriana could pull him back. She smacked him up the back of his head. 

“Hey!”-Ajay 

“Fool! That could be poison.”-Adriana 

“But He did it!”-Ajay 

“And we already know that he is a fool. Want to end up fried like he did?”-Adriana 

“But he was glowing and throwing lightening around! It was freaking amazing!”-Ajay 

Ajay ducked and danced away when Adriana lifted her hand again. 

Jessica face took on a determined look, and she lean forward and breathed in as well. 

“It's like champagne!”-Jessica 

Jessica smiled, then gave Adraina a look. 

-I’m not sure what that said, but it shut Adriana down quick. Women can sure pack a lot into their looks 

Adriana gave Jessica a look back, then backed down. 

“Fools following a fool. I'll hold off in case you all get sick, but I’m not helping you if you start turning into an Ugly.”-Adriana 

-Oh, she’s got a point there. What if eating these is what creates an Ugly? 

I wrapped up the small sliver and put it back into the pouch along with the stick and the dice pouch. 

“We should probably move again before another one shows up.”-Jessica 

I nodded then looked over at the grey pile. 

“I want to check on something first. If you guys want to go back to finding the door to the Lake I am going to be digging.”-Me 

The others walked back towards the Lake as I knelt down and pushed the rather large pile of grey dust away to check out the ground bellow. 

-That’s a fairly large pile of grey “memory” dust. I wonder how old this guy was, and how screwed up was his head. Maybe Uglies are created when you go through so many lives, all the personalities get mangled together and you go insane. 

I shuddered thinking about the state my mind had been before my last life had worked out the magic to fix it. 

-Not that I have any memories of doing any of it, just the “memory” of how to do it, and an idea how bad it was before it was done. Now that I think about it, it was like preforming brain surgery on myself. 

I shuddered again, then started digging out what I hoped was a fairly large, glassy fused ground spike.  

It took me a fair amount of time to dig out my latest curiosity. A turnip shaped cone that started at 5cm, bulged to a 20 cm diameter and tapered down to a point at a total of 30cm long. Ajay helped me dig it out when he got bored with the Lake. 

After I had the overly awkward obsidian object out, and the hole left behind filled in, we started walking once again. We talked, interspersed with long silent stretches. We passed four more doors then turned out one more ring to end up and stone block door half buried in sand. 

“Mummy World?”-Me 

“Mummy World.”-Ajay/Lana 

Both Ajay and Lana agreed at the same time.  

“I’m not going in there without a whip and a proper hat.”-Adriana 

We all looked at her a bit weird. 

“I saw the movies too you know.”-Adriana 

She looked back at us with affront, then changed the subject. 

“This is one door past where we explored before. What should we do from here?”-Adriana 

“I think we should go back to what we were doing before. We should be 4 or 5 rings out from the last of the roped off doors, and quite a bit further than the last ugly guard.”-Me 

“I want to stay and try more of the Power of Dune stuff.”-Ajay 

“What?”-Lana 

“You know. Fear is the mind killer, etc. The Mentalist stuff.”-Ajay 

“I think you have that mixed up and I’m sure you just want to be here in case the mage does something else flashy.”-Adriana 

Adriana gave Ajay a level look. 

“No. The magic theory stuff is cool too.”- Ajay 

…. 

We returned to our “daily” routine that me and Jessica had established before, only now I got to hear about Lana, Ajay, and Adriana’s lives. My contributions tended to be about the more magical things I had seen on the other side of the Black Gold door. 

 After more persuasion and the evident fact that neither Jessica or I was turning into a monster, Adriana relented, and I started expanding every one's soul memory.  

I continued to “recall” more as the three new students asked questions while I taught them Magic theory, and Mentat skills. Adriana was particularly challenging as she tended to question everything I said. 

Jessica showed remarkable progress with her Mentat training, far exceeding my ability. All I could help her with now was the theoretical knowledge I had, she had to figure out the practical application herself. 

I spent a lot of time investigating the black glass turnip form the strike on the Ugly. It had captured much more than the claw had, although some were duplicates. For the first bit I decided to concentrate on the long runs of crystalized magicicles. When I used the terracile and areocile leaders I found that certain sections of the lines sort of popped out. I took a longer look at one line that seemed to pop for both leaders. After a while I realized that these sections contradicted my hypothetical rules on magicicle collapses. 

-That can’t be done with neutral magicicles! But maybe my leaders are reacting to their own types. That would mean that there are structure rules for different types of magicicles. What about speed, energy state and what I have been describing as spin?  

I frowned and rubbed my temples. 

-If that’s true I’m going to need that eidetic memory soon. I’m probably going to have to start recording my rules/patterns as symbols, like molecular models. Maybe I can copy the periodic table of elements. The periodic table of magicicles? 

I opened my eyes thinking about the years of work that had gone into chemistry and physics that I would have to duplicate for magicicles. 

-And that’s just crystallized structures. What about liquid magicicle, or maybe even a plasma version? And that does not even scratch the practical application of magic. How will different types of magicicles affect each twist? Air, electrical? Is there even a Soulicle? Cronocile? Spacile? 

“Arhggg! How the hell can I work on everything?!”-Me 

I threw my hands into the air and flopped onto my back. 

Jessica frowned at me from the spot she was trying to meditate.  

“You can’t. You do what you can, one step at a time till you're done.”-Adriana 

She stretched where she was siting. She was playing some game in the dust with Ajay. 

“I know that any journey is just one step at a time. But in this case, the journey I’m talking about would probably require thousands of people working over several lifetimes each on each aspect I keep uncovering about magic. Magicicle types, spell twists, crystallization patterns, etc.”-Me 

“Too bad you’re the only magician or you could share the work.”-Adrianna 

“You could teach me!”-Ajay 

Ajay looked up with glittery eyes. 

“You should pay attention, the Magician said you needed magicicles floating around inside of you”-Adrianna 

Adrianna shuddered a bit, she was uncomfortable with the concept that we were essentially empty shells which you could look into. 

“I looked, I don’t”-Ajay 

Ajay looked dejected, pushing his sneakered foot through the dust where he was sitting. Jessica sighed and opened her eyes. 

“Don’t be too down Ajay. You heard how the giant bear forced him into one of the glass trees before he was able to get any magic.”-Jessica 

“What kind of fool sticks around long enough for a bear...”-Adrianna 

I frowned as I looked up at the grey sky as I blocked out what the others were saying. 

-That’s wrong. Well not wrong it is how I got the first bunch of neutral magicicles, but I basically injected more later from broken open Phantom shrubs. But here is no Phantom Forest here to refill from, only the nothingness border and I don’t really feel like blasting everyone with an orbital laser like I did to myself. Wait there is another source! Me! 

I shot straight up and turned to Jessica. 

“Do you want to be a mage?”-Me 

They all stopped their conversation and looked at me. 

“What?”-Jessica 

“I think I can inject my magicicles into you.”-Me 

“WHAT!? You pervert! I knew it! You’re sick. Depraved!”-Adriana 

Adriana stood up and started to smack me, throwing some sharp kicks in to add emphasis each time she said pervert. Which she did a lot. 

…. 

After I explained that I was talking about transferring magicicles, and Adriana calmed down. I asked Jessica again. Ajay made some noise that he should be first, till I promised that if it worked, I would try with him too. This time I don’t think Adriana’s beating him about the head for being a fool would have stopped him otherwise. 

“What do we have to do?”-Jessica 

I coughed and pretended to not notice that she was blushing just a bit. 

“We just have to hold hands, and I’ll open a hole and feed some magicicles through.”-Me 

Adriana gave me a level look when I emphasised “feed”. 

“Um. Ok. I would like to try.”-Jessica 

Jessica lifted her arm up, presenting here right hand to me. I took it and looked into her eyes. 

“This might hurt, sorry.”-Me 

I took her hand and closed my eye looking inward. First, I checked on the drill, adding just a bit more spin to it when it looked good. I pulled the swirling cloud of magicicles away from the drill, sending them off to join the mess further on in my chest. Once I had the area mostly clear I moved the drill closer to my palm.  

Next, I moved on to my core. The chaotic clouds were still swirling around, just a thick as before, obscuring my vision till I moved close into my core. The bands had settled a bit more since my last encounter with blue/white light released from the nothingness boundary. Now the bands where much more distinct, with a fuzzy area above and below the accretion disc where the core effect was pulling the chaotic mixed cloud into the sorted bands. 

-When I only had neutral magicicles the whole core system was handy getting them all moving in the same direction and place. Made channeling faster. But it looks like a core, or something similar, is absolutely necessary when there are so many different types of magicicles. 

The band closest to the core, and by far the largest of the bands, was neutral magicicles. As I looked closer at the neutral band, I could make out that there was even some variation in the magicicles from the closest edge leading out. 

-I'll have to figure out what the variation means. Till I play more with all these new types, I’ll just transfer neutral magicicles to Jessica. 

I pulled from the closest leading edge out into my right hand, where I pushed the drill through the skin and into Jessica’s palm. 

“Ouch! That feels like a bee sting.”-Jessica 

She reflexively tried to jerk here hand away only to be held firm by my grip. 

-Going to have to watch out for that whenever I try this again.  

“You should focus your attention into your hand.”-Me 

The drill broke through quickly, fast enough that I almost pushed the drill right through. As is, I opened the hole to the full size of the bit. Once I pulled the drill back, the holes I had carved out started to close. 

-Hmm. I think a needle would be better in the future. 

I pushed the stream of neutral magicicles that had started to swirl around the drill, through the slowly closing hole. I heard Jessica gasp. 

“That is the weirdest feeling, like you are pouring warm water right into my arm.”-Jessica 

I kept an eye on the holes as I continued to pull neutral magicicles from my core system. 

-Damn, it looks like I'm getting a bit of the cloud dragged along too. I hope that won't affect her oddly. 

I had to use the drill again when the holes started to close, which is when I noticed that my side was closing significantly faster. The drill seemed to take longer to reopen the hole too, leaving a ragged edge unlike the clean drill round hole from the first time. I was too busy keeping the stream of magicicles steady to check it out now but made a mental note to look at it later. 

“It looks like a cloud of dark smoke is blowing into my arm. This is really surreal.”-Jessica 

“Wait till you form your core, then things get really surreal.”-Me 

I smiled as I continued to focus on transferring as much neutral magicicles before the holes closed again. 

-Is it sad that I’m only pushing as much as a small hole in a blade of phantom grass? 

When the holes closed, I checked on my core system. I had moved most of the neutral ring over too Jessica. 

-That should be enough for her to play with, maybe even build a simple core structure. I'll have to wait for more to settle out to transfer any more. 

I opened my eyes to see Jessica still had hers closed. I just stood and watched her face, till Adriana hit me again. 

“You're supposed to be teaching her Wizard stuff. Fool.”-Adriana 

Jessica opened her eyes quizzically, then noticed that I was staring at her. I could feel my cheeks go red. 

“Yes. Um, you should be able to see the neutral magicicles like a cloud now”-Me 

“She already said that you Twit. Are you going to teach something or just stand there holding hands and repeating what others say to you?”-Adriana 

Both Jessica and I looked down at our clasped hands. She looked up and smiled then let my hand go. I let go a moment after. I was also smiling. 

“Maybe we should sit down for this next part. I’ll have to draw some of this out in the dust.”-Me 

After we had all sat down again, Adriana muttering about adolescent fools under her breath. I started talking about how to join magicicles together, collapse patterns to form crystalized magicicle structures, how to form a simple core, and why she’ll need it. Ajay, and surprisingly Adrianna, paid close attention, asking questions as we went. Eventually we moved on to Mentat theory and started off a new “day”.