Drew awoke to a world vastly different from the one he had previously known. He remembered the day they'd bought his father color correcting glasses, allowing him to see the reds and greens that he had never been able to see before. He had been in sheer awe at what he had been missing, and this was like that.
He spent seconds just looking around him, amazed at all the things that he'd been missing. His jaw was slack as he watched the ebb and flow of mana in millions of different colors that he had no names for.
Katie laughed behind him and he turned to look at her. Lines of color were radiating away from her, creating an aura or nimbus around her. He stared, not really seeing her, just the light around her. The colors were present everywhere, but they seemed to twist when they got within a few feet of her, pulled into her body as they disappeared. Her body seemed darker and less real than he remembered. Most of her aura was blue, with different shades of purple and green acting as secondary colors.
"You look like you've never seen a girl before," Katie said with a grin.
"I'm not sure I have, everything is different," Drew said, looking away from Katie to glance at Sarah's prone form next to him. Her aura wasn't as bright as Katie's, and the predominant colors were different: oranges, yellows, and greens all swirling in equal number, but like Katie, her body itself was devoid of the color granted by his new vision.
"How long was I out?" Drew continued to look around; underneath them, he could see massive white lines of mana flowing through the Earth. The movement was like watching rivers flow, several of them converging and creating a glowing light directly under the building they had just escaped from. Another, larger line surged out of that node, and from there into DC proper, joining with other lines and then splitting chaotically. It created a vast, intricate web. Every point seemed to fill with light and then when it was full, passed it forward into other lines and nodes. As he looked, he realized that sitting in the middle of all the various webs was a single node that didn't have an outlet. He couldn't tell exactly where that node was, but it was many times deeper than any other node he could see.
"A long ass time. Sun rose awhile back. What the heck are you staring at?"
"Mana, I think. I can see these lines under us. They converge under the HQ building and then head into DC, and there is one massive node there. I'm guessing that whole knot is the central nexus, and it's huge." Drew stood up with a groan, his body stiff from hours of inactivity.
"Cool. Well, your turn to be on watch, I'm going to slot heat shield." She laid down on the spot Drew had just vacated. It was only as she did so that Drew realized she had changed clothing again, out of the ODUs she had been wearing and into a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt. She had been pretty in uniform, but she was beautiful in normal clothing. He blinked at her. "You know, it's really not polite to stare," she said with a grin and then grabbed her head in pain.
"Mother fucker," she grunted but remained conscious. "Cast refresh on me please, I don't think I'm gonna get to sleep, just feel like I have a migraine." Drew wisely kept his laugh to himself while he created the hand seals to cast the spell on her.
Katie grunted and sat back up. Then she smacked his leg, "Hey, what was that for?"
"Because of how stupid you were to slot blink step in the middle of a fight," Katie replied, "How did you even stay awake?" She rubbed her forehead and shifted a few feet back so that she could lean against the wall.
"I don't think I did," Drew said, as he went in search for food, "You want anything?" He asked, grabbing a bag of chips.
"Chocolate, dark."
"Nuts?"
"God no."
Drew laughed, and he grabbed some M&Ms and candy bars for Katie while he grabbed three ravioli packages in a microwaveable bowl and a spoon. Not that he had a microwave, he just wanted something more solid than snack food. Handing Katie the chocolate, he popped the top on his ravioli and began to eat it cold.
Katie gave him the weirdest look, "Men are so gross."
Drew shrugged, "First real food I've had in a week, even if I have to eat it cold."
They ate in silence for a few moments, Drew getting lost in the new colors around him. His eyes never really stopped moving as he tried to take in everything. He glanced over at Sarah, then back at Katie, who just shook her head with a sigh.
"I can tell what colors your xatherite are with this sight. Well, I have a hard time distinguishing between the indigos and violets, but I think that's just my refusal to acknowledge they both aren't purple."
Katie frowned slightly. "Well, that will be helpful if we encounter any other humans, and it might hold true for the other stuff that has been mana twisted as well. Oh, I know." She hopped up to the wall with the window looking out to the southwest, unsummoning it with a thought, "Can you see the turtle's aura?"
Drew looked out the window and frowned, "No, I can see the ley lines, but anything past about 50 feet, I can't see the mana around."
"Right, there was some sort of range limit on it right?" Katie asked.
"15 meters, yeah." He looked around again. Outside, the mana seemed to flow in a normal pattern, pulled slightly towards the node in the basement of the HQ building. But he realized that the sun was already a quarter of the way through the sky, "Let me try out gravitas a bit and then I'll head out. I'd much rather do this with lots of light to spare."
He shifted to a spot where there were no pipes in the ceiling and then activated the spell. Unlike all his other skills that were always at full power, he could sense how to change the potency of this one, and a slight change in his intention turned it from negative to positive gravity. He also realized that he couldn't change the direction the gravity was pulling from; it was all either straight up or straight down towards the center of the earth, and thus his hopes of being a windrunner met an early death.
Drew's first mistake was using it on himself instead of an object near him; his second mistake was that he activated it at full negative power, which meant he fell to the ceiling at half speed. It didn't hurt him, as he slowed himself with his hands and then rolled into the ceiling. A feeling of disorientation overcame him as he looked down at Katie with his back against what felt like the floor. He frowned; he needed to get to the floor before the spell wore out or he'd fall at full speed the entire ten-foot distance.
Changing the force of the spell to negate all gravity on him, he floated down away from the ceiling for a moment, lost in freefall. He pushed gently against the ceiling and floated down parallel to the floor until he was eye level with Katie.
"Having fun?" She asked with a grin.
"A little," he said, reaching out a hand to her, "Hey, hold me against the floor for a second." Katie grabbed his arm and he shifted his body so that he was oriented with gravity again, and then let the spells manipulation equal zero. "Okay, more than a little," he said with a grin. He had just flown on his own, eat that Wright brothers! Well, technically he had fallen and floated, but that was close enough.
"You wanna try?" he asked Katie.
She laughed and shook her head, "No thanks, maybe if we find another one and I can control it."
"Yeah, that's fair. It would've been much scarier if I wasn't in control." Drew frowned, pulling up the spell again, "Oh, can't use it on other people anyway, only myself and inanimate objects."
"Try making my shoes heavier," Katie said, "That would be a huge advantage in a fight if you could make it so Chakri couldn't dodge or make a weapon twice as heavy to wear them out faster."
"Hmm, can't switch to something else while the spell is still active, and I can't cast it again for a minute." Drew looked around waiting for the spell's cooldown to allow him to recast it.
He had Katie take the walls down long enough for them to relieve themselves in the bathrooms; these toilets thankfully had tanks, so they could be flushed. When they were both done, he cast gravitas on her boots, sticking them to the floor with two and a half times the normal gravity. She stumbled but was able to adjust after a few seconds, her movements much slower.
"That's a workout," Katie said, slightly out of breath just from walking back to Sarah.
"Yeah. It'll make it a lot easier to stop things from chasing me. Unless it's a spider or something else that doesn't wear shoes." Drew grabbed one of the backpacks and began filling it with food and water.
"Planning on being gone a long time?" Katie asked, with a frown as he packed.
"No, but who knows how common food is out there? If I find someone else who hasn't been able to get food recently, this may give them enough of a boost to follow me back." Drew looked around and then grabbed a couple of the knives on display and several of the spare glowrocks; Katie had made a whole bunch more while he had been passed out. "Just in case they're injured and can't be moved…having some light will be good for morale," he answered her unspoken question.
After he had put back on his armor and tightened the pack down, he turned to look at Katie, "We could all go together, you know."
She shook her head, "No, we already decided on this. You'll only be gone for a few hours and when you get back, we'll be in a much better spot." She forced a smile and then hugged him. "Just don't go dying on me. I don't want to be alone."
Drew hugged her back, not letting go until she did. "It'll be alright Katie; I'll be back before dark."
Katie nodded again but didn't seem to be about to add anything else to the conversation.
She removed the walls she had placed and they both locked eyes one last time before she put the wall back up. Turning, Drew headed down the hill. He looked back at the shop when he was about halfway down and could see Katie watching him from the window. He waved to her and smiled again as she shook her head and waved back. Her lips were moving, but it was impossible to tell what she said at this distance.
The loading dock was near the base of the hill, not far from where they had left the main building the day before. Built under the road he had been walking down and situated between the parking garage and the building was a ramp that led down into it. Drew stopped one last time to look up the hill, where he could still see Katie's figure standing in the window. He then took out a glowrock and descended into the darkness of the loading dock. His new vision painted the area with a brighter color than the exterior had been, showing more ambient mana in the area.
"Does that mean the building really is a dungeon? If so, what does the node mean?" He asked himself rhetorical questions to keep his mind occupied while his eyes scanned the area, looking for auras and movement. The bay was large, several hundred feet across and 30 or 40 feet tall. There were no vehicles, of course, and all four of the receiving doors were closed. There was a small access door on the far side of the building that he made his way towards.
From the corner of his eye he caught movement and suddenly went into high alert; a human-shaped aura was all he could see in the darkness. It was mostly purple in color and about his height.