Hana was confronted by the Mollen, several of them had strange looks on their faces. Whistling, she cleared their minds. They snapped to attention and realized who it was in front of them. She spread her wings once more and flew toward the far Island. The Mollen didn't stop her, instead they moved out of the way. It was all a bit too much for her, she landed near the Bloodpools and walked into her tent. The inside was dry and only the blood near the entrance that was tracked in by her boots was present. 'Finally, somewhere clean to sit.'
She pulled out the stack of books. Initially, when she was thumbing through the books, she thought perhaps that Elder Kesra would hold something back. But after checking each book, she started to notice the few at the bottom were her previous notebooks. The original ones. Then, she pulled out the projector that Patriarch Ooran had given her. 'Grandfather, why did you give this to me?' She flipped through it a few times and saw the number of formations, somehow, the description was easy to read on the side and navigating its contents was simple.
'Ice pit, fire pit, campfire, freeze dry, inferno, gently cool, wind tunnel, saturate, magnify on focal point..' Hana was reading off the formations, there were a lot of them. 'Did he give this to me for a reason or just as a convenience?' Hana saw another button. 'Scan?' She pressed it and a small beam of light passed over the desk in front of her.
'Unsuccessful, no formation present. Please try again.' The message appeared on the side.
"What?" Hana smirked and laughed. 'Oh, Em, Gee!' Her hands trembled. 'How many can it hold?' She had been experimenting with formation lines constantly, with the brick, she could go so much further. Leaping to her feet, she brought out all of her notebooks and every paper she had on formations. When it was time for bed, she had only scanned the first stack. Situated in the book in front of her was a formation she had never considered learning. 'Soul Extraction.' It was marked as secret, one of the books given to her by the Patriarch himself.
The technique they called soul extraction was the process of removing a soul from an item or a person. Essentially, the technique confining the harvested soul into something, usually an orb for later processing. Hana studied it intently. It was difficult for her to take her eyes off of it, she was mesmerized. Scanning it, she loaded its preset into the device and brought over one of the Bloodgrass.
She put the Bloodgrass on the ground and projected the formation over it, there was a reaction she didn't expect. The plant withered in an instant and a small maroon bead floated above. The essence of the plant. 'Why did it do that? Plant essence isn't the soul.' Sighing, Hana put the essence into a bottle for later and went back to reading and scanning. There were a lot of books to input, she didn't know if anything similar was already loaded but she was willing to stuff the device full of whatever she could find.
'Gaseous, Harden, disintegration, dismemberment, clone, rock pit, spike pit, psychic shield, isolation barrier, vacuum, boost, condense, compress, extract, disassemble.' Hana stopped again but turned the page, there were enough things to juggle, another her wouldn't necessarily be a good thing either. Putting the device down, she laid down on her bed and stared at the tent. The rain had started again, the pattering of blood against the outside of the tent kept her concentration out of focus. Resting was a good idea.
Hana overslept, she only woke up because Grandmaster Lu Sha had come. "Master, why have you disappeared."
"Hana, what has happened here?" he looked around in a somewhat stunned expression. 'So much blood.'
"The Mollen, they did most of it. You said not to slow their development, I have been mostly hands off the whole time." She defended herself and then he walked out of her tent. "Master?"
She opened the side of the tent and looked at the interior of the Dimensional Space. It had expanded greatly, having grown almost eight fold overnight. 'oh wow.'
There were artificial islands, masses of materials conjured by the Mollen, suspended midair and connected by braces or chain like strands. As the blood fell from the sky, the spray got more intense. The pool had never stopped producing blood, not in the week since its activation.
"Master Greets Disciple, you have done well. Whether it is by their luck or divine intervention or your hand directly, they have thrived. This space belongs to them, visit it but never destroy its barrier. Should you release these beasts into the world without an education, you will bare the consequences and hate of many. Species arrive daily, but they resonate with your bloodline, denial of their heritage and providence will be next to impossible." Lu Sha waved his hand and condensed the Bloodpools into a crystal as it was raining.
"Very useful, but beware. This crystal composite, if it fell into the wrong hands." he passed a large fist size variant of the Dragons Egg Crystal to her. "When you can make one that is as tall as I am, then we can talk about why its dangerous. For now, just remember that you can never bring another person here." A yellow crystal appeared in Lu Sha's hand. He passed it over.
"This is a raw memory crystal." He pulled out another. "And this one, is not." The large stone slammed onto the dirt and stood erect, it was almost three feet in height. "Obviously you can't eat this crystal, pour your energy into it instead. This is a secret of the Sect that your father taught the first of us. The Crystal was developed by Master Xuan, he's been working to create an 'artificial intelligence' but getting the puppets to respond to questions has made him abandon the project. The best part of his project was that he created the crystals to store memories, Qu has uploaded all of the formation information. This is a gift from your Mother, she's worried about you. I can't stay long but I will inform them of your progress. If these Mollen become violent, abandon this place and seal it."
"The Mollen deify me, I doubt they will harbor negativity toward me. They killed the last intruder that made me frown." Hana smiled and cocked her head.
"Haha, Disciple is a funny one. I am leaving." A formation and thunderclap arrived in almost an instant. Lu Sha was gone once again.
'How does he do it so fast!' Hana felt frustrated, she had been studying the portal formations but couldn't figure out the destination alteration effect. Otherwise, she would simply portal to and from. 'Eh, I'm lazy. I'll figure it out later.' She sighed and took a good look at the surroundings. Small buildings, nothing special, were now popping up on the top of the islands and the honeycomb of nests grew into towers. 'These guys don't sleep?' Impressed, she flew below to check on the eggs from the few days prior.
There were hatchlings crawling around on the bottom of the building. Sharp talons clung to the crevasses and held them in place. Hundreds of little ones scuttled around, "Pddddd" Another burst of noise and chittering came from the young ones. Hana spoke and increased the pressure from her Aura. Then, she flew around to each of the Islands trying to count the offspring. 'So many... so very very many.'
Hana noticed that they Mollen had begun to pile the crystal away from the population and felt like they were learning. A Small island floated.. Hana almost flew up to the site and thought of eating the crystals. Better minds prevailed, filling a few more storage rings with Bloodgrass was a productive use of her time between her training and reading.
For days, Hana didn't bother to leave the Rift. Instead, she chose to digest the knowledge hidden in the books and observe the growth of the Mollen. There were changes she couldn't expect and the population of the Mollen was growing at an extreme pace.
Hana took one last bath in the Bloodpools and gathered as much as she could carry. On her way out, she noticed spellwork, similar to the portal was being written in several places. Conduits were channeled up to it but they had left a break in the power to keep it inactive. 'Is this?' Hana studied it all over. A few moments after she began, she was surrounded by the Mollen. A Whimpering could be heard from the majority of them. Looking over the formation and design, she noticed some differences in its construction. A few markings had been altered, she went to the next portal, it was also different.
"What is this?" Hana rubbed her head in confusion. 'I think I'm about to lose containment.' she wondered if there would be a problem when she left.
Sighing, there was nothing she could do. She hoped they wouldn't escape into the Kingdom and pulled out the token. When she deactivated it, its energy was no longer contained in the barrier and the channels that had been dug filled to the point of saturation in moments. Hana stopped herself when she saw the channels filling and looked back to see the break in the transmission line carved away, allowing the energy to flow and activate the second portal. Hana didn't want to get stuck in the dimensional rift, she passed through and watched the portal gate fritz.
Taking a few steps back, she watched it come to a grinding halt and dissipate. "No!" Hana was growing attached to the creatures, she wanted to know if they would be useful. With the portal broken, there was little hope of answers in the immediate future.
Hana called Caoimhe and rode to the Sect. Dissait rode in her shadow, he could feel that her aura had increased again.
"Young Miss Hana?" His voice came out along her ears.
It was a strange sensation, hearing his voice so closely. "Its just Hana, what?"
"What happened to the portal?" He asked softly.
"Nothing, I destroyed it for safety reasons." Keeping calm, she leaned on Caoimhe and turned to the Castle.
Dissait spoke again, "You shouldn't fly in like this but its already too late. Land in the garden."
"I was already on my way in that direction." Hana had Caoimhe reel a bit as she landed, it pushed the leaves from the garden out and into the adjoining spaces.
"Young Miss, you've returned. I will inform the Patriarch that you've arrived. This way." An attendant approached them and tried to guide them to the Castle.
Hana stopped them, "No, I'm not here to see the Patriarch. I'm here to see the Alchemy Department's Director."
"Oh? I don't know if he's available but we can arrange to have word sent and request his visit. Would you like to wait inside?" The attendant seemed polite and pointed the way. As they arrived inside, a table was set and fresh Tea was poured. "Please, if you need anything at all, just call."
'Too polite.' Hana frowned but looked down at the Tea, it was her Grandmother's favorite. 'More spirit tea?' Sighing gently, she let the effects wash over her. She calmed down and then a door opened. She had expected Chief Harris but a scraggly forty-something man wandered in and rubbed his head.
"Are you Hana Maker?" he asked and kept looking away.
"Yes. What is it?" She didn't have a problem answering but she wondered, why look for her.
"I have a message from the Front lines. This transmission is confidential, please open it when you are alone." A talisman and another brick were inside of a box in his hands. "If there is nothing further, I must go." He sulked and turned to leave.
'Message?' Hana wondered who it could be from. She smelled the box, it smelled like her mother. 'Mom. Front lines?'