Well, neither did the first one. He slips 'em into his pocket and continues to his room, since he's abruptly aware that he's spent the past 30 seconds just standing in the hallway dumbfounded and would like to be dumbfounded not in the hallway.

Okay, so.

What was happening when the rock vanished? He - was wanting to be a wizard, or at least the equivalent of a wizard. He wanted this to be… maybe not the call to adventure, he'd kinda prefer to just live a life of magic-augmented fun and comfort, but the promise that this strange thing happening to him was more than just one of the millions of coincidences that happen every day but a strange thing happening to him, a gateway into a world that had been kept from him.

Are these rocks just… magic wands for whatever you want? Powered by pain, and not even that much?

He wishes to be a really good wizard who knows what he's doing.

No knows-what-he's-doing materializes.

So maybe he can't wish to know what he's doing, or maybe it's just that these rocks aren't strong enough. He didn't even get the elbow nerve, earlier.

He sets down the coins and smacks himself in the cheek as hard as he can.

It stings. More importantly, it lights up his painsense! He can tell that it's more than before, not just literally but in the sense that it's over some sort of… threshold. He could do something slightly different, if he moved it.

He does something slightly different!!!

He gets: a new shape! As he could have possibly predicted, it's got two long points rather than just one, positioned almost-opposite from each other on the central septagon.

The aura of usefulness around the pain drops sharply.

With a giggle, he moves the pain one, two, three more times and collects three corresponding one-pointed Weird Rocks. Holy shit this is so cool.

Okay, so maybe he hasn't done much. But he's discovered at least a step towards being able to make a ✨ magic powers ✨ level Weird Rock. And he's getting a better sense for his not-pain sense, too - he can perceive differences in type of pain. It's weirdly… beautiful?

He should probably figure out what either type of Weird Rock can do.

… or maybe he can try to make more of the twofers! And see if he can hit three points! He slaps himself again, on both cheeks, repeatedly.

Well, hitting the same spot twice definitely increases the level of usable pain, though that caps out at just over two two-pointers.

Yeah at this point he doesn't even care because this has gotten weirdly fun.

He makes the coins, though, and it's slightly less fun to smack himself when the pain is less pretty to his shiny new sense.

He calms down marginally and surveys the fruits of his labor. He's got six ones and three twos, for a total of nine shiny red rocks. They're - weirdly uniform, actually. He holds a one and a two up to his face and sees that they're the same thickness, that if he presses the edges together they look like they're part of the same object. He still can't tell if they actually emit light or if they just look really vibrant.

He should probably start testing, then. What's something small he can do with magic… well, he's hungry. He tries to make the first thing that comes to mind.

The two-pointer vanishes. A sandwich appears in his lap.

Neat! So for ones he should be thinking of things that are smaller than making a sandwich, and for twos he can get things of that level. What can he think of that's smaller than making a sandwich…

Well, maybe he can try getting rid of the crumbs that were left behind when the sandwich appeared in his lap with no plate. After he finishes eating.

The one handles this just fine.

Oh cool. Can he use a one to clean his teeth? Brush his hair?

Yes and yes.

Okay, so now he's got three ones and two twos. He can probably get at least another two from smacking his face, then - he's not sure where to go from here. He doesn't really want to meaningfully injure himself, not until he figures out how many points he'll need to do healing, but for now there's something pretty amazing about literally slapping magic out of himself like he's a video game monster.

By the time he gets bored he's produced nine more rocks, one of which is a two-pointer.

Okay, cool. That's enough that his hands are meaningfully full when he cups them around his drops magic rocks. He picks out one of each kind to keep on his person and gets out a pillowcase to dump the rest into. Probably he should secure them slightly better, but - his mom doesn't snoop on him, and even if she did find these he's pretty sure she wouldn't figure out what they're for, and even then he's still pretty sure she'd be chill.

Maybe he shouldn't let her find out about the pain thing, though, that might freak her out.

Whatever, the pillowcase will do fine.

It's pretty easy to settle into a pattern, over the next few days. Most of the time, he doesn't actively think about making magic - it happens naturally when he stubs his toes or gets papercuts, though, and he takes to making sure he has easy places to discreetly store it on the spot. (It's surprisingly appealing to just have the magic and not even use it.)

He isn't sure what to tell Sylas, though. It sounds pretty unbelievable, and even if he's able to get Sylas to believe him, he'll definitely freak out over the details of how getting magic works. Maybe he can do it once he unlocks the three-pointers? Then he'll be able to show off, at least.

About a week after he found the first six-pointer, he wonders if he can figure out what the rocks are made of and if he can break them. He definitely can't snap them in two with his hands… maybe he can smash one with a hammer?