"That's how I recognized you, Elphyn. You are identical to the pictures of you from over 600 years ago." Faluel said.
"Please, call me Solus. The name Elphyn means nothing to me. Can I see those paintings? Even if I recover no new memory, I would still love to have a portrait of my mother."
"I can try and borrow them for a while." Faluel replied. "It's not safe bringing either of you to my mother's castle. Silverwing may be wrong about your relationship, but every one of Menadion's friends would react the same way she did.
"The tower half technically makes Solus a slave and even as Elphyn she lacked the malice necessary to overpower someone as shrewd as Lith. No offense."
"None taken." Lith said. "By the way, how was your vacation and how are you doing with the Hands?"
"Are you asking me because you want to know if I unlocked properties that you are not aware of, because you want my help crafting something from that Dragon's corpse that I heard you took away, or both?" Faluel asked.
"Both." Lith shrugged. "I was just trying to be polite and not go straight to business."
"My vacation was great, thank you. Too bad that when I got back, I discovered that someone exploited my absence to make a mess of my turf. We'll talk about that later." She snarled. "As for the Hands, I'm sorry to say that I've made little progress with them.
"At least until I talked with my mother."
A flick of her wrist and a smug grin made the Hands appear.
Menadion's artifact looked like a pair of thick silver working gloves that covered Faluel's arm up to the elbow. The Hands had one mana crystal of a different color on each fingertip and a sixth in the middle of their backhand.
The crystals went from red on the little finger to blue on the thumb, in a pattern similar to the mana core's progression, but the green was replaced by bright silver while the gemstone on the backhand was black instead of violet.
"You should already know about this and this, correct?" Faluel took control of the world energy flowing inside her lair, making it hard to cast elemental magic and deactivating every piece of equipment without a power core her apprentices wore.
"Correct." Lith nodded, feeling his auxiliary cores growing weaker. "Yet I had no idea the Hands could affect spells as well."
"They can do it only if the place, like my cave, has arrays that limit the flow of world energy. Otherwise there is just too much elemental energy to control it." Faluel said. "What my mother taught me is that each gem on the Hands grants their master control over the single elements, like this."
Faluel stopped drawing the world energy, flooding the Hands with her own mana instead. Each gem produced a small circle of their respective color that grew in size until they filled the cave.
"How did you cast six elemental sealing arrays so quickly?" Lith was flabbergasted.
"Could you please stop doing that? I need the Sage Staff to keep my strength." Solus panted heavily.
Now that the world energy was blocked, the Sage staff was no better than a regular walking stick.
"Sorry!" Faluel dispelled the arrays, conjuring more but of a different kind.
After a few seconds, six new elemental circles had appeared in between the gems of the same color on the two opposing gloves.
"As you can see, each gem is infused with enough elemental runes to allow me to cut down the casting time and even to hold six different elemental arrays at the same time with a limited burden on my focus.
"Without the Hands, I would never be able to sustain so many, nor could I do this!" Faluel made the arrays overlap, turning them into Warping arrays first and then into Gravity arrays.
Once conjured, Faluel could rearrange the runes forming the magical formations, changing the effects of the spells without having to cast them again.
"By my Mom! We would have never thought about this method by ourselves." Solus said while the Hydra Warped everyone through her lair and to all the places in its vicinity she was familiar with.
"Neither would I." Faluel shrugged. "If my mother hadn't explained it to me and then given me a practical demonstration, it would have taken me months if I dedicated myself solely to the study of the Hands and years if I kept to my usual schedule.
"I always tell you guys that you are trying to do too much already. I hope you didn't tell Lith about Blade tier spells."
"I'm not insane." Solus went pale at the thought of adding one more thing to their infinite to-do list. "But, Professor, the tower's Hands are a bit different."
A pair of black gloves appeared over her hands and both of them had now a black gemstone on the back of their hand.
The right glove also had one gemstone of a different color on each of its knuckles instead of on the fingertips and a crystal of muddy color on its palm. The left glove, however, had just a yellow and a red gemstone respectively on the knuckles of the index and the medium finger.
"This doesn't make sense." Faluel said. "Based on what my mother told me, the tower's Hands had six gemstones as well, not seven. There shouldn't be any on the palm."
"Just like I'm supposed to have two streaks in my hair instead of seven." Solus shrugged. "Malyshka, I mean, Baba Yaga said that it's because ever since I fused with the tower, it became a living artifact capable of evolving and self-upgrading."
"I see." Faluel used Lifestream to study and compare the two artifacts. "The good news is that if my theory is right, the seventh gemstones might allow you to cast even Spirit arrays.
"The bad news is that until your Hands recover, you can't conjure more than three arrays at the same time."
"Professor Faluel, you seem to forget that I don't have a bright violet core." Lith said. "Also, I can't afford that much time to cast an array nor to take the Hands out unless I'm sure that I can kill all the witnesses."
"I could cast them for him, but between the energy necessary to keep the Hands active and everything I usually do during a fight, maybe I can do two. Maybe." Solus dispelled the Hands to not reduce the duration of her human form any further.
"It's still more than you could do until a minute ago. Have fun training." Faluel said with an impish smile as she explained to everyone how the Hands worked.
Solus slouched and groaned, knowing it would be up to her to practice with the tower's artifact and that she would have even less free time than before.
"Why are you teaching them as well?" Lith pointed at Friya and Phloria. "Don't tell me that you are dying and plan to leave the Hands to one of your beloved disciples. Fyrwal would hunt us down."
"No, smartass! It's because the Hands are a teaching tool. Anyone of my choosing can use them as long as they don't get too far from me.." Faluel said.
