Marina was currently doing a very convincing impression of someone attempting to turn their own ribcage inside out. Her screams were reaching a frequency that was probably shattering windows in the next zip code, and her fingernails were digging into the hardwood floor with terrifying enthusiasm.
Kai stood over her, hands shoved casually in his pockets, tilting his head. 'Ohhh-kay,' he thought. 'That's a lot of lung capacity. Good for her.'
Counting Marina, that made ten. Ten little "upgrades" successfully deployed. He'd just come back from Fillory, where he'd played the world's most dangerous Tooth Fairy. Handing pearls to Eliot, Josh, and Margo had been… an experience.
"Honestly, I should get a "Friend of the Year" award. Or at least a thank-you card. Instead, I got front-row seats to Margo's creative vocabulary. I didn't even know half of those anatomical impossibilities were physically possible, but she was very insistent on where she was going to shove my ball once she could stand up again. Talk about ungratefulness. I give you a new magical core, you give me a death threat. Where is the etiquette?"
He shook the memory of Margo's screaming face out of his head and looked around the room. It was a bit of a comical mess.
Pete and a half-dozen other hedge witches were currently pinned to the floor in various awkward, starfished positions. The moment Kai had fed Marina the pearl and she'd collapsed, they had predictably tried to go all "loyal henchmen" on him. One snap of his fingers later, and they were all discovering exactly how cold and dusty Marina's floor was.
"Hey, guys, guys, guys! Come on now," Kai said, his voice light and airy, like he was trying to calm down a group of rowdy toddlers. "There's absolutely nothing wrong here. I promise. I'm just helping her! It's a health kick. Probiotics, but for the soul."
The hedges glared at him with a level of pure, unadulterated hatred that would have withered a lesser man. Pete, whose face was pressed firmly against a dusty rug, managed to choke out, "She's fucking screaming her throat out, you freak!"
Kai looked back down at Marina. Her eyes were wide, bulging with a mix of agony and the kind of power that felt like a lightning strike to the stomach.
"Well," Kai muttered, rubbing the back of his neck. "She could be exaggerating. You know Marina. She always was a bit of a drama queen."
Marina suddenly lunged upward, grabbing the hem of Kai's jeans with a white-knuckled grip. "You… bastard!" she gasped, her voice sounding like she'd been eating glass. "You… didn't… warn me!"
Kai's lips curled into a delighted smirk. He leaned down, his eyes sparkling with mischief as he looked from her to the struggling Pete.
"Ah, yes. You see, would you have swallowed it if I had told you it feels like a hot coal melting through your intestines?" He chuckled. "Actually, don't answer that. Usually, they all swallow eventually when I tell them, but the surprise factor really adds to the bonding experience, don't you think?"
Marina let out another gut-wrenching shriek as the pearl finally began to fuse with her existing magic, sending a shockwave of silver light through her veins.
"Don't worry," Kai muttered under his breath, stepping over her reaching hands. "You'll thank me later. Or try to kill me. Probably both. It's the thought that counts, really."
————-
Kai blurred to a halt in front of the apartment door, the world snapping back into focus. He reached for the handle, whistling a low tune, and swung the door open.
'Oh,' he thought.
He didn't even have time to finish the thought before a heavy butcher knife whistled through the air, aimed precisely at the space between his eyes. Kai's reflexes kicked in; he tilted his head a fraction of an inch, the blade grazing his hair, and caught the handle mid-air with a practiced flick of his wrist.
"Oi, oi, oi! Is this how we greet—"
CRACK.
The bone in Kai's left leg snapped like a dry twig. He hit the floor with a dull thud, his knee buckling at an impossible angle.
"Fuck me," Kai wheezed, staring at his mangled limb. He looked up, a layer of high-octane sarcasm coating his voice. "Well, I see the 'Welcome Home' banner was out of stock, so you settled for aggravated assault. How very charming of you all."
He looked around the room. It was a firing squad of pissed-off faces. Standing front and center was Alicia, her eyebrows raised in that familiar, terrifyingly sharp expression of pure sexiness he'd definitely be kissing later… when she's less pissed off.
As Kai's bone gave a wet thwack and snapped back into place thanks to his healing, he looked at Quentin, who still had his hand outstretched, his face set in a grim line.
"Really, Q?" Kai asked, holding up the butcher knife. "A knife to the face? That's so... season one of you."
He didn't get an answer. The room exploded into a coordinated blur of vengeful magic.
Penny flicked a hand, and the gravity around Kai tripled, pinning him into the floorboards. Kady followed up by slamming her palms together, sending a localized boom into Kai's ears that made his vision swim.
Kai's eyes widened suddenly as a stray spark of Alice's energy singed his sleeve. 'Oh fuck,' he thought, twisting out of the way. 'They aren't just playing.'
Downstairs, the neighbors probably thought a wrecking ball had hit the building.
"Well then!" Kai shouted over the din, rolling into a crouch. "I can see you've all gained some degree of magic back! Congrats! Mazel tov!"
"Degree?" Kady spat, "That felt like a bad drug gone wrong, Kai! Like my veins were being filled with liquid lead and then set on fire." She took a step toward him, her teeth grit. "But I can feel it. The power under my skin. It's... it's lesser now."
Alicia crossed her arms, her gaze tracking Kai with a hard look but lingered in his healing wounds along with Julia. "It's a crude delivery system, Kai."
"You're a sociopath," Quentin added, though he looked like he was about to fall over. "You could have killed us and why do I feel exhausted all of a sudden."
Suddenly, the air in the room seemed to go thin. The frantic energy vanished as quickly as it had arrived. Kady stumbled, her knees hitting the carpet, and a wave of profound fatigue washing over them all.
Kai, who had chosen to remain uncharacteristically quiet during the beatdown, finally stood up and dusted off his shirt. He looked at the panting, exhausted group with a lopsided, knowing smirk.
"Well," Kai drawled, "it would seem you've finally exhausted your reserves. Thank God for that. Sheesh. Give you all your magic back, and the first thing y'all try to do is kill little, old, innocent me? I mean, come on, man! What have I ever done to deserve—"
He stopped mid-sentence as Alicia, Kady, and Quentin all leveled a gaze at him.
Kai raised his hands in mock surrender. "Okay, don't answer that. Rhetorical question."
He hopped onto the kitchen counter, "Well, I'm guessing you're all wondering why you currently feel like you've been hit by a freight train made of bricks and narcolepsy. Anyone? No? I'll tell you anyway."
He leaned forward, "You're tired because you just blew your entire magical load in under sixty seconds. You've used up every scrap of energy in your new cores."
"Cores?" Alicia asked, her voice raspy from the fatigue. "What exactly did you put inside us, Kai?"
"A seed," Kai explained, tapping his own chest. "The cores I gave you are newly built and are more like infant organs, basically. Which means they're tiny. They only contain a minuscule amount of energy at this stage. Think of it like a brand-new rechargeable battery that only has a 2% charge out of the box. You just drained that 2% trying to turn me into a floor rug."
"The world is currently a 'non-magician zone', there's no ambient magic floating around for you to suck up like a straw. Usually, magicians are like solar panels; they take what's in the air and move it. But you lot? You're now using internal combustion engines."
He gestured to their stomachs.
"Right now, your cores are about the size of a marble. You have a very limited 'Gas Tank.' You can throw a punch or cast a snap-bolt, but then poof, the tank is empty. Because there's no magic in the atmosphere to quickly replenish it, your body has to do the heavy lifting. You're going to have to replenish that energy slowly, through your own metabolism. Eating, sleeping, breathing. Now, your body is literally converting calories into magic.' So, if you want to cast a big spell tomorrow, I'd suggest eating a very large steak and taking a twelve-hour nap today."
He grinned at their stunned expressions. "The good news? The more you use it and let it refill, the more the core grows. Eventually, you'll go from an AA battery to a god-tier power plant. But for now? You're basically a group of very angry, very tired flashlight bulbs."
Alicia rubbed her temples, processing the sheer biological shift he'd forced on them.
"I'm only explaining this once," Kai added, snapping his fingers to get their attention. "I am not a tutor, and I don't have the patience for a second lecture. We need to go to Fillory. There's actually a bit of magic there, which should act like a 'Fast-Charger' for your systems."
He turned toward Penny, ready to tell him to grab everyone for a "Traveler Express" trip, but as his eyes landed on the psychic, Kai suddenly froze.
"Oh, shit," Kai whispered.
Penny's brow furrowed, his hands already glowing with the intent to travel. "What? What is it?"
"Nothing," Kai said quickly, forcing a smile back onto his face. "Nothing! Everything is fine. But first..."
——-
An hour later, Penny appeared and dropped the group into the throne room. Kai had made a quick, unauthorized detour back to the hedges' warehouse to scoop up a dazed Marina who was still vibrating like a tuning fork from her "upgrade" before any of the others could object.
But the moment their view settled, Kai realized he'd walked into a meat grinder.
Margo was standing there, she didn't wait for an explanation. She didn't even wait for a "hello." She opened her mouth, " You motherfucking, cocky shit eating, boot smelling sorry excuse of a sociopathic bastard…" she had unleashed a litany of words so creative, so biologically impossible, and so profoundly foul that Kai actually felt his soul shudder.
Then, she stomped her foot.
Thanks to her new core and Fillory's higher magical remnant in the air, the "Fast-Charge" atmosphere, the stone floor cracked and erupted. Serrated obsidian spikes shot out of the ground with the speed of a firing squad. Kai yelped, blurring backward, but a few of the spikes caught him in places that made his eyes water and his voice go up three octaves.
"YAAAAAAAHOOOOOOO"
A while later after shifting them all into his prison realm, Kai stood back in front of them wearing a fresh set of clothes and glaring daggers at Margo.
Margo was lounging on her throne, buffing her nails and wearing a smile that was pure, unadulterated venom. "Oh, suck it up, darling. It's not like you can't heal from anything. You're the 'Original Heretic,' right? Surely a few stone toothpicks to the nether regions won't ruin your afternoon."
"That's a jab, right? That's definitely a jab," Kai muttered, adjusting his belt.
"Think of it as a 'Welcome Back' tax," Margo countered, finally looking up. "Now, start talking before I decide to see if I can grow a forest inside your lungs."
Kai sighed, leaning against a pillar. "Right. Fine. Since everyone is currently staring at me like I'm a biological weapon which, fair here's the deal with your new hardware."
He gestured to the room at large, including Marina, who was leaning against a wall, looking surprisingly sleek but clearly exhausted.
"You all have a 'Growth-Type' core now. Think of it like a muscle. Right now, it's a scrawny little thing that hasn't hit the gym. But because we're in my version of Fillory, you're currently plugged into a high-voltage outlet."
"The core expands the more you drain it and let it refill. It's a cycle. But if you try to pull more than your current capacity can handle? You won't turn into a Niffin. These cores are designed to prevent the 'leakage' that causes Niffining. Instead, your body will act as a fuse. You'll feel like your brain is being shoved into a deep-fryer. Your mind will burn and you'll be about as useful as a wet paper bag for a week."
"So it's a leash," Marina interrupted, her voice coming out raspy from all the screaming did earlier.
"Exactly!" Kai snapped his fingers. "Smart girl. Right now, your 'ribs' are your limit. You have to train the core to expand. If you go 'Super Saiyan' too early, you'll end up as a vegetable. And I don't do well with vegetarians."
Eliot, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, looked at his own hands. "So, we're essentially magical toddlers again? Powerful, but prone to blowing our own circuits if we have a tantrum?"
"Pretty much," Kai grinned. "But hey, on the bright side? You don't need the Wellspring anymore. You are the Wellspring. You're just... currently a very small puddle."