Jamie forced herself to keep an open mind and had to keep reminding herself she knew magic was real. She had to remind herself that what Val was saying wasn’t insane, even if it would have sounded so a week prior. The world had gone mad, so it wasn’t strange that magic was being talked about seriously. Even her own weapon, a kusarigama, had what could only be described as a magical enchantment but still…

  She was struggling.

  The younger girl had unlocked a skill she called “Magic Missile” and while she was still learning how it worked, the facts of its efficacy couldn’t be ignored. It took about five minutes for the energy required to create one returned but from the pockmarks in the ground and trees nearby, they were effective.

  “Hit me with one,” Jamie demanded.

  Val looked at the wolves, felled mostly with one clean hit from the missiles. Jamie had to control her own breathing to remain calm. She didn’t want a discussion. She wanted to test her durability. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea…”

  “I have to know, Val.” Jamie’s voice broached no argument. Jamie was proud of her attributes. Their array was elegant, and the way Jamie used them made every point more effective. She was loath to even truly consider that she might have taken an incorrect path to power, but she could accept that there were other avenues she hadn’t considered.

  “Are you sure?” the girl asked. Jamie had five points waiting from her last level up, but she didn’t place them yet. She just nodded instead. The gains from levelling to thirteen were on the line. Privately, Jamie felt that if she put all five points into Resilience, Val’s magic missile wouldn’t do anything. She tried to brace herself for the attack as Val used her new skill.

  Without any way to sense the attack coming, it was futile. When the bowling ball hit her in the back of the head, Jamie didn’t hold back her reaction. “Jesus fucking christ,” she groaned, holding the spot she had been hit and falling to her knees. It felt as though a white hot ball of force had collided with her skull. The heat vanished quickly, but the effect was worrying. Checking her health total, she was shocked to see the attack had stripped away almost a quarter of her maximum.

  “I’m so sorry!” Val exclaimed, crowding Jamie as she crouched and rubbed her head. Val was still four or five levels lower than Jamie, but if she was capable of hurting her to that extent, she could probably have won a serious fight. That thought was an icicle in her chest. Jamie trusted Val enough, but the idea of power like that, invisible and deadly, in the hands of someone with less morals? It terrified her down to her frozen core, enough that Jamie did as Val suggested.

  “Did you aim for my head?” Jamie asked with a wince. She didn’t get the answer from Val’s responding squeak but she let it drop. Whether it was intentional or not, it was a serious attack and Jamie couldn’t complain. She had asked for it. Instead of pressing the point, Jamie glared into the blank air and opened her System window.

  Three points into Command, one into Power and one into Regeneration. One mana regeneration per second and fifteen in total. Jamie immediately noticed… something. As the attributes settled in, there was a tingling all over Jamie’s body. Even inside, the feeling tickled its way through her. Unfortunately, Jamie seemed to be less capable than Val, who was confused to hear Jamie ask what was next.

  “For me, it’s like… falling sand. I’m the hourglass, and the sand tumbles in from somewhere else. Once I have enough sand, I can… move it around? Then I build it into a shape in my mind.”

  “Like a sandcastle?” Jamie asked. “You imagine yourself making them and then what?”

  “Yes, actually, that’s pretty close. These magic missiles are a bit like sandcastles, except the System helps me make them really fast. Oh, but that’s not how it started. To start with it was like, uh, putting the sand under my feet? When the mana felt ‘right’, I was able to move a bit faster and hit harder.”

  “So there was a passive element to having mana even before you started shooting lasers?” Jamie tried to add some levity, feeling more like she was interrogating Jamie than sharing information. She simply didn’t have anything to work with yet. Val nodded in answer. “And you gained the skill because..?”

  Val shrugged, looking apologetic. “It just happened. I was fighting, I felt the mana moving around inside of me and just… grabbed it. When I decided it felt like sand, I also decided to make my own sandcastle. It wasn’t as good as the System’s, but it was close enough for the skill to unlock I guess.”

  Jamie was still a little leery at the idea of random knowledge being shoved into her brain, but she was not one to avoid power right now, in any form. An ability which could make the downright cherub which was Val into a murder machine with casual ease was not something to take lightly or ignore.

  Val explained some more about how mana felt to her while Jamie got to grips with her own sensation. Or, more correctly, failed to do so. She tried to feel for the falling dust, but nothing like that appeared inside her. Hearing about all the possibilities was only making it harder to concentrate, as nothing Jamie tried allowed her to grasp the elusive feeling within.

  After around twenty minutes of nothing, she began to get frustrated. Anger bubbled up, with a heat that burned Jamie’s knuckles. Attempting to alleviate two problems at once, Jamie punched the nearest tree. Her Resilience was high enough that she wouldn’t hurt herself doing so. She had expected nothing to break, so when she punched clear through the bark and wood beneath Jamie flinched away. A branch from above snapped and fell on her head, but it was ignored.

  For a few seconds, nothing in the small clearing moved. Slowly, Jamie turned wide eyes to a similarly excited Val. “What the fuuuuuu-”

  ————————————————————

  Jamie and Val were late for the administration meeting, which was met with understanding. Perhaps it was their gory countenances which made people listen as she spoke, but Jamie liked to think it was her passion for regulations which did it. Thankfully, there wasn’t much for Jamie herself to even do, as it was handled well by Ralph. Distracted as she was by the energy in her hands, Jamie allowed him more decision making power than she might at another time but she found it hard to care.

  Jamie hadn’t allowed herself much time for the man. He hadn’t endeared himself by trying to take control of a situation he clearly wasn’t ready for in London, and had been dismissive of the women who actually got things done. That didn’t mean Jamie wouldn’t let him think this was where he would finally gain his control. She named him superintendent, not even sure what such a role would entail.

  Apparently it meant he now felt confident ordering anyone not actively training or working into performing some labour. After some people began to appear sedentary, Jamie thought this was fine and left him to it. All she had really done was remind people there were unspoken rules and begun the process of putting some of them into writing. A large sheet reading the words “Be Good” was hoisted into the air like a flag, which was a start. The white letters were emblazoned on a black background, which reminded Jamie of the system messages too much to be entirely comfortable with.

  Realising that most of the idle eyes in the camp were staring at her, Jamie retreated back into the forest. She went alone this time, leaving Val to her more traditional hunting group. The girl began animatedly explaining her new skill to the group, which included Huckle. The large man had scared eyes as he nodded a polite recognition of Jamie, and she had to leave so as not to laugh.

  Laughing are we? Jamie asked herself once the calm and quiet hit her. The disgust she felt in the pit of her stomach wasn’t fair to herself, but she encouraged it all the same. Who do you think you are? Jamie demanded, hitting her forehead firmly on the nearest tree trunk. How dare you smile?

  As the ice in Jamie’s heart tried to freeze her over once more, Jamie screamed. She shouted angrily as her emotions tried to fade into the background. The heat in her knuckles returned, but instead of punching the feeling away, Jamie revelled in it. The warmth began to spread up her arms, painful and slow. The flames within stung as they forced back the protective ice Jamie had cultivated, but she didn’t shy away.

  She simply continued to scream. She wailed, she wept. She clawed at the ground and pounded it with her fists. She allowed all of the doubt, fear and hate vomit from her in an uncontrolled deluge. Her family. Her friends. Her life… all stolen in a moment by an uncaring world. All the while, the fire burned through her.

  Soon, faster than she would have thought, Jamie was blazing. A thousand angry fireflies bounced around inside of her, forcing away the frigid thoughts and even the painful ones. She didn’t know how long she spent in the dirt but when Jamie stood from her foetal position, she felt light. You have to see what this feels like.

  “You were right, Val,” Jamie whispered, looking over her hands as though they were new additions to her form. The weight of her loss was still there, but it was like it had been pushed back by the warmth of Jamie’s mana. The resulting slurry of emotions was confusing and painful in its own way, but she continued to allow it. The discomfort of emotion was necessary to move forward. The ice within her heart had been the only reason Jamie survived as the world collapsed.

  Now, the fire of mana would let her live.

  “You want some company?” A familiar voice asked gently. Jamie turned from her current position, face down in the mud, to see Cate and Kylie watching her with concerned expressions. Unfortunately, as her emotions returned, Jamie found that embarrassment still had a piercing effect on her and she shot to her feet quickly.

  “Yeah,” Jamie said, the fire in her fists igniting at the sight of competition. “Yes, I do.”