The tunnels beneath the village were nothing like the streets above. Down here, the air smelled faintly of ozone and plastic instead of woodsmoke and bread and inset LED light panels provided a soft, regular illumination. Ahead, smooth corridors branched away at precise angles.

  Alex walked through the halls, absorbed internally and didn’t really notice his surroundings. His HUD had overlaid a dotted line leading him to wherever it was that he needed to go and that was all he paid attention to while he thought.

  He was still thinking about his meeting with Dr. Holt and Mei Lin that morning. The thought that magic was real was enough that he couldn’t stop smiling.

  But her words were more. They echoed in his thoughts: You are a mage. She hadn’t said that exactly of course. But that’s what she had implied.

  And he was still trying to process it. Magic was actually real. People could cast spells, create fire from nothing. This universe had a heartbeat and he could feel it. He wondered what other spells he could learn.

  Of course, as Lin had suggested, he hadn’t told anyone yet. It’s not like he could cast anything yet. He had been thinking of the candle flame exercise in every spare moment, but it was still nothing more than a thought. He had a long way to go to actually create his own flame from thin air.

  As he walked down the hall he practiced his breathing. Reach’s Still Water Breath; he figured he would save the new breathwork Lin had shown him until he had time to sit and meditate. He stopped suddenly in the middle of the hall and looked around. Where would he meditate here? There were people around him all day long.

  He shook his head and kept walking. He would figure it out when the time came. If nothing else, he could meditate on his bunk at night if he had to.

  He had spent an extra hour on the weapons training field and had just headed off for a late lunch when he received an alert on his HUD to come see HEX division. He didn’t know anything about the HEX, but apparently they had some ‘wizard gear’ for him. Whatever that meant.

  Hopefully it’s not a robe and pointy hat. He thought.

  In, hold, out, hold longer. He practiced the breath work as he followed the dotted line, pausing a few times to drop into the starting pose he had been practicing for his sword work, holding it a few seconds, then moving on. He couldn’t help but think about how surreal this weekend had become. Or maybe not surreal. It actually was all turning out to feel very, very real.

  As he practiced his breathwork the world seemed to slow around him, just a touch. The hum of the ventilation softened. The air seemed to almost thicken. Tiny lights popped out in front of his eyes, floating through the corridor – not lights of course… mana – and flared faintly with each breath.

  He held out a hand as he walked. Focused on the idea of a flame. A small flickering flame. In the center of his palm. Lin said that he would be able to create fire, but he didn’t know how he was supposed to go about it. He could imagine the heat inside him. He tried willing it to happen. But nothing. He focused harder.

  A drop of sweat tickled his temple and he pushed it back with the heel of his hand, annoyed at himself for being annoyed. It was too early. He knew that. He had, what, a few hours of practice so far? You couldn’t become a mage between coffee and lunch. It was going to take time unfortunately.

  He headed back down the corridor.

  In the meanwhile, he would focus on the breathing. In, hold, out, hold longer. Some internal pressure that he hadn’t even been aware of a moment ago, smoothed out. His stride loosened. That was something anyway and he was satisfied, for now.

  By the time the corridor flared open into the HEX sector, he’d filed the failure under: “Soon, but not yet,” and was even mostly okay with it.

  And then he arrived. He exhaled slowly and let his breath return to normal.

  The entrance to HEX looked like something out of a futuristic James Bond movie – polished metal blast doors inset with thick smoky glass, marked only by a subtle hexagonal logo and yellow tape on the floor marking off the area in front of the doors. When Alex approached, his HUD pinged and the door hissed open. Crisp air burst out through the opening with just a hint of burnt plastic.

  Inside, the lab was a hybrid of research facility and creative chaos. Transparent walls divided areas filled with equipment that looked far beyond anything Alex had ever seen before – there were huge microscopes that shimmered with blue light, containment pods glowing in a faint green, holographic panels filled with shifting symbols and rows of machines for which he had no inkling of function. Tables were piled with gear, dissected animals or plants of unknown origin.

  Lab techs in gray uniforms moved between stations with tablets, their chatter blending into the hum of machines.

  A sign on the wall read:

  HEX – Human Enhancement eXperiments Division

  “HEXpanding Humanity’s Reach, Responsibly.”

  Alex grinned cynically. Yeah, right. Responsibly. If you had to put it in your motto there were already questions about your process as far as he was concerned.

  A woman standing behind a table with a pile of electronic gear looked up at him, saw his badge, and offered an I-see-you grin.

  “Alex Mercer?” she said. “Dr. Suresh is – oh.” She looked around and then cocked her head toward the far end of the room. “He’s already in the range.”

  “Range?” Alex asked.

  “Through the main lab, last door on your left. He told me, quote, ‘If he runs, let him.’ Unquote.”

  Alex felt his face go hot. “He said I could run?”

  “He said you deserve good things, and I think he may be just as excited as you are to see how your new toys work out,” she said with a smile. “Try not to break anything on your way through though okay?”

  “No promises,” Alex said as he moved quickly towards the indicated door.

  He didn’t quite run and only paused for a moment to look at a workbench where a thick dissected plant lay in quadrants on a tray. The leaves were a shade of turquoise green he’d only seen in fantasy art, and its sap had dripped down and hardened into what looked like amber resin stalagmites. A small plaque read: ALPHA BASE FLORA 17A (TENTATIVE NAME: GLASSFERN). He took it all in and headed to the back of the lab.

  “Ah! You must be Mercer!”

  The voice carried easily over the ambient noise – warm, sharp, with a formal British accent. A tall man in his fifties strode forward, all energy and curiosity topped with salt and pepper hair; more salt than pepper. His coat was a darker shade than the others, the collar embroidered with the HEX insignia.

  “Dr. Suresh,” Alex said, straightening. “It’s an honor.” He didn’t know the man of course, but anyone who ran a lab full of so many incredible things had to be someone at the top of his game.

  Suresh waved that off. “Please, please. Titles make me feel old. Call me Aarav, or Suresh or Doctor if you must.” He smiled broadly and just stared at Alex long enough to make him uncomfortable before continuing, “You are our first official mage assignment, Alex. Well, you and Brandon in Class B of course, but I’ve been waiting for this day for months!”

  “Really?”

  “Of course!” Suresh’s eyes gleamed. “Do you have any idea how long we’ve wanted to design proper mage-grade field equipment? For the first year it was nothing but fighters and rangers - bah. Swords and Bows, not much we could do with that and still keep the local realism. With wizards though! The challenge was mountainous, but we have had so much fun getting this ready for you.”

  Alex chuckled, caught off guard by the man’s enthusiasm.

  Suresh led Alex through a set of transparent doors into a smaller chamber. The walls were reinforced but still, there were scorch marks and potholes in several places. At the far end stood a long table draped with a white cloth. Something long and slender rested beneath it.

  They approached and Suresh waved his hands over the object like a priest unveiling a relic before finally whisking the cloth away with a flourish.

  The staff gleamed beneath the lab lights. It had a sleek and elegant dark wooden body, polished to a sheen with intricate filigree curling along its length. At its crown, a crystal glowed a soft blue, the light swirling like trapped smoke. It didn’t look like the crystal was even attached, it just floated between the four wooden spikes that extended out the top like reverse roots.

  This was going to be his. Alex exhaled slowly at a loss for words at first. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Isn’t it?” Suresh said proudly. “As always, we needed something that could blend seamlessly into the world’s fantasy aesthetic, but the heart here is cutting-edge nanotech. The core of that crystal for instance is a stabilized photonic crystal, powered by a micro-fusion cell. Don’t tell COIN; they’ll have a fit.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Alex reached out, hesitated. “Can I?”

  “Of course. It’s yours.”

  Mine. He reached out slowly and ran a hand over the wood before picking it up. The weight surprised him – it wasn’t nearly as heavy as he had expected, but still substantial. Balanced. The crystal at the top pulsed as he grabbed ahold of it.

  “It feels… alive,” Alex said softly.

  Suresh grinned. “Right. Good. That means it’s listening. The alloy looks like wood, but it’s actually a metamaterial skin and will be able to change properties based on electrical feedback from your ANIP. Once synced, it’ll respond to your neural impulses directly.”

  “The staff also has a photonic crystal core,” Suresh said. “We patterned it to handle the holography and light projection without requiring particulate media. No smoke, no mist. Just Illusions. You can make floating runes or dragons or – well, whatever images you feed into it.”

  “Holograms? From the… crystal?”

  “Programmable metamaterial.” Suresh gestured. “Flex lattice under a rigid skin. It can present as smooth crystal, rough ‘ice,’ smoldering coal, spiky, flowered – you’ll see. It’s not a weapon in itself, but it helps cue expectation. If the villagers think it’s an ‘ice staff,’ they’ll react like it’s cold. Soft power matters.”

  Alex didn’t know what to say as he turned the staff this way and that. It was all already too much to take in. What he did know though was just that this was probably the coolest piece of tech he had ever touched. “And hard power?”

  “Magic missiles and more.” Suresh’s grin sharpened.

  He moved to a nearby console and retrieved a small tool shaped like a pen. “We’ll need a bit of your blood to calibrate the nanonet signature first. Standard bonding procedure with the ANIP.”

  Alex held out his hand. A quick prick and a single drop of blood formed at the tip of the tool. Suresh transferred it to the staff, pressing it into a thin groove that ran along the filigree near the top.

  “There,” Suresh said. “The nanobots in your bloodstream will finish the handshake automatically. You’ll feel a tingle–”

  The staff vibrated faintly. A blue pulse ran the length of it, then settled into a steady glow.

  “– and done,” Suresh finished, smiling. “You’re synced. If someone else picks up the staff, they only get a pretty paperweight unless you authorize them.”

  Alex blinked as his HUD flickered. A new icon of a stylized staff head appeared in the lower right.

  “Whoa.”

  “Come to the line, Mr. Mercer. It’s time to scare some ballistic gel!” Suresh gestured enthusiastically towards the top of the range ahead of them – rows of inert training targets shaped like humanoid silhouettes filled the other end of the room. “You understand the concept of ‘Magic Missile,’ yes?”

  Alex laughed. “Oh yes.”

  “Right, good. I suspected as much. This will feel natural then. Think it, say it if you prefer, and look at your target. The staff will do the rest.”

  Alex tightened his grip. The crystal’s light brightened slightly as he took his stance. Okay. “Magic Missile.” Nothing happened. “Fire Magic Missile.”

  ‘Nothing’ continued to happen.

  Suresh tilted his head. “You’re being polite. Don’t ask it; tell it. Intent matters. We can’t have it going off every time you randomly think about using it after all.”

  Alex grinned sheepishly. “Right.” He pointed the staff down range. Ready. Okay…

  “Fire Magic Missile!”

  The staff pulsed. A low whine built in the crystal head and with a crackling burst the shaft of the wood split just below the crystal and something shot up into the air. It moved quickly and was difficult to see over the glare from the crystal. Alex would have missed it completely if he hadn’t been watching it directly.

  Whatever it was, it was fast, reaching 2 feet over his head in a fraction of a second. Once there, it burst with another flash of light and then three streaks of blue-white shot down the length of the range at top speed. They struck the target he was aiming at with satisfying thuds. Sparks burst out across the target.

  Alex’s heart pounded. “Holy Hell!”

  Suresh was grinning ear to ear, clearly enjoying this demonstration of a tool his lab had created. “Again!”

  Alex reset his stance and aimed at the next dummy. He squinted and focused on the painted face. This time he only whispered the command. The bolts streaked faster and hit with a tighter grouping.

  By the fourth volley, he didn’t have to speak at all. The staff hummed like a living thing in his hands, responding to every shift of thought and gaze.

  Suresh applauded. “Marvelous! You have intuitive neural signature control. You’re a natural!”

  Alex lowered the staff, still catching his breath. “Feels like it’s reading my mind.”

  “It is,” Suresh said cheerfully. “In a strictly non-creepy way. The photonic crystal is tuned to your ANIP’s cognitive patterns. That allows immediate command translation. It’s designed to make spellcasting feel instinctive. No menus, no toggles – just thought and intent.”

  He nodded toward an open case at the far end of the table. Alex looked and saw a foam bed with several dozen capsules the size of AA batteries, their ends were color-coded which made them look like candies.

  “The staff can hold six microdrone capsules at a time,” Suresh said. “Each capsule splits into three drones on launch. We tuned the emitters to leave visible light trails in your choice of color. You can find the options in the weapons settings menu on your HUD.

  “The trails are not fireworks, but rather a mix of LEDs, ionized air and controlled output from the drones themselves – but the effect reads as ‘arcane.’ At full power, each segment of the drone carries a kinetic package sufficient to penetrate metal, thick hide or plated chitin at a range of up to 100 meters. Give or take. You’ll have to play around with distances a bit since we have only tested it down here.”

  He tapped the staff about ?’s of the way up, where there was a series of inlaid filigreed spirals.

  “Just hold the drone capsules here to reload, they will absorb into the metamaterial, this way you just need a capsule in your palm to load it and the cameras won’t catch any awkward reloading actions. Just remember to face the coloured ends down. They’ll still eject if you get it wrong, but nothing more.

  “You’ll need to wait about fifteen seconds between shots. Oh, and they’re steerable post-launch via your ANIP; targeting defaults to the eye-line of your dominant eye. You should practice this as it takes a little getting used to.”

  Alex picked up one of the magic missile drone reloads and held it up to the spiral pattern. The material melted around the capsule like water and it sunk into the handle. He tapped the spirals after it was done.

  – TICK – It was completely solid again.

  “Okay, you would think that this is enough, but you would be wrong!” Suresh was enjoying this way too much. Alex numbly handed the staff back as Suresh held out his hands.

  “As already mentioned, housed in the head,” Suresh said, “is a first-gen programmable nanofog. A hard light illusion via drone lattice.”

  “I think I understood all of those words, but none of the meaning,” Alex joked.

  “Think of it as a thousand tiny drones ready to paint the picture you want. Or, to put it simply: illusions. Dragon heads, floating hands, a wall – whatever you can think of, or feed it pictures of, you can create.” He paused and stroked his chin as he considered this. “Anything from a fist sized object, up to… say 5 meters cubed at any rate.” With that, Suresh pointed the staff down range and a dense fog erupted around the crystal and floated up into the air to form a dragon head about 4 feet long.

  “Whoa,” was all Alex could say.

  “Go ahead… touch it!”

  Alex moved over to the floating Dragons head and gingerly poked at it. As he got close he could hear a faint buzzing, like mosquitos. It seemed solid at first, but not entirely. As he pushed, his hand sunk into the image of the dragon.

  “Drones. Thousands of tiny drones programmed to maintain a specific shape.” Suresh did something, or likely just thought something, and the image of the dragon head melted as the drones dropped and sped around Alex to meld back into the staff.

  “Say ‘Lantern,’” Suresh said, handing the staff back to Alex.

  “Lantern.”

  The crystal head bloomed. Light poured out in all directions, bright and white. He had to squint in the glare.

  “Spotlight,” Suresh said.

  Alex said, “Spotlight.”

  The beam sharpened to a precise cone, hot white with a halo of blue, that tore across the room creating a bright circle on the far wall.

  “Witch light,” Alex said, because he could see the option on his HUD already, and the staff obliged by changing the light to a hovering, fairy-soft, blue radiance that looked enchanted – and mostly was.

  Suresh made a pleased sound. “Right. Good, you get it! Keep in mind that everything has an output force selector via sliders on your HUD. In training and in live ops, you should keep a mental thumb on it. For any weapons, thirty percent is ‘nobody dies unless they already wanted to.’ Sixty is ‘this is a fight and we came to win.’ A full one hundred percent is ‘we’ll fill out the forms later.’”

  He turned back to the console, pulling up schematics. “We’re already working on upgrades – plasma-based lance projections, sonic disrupters and more. Once we get the safety protocols approved, you’ll be our primary tester.”

  Alex’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”

  “Of course! You’re uniquely qualified. You have both the neural flexibility and, apparently, the showmanship.” Suresh winked at him with a grin that softened into something almost paternal. “Just remember: this gear is powerful. But it’s still a tool. The real magic is you.”

  Alex laughed and thought back to his conversation with Mei Lin earlier in the day. Dr. Suresh, you have no idea.

  They ran a few more cycles of fog and magic missiles to train Alex’s nanonet and burn the patterns in. Suresh kept a patter going the whole time – explanations, tips, jokes. He showed Alex how to subvocalize without chewing his cheek raw.

  Then they finally wound down. Suresh slotted fresh capsules with practiced ease and cleaned the staff head with a soft cloth like a man polishing a violin

  When they were done, the range looked only a little worse for wear – the same except for a new scattering of neat pockmarks in the gel dummies. On the other side of the glass wall lab techs went about their business like it was any other Sunday, underappreciating the new power in Alex’s hands.

  Suresh: You’re still thinking too linearly. It’s not the energy source that matters—it’s how the material decides to respond to it.

  Dr. Chen: You’re talking about adaptive lattices again.

  Suresh: I’m talking about materials that don’t just conduct or resist, but interpret. Metamaterials with programmable stress responses. Energy matrices that reconfigure their internal geometry when exposed to intent-linked input. We already do this at the nanoscale for signal routing. Scaling it up is an engineering problem, not a philosophical one.

  Dr. Chen: And you think that gets us… what? Force projection? Shields?

  Suresh: Eventually. You couple high-density power sources to photonic crystals, layer in self-correcting nanoframes, and let ANIP handle real-time modulation. The item becomes less a tool and more a conversation between user, material, and energy flow.

  Dr. Chen: Sounds unstable.

  Suresh: Everything interesting is. The trick is making the instability repeatable. Once you can do that, the rest is just aesthetics. People don’t want raw capability. They want it shaped.

  Dr. Chen: Shaped how?

  Suresh: Like stories they already understand.

  Lab Transcript — Informal Discussion

  Dr. Aarav Suresh, Head of HEX Division with Dr. Chen, research scientist

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