Brin rolled over in his sleep, half waking. He would’ve gone immediately back to sleep if not for Hogg’s voice.

“You’re awake! Finally! Well? What are you waiting for? Get up and tell me how it went. Well, I know how it went. Glassbound!”

“Hrm? Hogg?” Brin blinked, looking around. It was still dark. It was probably still hours before dawn.

“Who else? Come on. Get up already!”

Brin groaned. "What time is it?"

"I don't know. Let's go. I've already put on the kettle."

Well, there was no getting back to sleep at this rate. Brin sat up, eliciting an annoyed squeak from Marksi, who burrowed in and immediately started into squeaky, trembling snores again.

Brin stumbled into the main room and sat down at the table. Through the window he could see that it really was still dark outside.

Hogg hadn't lied about the tea, and he'd also made a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and fried mato. Clearly waking him up had been no accident, but for bacon all was forgiven.

He munched on his breakfast, still groggy, while Hogg paced back and forth across the room restlessly. He had a huge grin on his face and babbled excitedly. "Where to even start! I can teach you so much now. Don't think that just because I evolved out of that Class I'm useless, oh no. First we should... oh, wait, actually... and that Strength! Boom! Three Strength out of nowhere. You'll have to remember to put a few points in Will. Hey, I bet you're glad I told you to wait until you had [Summon Glass]. Oh, what Skills were you offered for level 20?"

It was a little hard to follow Hogg's train of thought. He’d honestly never seen Hogg act like this before, but the enthusiasm was infectious. He found himself smiling along. "Oh, I never actually chose, did I?" He selected [Memories in Glass]. "Now check."

Hogg stopped in his tracks, reading something only he could see. "No way. I hate you. How did you swing that? You bastard." There was no heat in it; Hogg shook his head in amused awe.

"They said it's from all the [Meditation] on memories I've been doing."

"From all the... I guess that makes sense. You've got a better understanding of your own mind than a kid your body's age should have. This Skill. Do you realize what it can do?"

"If I find a way to play back memories, I can show you some movies from my world," said Brin.

"I guess. No. Listen. You can record everything! Keep it on all the time and have a complete living record of your life. Just for training this is going to be a game-changer. I could give you a couple paragraphs of the Language, and you could play that back any time you want to reproduce some of the better [Illusionist] abilities. My Lightmind can barely do that! It can only record things my illusions see, not what I was thinking or feeling at the time. You're going to be years ahead of where I was at your age. You lucky git. Well, what are you waiting for! Try it out! Do you have any glass on you?"

He still had a bunch of glass in his pockets from the fight with Zilly, and the bigger pieces of the broken sword were still in his bedroom. He could sense them now, and all the other glass. Hogg had several glass objects on his person, there were a few mirrors around, and he could even sense the glass inside Hogg's secret dimensional storage chest that was disguised as a yellow couch.

He pulled out one of the caltrops, and idly pushed some mana into it with [Shape Glass]. Usually any changes he made to glass had to be either very gradual or heavily directed by the Language, but this time the piece of glass immediately collapsed into a restless, shifting puddle in his palm. Every tremor of his thoughts seemed to be reflected in the physical shape of the glass.

He used [Directed Meditation] and the glass immediately stilled until it was barely vibrating. He pictured what he wanted it to do and it followed. The glass formed a line and slithered up his hand like a snake and then wrapped around his finger. There was too much, so he trimmed it down until it was the size and shape of a simple wedding band. Since it wasn't a wedding band, he decided to color it black. The color didn't come as easily as the rest. It darkened into a grayish purple. Good enough. He let the excess fall to the floor.

The excess glass hit the ground with a loud clink that shook him out of [Directed Meditation]. For how smoothly the glass was flowing in his hands, he'd expected it to land with a splash.

"Wow!" said Hogg. "'Drastically improved efficiency' was an understatement. You did that like someone who's been a [Glasser] for years."

Brin felt a bit drained. His mana pool wasn't near empty by any means, but it had taken a bit of a bite out of it. "I'm not sure about that. It seems to be draining mana at the same rate. The efficiency isn't actually better. Only the speed has increased."

"You've got it backwards. You were pushing the same amount of mana in as you're used to, so of course that's the amount of mana that got drained. The greater efficiency now means the Skill can do more than it used to. As you gain practice with [Shape Glass] and the Language, you'll be able to stop all those unnecessary movements and wasting your mana."

"Ok, I'm going to try recording," said Brin. He found that he could activate the Skill with a thought. A small, almost imperceptible stream of mana left him and entered the ring. It was less than his natural regeneration. He really would be able to keep this on all the time if he wanted.

"It's working. Now I'm going to try retrieving the memory."

It came like a second world. All the perceptions of his memory, as well as his thoughts and feelings, all of them came rushing back, playing side-by-side with his present reality. It was jarring, with Hogg positioned just a little bit to the left but still in the same approximate area, still with the happy, interested look on his face.

"Ok, I'm going to try recording," said--

"Ow. Ow ow OW!" A spike of pain hit his brain, like a ringing in the ears paired with the burning of staring into the sun. He canceled his Skill, and for good measure tore off the ring and threw it on the ground.

The pain faded quickly.

"What's wrong?" asked Hogg.

"A feedback loop, I'd wager. No recording and replaying at the same time."

Hogg snorted. "You alright, though?"

"Yeah," said Brin. He hesitantly poked the ring on the ground, and when it didn't burn his mind again, picked it up. He could sort of feel that it had a bit of his mana inside, and also that it was mostly empty. It could store a lot more than those few seconds. He also found that he could pull his mana back out, effectively erasing the memories. He did so, and then slipped the ring back on.

"I want to try a couple other things," said Brin.

"Be my guest. But don't take too long. We haven't even gotten to try your new Class yet!"

Brin used [Directed Meditation], and this time focused on one of his [Memories of Glass]. A relatively benign one, where he was casually skimming an article detailing the type of glass tiles they used on the space shuttle. He recorded it, and then carefully turned off the recording. The memory came back in vivid detail, but he also got a strong impression of him sitting here and now. Could he separate that, and only record the memory? It took a couple tries, but he figured out how to split the memory off and record it alone. This time when he replayed it, it was almost overwhelmingly vibrant, and nothing of his present came with it.

He erased it. Eventually, he'd catalog every single [Memory of Glass] like this, but that needed to be an organized, methodical pursuit. Right now he just wanted to know what the Skill could be used for.

He tried one of his other memories. Christmas when he was twelve. His parents had bought him a microscope and that really cool build-a-robot kit. Again, it took a minute to separate the memory from the remembering, but when he had it, the memory came back strong. Details were there that he'd thought he'd forgotten. The exact color of the carpet. The cat playing with the wrapping paper. The color of his mom's eyes...

Too real. Now wasn't a good time for this. He shut it down. He decided he'd do all his important memories like this. Soon, before they degraded any further, but now wasn't the time. He thought about removing the memory, but decided not to. He slipped the ring into a pocket and created another one, a dark red ring. He'd let this one keep recording the entire day, or until it ran out of space.

“Hey look, I know you probably have lots of glass stuff you want to try out, but you can do that later with Ademir. Don’t you want to try out… you know. Your other abilities?”

“My–”

“To the cellar!”

Marksi swept out of the bedroom, and Hogg tossed him a slice of bacon which Marksi snapped out of the air and swallowed in one bite. Then Hogg turned and practically skipped outside to the cellar entrance.

Honestly, Brin thought it was going to take a lot longer to get over yesterday, but a half night's rest paired with a good breakfast and Hogg’s infectious giddiness was making him feel pretty ok. The old guy was acting like a kid on Christmas morning and it was infectious.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

Brin followed, an odd smile tugging up the corners of his mouth. Marksi hopped up on his shoulder.

The instant they were Inside the enchanted circle, Hogg said, “The words are <<Sumo Baum>>” A perfectly yellow orb of hard light appeared above his finger, which he dismissed with a wave.

“<<Sumo Baum>>” said Brin, and predictably, nothing happened.

He pulled another piece of glass and shaped it into a marble. “<<Sumo Baum>>” he said, trying again.

He felt a miniscule tug on his mana, and the marble began to glow with a bright and pure white light.

Alert! [Call Light through Glass] leveled up! 1 -> 2