The girl and her dog had been curled up on the couch together watching cooking shows for most of the day. Lily drifted in and out of sleep, but Star had watched with rapt attention. 

Over time, Lily’s marks had stopped glowing, leaving behind slightly tougher skin. Now that she was examining it more closely, it wasn’t exactly scar tissue once each one had finished healing up. They were still sore to the touch, but the skin where each star had been was just a little darker than her normal skin color, and a little more uniform. 

When she was feeling particularly energetic, or at least not unable to move, she had checked herself out in the large full sized bathroom mirror, and been somewhat distraught. The marks started at the tips of her fingers and ran up to her forearms before starting to really thin out. But on top of that, she had a number of them across the rest of her body. Her chest, her legs, her back, even her neck and face had a few.

Lily had never been particularly vain. In fact, her self esteem had been very low for as long as she could remember. This did not help. The marks themselves weren’t exactly ugly as they were reaching a point of being fully healed. But, they were still a startling change to her appearance, and really would stick out in a crowd. Which was exactly the sort of thing she didn’t like.

“Not that I really have to worry about crowds now I guess. Honestly, I don’t know why I care. But I do. I hope they go away.”

She found herself returning to the couch and cuddling up with Star again. Gordon Ramsey was chewing out some poor line chef who’d not heated some chicken properly under pressure. 

“Hey, I’m gonna go spend some time studying the basement spell. You wanna come or keep watching?”

Star turned for a split second to lick her face, and then went back to the show. Lily laughed. He was really into it. 

“Okay, but absolutely no trying any of this out without me to watch you, okay?”

His tail wagged, but he refused to look away from the TV. Lily was privately delighted, and decided to leave him to it.

She still really didn’t like going down the elevator, but she wanted to take another look at the circle. It wasn’t powered up, so she wasn’t worried about dealing with anything magical. But for some reason, she had a gut feeling about it and she wanted to spend some time introspecting on that and looking at the glyphs closely. If nothing else, to convince herself that she might be wrong about it.

She forced herself to get up the courage to use the elevator. Although she had to sit down once inside and wait a few minutes to get back up even after it had descended. 

Pressing the button to open the door she got herself together and proceeded into the room. Sure enough, there was the circle, just like she remembered it. Nothing had changed. Although the room was still somewhat eerie, it was only in the same way any empty room could be. Magnified by the size of the room, of course.

Lily shuffled in, and went to sit in the center of the circle. 

“What kind of metal is this I wonder? How would I check?”

Whoever had made the circle, presumably entity B, must have expected a ridiculous amount of mana to be flowing through this place. Otherwise, there was no real reason to create the circle out of something so durable. Or maybe it was about conductivity? Was mana conductivity a thing? Did it just make a circle less likely to fail from being overpowered? Or was it actually more durable? For that matter, how did writing a circle in mana compare?

An endless string of things to test. Neverending. Well, it’s not like Lily was pressed for time. She began looking over the circle. It really was complicated. Hundreds of nodes, with circles nested in circles nested in circles.

How deep could that go? Lily imagined at some point you were limited by the physical matter the circle took up. Were mana circles so limited? If she tried to create a circle with mana as small as an atom, could she? Probably not. She’d have to be able to conceptualize something so small. 

If she started with a circle the size of her city, how many circles could she nest inside of it? What actually were the limitations on that?

Lily realized she was laying on her back, staring at the ceiling and letting her mind wander, so she sat up and refocused.

“Although, is it so bad to let my mind wander? I feel like I’ve replaced media consumption with work as another way to not let myself have time to think about bad stuff. Shame no one invented a robo-therapist or something before the world ended.”

Speaking out loud may have been a mistake. The echo was off-putting, to put it mildly. Lily sighed and went back to her examinations.

She didn’t recognize all that many of the glyphs, but in a lot of ways they were simply pictograms. So it’s not like she had no guesses about any of them. That didn’t explain her gut feeling though, because even if she thought of it that way, the hundreds of little stick drawings didn’t exactly paint a cohesive picture. And why would they? They were more than stick drawings. They were a language all their own. Just because the fire symbol looked a little like a fire, and so on, didn’t mean she’d just know how to read it. No more than if she tried to read hieroglyphics. 

So, why? Why is it that when she asked herself what she thought the circle did, she had a clear answer? On what level of her mind did that come from? She’d hoped that giving it another look would convince her she was just being hopeful, or noticing something subconsciously, or anything else. But there were no real clues that would lead her to a conclusion without a lot of testing. So, why did she feel like she knew?

“Why do I think it’s a teleportation spell?”

Even if she was totally right, which was doubtful, would that be a good thing? Where would it take her? Would she go? Why was it called a final gift?

“Who am I kidding? Of course I would go. How else am I gonna get some answers?”

---

 

Morning found Lily and Star cuddled up next to Bay in the living room. A compilation of cooking shows had been playing all night and at some point they had drifted to sleep. 

Now Lily awoke to barking. Star was going nuts seeing Guy Fieri for the first time. Lily calmed him down after pausing the show. She suspected it was the hair that did it. 

After she got him to stop barking, Lily laid her head down on his side and got him to lay still. But, it only took him a few minutes to get restless and want to get up. Lily groaned and rose too, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

“Fine fine. It’s morning. I get it. I’m up. You know, it’s not fair. You still have the vigor of youth. An old woman like me needs more rest!”

Star looked at her clearly disbelieving. But, Lily was getting up so he didn’t fuss about her. She examined her hands, and found that they looked about the same as last night. Whatever healing process had been going on seemed to be done. Maybe they’d fade like old scars sometimes did with time, but it was clear that for now this was going to be normal for a while. 

Lily would need to go shopping soon. She was starting to run low on food. Unfortunately, she was pretty sure she was only going to find non-perishables in the stores at this point. Any fruits and veggies that had been left out all this time were probably going bad. Not to mention meat. Oh no, the store was going to smell awful.

For now, she left Star in charge of carrying Bay around while she got breakfast together. Her hands still hurt a bit to use, but not so much that she couldn’t microwave some ravioli for herself and Star to share for breakfast. He also took a chunk of the Stag. He was a growing boy after all.

After breakfast they got loaded into the car. It was going to be a long day today. Lily still had three chaos emeralds to place charging, and she had three spots in mind. The library, La Mancha, and the drive in movie theater. Lily suspected La Mancha would take a good portion of the day. She needed to work on setting up her water spells, feeding the animals, and any general upkeep that needed doing there.

So, with everyone set, fed, and ready, she set off.

---

The ride to the library was fairly short. It was only about 15 minutes away if Lily was willing to speed a bit, and she was. She’d been down this road a good number of times at this point, and knew that it was straight and mostly clear of other cars. 

She only slowed down when they approached the purple zone. The smoke was thankfully all gone, but everything that had been caught in the blast was covered in a layer of purple… stuff. Lily didn’t know what it was. It looked like powder? She wondered if this stuff might have a magical use since it was a magical substance. But with everything else on her plate it was going to be a while before she even thought about testing it.

By the time she was getting close to the epicenter of the blast, she was sure it was still a spooky spot. Her mana compass was pointing right to it. That was encouraging. But there was a problem as she pulled in.

“Ow! What the fuck!”

Suddenly, Lily’s hands ached! As she looked down, she saw that all of her marks were glowing again. Only faintly, but it was happening.

“Oh come on!”

Lily looked over her hands carefully. Each mark was a four sided star, or the mana glyph, and they were opalescent. Not exactly putting off light, but shifting points of color moved against her skin from the inside. It wasn’t debilitating pain, but it had come on suddenly as she approached the spooky spot. 

She hoped strongly that the pain would go away with time, otherwise she was going to have a hard time in mana dense environments from here forward, and that would be a lot harder to accept than simply being sore for a few days from overuse.

But, she was here for a reason. Despite the pain, she was determined to get it done. It was only one spell, and it was one she’d cast at least ten times by now. 

It took some physical effort to climb to the top of what was left of the rubble. As she approached the center, her hands did begin giving off light, and the shifting colors grew more intense and excited. Lily pushed through it, despite Star’s mild protests.

“At least I’ll be able to detect mana super easily if this keeps up, huh? Let’s look at the, uh, shiny rainbow lining huh?”

Star groaned. But, Lily was already here and had everything she needed to cast her spell. Thankfully, it was quick and easy. Her hands definitely hurt as she let the mana flow out of her, but it was no more intense than trying to lift something heavy after a day of very hard physical activity. It wasn’t just her hands either. She felt it through all of the wounds she’d gotten, even the ones on her face. That part was the most unpleasant. 

But, it only took a few minutes for the spell to be done. She placed the chaos emerald, this time the purple one. She was getting a small amount of pleasure placing them in color thematic locations. Yellow for lightning, purple for the purple fire. Star had chosen blue, cyan, and white, leaving only red and green in the car. Green would go in La Mancha, which left only the movie theater as not theme appropriate. 

They loaded back into the car and headed off again. It was high time Lily and Star had a little chat.

---

“Soooo. About the basement.”

Lily was cruising down the road to La Mancha, and thought this might be the perfect time to broach the subject. Star gave her the side eye.

“I think whatever it is, when the emeralds are charged I’m going to activate it.”

Her companion whined nervously.

“I know, I know. But I could spend years studying that thing and not know what exactly it does. I want answers. Entity B called it a gift, and they’ve only done good things for me so far. Besides, I think I know what it does in a general sense.”

Star went silent, but continued staring.

“I don’t know why, but I have a strong feeling that it’s a teleportation spell. You activate it, and disappear from where you were, and pop into being somewhere else. Like going from home to La Mancha in an instant. I just… don’t know where it goes. Or even if I’m right for sure.”

He let out a low groan. It was almost a growl. Lily looked at him, a little surprised.

“I get it! It’s scary. But what else am I gonna do? Not activate it? We both know I’m going to use it eventually. Why put it off? If it’s gonna do something bad, I want to know. And if it’s gonna do something good, which seems more likely, there’s no reason to wait.”

Was her dog glaring at her?

“Look. I’m doing it. But what I want to talk about is this. Will you go with me? I don’t want to leave you behind. I’m not worried about you starving or anything really. But, we’re partners right? If we get separated, I’m going to do everything I possibly can to meet back up. But, I’d really just like to take you with me in the first place. Will you come with me? Please?”

He poked her with his nose, then licked her arm. Lily pet him, and they were silent for a few minutes while she rubbed him behind the ears.

“Thank you. Truthfully, I’d be scared to go without you. I mean, I’d do it if I had to. But, I’ll be much happier having you with me.”

She heard his tail start to wag, and knew everything was going to be alright. They stayed like that for the rest of the drive.

The first stop was just a little past La Mancha. It was the spot she found Star.  Amazingly, the surrounding area was already starting to look less scorched. It was mostly still black, but some of it had faded, and a bit of green was starting to show here and there.

They took the short walk to the actual spot, and Lily sat down in the grass to begin working on her spell.

“Can you be nostalgic for something that happened only a couple weeks ago?”

She laughed.

Woof!

Lily yelped.

---

 

La Mancha had been holding up fine from the looks of it. As Lily pulled in, Donk-Quixote came trotting up to say hello. She was a little sad she didn’t have any treats to give him, but there was nothing she could do about that. Maybe she could drive around the area sometime soon and see if she saw any fruit trees. Or just examine this property a little more closely.

For now, she had to settle for scratching him behind the ears, and talking to him a little. He seemed receptive, and that was good. She still wished she had some apples or something though. After she was done giving him some affection, Donk and Star ran off to play and Lily got to work. 

Before anything else, she checked the huge silo type water tank to make sure it wasn’t going empty. It was still quite full, which made her breathe a sigh of relief. If that was the case, she had until a mechanical failure to get things properly set up for watering. 

Although, what was going to happen to these animals if she teleported away…? Lily would have to make sure they had enough food and water to last quite a while, and then find her way back, right? She wasn’t about to just leave them to starve. If she couldn’t find another solution, she’d have to open all the cages before she left.

Maybe she could set up a dead man’s switch with a spell? Some kind of mechanism that if she didn’t come and stop it, would eventually open all the cages? How would that work? It would probably be best to set things up so that a spell was holding them closed, but could be washed away, and then set up something mechanically to wash the spell away after a set amount of time. Or just rely on the rain and leaving enough food.

“Hah, I just can’t stop myself can I? All that talk about sticking to only spells I know.”

But, this was important. Not just a test. Still, after last night a pit of anxiety welled up in her whenever she thought about doing something new. Nevertheless, it was an issue for another day. Lily was here to do the bare minimum until she recovered. First up: Eggs. She hadn’t gathered eggs from the chicken coop yet, and she was sure they must be piling up. So, that was her first stop.

“Holy cow. I mean. Chicken. I mean. Um.”

There were SO many eggs. The nest boxes were easily accessible from outside the chicken run, thankfully. But there was a problem. They were beyond overloaded. In fact, a good few eggs had broken due to there being no room, and the smell was— unfortunate.

She couldn’t just leave it like this, could she? No… The smell would probably only get worse, and she didn’t want it attracting wildlife or contaminating otherwise good eggs. Come to think of it, why hadn’t it already attracted wildlife? She figured small bugs and stuff were all eaten by the chickens, but it was crazy to think that no racoons or foxes or whatever else had come for a taste of delicious eggs.

“Is Donk just that good at his job?”

Lily glanced over to where Donk and Star were playing. The huge beast was chasing the dog, and nearly keeping up while Star raced ahead, tail wagging.

“Huh. Okay. Maybe?”

She went back to her work. Thankfully, the previous owners had an area near the coops that had a ton of empty egg cartons, so she started gathering, cleaning the eggs off with a hose when they had goo on them, and washing out the nest boxes as she finished.

The process felt like it took forever, and by the time she was done she had collected 103 eggs. There were too many eggs. She had no idea what to do with that many. But, she loaded them into the car anyway. She’d figure it out, or have an extremely egg heavy diet for a while. Star wanted to learn to cook, right? She wasn’t sure he could do something like eggs with his paws and mouth though. Well, whatever. She’d find a use for them.

That process had taken her a good hour and a half, but she still had work to do. Lily wandered around to all the animal enclosures and started filling up everyone’s food. She took a moment to appreciate that her body was already so much stronger than it ever had been in her apartment. On day one, a shopping trip had exhausted her, and here she was doing some farm work while still recovering a little bit from the night before last. 

She still wasn’t exactly muscular, but she was sure she’d lost weight and built up a bit of muscle. Something to be proud of, at least.

Before she was completely done, she sat down in front of the chicken water feeder and worked her water spell. It wasn’t any more complex than her charging spell, and she opted to use mana. It was amazing, but while she couldn’t cast more than one spell like that at a time, she was up to her third today without exhausting herself. 

“Guess those muscles have been getting stronger too huh?”

Next up she went to collect Star. It took her a little while to find him. Star and Donk were laying next to the little pond, looking tuckered out. But they also had company. A goose was sitting on Donk’s back.

As Lily approached, the goose stood and looked wary. But, when neither Donk nor Star moved, it settled back down. Lily made sure to approach slowly and tried to look as non-threatening as possible.

“Hey, who’s this? A friend?”

Star barked, wagged his tail. Donk seemed uncomprehending but was clearly not offended by his passenger. So, Lily dropped her guard a bit.

“Donk has a friend huh? I guess that makes you Sancho?”

Lily giggled. The animals didn’t get it, but that was fine. 

“Well folks, it’s time for me and Star to mosey. C’mon, let's go. We have one more stop before we can head home.”

The girl was a little surprised when the dog got up and gave both donkey and goose a quick lick before trotting after her, tail wagging.

“Huh, guess you really like them? Or is that like, a dominance thing?”

Star made his way to the car, so Lily shrugged and followed after him. A few minutes later, they were pulling out of La Mancha and headed towards their next stop.

---

 

By the time they approached the drive in, the sun was getting low in the sky. It’d set in the next hour or so. It had been a very productive day, and Lily was pretty tired. But, after she disabled anything that was going on here and set up the chaos emerald to charge, she could go home and know that all of them were being charged up.

Lily had to get out to raise the gate that used to open up after someone would pay for a ticket to let the car through, but it was just made of plastic, so it wasn’t too hard. She’d been prepared to cut it up if needed, or melt it down to a stub. But, when there was no power simply lifting it up and pulling it all the way back was enough. 

As she pulled in, Lily realized with a start that she’d been here before. A couple times as a little girl. They used to have a swap meet here, and she’d gotten lost once. She almost laughed. What a silly memory to come flooding back. But, she wouldn’t have to worry about getting lost this time. After all, it was just a really big parking lot with a few giant screens in different directions. She pulled into one of the spots, and got out of the car. Her hands were already glowing, so she knew the spot must be concentrated around here.

“Okay Star, I’m going to start looking for a circle. Let me know if you sniff anything out, okay?”

“But we are already inside the circle. I hope you find it soon Master.”

Lily screamed.

“Wh-what the fuck?”

Star looked at her, and she clearly heard a voice despite him not opening his mouth or anything.

“What? Did I do something wrong?”