“Well, I should probably get back…” Enoch muttered to himself. He’d spent another couple of hours, just staring at the stars. They were so beautiful when there was no sprawling society full of lights to outshine their distant form.

  As he stood, Enoch nearly made it inside when he noticed it begin to grow bright. Confused, Enoch turned around, looking up. Streaks of golden light were gathering from all around in a vortex, high above the clouds. The energy, which was brilliance, as identified by Ripley earlier, spun into a progressively small vortex. As it formed, the courtyard was illuminated. He checked the windows and roof, but the light seemed to focus on the courtyard.

  “Is it a manifestation? I thought he said those were rare…” Enoch said aloud. He walked to the center of the courtyard, directly underneath the vortex, which had become too small to see in the distance as anything but a tiny sun in the sky. As he watched, the stars in the backdrop of the orb seemed to grow brighter rather than dimmer, stars previously unseen glowing just bright enough that they appeared. More colors appeared in the sky, red, blue, white, gold, purple, green. Enoch’s breath was taken away by the display.

  Enoch sat back down, simply staring at the sky, his previous sense of peace restored tenfold. He halfway expected Ripley to appear at the lightshow, but he either didn’t notice or was watching from elsewhere.

  After around an hour, the moon struck its zenith, which seemed to be a trigger for the orb to implode. It disappeared, the stars retreating to their former brightness. Enoch laughed, quietly. Wonder was all he felt as the courtyard fell back into the moonlight. A moment later, a pinprick of gold appeared above. Rapidly, it was growing. Enoch blinked, then went wide-eyed as he dove to the right, remembering the seemingly ridiculous fact that people could get injured by spontaneously summoned magic rocks from the sky.

  Just in time, Enoch landed as he heard a tremendous clang from behind him. He got to his feet, turning to see the chair he’d occupied having a molten hole in it. Beneath the chair, a small, dinner-plate sized crater had formed, a glowing rock inside. Well, gem. Wary of the heat, Enoch approached. Moving the chair aside, Enoch crouched next to it, holding a hand out for the heat. But it wasn’t there.

  Enoch inched his hand forward, closer and closer to fell what had melted the iron chair. He got nothing. Taking a deep breath, Enoch decided to take a risk. He poked it. “What the…” he said, grabbing the thing wholly. It was heavy, warm, and still bright, but nowhere near enough to melt metal. Enoch walked over to the chair and dropped the facet onto an undamaged part of the chair, which was pretty small considering the impact had warped it pretty good, making the whole thing look awkward. It melted right through.

  Enoch grabbed it again, this time getting a better look at it. What at first glance seemed like a solid golden gem was really like… well, like gold glitter in golden liquid. It was strange. Within the golden light floated tiny white, purple, red, and blue motes, almost imperceptible. They were on the precipice of being completely outshone by the golden light.

  Lost in the gem, he jumped when a hand slapped his shoulder playfully. “Whoa!” Enoch shouted, stumbling back from Ripley. The man just chuckled.

  “That’s quite a find. Do you know what it is?” Ripley asked, approaching as he looked the facet over. Enoch was stumped. Obviously it was a facet, but what kind? Light, maybe?

  Enoch shrugged, “A light facet, maybe? Whatever it is, it's pretty. And apparently destructive to things that aren’t human.”

  Ripley shook his head, “Wrong. That’s a star facet. First one I’ve ever seen, in fact. Also, it isn’t just destructive to objects; people too.”

  Enoch furrowed his brow, looking from Ripley to the star facet. “You’re joking. It’s warm, but not near enough to melt steel. Here, try holding it.” Enoch held it out.

  “Hm, maybe…” He held out a finger, carefully poking out. When it touched the facet, a bright light flashed, causing Ripley to withdraw his finger with speed that caused Enoch’s spine to go cold. Ripley was shaking the hurt hand, wincing, “Holy… Told you. Ah! That hurt…” Ripley stayed there nursing his wounded hand.

  Enoch blinked away the fear he felt, seeing the inhuman display of speed. He looked back at the facet, “Why doesn’t it burn me?”

  “Any facet that comes from outside the atmosphere is strange. I didn’t mention it, because cosmic facets are stupidly rare. I’m almost certain this thing turning up has something to do with your appearance.” Ripley said, having gotten over the worst of the burn. He kept waving the finger slowly, cooling it down.

  “Did it, like, choose me or something? Maybe because I’m not from here?” Enoch asked.

  “No, facets, however finicky, are not sentient. It might be that only people without a fully faceted gem can touch it. Maybe something to do with affinity. Whatever the reason, you can have it.” Ripley said.

  Enoch twisted his lips, “... No, you should have it. Surely you have a way to store it, right? I mean, it spawned on your land, and I can’t really offer anything else as payment. Besides, if I’m not gonna be a mercenary, I don’t really need it.”

  Ripley burst out laughing. It was genuine, which made Enoch frown. “What’s so funny? I want to show my appreciation, and you collect these, so surely its not that dumb.”

  Ripley shook his head, “I appreciate the sentiment, but no. I won’t take it. First off, I’m a believer in destiny, and if a star facet that only you can touch, as far as we know, isn’t a sign that you were destined for it, then I’m clearly wrong about destiny. Also, facets are from a ‘mercenary’s item.’ They are used all across the board, by anyone who can get them. Most non-mercenaries who take facets use quartz dust, but they are certainly gem-users.”

  “Well… I guess I’ll take it if that’s the case.” Enoch nodded, staring at the facet. “How do I use this thing? I mean, there isn’t any downside to using it now, right?”

  Ripley shrugged, “I can set up a ritual tomorrow. Until then, get some rest. And maybe thank the stars for their generosity!” He laughed during the last sentence. Enoch numbly nodded, heading back in the direction he’d come from.

  He stuffed the facet in his pocket before he could stop himself, but the clothes didn’t burst into flame. Sighing, Enoch took his time, meandering the halls as he made his way back to his room. The art was all similar, but never quite the same style. There were little emblems in the bottom right of each canvas, which seemed to be this world's equivalent of signing it.

  Enoch eventually reached the foyer. He blinked, “I must have passed my room.” Enoch walked over to the door, looking outside the two tall windows on either side of the doorframe. The moonlight was potent enough that Enoch could see the floating islands clearly. It was then that Enoch also realized Ripley’s estate was, in fact, located on one of those floating islands. Just one of the lower ones.

  Enoch wanted to open the doors, but he didn’t know if he was allowed to. “He said if its locked don’t touch it… Well, it’ll only be a moment.” Enoch easily convinced himself to try the door handle, and it opened without fanfare. Not even stopping Enoch walked outside, onto a small porch. Down the stairs and forward about thirty-five meters, the edge of the island ran to the left and right. Enoch walked over to the edge and looked down. He swooned, quickly stepping back. “Woah,” he muttered, still shaking the unnerving feeling of looking down what had to be one-thousand meters.

  He felt good though, so Enoch sat down and scooched over to the ledge, dangling his feet off. After settling, Enoch faintly heard a rushing noise from the right. Over there was a waterfall, being fed by a small stream from the other side of Ripley’s estate. Enoch smiled, turning back to the ground far beneath him. Far, far below, there were some lights all clustered in a circle. According to Ripley, that was Velocity, also known as Script City. It was interesting, seeing such a modern city from a fantastical point of view.

  Enoch pulled the star facet from his pocket, looking it over. “I wonder if you’d let me see the stars…” Enoch muttered. Unexpectedly, it answered. From the facet, a particular mote of light within began to grow. Enoch moved it closer to his eye, getting a better look at the growing light. It was golden, except somehow more golden than the light of the facet.

  “Weird. Wait, is it coming towards me? Not again.” Enoch pulled his face away from the facet, where the golden light shot through the inner wall of the facet, stopping its mad dash. It just floated in front of the facet, bobbing.

  Enoch shook his head while staring at the light. How many times was he going to have something shot at his head? Since nothing had gone wrong so far, Enoch poked the light. As soon as he did, the thing popped up to the size of a book… because it was a book. The golden light around it was sucked over the cover to the three open sides of the book, filtering between the pages and then remaining for a few seconds. Then, it faded, leaving Enoch holding an unchanged star facet in one hand, and a strange book sitting in his lap.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Could this day get any stranger? What’s a book doing inside a facet?” Enoch put the facet back in his pocket, instead picking up the book. Flipping through the pages, Enoch squinted inconceivably at the blank pages. Not one bit of ink was inside.

  He flipped back to the front page, and noticed a line. Beneath the line were the words Enoch wondered where he could get a pen from, and a golden quill poofed into existence next to the book.

  Enoch waited, assuming the magic book would react. After a moment, nothing changed. He flipped the page over and there was now a bunch of script there.

  Enoch stared at the book, uncomprehending. “What are inherent powers?” He muttered.

  “You answer questions? Sweet. What do my inherent powers do?”

  Enoch frowned. A note was left for him, but by who? And how did they put a book inside a facet? And what were inherent powers? Enoch had so many more questions he knew he was going to need to ask Ripley to stay longer to learn more. Enoch decided to check one thing before he actually went to sleep for the night. He was about to go searching through the book for the ritual it spoke of, but the knowledge came to him easily. As simple as blinking, the Facet-Fusion ritual deployed like a net thrown by a pro fisherman from the book, going up in the air. Quickly it floated down, pressing itself into the ground, leaving a diagram on the ground looking to be made of liquid mercury.

  Enoch’s power made him aware of what he needed to do. There were two obvious and empty circles on the ritual circle. One was in the middle, and Enoch was supposed to sit there. The other was at the front of the circle, on the very outer edge. Placing the star facet in that deposit, Enoch sat back in the spot for himself. He didn’t need to do anything as the star facet shota few tendrils of golden energy to the circle it was within, then floated upwards to eye-level with Enoch. Enoch simply sat, uncomfortable at the building hum from the facet.

  Suddenly, the golden facet was drained of color, turning to gray dust moments later. Enoch nearly lunged to grab it, to see if it was broken. Before that, the golden energy traveled into the ritual circle, crawling along the diagram, splitting up and merging at odd intervals. It all slowly encroached on Enoch. When it reached him, Enoch felt it sink into his being. It crawled up his body and into his heart. Breaths came slow and shallow, and Enoch was gasping for breath. He clawed at his chest, and he tore his rough free, hoping that would solve the breathing problem.

  With the rough coming out of his chest, so too did a bundle of golden light surrounding it. It was swarming around the rough like a swarm of bees, and Enoch could breathe again. The light sunk fully into the rough, which looked different now. The bottom looked like one flat surface had been ground on the gem, and that one surface was golden with small motes of light within. The rest of the rough still looked like glass though.

  Enoch felt something from the Archive. He felt it gleaning information and storing it. Enoch nearly reached for the book sitting a few feet away from him when it poofed into his hand. The scene was jarring, but Enoch was learning to take it in stride. He opened the book to a new line of scrawl.

  Enoch read the description of the ability, but really it wasn’t needed. Deep down, Enoch knew how to use the ability. It was like breathing, only completely different.

  “That’s enough for one day. Time for bed…” Enoch swung his feet back up and onto the island, turning and heading for the door. He tried to see if the door had a lock after he entered, but there wasn’t a visible one. Figuring thievery wasn’t a big problem, Enoch shrugged. As he made it back to his room, he took off his shoes and jumped into bed, throwing the Archive on the bedside table.

  …

  Ripley shook his head, observing Enoch through his surveillance system. It wasn’t often that something capable of blocking his perception came from someone without any facets. Not long after Enoch sat on the edge, Ripley’s security went wacky, making him unable to observe Enoch. It wasn’t anything creepy or malicious. In fact, Ripley’s only selfish motivation was that maybe the man would unintentionally find or uncover clues about Sharingway’s disappearance. Ripley decided the best decision to being cut off was to let it happen. Enoch wasn’t aware, but Ripley was reading his emotions every time they had talked so far.

  “Coulter, I don’t know what happened specifically, but I imagine he’ll want to tell us all about it tomorrow morning.”

  …

  Bowen was at peace. He’d already been up for a few hours by the time the dawn made itself known. Dew began to condense on his skin, and the fog in the air made the rays of the suns seem tangible. Bowen was seated on a fallen tree, a familiar seat he’d been using for a year now. He sat and admired the beauty of his environs for a few more minutes, before he sighed and hopped to his feet.

  Walking over to a human-shaped collection of logs, held together by ritual magic and lots of nails. It was jabbed crudely into the ground. Bowen drew a wooden sword from a cloth ribbon tied around his waist. It had a small loop sewn in by his mother for his favorite practice sword.

  “Hah!” Bowen struck the unsuspecting dummy with as much speed and suddenness as he could muster. Bowen had a hard time believing anyone could react to the attack. Well, anyone who didn’t have facets. He stayed there for hours, his skin becoming wet with sweat after the dew had dried off of him. Bowen found that despite his violent practice, he found peace in his actions. It was strange, in Bowen’s opinion. How could an art made for war and conflict bring a person peace?

  Bowen was about done, but he wanted to try something new. Stepping back, Bowen dropped to a knee, set the sword down, and began to draw a ritual circle around the “blade.” Since it was dirt, rather than a more conductive material, the ritual would be inefficient, but it was a trial. Unabated, Bowen kept drawing. Nearly a minute later, the sword sat in a ritual circle containing flowing symbols that almost looked like fire. Bowen checked his work, finding no mistakes. He drew in the last little bit of the circle remaining, and the entire thing came to life.

  Bowen always found it interesting to see how a ritual circle acted. Without facets, Bowen couldn’t infuse brilliance directly, but he’d gotten quite good at adding self-fueling sub-rituals to his primary ritual circle. Bowen was pulled from his thoughts by a glow coming from the practice blade in the circle. A red, glossy barrier began to crawl around the blade, sheathing it in its entirety. As soon as the entire sword was covered, deep red flames coated the blade. Bowen laughed in awe as an experiment turned to a success before his eyes.

  Picking up the sword, which was covered in flame, even to the hilt, Bowen had faith he wouldn’t be burned. As he grabbed the burning hilt quickly, the red, glossy barrier wrapped his hand like a glove all the way to his elbow. “Sweet!” Bowen shouted, seeing his hand go alight. Turning to the dummy, Bowen smiled deviously. It wasn’t long for this world. With a shout, Bowen dashed the small distance to the dummy, planting a foot and abandoning technique in favor of a telegraphed and brutish chop to the ribs. With startling ease, the blade burned through the wooden dummy, turning the wood to charcoal and then crushing it to dust.

  Bowen drew back his sword arm, noting the disappointingly mundane blade in his hands. The flames were gone from the blade, but not from the world. The dummy, in two pieces, was smoldering with the flames. Bowen stared at it, only slightly concerned the flames might spread. Bowen had designed the ritual flames to only burn the entity marked as the target. It shouldn’t spread. Key word being “shouldn’t.”

  “Bowen… why is there fire?” A voice others might call pleasant and calm spoke. Bowen was not so naive, knowing the angry words of his father when he heard them. Chilled, Bowen turned slowly, putting on his best smile.

  “Father! I was just about to come get you. You know that ritual I’ve been working on for a few weeks? Well, I got it to work! It was much more effective than I thought it’d be…” Bowen gulped.

  A man appeared from seemingly nothing, walking into the small clearing. He had a pleasant smile and closed eyes. His head was looking at the dummy, which was now just a pile of ash. The fire disappeared in a plume, leaving no trace of its existence aside from a pile of ash and a ritual circle of gray dirt. “You were about to come get me, huh? What did I say about testing fire rituals in the forest?”

  Bowen couldn’t keep up the act, fear and shame on his face. He muttered, “... Not to.”

  Bowen’s father nodded, “Yes, Bowen. I think this is an offense worthy of a few laps, don’t you?”

  Bowen paled, “Father, surely Mother will be angry if I come home too late! Please, I’m sorry!”

  A new sound came from the forest, and Bowen felt all hope vanish. “No no, my sweet boy. I understand you wanting to train. Take all the time you need. Dinner will be waiting for you.” Bowen’s mother walked from the opposite side his father had come from, and Bowen had a feeling this was a planned event.

  Bowen knew when to take a loss. “Okay… How many laps?” he hoped it was beneath three. Even one took nearly an hour…

  “I think five should suffice. Have fun, Bowen. Christy, let’s go. I believe we were expecting a package?” Bowen’s father said. His eyes remained closed, like always, as he asked the second part to Bowen’s mother, Christy.

  “I’ll be home in an hour or so, Tregzial. I need to make a trip to town for some ingredients!” Christy said, ignoring an increasingly defeated Bowen.

  Tregzial nodded, then simply disappeared. Christy followed him a moment later, vanishing. Bowen sighed, happy his mother had at least promised him dinner. Not thinking about it anymore, as it would only make him feel worse, Bowen set out on his first lap. As he set off, Bowen muttered, “God, I hate running around the mountain…”