Flicker had made a mistake. She had decided to practice more spark magic, but something had gone terribly wrong. This wasn’t just a failure. She’d had casts before that had failed, but then, nothing had happened. This time, something had definitely happened, it just… wasn’t right. Luckily, the spell she was casting wasn’t very strong to begin with and couldn’t do much harm. But it wasn’t the electricity that was hurting her. She didn’t know why, but suddenly one of her ribs hurt like hell. What she didn’t know was that that was where her Gemstone was, a round piece of orange carnelian lodged into one of her ribs. And right now, it was reacting to a bad cast and it hurt. It hurt so bad she felt nauseous, curled into a ball on the ground, unaware of anything around her. She was lucky she had been practicing a low-level spell, or the failed cast might have ended up electrocuting her…

The pain slowly dissipated over the course of a minute or two until it was completely gone. Flicker sat up, her back to the stranger, unaware of their presence. She shook her head slowly from side to side, trying to clear her mind of the fog of pain. What had happened? She didn’t know that she could fail to make sparks and then make her ribs her so badly. Maybe… maybe they were unrelated. But then… Oh, that scared her a lot more! If the pain in her ribs wasn’t caused by her magic, then… then what was wrong with her ribs? She whimpered in fear, wondering morbidly if she was going to die. That was when she smelled the stranger and wheeled around to face them. She felt embarrassed to cry in front of someone, so she quickly stiffened her lip. “H-hey,” she called to them, her voice faltering. “What… what do you want?”