For the last few weeks, I had been pretty busy. I had my normal Power Brigade work, but I also had to do some work for Extra because of that little thing where I assisted someone with getting extradimensional powers. Personally, the world made more sense to me if everyone had powers, but it seemed that people used them more here. I couldn’t tell who was strange. Maybe both. I still wasn’t completely certain how New Bay didn’t collapse with such a constant supply of villains, but I also didn’t get why so many people where I had grown up were fine just being… boring.

  Maybe it was simply that most of them had no aspects, or one that was convenient for what they already wanted to do. So they gradually leveled up and enjoyed whatever level of power they achieved.

  Personally, my life had been unpleasant. Not awful. Master Uvithar had made sure I was well taken care of and had plenty of things to learn. He couldn’t do anything about my aspect, though. Or at least, it was a bit unreasonable to expect him to set up magical wards just so I could fight people without anyone getting seriously hurt. Most of the apprentices weren’t very interested in combat spells, offensive or defensive.

  There was one elf, Thaluin. He’d been in and out of the tower a lot… and not particularly interested in battling a weak orc. I was pretty sure he was a battle mage of some sort, so it would have been nice to just Firebolt his wards or something. I’d considered trying to Scry him, but things with Mided hadn’t gone well and I didn’t expect it to go better with someone who could probably Disintegrate me. I honestly didn’t know how to even defend against that spell.

  I would have learned it if it made any sense. But the Power Brigade really wasn’t fond of ‘collateral damage’ and ‘atomizing people’. Usually, we tried to be nonlethal. It was better for our image, and the city, and it paid better regardless. Disintegrate didn’t have a nonlethal level, unless you counted only destroying half of someone’s ribcage or ‘just’ one limb nonlethal. But they probably would be.

  Maybe Extra didn’t want people with powers like Disintegrate appearing. Actually, that was probably exactly one of the things they focused on. Advanced tech could make death rays, I think. Those were probably the same. Super tech was more common, but that had limitations. Anyone could use proper tech, and make it if they had the right knowledge. So properly vetting aliens and extradimensional entities was an important job.

  It sure did involve a lot of casting Translation, though. I was present for some of the following interactions. It seemed to pick up new languages faster with more exposure. Some magical part of me was probably collecting a lot of language knowledge, just like my brain was also doing that regularly.

  Zorphax hesitated as we were about to step into an interrogation ‘room’. The nice sort, with comfy chairs. But also one of the ones that wasn’t exactly a room, but instead was open to the outside. Some individuals didn’t do well with confinement. “You’ve worked with Jim, right?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “He’s pretty cool.”

  “Good. I need you to keep the same sort of open mind for this individual.”

  “I can do that,” I said.

  Then the door opened and I saw what was inside. As it turned out, I couldn’t.

  It wasn’t like Jim at all. He, at least, had a recognizable form. Half of that was that he arranged himself in a recognizable form, but even so a whole bunch of tentacles was, in fact, recognizable.

  I hadn’t the slightest idea what I would call the bits that the creature in front of me had. They were all clearly organic. Extremely clearly organic. Blood of various colors was flowing through uncomfortably translucent parts. Calling them limbs or organs would be generous. Even more concerning was the blood that wasn’t flowing through it. Not the random pools of blood it had in pouches. I meant the blood or other vital fluids that were flowing outside of it. Some crawled along the creature’s surface. Some fountained between various bits. Some just… floated.

  If that had been all, I probably would have been fine. Weird? Yes. But I could deal with weird.

  The thing was, it was terrifying. To the point that if I hadn’t been warned ahead of time that I might have thrown a Meteor Swarm at it- without regarding the fact that I was also inside with it. Or at least, I would have if I could move. Something about this creature hit me extra hard, and I completely froze. I wasn’t sure quite how long I was standing there, but I suddenly became aware of Midnight’s worry.

  And the Mental Freedom spell cast upon me. He wasn’t even here, or close. I didn’t even know we could share spells this far apart.

  Looking at the thing in front of me again, it wasn’t that scary. Not without the supernatural boost it got. With that, however, I was extremely impressed with Extra for not turning it into a puddle on sight. “You guys are so good at your jobs,” I said. Zorphax was looking a bit stiff, though, so I cast a Mental Freedom spell for him, too. Then I sent Midnight a thank you text, briefly explaining things so he wouldn’t have to worry.

  There wasn’t anything we needed to be scared of. It was just a thing that radiated terror. It wasn’t the same.

  Zorphax relaxed with the help of my spell. “Oh, thank you. I’m not quite sure what you did.”

  “It has a terror aura,” I commented. “Do you think it speaks a similar language to Jim? Would it react negatively? How did you bring this one here to begin with?”

  “I can answer that last thing,” Zorphax said. “We have some people with guidance powers. They would have been able to convince it to come here and wait while we tried to communicate. We were fortunate that it was responsive. But now, we need to focus on it.” I couldn’t quite tell when Zorphax turned his eyes towards something else, since they were fully black. But his head turning was helpful. “Can you understand me?”

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  Obviously he didn’t expect it to. But prompting responses was how we got Translation to work. It took about a minute of attempts before our target responded in an audible fashion. If I didn’t have Mental Freedom active, I would have sworn the hisses were some sort of aggressive noise instead of just… releasing gasses from unknown tube shaped appendages. Hopefully they weren’t toxic gasses. I think Extra had scanned for that kind of stuff?

  That might have been words. But after ten more minutes, Translation had gotten us nowhere closer to understanding or speaking.

  “I don’t think this is going to work,” I said.

  “How unfortunate. Do you think you could… try to open it a Gate back home? Without talking to it?”

  “Oh, I could try,” I said. “But then we’d have a Gate open to wherever it came from. I don’t know if I’d want to bet on this thing’s associates being… docile.” They might be. They might also have terror abilities so strong they could stop hearts or give people aneurisms or something. “Give me a second.”

  I didn’t want to show off my ability to improve utility spells too much, because then people might want me to do it more. But putting extra mana into things worked just as well with non-combat spells. I did have to pick some sort of balance, though. Best to test on myself. I didn’t know what sort of side effects too much Translation could have, but that was all the more reason to be cautious.

  Maybe ten points of mana. That was more than triple the base cost. Equivalent to a mid rank spell, but not the top end of mid ranks.

  I was glad that I’d stopped there, because my body began to vibrate in tune with the thing in front of me. I hadn’t even realized that it was doing it before then.

  “Something shifts,” it spoke.

  Responding was… surreal. It was like my whole body was the vocal chords. I had things I wanted to say, but what I did say was something like… “Peaceful pact. Communication clamor. Resonant route.”

  I guess that was kind of like ‘hey we don’t want any trouble, I used a magic spell so we can talk’? Kind of. My body felt strained, though. Like I was using muscles I never used, which was insane because trainers at the Power Brigade worked very hard to make sure that wasn’t true.

  “Unexpected understanding.” My ears most certainly weren’t interpreting those sounds as words. Anything less than magic wouldn’t have been sufficient. I was pretty sure it wasn’t just sounds involved, but I couldn't have said what. Maybe some sort of visual change? “Conscious connection?”

  The words- the words my brain was interpreting things as, at least- made me think of bonds and such. But this wasn’t that. It wouldn’t have been weird for something like this to have some sort of telepathic communication, but I was rather certain it wasn’t. Speaking of mental things… “Purposeful panic?”

  The creature thought for a few moments. “Unintentional unease.”

  I had literally no idea how to tell if something like this was lying. Malaliel might have been useful for that, but she might have been magically bound to slay anything that looked like an abomination. Or at least have reflexes to that effect that would be difficult to control. “It says that it wasn’t trying to scare us. I think.”

  “You’re actually communicating?” Zorphax asked. “Why can’t I understand anything?”

  “It’s… a bit rough,” I said. “I think I can do it for you too, but it’s bad for my body.” I looked down at the Martian. He was presumably in pretty good physical shape. But I honestly had no clue how delicate he was.

  “We’ll look into that soon. Can you try to ask for its name? No, wai-”

  I was already asking. “Individual identification?” I paused for a moment, gesturing to myself. “Turlough. Turlough.”

  Obviously I didn’t expect to get a name that I could pronounce. “Nascent name.” I would have said the name was kind of like ‘Raglubithex’. Raglubithex. If I took out some pipe organ sounds and incomprehensible things, that might be a single percent accurate. I could probably replicate it with Translation though.

  “Enjoyable encounter.” I wasn’t actually saying words that started with the same letter. But Translation knew that sameness was important. No, mandatory. Except for names, perhaps, it wasn’t possible to speak otherwise. No… names were echoed. I hadn’t repeated myself for clarity. Nor had my mind reiterated it for remembering. Oh no now my thoughts were doing it too. I was pretty sure I had to stop soon. “Raglubithex,” I managed to say it just once to Zorphax like a normal person. “Also, I don’t think I can continue long. I can maybe get one more answer, then I can do it for you but you need to make sure you stop.”

  Was terror slipping through Mental Freedom? Maybe. It wasn’t utterly useless yet, but it was showing strain.

  “Right,” Zorphax took me at my word. “Ask if we can put supernatural restrictions on it.”

  “I can’t be that candid,” I said. “Though it’s time to try.” Triple was bad. I shouldn’t think triple. “Terror tempering?” I asked. “Magical methods. Consciousness comfort.”

  Raglubithex Raglubithex probably pondered. “Pain preventing? Cautious consent.”

  “My magic?” I asked Zorphax Zorphax. “Consent confirmed.”

  “Do what you can, I guess.”

  Inverted intent. Mental magic manifested modularly.

  “Must move out,” I commented to Zorphax. Just one. Then to Raglubithex Raglubithex, “Body breaking. Pleasant present.”

  I managed another big Translation on Zorphax on the way out, dissolving mine at the same time. Once outside the room I started a timer. If he wasn’t out in five minutes I would save his scrawny-

  Ugh. Translation wasn’t supposed to be able to hurt. Usually when I experienced something like this I would at least get experience.

  Oh. After I checked, I cut two minutes off of the timer.

  At two minutes and fifty seconds, Zorphax stepped out of the room. “Cancel com- the spell.”

  I did. I tore it apart to so many shreds of mana I didn’t even bother trying to retain any of them. “It’s bad, right?”

  “Raglubithex?” he asked.

  “Trying to communicate,” I said. “I think if it was trying to hurt us, it would probably be worse? Or it’s nothing to worry about.”

  “Right,” Zorphax said. “If this is aggression, we’ll be fine. And if not… some people have spikes that are inconvenient for others. We’ll manage. Anyway, I couldn’t get any desire for Raglubithex to go back. So we’re not going to have you try that.” Zorphax was taking deep breaths. It wasn’t like exercising. It was like… I wasn’t sure. But not fun. And worth way too much experience.

  Maybe I should try again later. After we got supernaturally scanned.

  Accidental alliteration was normal. As long as it didn’t linger, it would probably be fine.