-Tabitha Booth-

Coaxing mana through my arm, both through my mana circuitry and my body itself, I aimed my conjured dragon head of a hand at a floating jellyfish: with a whoosh of mana, an energy bolt of a dragon’s breath shot out and destroyed the magical beast in a single blow. Using body non-mandala magic and outer genomes non-mandala magic was a weird and tricky situation, even with a system slot and a Hybrid System helping me out. I can’t believe people specialize in this sort of stuff, I thought to myself, stepping back from the lake’s shore so that Lyria and Loria could have better aim at the magical beasts we managed to aggravate with their respective X-shaped longbow and wrist-mounted crossbow.

“That is rich coming from a mage who specializes in my many legacies,” quipped Vertrala from his oversized personal space carved out by Vertrala Incarnate. “This sort of magic should be easy for you to use.”

“Is it though?” piped up Aiden, curiosity and excitement in his voice.

“All our legacies are three-way hybrids with system slots and mandalas involved, besides none of them are hybridized with connections or body,” I telepathically pointed out with a sigh. It didn’t even matter how between the five legacies, they touched upon seven of the nine pieces of a body: it was wired to relay the magics of the legacies through a chain of system slots to my Grand Key. You’d be hard pressed to even call that odd magic or even system slot non-mandala magic.

“Mind Strike,”casted Margaret through her conjured flower-patterned bevor of a lower face mask: one of the nearby flying jellyfish dropped down as something intangible struck it. It was sort of nice to know that I wasn’t the only one having to deal with non-mandala magic that wasn’t system slot based with their conjuration, but I had to say Margaret’s was way scarier than mine. Striking the mind and soul to the point of death was serious stuff, although it wasn’t striking the connections for some hard core killing. Taking a deep breath, Margaret asked the rest of us, “Anyone else feeling parched?”

“Just you,” answered Tala as she glided through the swarm of flying jellyfish on her conjured levitating hoverboard. Haha you go girl, I mentally laughed with glee as I watched my girlfriend turn a conjuration that was definitely meant for mobility into a working means of attack with slams and slicing turns.

“Why did I have to get this bevor,” moaned Margaret in frustration as she dispelled it. “It’s so awkward to use… and I don’t like the concept of using magic that hits the mind or soul. I don’t want to end up doing lasting damage to someone cause I was stupid”

“That is understandable, healing those pieces of a being isn’t a common skill,” noted Loria with an understanding look as she dispelled her own conjuration as her sweet tooth cousin did the same. “Is there any way for you to gain healing magics through your bevos? A curative ability or some upgrade to the system slot’s connection?”

“No, it just feels like it’s geared toward offense and banes, and I have no clue how to upgrade it. Are we supposed to be collecting experience or do we have to work on our proficiency or something else?” She wasn’t wrong, we’ve only been able to manage to scratch the surface of the Hybrid System of Flowers, just the general feel of things, not even the purpose. We didn’t even know how this system handled things like ranks, levels, abilities, equipment, and spirits... We just know about the flowers and their conjurations and magics, I mused as I tried to feel out my system slot for Mercury-Gardenia some more, there was definitely was experience being pooled into it’s connection but I couldn’t really tell what else was going on with it.

“We can always research into this later, maybe even figure out the process of forging more connections to this place,” pointed out Lyria before suggesting, “But for now, how about we enjoy the lakeview?”

“I agree, we came to enjoy ourselves, not just fight magical beasts,” I agreed, looking out to see the rest of the flying jellyfish plus the variety of jellyfish below the lake’s surface. This place was incredibly scenic, especially with the ruralscape and  mountains on the other side of the lake and mixture of suburban and urban areas behind us to go shopping and relax in.

“This parfait is amazing,” laughed Tala as the five of us took a break to eat some cold treats at a lakefront cafe.

“I know, this place has great food,” I returned with a smile before taking another bite of my sunday, getting used to eating without my crystalline canine in a way: this simulated body was definitely interesting, especially with how different it felt from the proxy bodies I had access to. Finishing up our parfaits, sundays, and sorbets, we decided to make one more round around the lakefront district before getting a taxi to head back to Historie Pastoria Sweets.

It wasn’t until we were at the far end of the lakefront district that things started to feel off. There were a lot less people around and those who were seemed even more oblivious than normal, which was saying something. There were less flying jellyfish floating above Lake Flidusa, it was almost like they were hiding underwater with their bioluminescent counterparts. Everything feels so much darker and… picturesque? I pondered cautiously as we slowed down, taking in the subtle changes in our surroundings. It wasn’t until we heard the distinct sound of fighting and spellcasting that we realized how off everything currently was.

“Should we investigate?” inquired Lyria, already conjuring up her X-shaped longbow.

“Yes, it could be someone in trouble, someone that could help us,” replied Tala with a nod as she also activated her conjuration.

“Finally something interesting,” laughed Vertrala, stirring Aurum, Obera, and Manakel in his excitement as I followed the others to the source of the sounds, letting my arm transform into a dragon-headed one with my own conjuration. Arriving at the scene of the fight, we saw two crowds of flower conjuration-users: one crowd had a variety of flowers and conjurations while the other crowd was weird… they all had the same set of conjurations in the form of long-tentacles jellyfish and all had the same aquatic-looking plant coming out of their chest and neck, covering their faces.

Before I could get a better sense of the second crowd that I could somehow tell was some type of enemy made by this place’s system, I noticed something familiar in the first crowd: a conjuration in the form of a long flower stalk covered in pearly white lilies with petals that made it look almost like a pitcher plant. Tynna?! I mentally gasped as the chick holding the stalk of white bathtub lilies struggled to heal her companions wielding circular stun guns, trying to retreat toward us. Unable to help myself and not having enough time to explain, I rushed forward, blurting out, “We have to help them!” 

“On it,” replied Lyria and Loria in unison as they went to lay down covering fire for me as I neared Tynna.

“Tynna!” I called out, drawing power from my simulated body’s outer genomes to empower my dragon head of a fist. 

“Who are you?” yelped the woman, turning around to reveal that she wasn’t Tynna, just looked and sounded like her. 

“I’m Tabitha,” I replied in confusion as I punched one of the aquatic plant-covered people and sent them reeling.

“Careful! They are weed-heads, don’t kill them.”

“Weed-heads?”

“They’re real people, just knock them out,” answered the woman as she went to creating a wave of healing energy from a ringed orb of light that was floating over her shoulder, washing over everyone except the still conscious weed-heads. She looked at me and the others before looking to her allies and the weed-heads they were fighting, with a shake of her she told me, “We need to leave now.”

“Why?” I asked, shifting from killing blows and just knock outs as I tried to avoid the swarm of conjured jellyfish.

“It’s obvious, we’re being overwhelmed here, and it’s only a matter of time before Viviane Alter gets back up from other Glory Daze members,” she replied, already grabbing me and pulling me from the fight as her allies started to split up into smaller groups to escape. Caught off guard by the fact I was suddenly leaving the fight after just joining it, I allowed the Tynna-lookalike to lead me away back to the others as her two closest allies went to covering our retreats.

Both the Glyirians along with Tala and Margaret were confused by the sudden turn of events also, but after the Tynna-lookalike told them about the nature of the weed-heads and how there would be more coming any second, they followed. Running down the lakefront, I managed to get her to tell me her name and realized exactly who she was: Tymai, Tynna’s sister. I couldn’t believe I was meeting her here of all places. Tynna didn’t talk about her sister much, other that she became shut-in that greater gamed a lot after the position of Vox Ho’opau apprentice vox reborn was given to their older cousin instead of them. 

“Does… Tynna know you’re here?” I asked Tymai, catching my breath from all the running.

“No. No one in my family knows about Mercury-Gardenia except for me… This was supposed to be my place to escape to.”

“Was?” questioned my girlfriend, staring at the Hollo Oceanian with a look of interest..

“Yeah, was. I came here as a visitor to enjoy the city and its surroundings, get away from things. I even got a special system slots facsimile so I could get another white bathtub lily primary spirit halo along with it as a flower that I could use.” Stroking the white bathtub lilies coming out of her chest, the Alihi’a’Poungian made a small spirit halo appear over it. Cool facsimile, I thought to myself as I saw Tymai handle the spirit halo without any cross-karmic retribution. “But then some members of the Glory Daze started trying to capture me and turn me into an ignorant. I only escaped because of the Vraglixian Blossom Rebellion, so I’ve been helping them in return.”

“Glory Daze? Ignorant? Vraglixian Blossom Rebellion?”

“You five must be new around here if you don’t know what Tymai is talking about,” quipped one of the guys that followed behind us to cover our retreat.

“It’s our first day here actually,” explained Margaret with a half sigh. “We just wanted to try and enjoy ourselves some, not get caught up in a rebellion.”

“We’re… uggh… we’re not some terrorists or rebellion… it’s just our name,” scowled the man before Tymai put a hand on his shoulder. Softening up slightly, he and the other guy that’s helping us retreat went to explain everything going on. Here in Mercury-Gardenia there were four type of people: lifers, the people born here; visitors, the people who occasionally come here; ignorants, people the Hybrid System of Flowers fully dragged into Mercury-Gardenia who were brainwashed to not realize the fact; and awakens, people who are either born here or trapped here but aware of the Hybrid System of Flower’s influence and above it. As for Glory Daze, they are a group of fucked up awakens who used something called weed flowers to turn the place into their own twisted paradise while turning visitors and other awakens into ignorants to have their way with them. 

And as for the Vraglixian Blossom Rebellion, they are entities and beings primarily from a nation called Vraglix in some artificial world cluster called Starport Cyber and spread to other places like here in Mercury-Gardenia and mostly were descended from aliens, like actual aliens, that the Aligning converted into other races and were trying to free themselves and become magi-sentient or partial-magi-sentient. 

Processing the information as the best I could, all I could think was, Holy shit... what did we just walk into? 

“I think people in need of help,” commented Aiden earnestly.