“You were warped by magic?” The woman playing on her phone wasn’t looking at it anymore; instead, she stared directly at Serenity. “That explains a lot. Did you know that you glow a little?”

“Glow?” Serenity glanced down; he was pretty sure he wasn’t actually glowing. “Oh, you mean with magic.”

Serenity wasn’t certain if she meant the bloodline he pretended to have, which did seem to leak some magic, or simply the more-than-normal amount of magic a Tier Eight shed on a lower-Tier world like Earth, even in a nexus. In the end, it was simply a reminder that there were people he couldn’t hide his approximate Tier from if they knew what they were looking for. It was a good thing few people on Earth knew what to look for.

“Sounds like you did know, then.” The woman sprang to her feet from the container she’d been sitting on. She was even shorter than Lyle Baker, which made the container just about the right height to serve as a chair. It was sturdy black plastic with wheels and a handle, a fairly common sort of carrying case. There were several of them in the room; two larger ones were even stacked to form a sort of temporary table.

She brushed her red hair away from her face with an irritated expression that morphed back into eagerness almost immediately. “You must be Tom Cooper; I’m Samantha Rice, physicist and apparently now an expert in magical theory with a sideline in enchanting. What did you do that overexposed you? What have you noticed that has changed?”

Did he have to invent a magical accident now? That seemed like a bad idea, especially since someone might try to replicate it. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Oh, poop.” Samantha didn’t even seem to notice that the expletive was unusual. “I want to have the ability to see magic without a spell, too. The spell itches if I keep it active too long, and having your eyes itch sucks!”

That sounded surprisingly familiar. Had Vengeance had the same issue back in the day? Serenity couldn’t remember. “Just keep trying. The Voice likes to reward practice.”

Samantha snorted. “Yeah, I know, I’ve read the Earthling’s Guide too. Doesn’t make it any more fun; a shortcut would be great.”

Serenity shook his head. Shortcuts had their own perils. The only reason he was able to take things as quickly as he had and still be useful was all the time and effort he’d put in as Vengeance and the Final Reaper. He’d taken shortcuts; generally, those were the things he couldn’t do now. The things that he could still do were the things he’d actually taken the time to learn for himself.

Not that that situation applied to anyone else.

Serenity sighed. “It’s not as good as it sounds. Too much mana can cause a lot of damage; just think about what spells can do to you.” That was true and might discourage her from trying and hurting herself. “So what do you have for me to look at?”

Samantha giggled like he’d made a joke. “Nice one. It’s this thing; I can tell it’s magical, but that’s really all I’m getting from the magesight spell. Analyze Enchantment gets me a little more, inputs and outputs basically, which lets me see that it’s linked to the island somehow. The problem is that I can’t figure out what to put in at the inputs to make it work. Liam thinks that means it’s locked out somehow.”

As Samantha talked, she turned and opened the case she’d been using as a seat. She had to reach deep into the box to pull out a stick. Serenity could suddenly understand why that was Liam’s description of it.

It was an odd stick, but it was clearly wooden; it looked like a thin branch with the bark removed. The shape was the strange part; it was not a shape you’d see in nature. There was a straight section, which was where Samantha held it. The far end of the straight section was connected to a curved section, almost like the original tree had branched but for some reason it branched into a pair of curves instead of two more straight branches. If you ignored the smaller end of the curved section, it almost looked like a sickle.

It had to be artificial. The curve was continuous, even though there was a larger bump visible where the two branches joined the straight section. It still looked like the item grew as a single branch; the wood continued smoothly from the straight section into the two sides of the curved section with no apparent change. Serenity could see a few whirls of wood grain in the straight section where it looked like other branches had been separated off, but there were none in the curved section. “I wonder if it was grown like this. It kind of looks like it was; there’s probably magic that can do that.”

“Why?” Samantha glanced down at the strange item then back up at Serenity. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just make something? Faster, too?”

Serenity shrugged. “How would I know? I’m not an enchanter.”

That was the easy way out, but it was the wrong tack; it was refusing to even think about the question. Serenity sighed at himself and decided to actually give the answers that came to the top of his mind at the question. “You’re right that there probably is a reason, but it’s entirely possible this is the easier way to whoever made it. If they’re as high Tier as A’Atla once was, a few years to grow isn’t that big a deal; more than that, if it’s from a fast-growing tree it might be only a few months.”

Serenity paused and took a careful look at Samantha. She seemed to think about what he said; at least, she nodded in the right places. This seemed to be working. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t just cut up a larger piece of wood for it, probably something to do with the enchantment; that’s the same answer I’d give as for why they didn’t use any other material. I can make guesses, it probably needs to all be one piece rather than joined, but I’m really not an enchanter so they’re just guesses. The only other thing I’ve thought of is that maybe it was grown here on A’Atla. Would that make it easier to link it to the ship?”

Samantha frowned in thought, then nodded decisively. “It would, so that’s probably it. Just making it here would work for anything I can do, but I can see where growing it in place might be even more important. I bet that’s why it’s still on the island, too.”

“What do you mean?” A lot of stuff was still on A’Atla. There were entire buildings still on the ship’s surface; many of them were still buried in mud that was slowly drying out. Serenity knew they were still being explored; if Liam hadn’t said the wand was acquired rather than found, he’d have assumed it came from one of the buried buildings.

Samantha shrugged. “It was found on top of a pile of rubble, nothing on top of it to keep it from floating away. It does float in ocean water; I checked.”

There was probably more than one explanation for how that could happen, but Samantha was right. Chalking it up to magic made at least as much sense as anything else. It even had a decent chance to be the real reason.

Samantha set the wand down on the “table”. Serenity could see why Liam had called it a weird wand; the straight section really did look like a handle and there was no obvious use for the item. Serenity couldn’t think of what it was for, either.

Serenity concentrated on it; he ought to be able to see at least as much as Samantha did.

As she’d said, it glowed with magic, specifically mana. It was different from other magic items Serenity had seen recently because there was a latticework of essence that seemed to reinforce its structure. That was harder to see when using the Mana Elemental Heritage, because mana tended to wash out the sight of essence, but it was definitely still there.

That reinforcement seemed familiar. It only took Serenity a moment to realize where he’d seen it recently: in the walls and door that led into the overpressurized dangerously toxic room that A’Atla’s mana swirl into. They weren’t actually different from the rest of A’Atla’s structure; the essence reinforcement was simply more obvious there because it was in use.

Knowing it was there didn’t help him get into the room, so he’d ignored it. Knowing it was here might help explain why wood survived so long, but it still didn’t help. He needed to look deeper.

That was really the only essence in the wand; the rest was mana. That made it easier in many ways; he only had to look for things he understood. It was already hard enough, however, because the wand wasn’t active. That meant no mana was moving through most of the wand; only one section was actually energized. It had to be the section with the links Samantha mentioned and it also had to be the section that dealt with activating the wand.

The mana used there had a minor Affinity. Serenity couldn’t quite pin it down, but it felt related to Ita’s Connection Affinity. All that did was confirm that the links were what they seemed to be.

Serenity grumbled and looked deeper. He had to shove mana through the wand without activating it to create a sort of pattern that showed where the mana wasn’t; that would give him information about what the wand did in the inactive sections. He needed to get what information he could without activating the wand; right now, he couldn’t guarantee that it didn’t do something extremely nasty when it was activated. The lack of elevated Death Affinity from it was a good sign but definitely not conclusive.

“Augh! Warn me next time!” Samantha threw an arm in front of her eyes and stumbled backwards when he created the mana flash. “Is that what you meant when you said you were exposed to too much mana?”

Serenity turned to look at Samantha, puzzled. “That wasn’t all that bright, just enough to make some shadows from the wand’s structure. Why did that bother your manasight? It’s no more than about twice as bright as the wand.”

Samantha’s mouth dropped open. It took her a moment to sputter out the words, “The wand is almost too bright!”

“Then you definitely don’t want to take a shortcut.” It probably wasn’t the most polite way he could have responded, but it was what came to mind immediately. Serenity turned his attention back to the wand; he’d gotten what he wanted from the flash. “Illusion Affinity. Should be relatively safe; seems to be capped somewhere around high-end Tier Four throughput, which is odd. That would usually indicate a large scale illusion, but this doesn’t have the right type of projector. They all seem to be local. Unless maybe it’s trying to cut through interference?”

Serenity reached out to touch the wand. In his peripheral vision, he saw Samantha start to reach for his hand, but Liam blocked her motion.

The incomplete circle was suddenly filled with pale words projected on a dimmer background; Serenity couldn’t tell if the din background was simply because it was sitting on a black surface or if it was actually dimming the area.

Hand Remote engaged: Wizard of A’Atla recognized

Limited A’Atla System Access Available

Serenity could see the links light up as the illusion formed; it was actually talking to A’Atla somehow. “Huh. It’s not a lockout; it was already unlocked. It just needs something to display.”

Lillene

No, the "Hand" here doesn't mean "Hand of the Voice".