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A [Redacted] from the Tribe is blessed by the Fountain and sent to Endless Adventure
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The veil stands before her, lit from behind by the soft blue glow of the inner garden. Aside from the veil she sees the rough rock of the passage and the mossy floor below her feet. If she glances back the warm light of the outer garden's sun beckons, coaxing her to walk the other way. This isn't her last chance to turn back, not really, but it is the last chance to say goodbye. Even if you try to walk through the strange waters of the veil hand in hand you always face The Fountain alone.

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Then it is done. You may depart whenever you are ready.

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And with a full-body exertion, she breaches the surface with a gasp.

 

Then...she looks over her rucksack full of junk, because where everyone else saw something broken...she saw things that could be mended.

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The soft glow of bioluminescent plants and moss around her light the area. Four waterfalls gently fall at the edges of the cave but the moss prevents the sound from being too loud. The fountain she just left has water spilling out of nowhere falling in strange, ever-changing patterns in defiance of gravity before falling back into the pool she just emerged from.

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Broken things glow subtly, she can tell they're not actually glowing just... highlighting them for her to look closer. A water purifier, a tablet, a broken enchanted flashlight, a multitool.

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And look closer she shall; she'll start with the flashlight.

She wasn't sure her power would work that way...but she's glad it seems to.

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Her power whispers into her ear; the crystal at the center of the flashlight has cracked and its mana has been depleted. This is the sort of tooling she would need to disassemble the housing and replace the crystal properly...but with her power's help, she can cheat: Unscrew here, focus the heat of a fire to make the frame flexible enough to squeeze the crystal out. 

Fixing the crystal is harder; she needs a source of mana to draw from and some source of the right elements to replace the bits of the crystal which dispersed when it cracked. Her power allows her to purify those elements from mundane materials without much difficulty. With those purified she can dissolve them in solution and, with her power's help, catalyze them depositing on the right parts of the crystal to make it whole, then channel a bit of mana from some other source to jumpstart the enchantment again and patch the broken edges of the magic.

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...say, is the Fountain (and its water) a source of mana, perchance?

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That small whispering voice advises her that it isn't but it draws her attention to the enchanted staff she has with her. She would need to be careful not to pull too much mana and break it but with care she can take an amount it can recover from without needing repairs of its own.

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Well, that would certainly work, and it's less risk than taking from her knife.  She will probably need the enchantments on that much more.

She'll see what else she can fix before she sets off.

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Well, in addition to the bits she's already looked at there's a sleeping bag that's fraying a bit around the edges and has some small holes, a broken tent pole, a small foldable table that doesn't fold as smoothly as it should, two pieces of a longer rope they're usable individually but mending it would give her more flexibility, a chipped cup, a spare firestarter that's too rusted to work, a somewhat bent fork, and a small solar panel that doesn't work as efficiently as it did when it was new.

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And of all these, what can she fix with what she has on hand?

(She asks, while taking a sample of the bioluminescent moss.)

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Some of it she'll need to harvest things from the outer garden but otherwise yes. The moss, her power whispers needs this humidity level and these nutrients in the soil to safely take root. 

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She nods, moving garden-wards, and wonders if she can make something to maintain that environment for her sample.  It would hardly function as a sample if it died, after all.

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There's a sense of a muscle pulled taut, and the little voice of her power whispers not yet.

The outer garden is as bright and cheerful as she remembers but it's quiet in a way she's never really known. The emptiness is strange, usually you can always hear at least the sound of distant voices or spot some harvesters collecting one thing or another... now it's just her.

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Well, she doesn't mind having privacy; honestly, she's a little looking forwards to having a personal space the whole Garden wide.  Regardless, she can get comfortable later - it's time to repair stuff.

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Her power whispers to harvest a bit of fibervine here, a bit of fastwood there, some of that herb and a few of those berries.

Then it begins the process of getting her to make replacement parts, guiding her through various tasks to make what she needs for repairs: thread to repair the sleeping bag and the rope, a type of wood glue to fix the tent pole, a lubricant and making a replacement washer for the folding table, a clay mixture to repair the mug, and a collection of refined powders that no normal person could dream of using to repair the solar panel.

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This is the stuff that dreams are made of.

 

Eventually, however, she is done, and ready.

"Well, then.  Bottoms up, as they say somewhere in the multiverse."

She eats a rainbow berry, after plucking a 'few' more and taking a cutting (just in case)...and activates its power.

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There's a moment of discontinuity as the world is briefly replaced with a wash of sensation, the smell of cyan, the feel of something sweet, the taste of the number fourteen, and then the maelstorm disappears in turn.

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It's replaced by a field. She sees a wooden wall off to the left and some trees further in the distance to the right. And then there's text superimposed on her vision.

Welcome new user. System activation in progress. 

Error unknown magic present... attempting reformat, reformatting failed, unknown magic left unchanged.

Activation complete: personal enhancement resources available, system ui available.

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Yes, she would like to view the UI.  After she makes sure she's not going to be eaten alive or something.

"Well, this is surprising."

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More text unfurls across her vision.

System input mode: verbal
System output mode: visual overlay

Available views:
Personal status and enhancements

System map

Help directory

System log

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Oh, no, no no, she is not going to be caught alive using a verbal interface, because then that means she'll be caught dead.

 

Right.  She'll get something set up like that fancy simulator someone brought back.  And then she'll read the manual.

...What does her power make of this?

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The system is remarkably chatty and after a bit of back and forth the line reads

System input mode: custom

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There's a faint sense of worry coming from the place she's come to associate with her power.

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Well, is it something she could eventually fix?

If so...well, she's glad she's here, and not some other poor schmuck.  She's any amount prepared for something like this.

...okay, from reading fiction, but that's more than anyone else would be!  (Also she might have something that'll stand up to even this, as far as powers go.  That's a potent confidence booster.)

 

Anyway, she'd like the tutorial-and-or-manual now, if the system would be so kind.

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