That evening in Trinketshore, they were already across the street to Howlett's to see if there was anyone around the block. The road was pretty much empty; it looked like there were no civil guards or homeless people around. The three of them had had their beanie and mask on. Only Alicia and Nadine wore the googles. As for Gilmore, perhaps his face was too common, the mask was good enough to cover his face. They also put on their thick jacket and long pants so they could blend in as a group of roofless looking for a fire to warm themselves, while also delivering their routine gossip that broke the night's mute.

The triplets started going the other way to the next pavement, where Howlett's—now a patch of a yard full of ashes—was located.

Gilmore stared at what remained of that place with a heavy heart. He would have to move on from his favourite protein buffet. "Oh, no... Howlett's, Howlett's," he said.

A dividing line marked with the civil guard sigil had delimited the courtyard. Nothing exciting to be seen there but ashes and bricks of charcoal, along with pieces of debris—very fragile debris—that could turn into ashes and be blown by the wind at any time. This did not look like an ordinary wildfire. There was no way a fire with a duration of roughly six hours time, with no one noticing, looked so clean and barely gave anything as a memoir. An elegant, minimalistic kind of fire, so people would say.

"This isn't a normal fire at all. Too clean. This must have been an act of magic," Alicia said confidently, then broke through the civil guard line. Nadine and Gilmore looked left and right before following Alicia close into the area.

"Can't agree more, hen," said Nadine, "But what magic and who caused it?" Nadine then looked at Alicia from behind her google.

"Only one way to find out."

Alicia was perhaps the most conspicuous of them all because she had a knapsack on her back, already like a tramp who had just been kicked out of the house. She called the ball out of the mouth of her bag, and Voila! Orb was already flying between her hands. She then asked her question, "Okay, Orb, you've seen it. Now please answer, is this your doing when you hovered in the sky last night?"

Orb gave off the same sad tone, just like when Alicia asked it at home back then, only longer. From the look on Alicia's face, it seemed that she didn't get the answer she wanted.

"Nothing, Orb doesnae remember anything at all," Alicia turned to face her friends. "It said the power emitted to attract our attention last night couldn't just make some random building burnt out."

Again, a dead end. But it didn't take long for her to come up with another pure dead brilliant thought.

"Orb, I can really do anything with your power, right?"

Orb just gave the signal of agreement, 'Yeah, something like that,' was how the girl translated its response. 'To find out, why don't you just do a sync and try it yourself?'

"As long as I'm in full concentration, I think it's worth a shot. Awright, then. I have this one idea. Let's just try it." Alicia straightened herself, making her hands half folded like she was praying, only leaving a slight gap for Orb to float between her palms.

"So, what are ye gaun tae dae?" asked Gilmore.

"Dinnae ken. Just see."

She closed her legs, lowered her head, and closed her eyes to enter synchronisation with Orb. The plasma energy from the magic sphere circulated throughout Alicia's neural pathways, lighting up her body the way Orb did. Then, from the soles of her feet, bluish plasma energy appeared in a circle, getting bigger, wider, and spreading to the surrounding area. Gilmore and Nadine, who didn't know what their best friend was doing, took a wise decision to step back, although the circle had reached and passed through them first. A few milliseconds after the first circle came out, another circle appeared, and another circle, and on and on until it made a water ripple pattern. Or most likely, a magic wave radar.

All those circles left traces at certain points within their reach, which then turned into plasma bubbles with an alien substance trapped inside. The bubbles kept rising to the top until they stopped right in the middle of the triplets. Finally, the girl stopped flowing the circle wave, and her body returned to its original state. She had just opened her eyes, but she staggered right away, almost fell. She then gathered air for her panting breaths. Cold sweat started to pour out, and her heart was racing unsteadily, even though Alicia wasn't running a marathon.

Her two best friends called out to her in tandem, "Alicia!" and then immediately helped her up. "Are you awright?"

"I, uh— " Alicia was still trying to do proper breathing from her mouth. "I'm fine. I was trying to find a way to scan the ruins with Orb's power for clues. It's draining me a wee bit." Alicia shoved the four hands away that became her pillars to stand on her own. "But, hey! I didn't faint right away. That's progress!"

Nadine scolded her, saying "You! Just because you didn't pass out doesn't mean it's time for you to be so petty!"

"Really Nadine, I'm awright!" Alicia managed to maintain her balance. Her breathing rhythm was also back to normal. "I just need to get used to this new power. Anyway, did it work?"

Gilmore patted her shoulder as he looked around, saying, "If yer throwing a bubble party, well, yer in for a guid craic." Alicia saw several medium-sized bubbles spread out in the yard.

"Looks like it worked!" Alicia started to get excited. She approached one bubble behind her for closer observation. The rest of them just froze because they didn't dare mess with those vesicles. The magic nerd tried to direct the bubble closer to her round glasses. Her initially excited mien turned into aghast when she saw what was inside.

"Oh, no...."

"W-what, what is it?" asked Nadine.

Inside that bubble was a residue of unstable magic energy. A bright purple residue, in the shape of tiny lumps with a long trail when moved, akin to a velvet tail. Her friends, who were devoured by curiosity, approached the bubble. They might not have a brain full of magical knowledge as the Crimsonmane nerd, but in this very world they lived in, there was absolutely no way for them not to recognise what was before them.

"This is…," answered the girl slowly.

"A fucking black magic," continued Gilmore.

They took a few slow steps back. All of them shuddered. Indeed, the occurrence of magic at Trinketshore was not unusual. But no one—not even the brigands or crooked magic practitioners, ever recorded in the Trinketshore criminal database—used black magic to carry out their criminal vigors. To the laymen, they would only see its presentation on visual prints or telemedia, if they're lucky enough to never encounter it.

Alicia checked the contents of the other bubbles, one by one. The number of bubbles that appeared in the area was not much, no more than twenty. All of them showed the remnants of black magic energy trapped within.

Those magic vesicles advanced their glow intensity not long after. The quadruplets were surrounded by dazzling light bulbs. Alicia protected her eyes with her left palm in reflex, but she tried to peek through the gaps of her fingers. Inside the plasma bubble, the black remnants appeared to look like being eaten away by the plasma flow itself. Suddenly all those bubbles, along with the black magic within them, disappeared in an instant, followed by a shrill but not deafening noise. Everything was gone. What happened just now? Alicia then dared herself to take her hand away from her eyes. It was darksome again.

"Good news: not Orb's doing. Bad news: it's worse." Nadine's face was somehow still showing goosebumps. "There's a dark mage running around creating this mess! Alicia, I don't think it's safe to be here. Would it not be better to just go back to your house?"

Gilmore voiced his agreement with Nadine. "Maybe Nadine is right. We cannae stay here too long. What if the mage is around and sees you holding the magic baw?"

"But we can fight him, right? I mean, we have Orb to help us out."

Gilmore refuted her, "I thought we've talked about this, hen. We cannae—"

"I know. It's just... are we really going to let a dark mage run wild around the town?"

"Alicia, ye barely have a physical fight, let alone engage in magical combat! Ye can never beat him, not in yer current condition!"

This wasn't the first time Gilmore or Nadine had warned Alicia of her incompetence. But this was the first time Alicia had shown offense to her best friends. She looked at them like she was looking at her Crimsonmane kins. 'I've been connected with Orb and became the mage I've dreamed of. Why do they still treat me like a helpless wee bairn?'

"Alicia, we only came here to check out this place, remember? Now we've done it. The trip's over!" Gilmore said.

"You guys can head home first, Orb and I will look for more clues ourselves."

"What? Alicia—"

"This mage," Alicia frowned. "This mage has black magic! If he's here, it's not just this restaurant. The whole Trinketshore would be in danger! We don't know why they bothered to come to this small town, but whatever it is, it's not good!"

"Ye just said it! It's nae good at all. They're probably here so that they could perform these forbidden rituals and but in a remote town. Or worse...," Gilmore squinted his eyes at the bright calming orb, shimmering like stardust with a cosmic vortex at its center, cradled in Alicia's hands.

"...They're looking for that."

Alicia tried to bluff. "Orb and I are already connected. They wouldnae be able to separate us that easy!"

"Ye may know more about black magic than both of us. But ye dinnae ken the full extent of your Orb's abilities. Yer no stronger than an experienced mage, Alicia. Not even with Orb's power."

Alicia lowered her head, looking at Orb. The understanding girl like her was forced to declare defeat in a brief debate with Gilmore. Not because her intelligence had decreased, but rather because she was smart, she had already thought about the repercussions of her actions if she was careless. Alicia still had to adapt to the pooling and circulation of energy back and forth between herself and Orb. Casting a simple spell with it could knock her out. What happened if she exploited that energy for long-term combat? Entering the battle unprepared only made her die silly. Even both her friends couldn't back her up, for the opponent they were about to face was someone who had black magic energy—a negative kind of magic that was too strong and destructive to everything, even to the enchanter.

Nadine gave her a pat of comfort. "I know you mean well, Alicia. But it would be best if we leave it to the Trinketshore magical authorities to take care of this matter."

"I… I just want to be useful because I've obtained this boon. I don't want to be just remembered as the frail Crimsonmane nerd. I'm sick of being protected all the time. Now it should be my turn to use my gift to help people as a mage."

"Gilmore isn't a knight just because he's only wielded a sword for a day. You'll have to delve deeper into Orb's relationship with yerself before you can slowly become the great mage ye aspire to be. And you WILL DEFINITELY be that person someday," Nadine embraced her. "I really believe in the Orb's power. Ye will become a great mage like yer maw in the future. But ye have to be patient and ken yer limits."

'Ah, Nadine, don't bring up 'mama' again! You know I'd be blue if I heard that one word,' said Alicia in her heart.

Gilmore let out a smile. "Jist so ye ken, I didnae mean to look down on ye, like...," his eyes looked the other way, his lips twitching. "Yon bunch of 'arseholes' ye call family."

Alicia then put on an almost smiling expression when she heard Gilmore insulting her big clan. Gilmore added, "It's just that everything takes time."

Alicia couldn't help but smile a little and nodded. They were right. Maybe for now, let the adult mages do what they were paid for.

But how the Divine had cursed them. Only after they had had enough deliberation, the three of them suddenly felt a violent tremor. The sound of a gigantic explosion shook their hearts, followed by the screams of a frantic crowd from a distance. It wasn't easy for them not to notice a purple explosion with an almost mushroom-like shape.

The black mage had returned, sooner than they expected.

Orb wailed a loud siren. The real threat was here. The explosion seemed to have swept away all the wise thoughts that had been embedded in the girl's head. She lost her rational minds again. Signs of panic began to appear in her eyes. Panic because they have to run away for the sake of their lives, or panic because the townspeople trapped in danger suddenly became a moral burden for the girl.

With her body shaking and trapped in a labyrinth of dilemmas, Alicia Crimsonmane decided to put the safety of the people first. Her feet pedaled faster away from her pals, who were still stunned by the explosion, before realizing that their childhood friend had instead walked towards the source of the fire.

"ALICA! WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO?"

"Damn it, that bampot!" complained the Big Yin.

Alicia's heard nothing but the screams of the citizens who were frantic like animals. []