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Taking a few steps back from the crystal, he looks around the room for the source of the vibration. Suddenly, his eyes fall upon the first crystal that’s lying on his workbench. It too is going from light to dark and back again. They’re leeching each other!

The vibration in the air begins to get worse and he can see the two crystals begin to vibrate where they sit. Casting out his magic, he tries to stop each of the crystal’s active spells. But instead, his magic is sucked into them, each taking half and almost seems to be fighting for what the other had taken.

Cutting off his magic, he looks to the crystals and now both are a deep crimson after having taken more of his magic. The vibration increases and a high pitched tone can be heard.

Realizing he may not have much time, he dives for the door and hits the ground outside just as both crystals explode at the same time. The resultant explosion is by far the worse yet of any failed experiment and actually cracks one of the walls of his workshop.

As he gets up off the ground, he sees the girls coming out of the kitchen door and Jiron and Roland running around the side of the house. Roland has his axe ready and Jiron’s knives are out as he looks for attackers.

James holds up his hands and says, “It’s okay, I’m alright.”

“What happened?” Tersa asks as she comes to his side.

“Just another experiment that didn’t go quite the way I planned,” he explains.

Replacing his knives, Jiron says, “You need to be more careful.”

“I know, but there’s no one to teach me about this stuff,” he tells them. “I try to be, but magic isn’t exactly the easiest thing to work with.”

“Probably why there’re darn few mages in the world,” Roland adds.

Nodding his head, James replies, “Most likely.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Ezra asks. When she gets an affirmative from him, she says, “Alright then, just don’t do it again.” Then she turns and with Tersa in tow, returns to the house.

“Let’s see what happened,” Jiron says as he moves toward the workshop.

The interior of the workshop is a shambles. His desk now has a large hole in it and the test table has completely disintegrated, shards and pieces of wood coat every surface of the workshop. The other crystals that had been lying on the workbench are gone, most likely are part of the crystal shards scattered all over. He checks the sack of crystals on the floor and finds them unscathed, much to his relief.

“Man, what a mess,” exclaims Roland as he enters the ruined workshop. Shaking his head, he picks up a broom in a corner and begins to sweep up the debris.

“Here,” Jiron says to James as he takes one end of the ruined workbench, “let’s take this out.”

Taking the other side, James lifts it up and they carry it out where they set it down along the side of the building. When they come back in, Roland pauses in his sweeping and says to James, “You go on in the house while I clean this up. You look like you could use a rest.”

Suddenly feeling how tired he really is, he replies, “Thanks, I think I’ll do just that.”

“We’ll get this place cleaned up and you can start again tomorrow,” Jiron assures him.

“Alright,” he says and then leaves them to finish cleaning up the mess. Returning to the house, he’s greeted by Ezra in the kitchen with a cup of ale. Taking it, he says, “Thank you.” He then moves on out to the front room where he sits in a chair by the window and stares out while he sips his ale.

The spells had taken more out of him than he realized, must’ve been concentrating too much on the effects of the spells and less on the effects they were having on him. He sits back and relaxes as he thinks of what went wrong.

When the second one began to leech from its surroundings, of course it would take magic from the other one. Then when the first began to drop in power, it started leeching from the second, and so forth.

The strain of working against each other must’ve been what caused them to begin vibrating and ultimately explode. Going to have to find a way around that.

He must’ve dozed off for a while, for when he comes awake, it’s near