Chapter 3: Magical problems require magical solutions

The next day, Nick set to work. The new sensors for the Formation were ready, the materials required to repair the damaged ones were also in his Bag of Holding – a useful little thing with expanded space on the inside. It was a small messenger bag in metallic gray with purple hues. He created this bag as his final project to complete his apprenticeship with Catherine, who was mainly an artificer and a designer on the side. If Nick had to compare Katrin with anyone, he would call her Edna Mode for sorcerers. Only with less hatred for capes. With enchantments, they became really useful.

She didn't have much interest in creating anything other than clothes and accessories, she completely immersed herself in the fashion world and decided that someone else could work in smithery. And someone else turned out to be Nick, who was happy to use temperature control and telekinesis to give the metal the right shape.

The red dots with broken sensors were exactly what it seemed, just broken sensors. All Nick had to do was pull out the old sensor column and replace it with a new one. Of course, sometimes the sensors just weren't there and Nick had to look for them so that no average Joe would stumble upon a Magical fucking artifact.

The problem with magic artifacts and normal people was… complicated. People could very well use, well, as example, the Bag of Holding. But the Formation and Wards were different.

Any artifact that had its own stable and closed magic circuit could be used by normal people. But if the artifact required recharging by mana in order to use it, then in the hands of a "muggle" it would be useless. Take the legend of Excalibur, for example, normal people couldn't even lift the thing!

King Arthur's sword had some sort of magical quality, but no one could find the piece of iron even after nearly a thousand years of searching. Why? Because the sword lay in the armory of the Originals, along with a mountain of other mythical weapons.

Nick had a chance to use the sword and was slightly disappointed. Yes, the Originals created strong weapon enchantments, but nothing that sorcerers couldn't create today. Magic has constantly progressed and people have found new ways to use it. With each generation, the artifacts became stronger, it was an undeniable fact, but among the sorcerers there was one interesting person who was still considered a brilliant artificer.

Banishing unnecessary thoughts, Nick cracked his neck. If his focus was drifted away so fast, then it was time to finish fixing the artifacts for today. Looking at the map, he counted the remaining sensors and noticed one interesting thing. One of the dots flickered from green to yellow, changing every few seconds. "Well… One extra wouldn't hurt," he muttered and disappeared from his place.

---

Teleporting into an alley in a small town in Texas, Nick immediately began to move. Even his invisibility didn't guarantee that he wouldn't be noticed. It was a common practice to teleport somewhere unseen. He did it so often that it became a habit and he wasn't going to change anything.

Dropping the illusion, Nick disappeared into the crowd, the city was quite lively and no one even paid attention to a random man in a worker jumpsuit. The last sensor for today was on the outskirts of the city, inside an abandoned house closed from all ten protective wards. Nick strode confidently up to the house and opened the door with ease, only to pause when he saw what was inside.

Three children sat around the column and took turns poking it with a stick, as if it was a half-dead dog. The sensor, oddly enough, shone every time the stick hit the hieroglyphs. They were twin girls of eight years old and a boy, seemingly two years younger than them.

"Why are we doing this again?" The boy asked, taking a stick from the hand of one of the twins and poking another hieroglyph, "We tried everything we could, this thing just glows."

The second girl took the stick from the boy and lightly pat him on the head, "Mom doesn't allow us to go further than this house, dad forbids talking to other children, and grandma says that the Internet is a creation of the devil. Do you have any other ideas?"

The boy rubbed his head and shook his head with tears in his eyes, Nick decided that it was time to butt in. "I have an idea," he said, and the three children froze, they mechanically turned their heads in his direction and looked at him with wide eyes.

"You can be literally anywhere else. Do you know how dangerous it is to wander around other people's houses?" Nick raised an eyebrow and pointed at the scars on his face, "I should know, I've already snooped around where I shouldn't."

The children nodded in agreement, but did not move. They were scared shitless, no one else could even enter this house! They had no idea why exactly only the three of them could enter the house, didn't know what kind of column it was and didn't know exactly who appeared in front of them now. Was it the owner of the house? Why does he say they shouldn't have come here? Will they even get out of here alive?!

Nick sat down next to the column, a little away from the children so as not to scare them even more, "So what are you doing here? I don't think that sitting in an abandoned house and poking one stick at another is very… fun."

Perhaps the siblings exchanged glances – 'Man, I need to ask their names.' – and the second twin started talking.

"Well… w-we're the only kids around here, so we h-have no one to hang around w-with," she stuttered. "S-so when we found this house, we decided to m-make it into our hideout…"

The boy stopped rubbing his forehead and instead grabbed his shoulder, "We come here to stay away from home…" The twins wanted to protest, but only looked at their brother and fell silent without even saying a word. "It's… nice here."

Nick frowned. His quiet words strongly hinted at abuse in the family, so to confirm their situation, he began to read their surface thoughts.

"That just sounds sad. I used to leave home a lot too, my uncle wasn't the nicest person," he leaned on the column and the hieroglyphs on it lit up brighter than before, taking away a small part of his magic. If it was possible, siblings' eyes widened even more. "Oh, so it's working…" Nick muttered.

"How did you do that?!" The girl that he dubbed 'first twin' jumped to her feet and pointed her finger at Nick, "Every time we did that, we just collapsed!" she shouted.

The boy looked at his sister with sadness in his eyes, 'That wouldn't be for the first time… mom made sure that the frying pan is heavy enough.'

Nick stopped and mentally began to groan. His magic carefully checked the blood of the children – and what would you know? – each of them was filled with mana. He wasn't sure which race the kids belonged to, but they definitely weren't humans. 'Girls may well be Witches, but I don't like the implications if that's the case. The boy is most likely a Wizard… And they grow in an abusive house.' He raised his hand to scratch his chin and didn't miss how all three flinched from his movement. 'Fuck my life, that's some Voldemort bullshit.'

"How did I do what?" he asked with a smile and pressed the hieroglyph that slowly turned off the sensor, emitting all the magic from it. This made the hieroglyphs shimmer with all the colors of the rainbow, removing the boy's attention from bad thoughts about his own family.

All three of them looked at him like he was an idiot, "That!" she pointed to a column that now looked more like a portable light show.

"Well, young Padawans, I'm turning it off. It's broken, so I'm going to fix it," he replied honestly. Nick noticed that the children immediately felt sad at his words about turning off the sensor, but their sadness was replaced by interest. In those brief moments, Nick was able to learn the names of the siblings.

The boy's name was Bill, and the twins' names were Tess and Jane. Their surname was of little importance, because they had magic. Which meant that Nick couldn't just leave them to be torn apart by their own family. He didn't leave children in trouble as a rule, but because of their magic, they took priority. Seems morbid, but that's just how it is.

"You didn't answer the question," she noticed. "Is it broken? What is this thing for anyway?" Tess asked and held out her hand, only for it to collide with an invisible barrier. Tess blinked, Bill blinked, Jane blinked, and all three of them stared at the barrier in confusion. The siblings were so well synchronized that it seemed unnatural. And it was.

Nick waved his hands and the column went out, disintegrating into a thousand small fragments floating in the air. Such an incredible show easily captured the children's attention, but Nick noticed how many questions were flying in their heads.

"Well then, I did all that with magic," He finally answered with a smile, making different shapes from the metal parts.

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'Ooh's and 'Aww's full of admiration filled the room, but Nick decided to ignore the children for a bit, in order to understand exactly how this sensor broke. He didn't need to find out how they got through the Wards, because the house only repelled normal people from itself. Magical races could pass through the first barrier, but everyone with evil intentions fell into a trap and got teleported to the Chinese prison, where Dayu decided their fate.

"So, what's your name, kids? You can call me Nick." He pulled the central part of the sensor to himself and began to examine it. They took turns telling their names, so Nick had a good excuse to know them. Finally, Nick noticed exactly what was wrong, "And it looks like your magic burned the internal emitting runes. Huh, I haven't seen this for a long time."

Tess turned and gently touched the nearest flying part, this time nothing stopped her hand. But the piece of metal with the hieroglyph didn't lot up, it continued to hang in the air.

But Jane started to worry again, "We broke it? With m-magic? W-we're not in trouble, are we?"

The very thought that they had magic was pushed into the back of her head. The fact that they broke something was much more… Well, more important than the unclear situation with magic, which was most likely a false hope.

"Nah," Nick shook his head. "You're all good. I'm going to fix that thing, so y'all need to wait a little bit, capiche?" The Siblings nodded in response and Nick got to work.

The magic sensors were quite similar to Sonar buoys, at least in their purpose. They filled the area around them with a thin, invisible mana smoke that conducted magic much better than air. But in order to spread this smoke, the sensors collected the surrounding mana from the earth's core – not directly, because that would've been foolish, they used small bits and pieces of magic that made it to the surface. As soon as the sensors noticed magic in the monitored area, they sent a signal to the enchanted maps with the location of the magical creature, or person.

So, what's the problem? The problem is that if one of the old versions of the sensors breaks just right, it will start taking mana from any source it can find, turning from a sensor into a life-sucking machine. That's what the orange dot on the map was made for. Fortunately, there were only three such sensors on the entire planet. Unfortunately, no one could say exactly where they were.

[A/N: I am not an expert in Chinese. Any information about the languages that I'm not proficient in is taken from Google.]

The old sensors were created with the hieroglyph [ná], which meant [to take, capture, take away]. The new ones used [jiè] – [borrow], and was much safer to everyone around.

The one he was fixing right now was one of the new models that could jump-start with someone's magic, but a little too much and the thing would break. He needed to re-carve a couple of hieroglyphs and fill them with silver so that the sensor would start working again, but he would do this at home, where he wouldn't have an audience.

Stretching, he put all the pieces in his bag and took out a brand-new sensor. Just because this one needed fixing didn't mean he was going to leave the city unsupervised, and therefore unprotected. Bill, Tess and Jane were whispering softly among themselves, but Nick couldn't hear what they were talking about.

"Right, I'm done," he put the sensor in the old one's place and nodded as it lit up with a million colors of magic.

Jane glanced at the pillar and spoke uncertainly, "Sir? D-does that mean we c-can't come here anymore?"

Nick shook his head. "You can even live here, just don't touch the pillar."

"Really?!" Tess screamed excitedly, but immediately covered her mouth with her hands.

The girl was shaking slightly, expecting some kind of punishment for her cries. Silence and obedience were expected of them, nothing less. Sometimes Tess couldn't speak for weeks, only showing with her hands what she wanted. Bill and Jane tolerated silence better, but for Tess it was strange comfort territory, when she was silent, bad things stopped happening as often, or so she thought.

'Holy fucking shit. That's worse than I thought it would be,' sighing heavily, Nick decided not to avoid the elephant in the room anymore. "Hey, kids, are you all right?" Tess and Jane looked at each other, trying to decide what to say to them.

"No." Bill quietly admitted, earning himself a pair of glares from his sisters, which he promptly returned. "What? He has magic, magic! I doubt it's some kind of trick, the deconstruction was far too real. If he wanted to hurt us, he would have done it already," the boy crossed his arms and pouted.

Nick raised an eyebrow at the unusual amount of intelligence in a six-year-old boy's brain. That wasn't normal even for magical children, Bill's thoughts were too fast. The girls were still unsure, but terrible memories of their family were already flying through their minds.

"Right, I'll give you kiddos a choice," Nick got to his feet and dusted his trousers. "You can stay here with your family and nothing will change. You can still go to this house, I just ask you not to touch the column, I'll probably block it off anyway." The kids nodded back at him, so Nick continued, "Or you can come with me where I'll most likely drop the three of you off to stay with my friend. She's wonderful with kids." He scratched his chin, "I'll be honest, you'd better be off with someone else."

The siblings looked at each other, sat down in a small triangle and began to whisper among themselves again. They had many doubts – no one in their right mind would agree to an invitation from a random magical dude, "stranger danger" is important – so they had many things to talk about.

Nick took out his phone and found the number of Howard, one of the operators at the League. He could have written to the head of the Center, but he didn't want to make a huge deal out of it, Nick didn't think that the children would be grateful for all the attention on their persons. The appearance of one of the immortals wasn't a great event, but it still attracted enough attention, so he chouse a low-profile visit, not many people knew his face anyway.

S10-8: [Hey, I have three magical kids from an abusive home here, can you take them in?] He projected a photo of the trio using Technomancy and sent it along with the message. After a couple of minutes of waiting, he received a response.

Howard: [Two witches and a wizard? Child Protection Services will be able to deal with them without problems, although I'm not sure how long it will take. If the kids choose to disappear from the radar, we'll have to modify a lot of memories.]

Someone may think it wrong to give such a huge choice to children, but magicians preferred freedom of action. For a person with magic, disappearing from the radar is as easy as appearing on it. With the advent of modern technology, this became more difficult, but that's what Technomages were for.

S10-8: [Look for the surname Cipher in Texas, it will help. By the way, tell the captain that I'm fixing the sensors for the map. Fuck knows why it took you so long.]

The repair of magic sensors and other artifacts initially rested on the shoulders of local Artificers, but in America, oddly enough, there were very few Masters, especially in recent years. So they sent a request to the world consul, where Nick decided to take the job.

"Um… sir?" Jane asked uncertainly, "We'll go with you."

Nodding, Nick went to the exit of the house and pushed the door out, Bill, Tess and Jane followed him like obedient ducklings. They were still unsure of their decision, but their doubts faded into the background when the space in front of Nick was pierced, a perfect circle hung in the air, leading to a completely different building. "C'mon, we're going to see someone cool." Sending the last warning to Howard, Nick walked to the other side.

Stepping through the portal, three children disappeared from Texas for a long time. They will return when they are ready to face their past.

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