Chapter One Hundred and Sixty-Five - Playing Coy

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  Dharti's lips pressed together. "Don't play coy with me, beta, I'm old enough to be your mother. I won't be fooled by such a lazy deflection."

  I raised both hands in surrender. "Sorry, sorry, uh, but really, what do you mean?"

  Her eyes narrowed and she reached out, grabbing my cheek in a pinch that really did hurt. "I can feel your magic. Not earlier, but with contact? If I am to heal someone then I need to know what I am healing, and that means using spells to see someone's condition. Sometimes you learn things about people that way, and so it behooves a medic to learn some discretion. Your core is roiling. I sense healing magic that isn't mine, mostly concentrated around your arm and eyes and ears. This is the operation you had, yes?"

  "Yeah, I had new cyberware installed," I admitted. "An upgrade or two. Nothing big."

  "Yes, and the magic in your core. It's the same as anyone else who has cleared a portal. Not just visited one. But there's more than one flavour to it. There's the flavour of the portal we just left, and at least two more. Maybe more than two more."

  I swallowed. Was now a good time to Reload? I could ditch the entire situation and basically arrange things so that I wasn't caught out.

  Then again... I kind of trusted Dharti? She was a little strange and brash and had her own way of doing things, but I couldn't help but get a strong... mom vibe from her. She was assertive, sure, but she'd also been nothing but helpful, and she was my number-one source of Nature spells.

  "Fine," I said before I gently reached up and removed her hand from my cheek. That still stung. "I obviously can't tell you everything."

  Dharti nodded. "Have you been moonlighting with another company?"

  "Huh? No? I only work for Luna Corp. I'm not like, a corpo spy or anything. Look, it's not that complicated. I have a few friends. We're all D-rankers, but we all want... you know, better? To hit C-rank eventually. So we're working together. A few of us are good at spotting new portals and when one of them shows up, we make time to hit it."

  "And you've found this many unclaimed portals?" Dharti asked. She wasn't even trying to hide her suspicions.

  "Yeah? I mean, usually we find about one a week, so far. That plus the portals from Luna Corp mean that I'm growing faster, you know?"

  "And with less supervision, at a pace that won't let you or your core grow used to the power it is absorbing," she added.

  "Maybe," I admitted. "But it's faster. Look, I'm not a child, I understand the risks. We're hitting smaller portals, usually E-rankers, sometimes weaker D-rankers, and we're doing it with just three of us. It's dangerous, I get it. We could probably use like... all the support and gear Luna Corp has, but what we're doing isn't wrong."

  "Just stupid."

  "Exact-- I mean, no? A little? We're taking some risks. Portals are dangerous. So far none of us have come out with even a scratch, though."

  "So far," Dharti said. "I know your level of skill, you are not so great that this 'so far' will last forever."

  I worked my jaw. She was right. If it wasn't for my ability to Reload and try again, I'd have picked up a few injuries already. Probably died a few times, too. But I hadn't. "I know," I said. "That's why we don't go at it alone."

  "And do you think the corps will be happy with you? I imagine that you're sealing these portals."

  "Yeah. We're not doing anything illegal. And we're not poaching like... the regular portals that are recurring that companies work on. Just those that pop up and aren't grabbed before we arrive."

  "Those represent a lot of money," Dharti said. "Resources, and training, and rare materials. You're stepping on toes."

  "Just a little," I said. "We wear masks."

  Dharti sniffed. "If you are hiding yourself then it is only because you know full well that what you are doing is no good."

  "I wouldn't exactly put it like that," I said.

  She didn't look impressed.

  "Most of the portals we go after aren't known about," I defended. "They were going to breach. If we didn't act a few times, then people might have died."

  ""Herosim, you'll discover, counts for very little unless people find that you are heroic on their behalf," Dharti said. "And when you close a portal under a corporation's nose, you are tweaking it. They will not appreciate the gesture."

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  I shrugged. It was what it was. Then I regretted the gesture before it made me feel another wave of vertigo. "Urgh," I complained.

  "Come here," Dharti said as she reached up and touched my head. "Hmm, still too much. You're not actually feeling sick. Or rather, you're feeling it, but it's not physical. It's psychosomatic, in response to your magic being unstable."

  "How do I fix that?" I asked.

  "Meditation, if you know how. Otherwise... do you know any spells that aren't loud?"

  "Soothe Minor Pain?" I asked.

  She shook her head quickly and decisively. "No. Nothing that affects yourself like that. External spells."

  "Uh, Leafshed, I guess?"

  She considered it, then nodded. A moment later I was following her out of the washroom and around the building. It wasn't long that Dharti found an office with some flower pots in it, then she casually stole them and brought them back to the washroom.

  I watched, feeling increasingly dizzy, as she stuck her thumb in the pot and the flowers grew and bloomed. "Start casting," she said.

  I did so, even if it felt like my magic was suddenly more like sludge than any sort of fast-moving water. The spell came out all wonky and wrong the first time, so I redoubled my focus and tried again. The second time it worked, but only about as well as the first time I cast it, and I could tell that the magic was doing something to the spell's carving on my core.

  Still, after casting the spell two or three times, with Dharti casually regrowing the leaves that fell, I could tell that it was working. The impression that my everything was stuffed was slowly fading away.

  "It's working, I think." I said. "So, what was wrong, exactly?"

  "Far too much magic, from far too many sources," Dharti explained. "Your core is meant to hold your magical energy. Pumping it full when exiting a portal is well and good, it'll force your capacity to grow. It's like... blowing into a balloon, yes? It swells a little. Eventually that new capacity becomes yours."

  I nodded along. "And I pushed too much?"

  "Yes. A rankless person surviving through a C-rank portal may well die from the magical energy alone. An E-ranker is at even greater risk."

  "Really?" I asked.

  "As a ranker, their body will try to absorb the magical energy. It pushes things too far, too quickly," Dharti explained. "The balloon is swelled up past its capacity, and then... pop."

  "Ah... well, that's no good," I said.

  She stabbed me in the stomach with a very hard finger. "It is not," she agreed.

  "Ow! Hey, in my defence, no one told me that?"

  "No one is fool enough to do portals so quickly. Or so lucky to find so many to tackle in such short a time. If we had completed today's portal rather than just clearing it to the boss, you may well have popped."

  "Ah," I said.

  "Then whatever progress you've made?" She made a flicking gesture, as if tossing it all away. "Gone. Not to mention the medical bills and time out. You would need to regrow your core."

  "That can happen?"

  She shrugged. "It's safer to regrow a ranker's core than to invest in someone and hope that they eventually rank up, so the company might have helped, maybe. If they didn't learn what you did. Foolish beta." She reached over and touched me again. I felt more magic slipping into me and some of the strange soreness faded.

  "What are you doing now?" I asked.

  "Healing you as best I can," she replied.

  "Is it bad?"

  She sighed, then shook her head. "No worse than someone spraining a muscle. Not to say that it is good, but you are young, both in your head and in terms of a ranker. You will be fine in a day or two. Now, an old crone like me? This would have me complaining for weeks."

  I laughed. "Well, thank you," I said. "You, uh, won't be telling the boss about this, will you?"

  "Eldur? Pft, no," she replied. "He'd stick his nose in your business. Though I will be the one sticking her nose in your business if you don't respect yourself a little more."

  "Got it," I said. "Uh... thank you, Dharti, really. Um... can I give you a hug?"

  "Of course you can," she snapped.

  ***