Episode: 2.6

--- Molly --

Lee Memento De La Graves.

That was the (probably fake) name the boy finally decided he wanted to be called.

When she asked why he chose that as his alias, he just cackled madly before telling her she’d get it soon enough.

When she woke up the next day, she was still wondering what the joke was and as she walked into her living room, she’d gained a new question to replace her old.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” Graves asked, not moving from his seat at her computer, not even to look at her.

She glanced at the couch, where he was supposed to have slept last night, noting the way the covers and pillows were still where she left them piled the night before.

Given how he’d stopped her suicide attempt and agreed to tutor her, she wasn’t exactly willing to just throw him out, especially not since she’d apparently broken him out of whatever prison he’d been thrown in.

Besides with her dad gone on his business trip, he wouldn’t complain. And based on yesterday, it was kind of nice to have someone else around for a change.

(Especially if you have a relapse…)

She shook her head. “D-did you sleep at all last night?”

“Nope.”

His bluntness threw her for a moment.

“Why not?”

Graves clicked open another webpage before answering, “Filling in the blanks.”

(That answered… nothing.)

“Erm, what blanks?”

“You know what Rifts are?”

“The tears between parallel worlds.” She answered easily, after all she did do a science project on them last year, and she deserved a better grade than the B- she got. (Stupid, Mrs. Krpowalski…)

“Alternate-Realm theory?”

“Out of all the universes connected to ours at least a few must be alternate earths, or at the very least alternate versions of the same worlds, which is why of all the observed worlds a handful of them have near matching signatures.”

“Good.” He nodded, “And color theory?”

She frowned.

(That’s a little different from the other two, but still…)

“Different colors cause different emotional reactions in people… or were you talking about colors in reference to the light spectrum?”

“Emotional invocation is good enough.” Graves shrugged, before snapping his fingers as if he was remembering something, “How about music theory?”

“Um…” she ran a hand through her hair, trying to remember something, “I know the basic scale?”

Graves frowned, shaking his head side to side, before nodding.

“Okay, it’s not ideal, but I can work with this if we supplement everything with the psychology overlap a bit, though that would only really help with Contracting and self-actualization…”

She blinked, as Graves continued to mumble things, she barely understood to himself.

“What?”

“Mm?” Graves glanced at her before blinking himself, “Oh, if I’m going to be teaching you magic, then I need an idea of what you know, so that I know which direction to take the lessons.”

“Oh… that makes sense.”

“Of course, it does. Sense makes sense to all but the senseless. Well unless you’re speaking non-sense then it only makes sense to you, and the Cheshire.”

(That’s… huh?)

Then again with the way he was grinning, she was fifty percent sure he was just screwing with her.

“Now that I’ve got an idea of the mental aspect, we still need to see what we’re working with on the magical front.” Graves pulled off one of his rings and tossed it to her. “And to do that we’re going to use this.”

Now that it was in her hands, she was able to get a better look at it, she took note of the silver frame, the smooth sapphire, and the intricate engravings, both on the ring and in the gem itself. All in all, it was probably the most expensive piece of jewelry she’d ever seen let alone touched.

She glanced at his hands and noticed similar rings on his other fingers, marking him a very rich man, which left her with the question of… (Why the fuck, are you sleeping on my couch?)

“Um, what am I supposed to do with this?”

Graves watched her for a moment, before pointing at the ring.

“Magic machine.”

He adjusted his finger to point at her.

“Magic battery. You’re a smart girl, figure it out.”

She glared at him for the battery comment, before turning her attention to the ring.

(Alright, he wants me to figure it out, so that means I must know what I need to, to make this work…)

(Now what do I know about magic?)

She thought about it and came up with a number of things she’d read about Arcane and their abilities, from papers on dark matter to theories on electromagnetic field manipulation.

(Okay, so going off standard theory for Arcane tools, I’d need to figure out how to manipulate my field so that…)

She paused before shaking her head.

(No, that’s all stuff I learned on my own.)

(He has no way of knowing if I know that stuff or not, hell by his theorem everything I know might be wrong altogether…)

Her eyes glanced at Graves, who was watching her patiently.

(Focus on what he’s taught you.)

She drew a blank.

He hadn’t taught her anything about magic, how could he? She’d known him less than twenty-four hours. All he’d done for her is unlock her magic and shown her that light trick.

(How the hell am I supposed to figure this out with just that?!)

“Damn it…” she cursed running a hand through her hair.

“You’re thinking too hard about it.” Graves warned her lightly, “You only need to know three things to do this.”

She watched him for a moment before nodding.

(Okay, three things…)

(I know the light trick, and he must’ve taught me something else…)

(Graves watched her for a moment, before pointing at the ring.)

(“Magic machine.”)

(He pointed at her.)

(“Magic battery.”)

It clicked.

She began pushing the cool-warmth of her magic down her arm, only instead of building the magic in her palm she pushed it into her finger, where it… just sat there.

She frowned.

Graves grinned.

“Almost, you’re just forgetting one little thing.”

She glared at him, then the ring…

(Wait, can I do that?)

…and immediately felt like an idiot.

(Of course, I can do that…)

Repeating her previous attempt, only this time when her magic reached her finger, she tried pushing it against the cool metal.

The ring’s sapphire began to glow as the engravings within stood out as if clearly written in white ink against the gem’s dark blue.

A rectangular image suddenly flashed in front of her, causing her to lose concentration as she jumped back, immediately dispelling the image.

“Pfft…” Graves covered his mouth trying to keep from laughing.

“W-what the hell was that?!” she yelled, her mind immediately flashing to the bullies that made her life hell.

“Sorry, sorry,” he waved off her anger, “I’m so used to it, I wasn’t expecting someone else to react so… dramatically. It’s fine, it’s fine.”

She glared at him for a moment, and he gestured to the ring with a patient and (irritating) grin.

With a sigh she pushed her magic into the ring once more, and this time didn’t jump when the image flashed in front of her. Now that she actually saw it, she couldn’t help but compare the image to a dark blue screen.

New user detected.

She blinked reading the text, before it flashed into a new sentence.

Initiating new profile scan…

The ring began pulling on her magic, before sending an odd if not unpleasant pulse through her every few seconds.

Her eyes glanced towards Graves, “Er, what exactly is this thing doing?”

“Give it a minute and you’ll see, this’ll help in the long term.”

While his words didn’t instill much confidence in her, she figured she was already in for a pound.

Data compiling…

Name: Molly Abigail Grimm

Age: (Approx.) 16 years

Species: (Human) Half-Life

MP: 121 / 126

MP-Regen: 2/5min

Traits:

Touched by Death: ‘One who has been touched by death and lived to tell the tale.’ Grants an affinity for Death attribute Weakens affinity for Life attribute Grants an affinity for Necromancy and Healing skills Note: this skill can be detected by others ‘Touched by Death’ and grants the ability to detect them as well. Half-Life: ‘Forever touched by death, but forever bound by life.’ Unlocks Mystic based abilities Grants an affinity for Death attribute and Will-craft skills Extends natural life span by magical potency Grants access to Dead-Life state when below half magical capacity

Attribute Affinities:

Death: (B)-Rank Ice: ©-Rank Shadows: (D+)-rank Life: (F)-Rank

Skill Affinities

Necromancy: (D+)-Rank Healing: (D+)-Rank Will-Craft: (C-)-Rank

She understood most of what the screen was telling her, even if she wasn’t entirely sure what the information translated to.

(Okay, Name and Age are a given. Species though…)

She bit her lip.

(I’m glad I still count as human, but what the hell is a Half-life?)

A glance towards Graves, tempted her to just ask him as he was reading, but a larger part of her wanted to figure it out herself. To not let herself become dependent on him for everything magical, even if he was offering.

(Besides he’d probably make me figure it out.)

It would fit the way he answered some of her other questions, pushing her to work them out, even if he gave hints as needed.

So, she decided to just cut out the middle man.

(It says I’m a ‘(Human) Half-Life’ so maybe it’s like my Deviant type?)

She nodded,

(MP must be magic points, or something…)

She gave Graves another look, as he seemed to be thinking over her screen’s contents.

(Didn’t take him as an RPG fan.)

She turned back to the screen.

(MP-Regen, sort of speaks for itself…)

The next bit threw her a bit.

(Traits, are…)

She was drawing a blank.

(Okay, think of this a different way. A trait is a definitive aspect of something, so in this context, these must be the unique things about me magically. And the points after are what those traits mean.)

Couldn’t help but shake her head.

(Alright, yeah, that’s fairly straightforward. I keep over thinking this.)

(Affinities, going with the most straightforward route, these must be my affinities for different types of magic.)

She frowned a little.

(But it’s broken into ‘Attribute Affinities’ and ‘Skill Affinities’…)

(I can ask Graves about it later, I already have to ask him this ranking system works, because while I understand Sanctuary’s system, that doesn’t mean this one works the same.)

“You work everything out?”

“Just two questions…”

Graves rolled his hand through the air, “And they are?”

“Right, um, first what’s the difference between an attribute and a skill?”

“An attribute is an attribute of the world, it can be any element from the classics like Fire and Water, to the rarer Smoke and Concrete, to even concepts such as Time and Death. You’re Rank in an attribute is how easily you can manipulate that given element, due to a natural connection to it you’ve developed over your life. For reference a person your age normally has both one C-Rank, and one D-Rank affinity, with a default of E-Rank in virtually everything else. Though an affinity for a given element can increase through long-term training connected to said element, or through extreme events that can develop traits, such as…”

“My suicide…” she grimaced.

“Yeah.” Graves sighed.

(Well that explains the high Death affinity…)

(And if a Trait can increase an affinity, I guess it can decrease them too, hence my low Life affinity…)

“Skills are a bit different…” Graves began once more, drawing her from her thoughts, “Basically they compare your skill level in a given art or craft that the ring’s database has scanned and catalogued. Typically speaking, your Skill-Rank is a comparison to your ability on a fairly massive scale, and due to the fact that all skills are learned rather than naturally developing over your lifetime, Traits that influence your skill levels are even rarer than attribute modifiers, and are typically limited to less physical Skills such as various spell-craft or psionic arts.”

“And since I have no skills, nothing pops up outside of my Trait skills…”

“Actually, the Ring needs to observe you performing a skill to offer a proper opinion, and even then, it’s a clinical opinion so most artistic skills are ignored or limited to actual skill rather than personal tastes.”

“Okay,” she nodded, more or less following along, “but that still leaves me wondering what the Ranks actually mean.”

He tapped his chin for a moment before snapping his fingers, “Oh, focus magic into the ring, and say or think really hard: ‘Explain-Ranking System’ the ring has a fairly decent help guide, though you might want to ignore some of the flavor text.”

(Flavor text?)

A new screen popped up before she could ask her latest question.

Ranking system:

--

-: Lower tier of Rank

--

+: Higher tier of Rank

--

Rank order from highest to lowest: S > A > B > C > D > E > F

--

Note:

Affinity Ranks Skill and Parameter Ranks are not based on linear values, but rather competitive comparison of subjects. As such Tiers of each letter rank are approximately 10X greater than the previous Rank’s matching tier.

--

S: Rank abilities are above the standard system; basic system rules do not apply.

(Word of advice if you run across an S-Ranker and are not an S-Ranker, it is recommended you run if you have anything resembling survival instincts, or an IQ.)

--

F: Rank abilities are below the standard system; basic system rules do not apply.

(Note: (F-) Rank is so abysmally bad at its given parameter it can be considered an inversion of whatever it is attempting to be.)

--

X: Rank is an outsider Rank representing an inability to compare abilities to database.

(Note: All (X)-Rankers are notoriously batshit-crazy, and it is recommended you never, ever, piss one off if you enjoy your spine in one piece.)

“That clear up your questions?”

“Most of them, yeah…”

(And I think I see what you meant by ignoring the Flavor Text…)

“Good, because we need to get moving.” Graves informed her as he hopped out of his seat.

She spun to look at him, “Wait, what?”

“We need to get moving, you know leave this…” Graves glanced around the room looking for a word, “lovely apartment.”

Part of her wanted to be offended, but truth be told, she didn't even like her apartment all that much.

“A-And why do we need to leave the a-apartment?”

“Well, typically speaking when a beginner first learns a spell or two, they have a habit of accidentally blowing stuff up… So, unless you’re looking to burn down your apartment and claim a hopefully ludicrous insurance policy…”

The way Graves trailed off… she wasn’t sure whether he was asking or encouraging her to commit insurance fraud.

“R-Right… just, just let me get my wallet…”

“You sure?” Graves called after her, “We can always burn some of this tacky furniture… We don’t even need the insurance money, luv!”