In the end, the answers were just as straightforward as Ebayne's descriptions. The fire explosion wand, the forked lightning wand, and the staff were all possible for Sophia to unlock and reset. The two wands would automatically accept a new owner the first time they were used, while the staff required a deliberate effort; Sophia was pretty sure that the easiest way to manage it was a drop of mana-infused blood smeared on the staff.

The earth-moving wand couldn't be completely reset. Sophia could replace the mana signature it held, but it had been designed to be bound to its owner by its original creator rather than to the first person who used it. Oddly enough, it was actually usable without the binding, but the result wasn't at all useful; it moved earth, but without any control at all on what was moved or where.

That gave Sophia some guesses about why all of the wands had to be locked to a single user; they were using the mana imprint as a carrier for the Intent that directed the spells they held. That wasn't the way wands worked at home, but it was similar enough that she could see some advantages to go with the obvious disadvantages. It might be hard for a wand to change owners, but the owner didn't have to have any training in directing Intent. Sophia certainly wouldn't take the trade, but she knew that a lot of people would.

The strange wand turned out not to be locked at all. In fact, it wasn't even a wand. There were definitely mana channels, but Sophia couldn't find a single spellform that created a spell from mana, the way the other wands worked. Instead, it was almost like the wand held a collection of miniature spellforms and a conduit that routed mana to them in sequence.

When Sophia described it to Xin'ri, the item-mage laughed and asked if the mana input was at the bottom, into the flameheart ruby. When Sophia confirmed that it was, Xin'ri asked her to hand the wand to Jax and told him to put some of his mana into it, as though he were using it like his sword.

A clearly visible red dot appeared on the target Jax aimed the tip of the wand towards. If he added more mana, it increased in intensity until it quickly burned through the target. Jax was delighted; it took far less mana than launching bolts of light with his sword for a similar effect, likely because the effect was concentrated into a smaller point. Jax was very happy with the tradeoff.

That made what it was doing fairly obvious; Jax's Mask used both light and items, so the wand was clearly a laser of some sort. Sophia only vaguely knew how lasers worked, but it was still obvious that this was a laser. She grinned and turned towards Xin'ri. "I see what you mean, it's perfect for Jax. How did you know what it was?"

Xin'ri shrugged. She was still clearly delighted at being right, but she was also trying to pass it off as nothing big and at the same time a little sad. "I've seen something a lot like it before. My … I mean, one of the people who taught me made and used things like that. He couldn't use them directly; he built them into his armor. He liked to use light magic, which is why I thought of Jax. He … well, I know what happened to him now. He didn't come home a few years ago. He must have died in the Maze."

"Then we honor him with the use of his weapon," Ci'an said firmly. "The wand is definitely one of our choices; not only is it Xin'ri's mentor's legacy, it really is perfect for Jax. What else should we pick?"

Sophia wanted to say the earth-moving "camp tool" wand, but she knew it was the wrong choice. It would be absolutely awesome for creating camps and even better if any of them made real physical traps, but Xin'ri was the only trapmaker and her traps were magical and actually preferred flat surfaces.

"The lightning wand," she suggested instead. "I'm just not sure who should use it. Dav, maybe? He's the only one who doesn't have a way to hit monsters without getting in their face."

Ebayne handed the wand to Sophia, then stood and ushered them out of the store while they debated who was going to end up with the wand. "I'll send a message to the Registry when I have someone interested in the staff, or if I have any more wands come in that are locked."

"It should go to Ci'an," Dav countered. "She also doesn't have a way to hurt things at a distance and I can get close. She can't."

"It's not for hurting them, it's for controlling them," Ci'an countered. "Which I can already do. Differently, but I can do it. It should go to someone who can't."

"Which means Jax, Sophia, or Dav," Xin'ri added. "Taika and I have our own ways."

"All three of us can lock something down if we're next to them," Jax added. "Are you sure you don't want it, Sophia? You're the one who did the work to get it."

She took another look at it, then admitted the real reason she was pushing the wand towards someone else. "I don't think I can use it in my Domain form. All of my gear vanishes. I'd have to use it before we really get to fighting or commit to using it instead of my feathers."

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Jax frowned. "That's a problem, for sure. You might be able to overcome it eventually; maybe there's an Ability for it?"

Sophia shook her head. She hadn't specifically looked for that, but she'd had plenty of time over the last few months to look through what the Guide had available for her. None of her new Abilities worked with her gear; they were all focused on doing something with her feathers. "Not unless it's new with my last level, and I don't think it's there. I, hm."

Sophia frowned as a new thought occurred to her. She could duplicate the spellform she saw in the wand and use it. It would take ten or fifteen minutes per spell, but she could do it. She also knew a lot of other spells, and one of the relatively Paths she'd had before she was sent to the Broken Lands was all about prebuilding spells so that she could use them quickly in combat. Maybe she could use her feathers for that? It wasn't offered as an Ability she could buy, but it might be a good direction for her to push for her Grand Talent. She wasn't sure what it would do to her Grand Ability and Grand Spell, but it was the best idea she'd had about how to move forward.

Now all she could do was try. If she was lucky, it wouldn't hurt her the way trying to channel the fiery fissure hurt Dav.

Surely it wouldn't. That was fire; this was a spellform. Never mind that she was basically trying to inscribe a spellform on her body; that had nothing to do with it.

The one saving grace she had was her heritage. She was an arcane dragon, or at least her father was. That meant that her very being was attuned to magic, even made of it in some way. Between that and the Path she'd once followed, she knew it was possible. The real question was how to get there.

"Then it should go to Jax." Dav stated his opinion firmly.

Sophia tried to gather her thoughts together. Figuring out her future was important, but living in the present was even more important.

"I just got a wand," Jax objected.

"And that's why you should get the second one, too. I have ways to get in close quickly; you don't. This way, you can just stay back and be useful that way." Dav snorted, then smiled. "Unless it depends on Core. Then it should go to Sophia, even if it means she can only use it at the beginning of a fight. I don't think it really matters that much; we can probably get more wands the same way we got these. I'm amazed you talked him into trading a few minutes' work for entire items."

"No one else can do it," Jax answered. "Or at least it's so rare that it might as well be no one else. If we'd pushed, we could have gotten away with taking more than we did; the amount he'd actually recover from those wands is so much less than what he can sell them for that we could take four of them and make the last one usable and he'd still come out ahead."

"That's not entirely true," Xin'ri said, openly amused. "If anything, we got the better end of that deal. I know what the light-ray wand is made of and how it was made, because I helped my father make it."

"Your father? Not your mentor?" Sophia jumped on the information about her ally. It was the first time she'd really thought about it, but Xin'ri never talked about her family. She sometimes talked about her past teams and she would talk about making things for hours on end, but she didn't talk about her parents or siblings at all.

"Both, really," Xin'ri admitted. "He taught me as much as he could, but he didn't want to bring a child to Mazehold, even if I was fourteen. When one of his team was injured and decided it was time to retire, he asked me to stay with Orzan while he made his way to Mazehold and earned enough to easily get me to the second upgrade. He promised to return by the time I was eighteen; we both knew I'd have my Sphere by then, but I held out on taking my first upgrade until long after he was supposed to return."

Xin'ri took a deep breath, then sighed. "It was a mistake, even if Orzan was happy to have my help around the inn. So was picking a supporting Sphere instead of something that could stand on its own; with a good group, supporting Spheres are great, but I'm not my father. I couldn't find a good team."

Sophia nodded. She knew the story all too well from there. She also knew what Jax thought about it; he was convinced that the problem, at least at the beginning, was that Xin'ri accepted the first offer of a team position she was given instead of trying a few battles to see how it worked, then accepted that of course she advanced slower than everyone else and they were going to move on. Once that was fixed in her head, she repeated the same mistake over and over again until she ended up on Lan'ti's expedition into the Wilds as an independent researcher rather than a Called fighter.

Jax called it foolishness, but it made a lot of sense to Sophia. Xin'ri hadn't had anyone to help her when she made a mistake; she'd already left home. Knowing that "home" was an adventuring buddy of her father's who ran an inn didn't really change anything, but maybe it explained some things.

"Have you been back home since you left?" Sophia wasn't sure she should poke, but at the same time she couldn't really resist the small glimpse she'd had into her friend's past.

Xin'ri nodded. Thankfully, she also smiled a sort of fond smile. "A couple times. I'd visit more if I could. Orzan's ridiculously happy as the cook and bouncer for his wife's inn. They're both happy to see me, too. They weren't perfect parents, but they tried. Their kids are tiny but I bet they're bigger now that it's been a couple years."

She sighed and shook her head. "Thing is, I long since outgrew Skyview. It's … well, you've talked about your time in Casterville. Skyview's even safer than that. It's a trade city with links to seven other shards within a day's travel; three of them are within the city walls. There are even a handful of water routes that lead to other cities or other shards. As long as you don't get too far from the city, you'll never see a monster past the first upgrade, and seeing a monster at all is rare. There's just nothing for me there anymore."

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