Questions of concern flew past Tercius, but he just stayed quiet. Considering the situation behind him, it seemed like a good option. Mistress Kalina wanted answers on the trigger, while Seliana and Penelope wanted to know if he was alright.
He was… fine. There was a headache rapidly growing behind his frontal lobe and his stomach seemed ready to eject everything that was currently in it, but those were just the aftereffects of complete mana outage. He had learned to endure them.
The fact that he just experienced wild magic for the first time… Actually, the wild magic part was very interesting, but unfortunately now was not the time to ponder on that.
Tercius was aware of the situation he found himself in and he had no idea what to do or what to say. Doing was limited, of course, being in the state he was in, bound in a crystal of his own making. Giving answers was an option, now that he freed his face, but how could he explain himself and his actions?
What happened?
Penelope, Seliana, and Mistress Kalina asked that question among others.
For a moment I thought that the whole world and everything in it was one giant lie that I told myself, would be his answer. But if he said that, then the questions would lead in directions in which he did not want to go.
His rebirth was an event fraught with unknowns and mysteries and the nature of his continuous existence had to have an explanation.
Was it a chance event where his soul— a medium that was used to hold his memories during the transfer— separated from his body and pierced the dimensional membrane of the universe and he drifted into another parallel world?
Theories he came up with were many and varied, and from time to time Tercius thought about them. Some were fairly pleasant to think about, but others…
Every once in a while he would have this unpleasant thought that everything from the moment he was reborn was just part of his imagination.
It was a theory that had kept him awake on many a night, when he was a limp-muscled toddler bound by a language barrier. For a long time, he had only had his mind to work with, and… some corners of his mind were not pretty places.
But Tercius had never shied away from looking.
After all, an answer could be waiting even in paralyzing nightmares.
Tercius could feel mana ebb back into his mana channels, slowly climbing from the bottom of a very deep pit. Around eight hours until his mana channels were filled to the brim and then who knows how long until he can fill his Well with compressed mana suitable for further expansion.
His temples pounded with an unholy vengeance, spreading just behind his forehead to the pulse of a drum and threatened to spill his mushed brain through his nose. To add its two bits to his misery, Tercius' stomach growled and threatened to eject the contents of his meals in the most explosive of manners, regardless of exit.
The drumming pulse pounded in Tercius’ ears and broke the words he saw the three women say.
"I need a moment," Tercius said and then gagged. He could feel his guts twisting, folding, and knotting.
The three concerned faces peered at him as Tercius took to darkness.
Everyone has obstacles in life, little one. Most are small, but some … some take a work of a lifetime to surmount, said a deep voice, one familiar to Tercius. It may seem strange when I say this but remember it anyway. In my life, I was and still am that lifetime-of-work kind of obstacle. I can see a lot of myself in you so let me give you a council that I wish someone gave me. First, learn to live with the obstacles and then, if possible, learn to manipulate the obstacles. Especially those made by you for yourself.
Mr. Sullivan's words spoken to Tercius so many decades ago came easily in moments like these.
Tercius’ mind eased and calmed with each passing second under the influence of Meditation [60]. Concern, anxiety, even the pain in his head that he felt a moment ago, just faded. He knew that he was tapping into his mana regeneration and that this would ultimately extend his recovery, but with the low cost of use of the skill, its restorative and calming effects, Tercius felt it a worthwhile exchange. He needed a moment to think clearly about everything that happened in the last few minutes.
Has it only been minutes? It felt like ages had gone by… Tercius thought.
As he learned more and more about skills and their inception, Tercius had started getting an inkling that the foundation upon which Meditation [60] had been made was the frame of mind that came to him easily when things become too confusing or stressful. Moments where he gained distance from all— even his body. There was clarity in that distance, he had always thought, and clarity was what he needed right now.
Mistress Kalina.
Seemingly a middle-aged woman who was in fact a centuries-old mage. She had offered him Mentorship— adoption, and teaching wrapped in a single mysterious package.
That Mentorship would entail currently unknown repercussions should he accept or maybe even decline. He simply had no idea. The woman had been lurking around him and his many secrets for some time now and he had no way of knowing her true intentions in regards to him. Now, she seemed to have had a prior relationship with someone close to him.
For a moment there, he had doubted anything and everything he had seen and heard and anyone he knew of, from the last decade. Was anything of it real? His new family? The world? Was all of it a creation of his mind? The terror of that one moment… was something he had never felt before.
He could feel that memory lingering at the back of his brain, bringing along the sensation, and, despite the active effects of Meditation [60], he shuddered.
All of these questions he had posed to himself time and time again, ever since he was born again.
Questions that he had never once answered with a firm yes or no, and that state of their being had been fine by him. Such existential questions, while interesting enough to think about to pass the time, were not meant to be answered.
But whether this world was real or not, it didn’t matter. Not anymore. He didn’t choose to be reborn to his mother and to be welcomed into their family, but now he had made a choice that was equal to being born. He chose to stay.
Tercius was now a part of this world of his own accord.
Releasing a breath carried for too long, he let all things go by him. With not a single thought to bother him, he was a part of the vastness of a light-less space, his body only a small part of non-existence.
Thinking was a great privilege, but paradoxically so was not thinking. If he had to place those two, he would be in a dilemma to choose which one would go first.
One was work, the other rest.
One was chaos, the other order.
Just as he was about to deactivate Meditation, the wisps arrived.
Small as specks of radiant sand the energy beings crossed the boundary that was his being and made their way to his center. They came in hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, and soon a beach full of specks of floating sand shared their warmth and light with him. They twirled on some waves invisible to him, twisting and turning, changing direction and speed with every passing second.
With an easy thought, he let himself be carried away in the sandy embrace of the wisps. A mere follower in the mass, Tercius was carried away by millions of wisps and a weight was lifted from his metaphorical shoulders. There was … a harmony to the wisps, their existence, and their life or whatever it was. They didn't have to answer a question if they existed. They simply knew they existed.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
No… it was similar to knowing but different at the same time.
They… believed.
They Believed with a firmness that was past the borders of the impossible. It was a self-conviction that was always a step ahead of the ever-expanding cosmos.
Tercius halted to a stop, as his mind separated from the unity. The wisps still frolicked all around him, but he no longer felt what they felt nor experienced what they knew.
***
“He’s using a skill of some kind,” Kalina sniffed at mana beneath the skin of the boy. “A… powerful calming effect, I would say… or something similar…”
“So he’s alright?” Seliana’s daughter asked as she poked at the crystal statue that bound the boy still.
Kalina gave the worried girl a nod. "For a moment he was completely out of mana, and you know how that feels," Kalina said with a shudder. Contrary to most mages for whom headaches proved more powerful, nausea was always the worst symptom for Kalina and she almost gagged at some of the numerous memories that floated past her. "But that also means that he's no longer in danger from his magic. Now leave me, child, I need to think."
The girl reluctantly went to her mother as Kalina frowned at the crystal-bound boy. What was the cause?
Wild magic always had a cause, an emotional outburst of some sort. The last time it happened to Kalina, a few decades back, the trigger had been grief. She had been so overwhelmed that she didn't even attempt to control her mana. She didn't even think of controlling it, and even that little step often proved enough to stop all wild magic.
Before distressing news were delivered to a mage, it was always preferable to get the mage to voluntarily drain mana simply to remove or minimize the danger of wild magic. It wasn’t always possible, unfortunately. Deadly consequences from wild magic were not uncommon, even among older mages.
Flashes of blood and a limp falling body assaulted her and her mana boiled, but ultimately stayed put under Kalina’s will. With a sniff, she got her thoughts in order.
After going over the events she knew of, the most likely conclusion was that it had something to do with the lingering effects of mind magic. Induced paranoia, some mages called it.
Damn that woman, Kalina cursed in her mind as her frown turned deeper. But what was the trigger?
Considering the timing of the event and various pieces she remembered, the boy’s thoughts likely went along the lines of her link to Seliana. She didn’t want to delve deeply into the reasons, for whatever they were, Kalina knew that she was stuck with the boy.
While Mistress Prime would never order or even ask Kalina to do something as personal as taking in a Disciple, Kalina knew well enough that this was the best way to keep the boy out of the eyes of the desperate.
Unfortunately, there were many of that kind among the mages.
Ebain came to mind instantly.
The man she had known from when he was barely twenty had grown so old that he couldn't even walk without spells. To make matters worse, his body was not the only frailty that ailed him. Lately, Kalina had been spending her free time at the Repository and the Academy and she had smelled that Ebain had trouble controlling his mana. Such was his daily frustration that everything from furniture to appliances broke in his presence, some items were merely damaged but others were outright shattered like a dropped glass vase. Ebain hid it well from his contemporaries, often replacing or fixing things, but Kalina had paid close attention to him in the time she had been near.
It pained Kalina to say it, but she didn't think that Ebain would make it. He was nearing a hundred and nine cycles of age, again, and he had no more Repository points to spend for the Chamber of Rejuvenation. While Ebain's lifetime of commitment was extraordinary, sometimes even extraordinary was simply wasn't enough.
He will be neither the first nor the last who died of old age on the path.
Then a thought came unbidden. The boy could help…
Kalina shook her head and her springs of hair fluttered. That was the true issue at hand, Kalina had realized. The boy had in his hands a method to help all of the mages who struggled with the most difficult of steps. Already Kalina had started experimenting with morphing her Energy to that neutral position, but progress was difficult.
She needed more of that Energy.
No… What I need to do now is address the boy's issue once he calms down. A standard approach to these situations should prove sufficient…But considering…
I can do a bit more.
Dealing with deluded, paranoid, and misinformed mages had been her job for decades. There was little news there. That skill the boy was using, though… It was powerful. Kalina would place the skill in the mid-fifties or maybe even sixty, and what's more the boy's skill was most certainly from one of the upper tiers of skills…
If someone told Kalina half a cycle ago that she would be jealous of a boy that was under a sixteenth of her age…
Kalina waved a hand and the part of the crystal Tercius had separated from his face floated to her hand. She observed the rough crystal mask, all the while taking in the rich fragrance of the morphed mana. Wild magic had this beautiful smell to it, something that simply couldn't be recreated with step-by-step magic.
A deep breath filled her lungs. "Ahh…" It was a Heavenly smell.
Crystals were the best long-term containers for other types of mana, ranked first on a long list of physical materials. Second through fourth places were types of rare metals, fifth and sixth were special kinds of rare stones, followed by more metals. Bones came on the number eleven of the current list, and then came a rather long list of different kinds of metals and stones, types of glass and wood, and even fibers and textiles.
Depending on the skill of the enchanter, the material used to hold the enchantment, and the size of the enchantment itself, an enchantment could last anywhere from less than a second up to millennia.
But Enchanters made things with a limited enchantment life expectancy. After all, if you made something that could last forever, then at one point there would be no need for any more enchanting.
Rise and fall, such was the way of Nature.
A bit rough… Kalina concluded as she squeezed the see-through mask in her hands. With a deep inhale, her skill informed her that the mana now no longer just mana. As soon as this mana settles completely, it will be usable…
What she held in her hand was a stable and permanent mana-made crystal, but still a crystal.
Now that the boy had severed the direct connection with his mana and the chance of a recoil was virtually null, Kalina debated about releasing the boy form his confinement. But… she decided to let him be as he was for now.
A single glance at the crystal-wrapped body made her snort. The immensity of surprises that came about around the boy were not good for her heart, she knew. But more than worry, it was amusement that prevailed.
As things are going, he might even start shitting Repository Points…
***
The wisps always had a way of messing him up in a way that was… strange. The whole experience of merging with them had a way of making his problems seem so small and utterly insignificant.
You nearly died? Same as us! How many times did you nearly die? We stopped counting around the millionth billion, it simply seemed pointless to count after that…
Assholes.
Even as Tercius’ eyelids came open, he knew that the crystal still bound him as tightly as it could and that he couldn’t move at all.
“Undo the last morph on the crystal as soon as you can, the mana has started to settle. Oh! And be a dear and split it into smaller pieces in the same way you did for your face. These have some value to them, you know,” Mistress Kalina said, and Tercius leg muscles tensed. He couldn’t see her and he couldn’t turn his head her way, but he heard footsteps coming his way.
In a moment Mistress Kalina was standing before him. In her left hand, she held the weird crystal that had been on his face, smooth on the side that had grown on his face and jagged and sharp on the outside. In her right hand was a pulsing crystal sphere in a deep red color.
"This—" she said and raised the glowing red sphere. "—is an outside storage for my mana. I'm emptying my reserves. It takes time to transfer back and forth. If you can check, do so,"
It took him a moment to understand her words and then he hesitated for a moment but complied. Mana Sight [35] made his eyes glow like green neon lights and he saw what she was talking about. There was a stream of mana traveling through her arm and into the sphere with every passing moment. "Why—" he said and swallowed a bitter sensation at the back of his throat. Unprocessed food had come up while he was under Meditation.
“So that we can talk,” she stated and moved to the left and out of his field of vision. He heard a creak of wood he recognized instantly— his rocking chair near the fireplace— even as he took a moment to orient himself.
As she said, he needed to do one thing first. He had to free himself.
He cast his focus on the dozens of rapid mana morphs he had managed to glimpse at with his Mana Sight [35]. Wild magic was the purest and the most powerful expression of magic any mage was capable of. When mana took a life of its own, and simply did magics a conscious mind would struggle with, was when a mage was at the peak of spellcasting. Morphing, shaping, and execution were done effortlessly in a natural harmony a mage had to emulate through the order that was a spell. A lot was lost in that emulation.
Visualization [40] helped him with the recollection of the seconds of the wild spell his mana-laden neon-green eyes had seen, but the harmony of the morphs and the rapid movement of mana proved an impediment from clearly identifying what exactly happened.
A fifth, at best, Tercius concluded. The end and some of the beginning of the spellwork… but the middle is practically melded together into one solid whole…
The end was what he needed for the moment. He had done or rather undone it once before in a spur of need, and he could do it again. With a thought, small strings of mana snaked around the crystal and he was surprised at how the crystal reacted. It took his mana with little effort, but not with the ease and responsiveness he remembered. Settling, Mistress Kalina called it and Tercius remembered something he read about alteration. Mistress Helfira, his teacher of practical magic, had mentioned alteration and he had done some reading about the subject.
Settling of mana was a phenomenon that was often mentioned in concert with wild magic, but also in creation magic, a meta-branch where settling of mana was especially prevalent. While created materials were almost always inferior in some way to their natural counterparts— credited to faulty knowledge of a mage who did the creation— their positive side was that as long as you had mana you could create more.
His strings of mana that snaked around the interior of his crystal armor morphed only slightly, just like the last time. He braced himself, but unlike before, this time the crystal stayed put. He tried it again and again, and nothing changed.
“Uhh…” Tercius halted, uncertain what to do now.
If his mana couldn’t free him, then… Ask Mistress Kalina to free me? No, no, I will think of something on my own… Maybe if I jerk abruptly, I can push myself hard enough back to fall… The crystal should shatter from the impact… right? Tercius thought as the muscles of his whole back tightened in anticipation. A lot of things could go wrong with that. He could break more than just the crystal…
“Is your morphing attempt unresponsive?” Mistress Kalina asked from behind him and he stiffened.
“... Yes…”
“I see. That’s good. That means that I can help you now. Will you allow me to assist you?”
“Well… Err… I think that’s not—”
"Listen. It took a lot of persuasion to manage to get Seliana and her daughter to leave us so that we can talk in peace," Mistress Kalina's voice interrupted. "But they will come back down soon, so we better sort this out now while we have a moment of privacy. So I repeat, can I release you?"
After a moment of tense silence, where he went over her words, Tercius nodded only to realize that he couldn’t. The crystal bound his neck and head firmly in place.
Tercius sighed. “... Go ahead.”
No words of Magik were spoken, nor a sound released, but what bound him so thoroughly, simply fell apart in dozens of pieces that floated around him. As the support his body had gotten from the structure was removed, he stumbled a bit but recovered quickly. The floating crystals flew away from him towards the table, where they piled.
“There you go. Now sit. Let's talk.” Mistress Kalina said from his rocking chair, as she indicated for him to take a seat on the other chair, the one Seliana usually used.