The “Rector” was pleased with the situation.

The curse-bomb would not only provide valuable humanoid bodies and knowledge, it would also give him the perfect uninterrupted work-area.

He sat down in meditating position. Crystals around him lit up and ..his?..body sunk together as if strings had been cut of a doll.

Another place an old female wood-elf body suddenly gained life.

Roleplaying as a councilman would ensure that the government and others wouldn’t bother him, but merely set a perimeter around Omo.

”You said it yourself, the mana-potion can’t restore your ice-mana. How do you expect to be of any help if you can’t use your spell?” Martin asked. He and his sister was sitting in a entrence too Omo

” Who cares!? I got to do SOMETHING!” She replied

“Auch, my head…listen, you are injured , he is a two meter tall bodybuilder on steroids…probarly literaly...hey wait! ”

Mathilde was already leaving.

Matt stepped into the entrance.

Mathilde showed a releived expresion

”Thank god, did you kill him? Took you so long I thought I had to handle him myse…”

” yeah, no of course not...I don't think it's safe here, so can we just move somewhere more safe first?”

HE moved right past them and further into the building. They followed him. ­Martin took the stolen bag of potions with him.

Taking some twists and turns they created some distance between them and the outside. They finally decided to rest in a closed of yard. Now that they understood the curse, they could feel that the density of it was low in the area. It most likely had something to do with the plants growing there.

They sat down and rested.

“I can’t believe this just happened” Matt spoke out loud

“yeah man, I thought I was a goner for second there”

Mathilde agreed with him.

They both had one of those nervous, yet genuine laughs, you get after surviving something like that.

Matt decided to drink some of the mana potions left, just in case he would need it again, because as Martin pointed out, Mathilde had no more mana to use, and he himself could hardly do anything with his [Mind connection].

Afterwards they decided too simply rest and wait it out.

Simply “resting” was kind of boring thou.

They played a little card.

Then Matt tested how strong unlocking his ki had made him. Turned out he was approximately half a time stronger with it. He didn’t test out how fast or durable he had become, but those were areas that should had improved too, at least slightly.

It was then Mathilde decided to check out the yard they were in. There was row of plants, most of them had some more peculiar felling mana. While decorative, it also had a clear educational purpose. An example of this was a row of the same type of plant, but they had different kinds of mana imbedded in their soil.

It was then she found something:

“Hey, guys! Look at this shard!”

She pointed at a black shard. It was laying almost hidden behind a bush beneath a broken window. It was surrounded by regular glass shards.

“Careful, it´s probably magical” Matt warned her.

“exactly, let’s check it out.”

She took a grip of the crystal. It gave of a hiss sound and shrunk in size. Her eyes flickered.

Matt took a step forward. F*ck, what was that?

The hiss sound stopped. She looked up. Her face had a dark expression on it, one the brothers had never seen before.

“what is it?”

She handed Matt the crystal. he touched it.

His head was immediately filled with images and information:

While there was no words spoken, or specifikaly images shown, this was the generel impresion he got from the information stream:

Black vortex of death. Evil mage. Evil mage corrupting the world around him, A shadow of him could be seen over war scenes of conflicts that had recently appeared. The shadow moved to buildings representing organizations of military and political influence, bringing inner chaos and incompetence, the power from the buildings could be felt disappearing until they fell apart.

A Portal to light and fondness showing up. A dark hand searchingly reaching through it until it grasped a brilliant light. The light changed to darkness and fire. the scene changed to the evil mage holding a war-torn planet in his hand. What little light there was back disappeared. The hand increased in evil arcane strength until the planet crumpled between it.

The portals location. Sharp and clear. Mantra:

prevent, prevent, prevent, bring this to the queen:

iy12%%&%12qqwedfåc´´´´1---å+´-´-´´

aa0fwerw + + + a && 8 o89

)( /ym10,.e0u28ey-,.-.,--.-.,-,

Matt immediately gave the crystal too Martin.

As Martin touched it, his eyes too flickered as he got the information, he was left with a very morbid expression.

“This is a very dire situation” He concluded.

His siblings sat down beside him.

“So, to make sure: we all got a vision of an evil mage trying to cause wars for some sort of reason, and a message to go through something and deliver something to prevent this from happening?” Mathilde asked.

“Yeah” Her brothers confirmed.

“And the thing we have to deliver is the crystal, and what we have to go through is a portal in that direction” Matt pointed at a door.

“The information is planted in our mind, we just have think about it” He explained further, when Mathilde showed a confused expression.

”To specify; the thing we have to deliver is the encrypted message at the end of the information stream. But never mind that, what’s important is what we do next” Martin said. His face was troubled.

They began discussing the situation and their options.

“So, we can choose to go through the portal, or go back into the city with the cursed mana, it’s by the way reasonable to assume it’s caused by the dark figure” Martin began.

“It is.... going out to warn people could however be dangerous, I don’t think I can handle a city worth of angry people” Matt pondered.

They discussed a little further, but their options were clear. Going outside was too high of a risk, even for Matt, so the only real options they had, were to go through the portal. Contacting someone with phone was not an option, seemed like the curse was doing something with the connection.

“Geese, why do we keep discussing this? We just go through the portal and done! It’s not like we have other options” Mathilde complained, got up and began walking.

The brothers were about to protest, but realized she was right. Matt took the Knowledge shard into his backpack.

Surprisingly there was no guard on the way, the portal was behind a recently broken-down wall.

They stopped up. Looking at an endless swirling.

Martin said something first:

“This is madness, there is clearly no way back, we haven’t thought this throughoutly”

Mathilde’s resolution didn’t waver. She grabbed him by the arm.

“We already talked about this, just go already!”

She dragged him towards the portal. Martin resisted, but stumbled and was dragged along.

“No wai..”

Matt didn’t have time to interfere before they were sucked in by the portal.

Separating really didn’t seem like a good idea.

For a short moment he stood in front of the portal. He sighted, who was he kidding, of course he was going through, he had the Knowledge shard. Besides: he wasn’t sure if he would be able to live with himself, if this was the last he would see of his siblings.

He took a step back, and with a jump he entered the stream. A felling of high speed was the last he felt before he lost consciousness.