After her talk with Morpheus and determining that her new crystal implants aren't going to cause problems with her physiology Envoy realizes it's too late in the day to do much more – except explore the firebase.

So she cleans up her fighting staff and puts a simple enchantment on it so that one end glows, then decides to cast a Stone Strength ritual for protection. Since her ability with magic has been drastically increased by the awakening of the Holy Seed, she tries to cast the ritual without drawing a circle at all, and just visualizing the structure in three dimensions.

Things take a turn for the bizarre, however, as the magic isn't going into the imaginary structure, but somewhere else and she hears windchimes. She tries again, this time so she can use her magic sensitivity to locate it – only to find the source is moving towards her. It turns out that the reactivated Sifran crystals she brought from Behemoth are hovering in a cluster and soaking up the magic.

She tries testing one of them, and this opens a communications link where the damaged crystal appears to be asking for a new function. Envoy manages to reconfigure it into a 'battery' for magical energy, which physically changes it into a Mobius strip. She stores it away for later and decides to cast her ritual the old-fashioned way after storing the other crystals in the crystal box.

Things go weird again when she starts the ritual, until the crystals escape the box and surround Envoy while changing into the symbols of her 3-D spell diagram. She continues the spell, listening to the crystals chatter about what's actually happening. She tries to reverse the spell at the last moment, but the crystals complete it.

Aside from tingling effects, it seems to have gone off as the normal ritual would have, so Envoy heads out to explore.