A rush of adrenaline ran through my body, blowing away any thought of magical experimentation. Startled, I jumped to my feet and stared into the darkness. That didn’t sound good at all. It sounded like someone had just been killed excruciatingly. Horrible images of man-eating beasts flashed through my mind. Actually, you’d think that someone who had seen the bloodiest horror movies and fought terrifying monsters wouldn’t be so easily rattled by a scream, but at night in the woods it had a very different effect than on the movie screen or monitor. A bag of popcorn probably wouldn’t help now, either.
“What was that?”, I whispered to the hunter.
“I don’t know,” he said almost indifferently. “Nothing good in any case. That’s clear so far.”
“But... shouldn’t we do something? Wake up the others, for example?”
“And then?”, I couldn’t see his shoulder shrug, but could almost feel it. “What good would that do?”
I couldn’t find an answer to that. Granted, the scream seemed to come from far away and we didn’t know the cause, but didn’t we have to prepare for potential threats somehow? Raise the DEFCON level, so to speak? I decided to rely on Orthok’s judgment. After all, he knew the dangers of his world much better and had certainly done more guard duty in the wilderness than I had lectures at the university.
We stood around for a while longer, listening into the night, but it was silent. No monster craving my flesh erupted from the forest. Gradually I calmed down again. I went to my blanket and sat cross-legged on it. If I couldn’t do anything, I would meditate to strengthen my magic core, since it seemed to have some practical use after all.
I looked inside myself to call up the image with the mana vessel and just managed to stifle a surprised whistle. First of all, the glass sphere was no longer full, the level was somewhere halfway up, which was also confirmed by the text Mana 8/14. Ok, somehow it was to be expected that mana is consumed when casting spells. What surprised me more was a second tab that was now visible at the top of the screen. It was a classic tab, as you know it from many software programs. And there was an icon on it!
Excitedly, I activated the page. Wow! It had the four icons I was familiar with, but while the flight icon was visible normally, the others were grayed out, like inactive controls in a computer application. Hmm, was that my spell book or library? But why were the characters displayed differently? I quickly came up with the idea that it must be because I had already cast spells myself with the flight character and not yet with the others. I made up my mind to change that soon, I was now really eager to try out the fire sign.
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What I also found interesting were the colors. When Nigel cast his “Fire Flight” I saw both symbols flash red, in my case the sign was the color of my magic core. Why was this, and what did it mean? Was Nigel’s magic core red? Did color play a role in casting spells? I remembered my musings in this regard at the inn. I absolutely had to collect more data, before that I could only guess, which was unworthy of a researcher.
I switched back to the magic core. With the two spells, I had apparently used six units of mana, maybe seven if the supply had been replenished by regeneration. Since the cone had flown different distances in both cases, more mana must have been used in the second attempt than in the first. Unfortunately, I had not paid attention to the mana level between the two experiments. The scientist in me just stood there with one laughing eye and one crying eye. How I would love to run a big series of experiments by all the rules, with different weights and variable mana amounts, preferably putting the whole thing into a nice Excel spreadsheet and figuring out the laws of magic. But at the moment I had nothing left but field research, and even that I had to postpone. I didn’t even have a simple scale or ruler at hand!
Don’t fret about the things you can’t change, because it won’t do any good, anyway. Following this time-tested wisdom, I pushed the thoughts aside and again imagined the mana lake above my head, from which an endless mana waterfall descended on my magic core. Logically, the half-full vessel had to fill up as a result, and so it did. Not as fast as dumping a bucket of water into an empty aquarium, but gradually the level increased again, adding perhaps one unit of mana every five minutes. When the glass was full, I let the virtual mana flow continue. It was really very relaxing to watch the pale-gold ribbon mindlessly. Somehow, I totally relied on Orthok and completely blanked out the surroundings. This time it took longer for me to feel a pulse of warmth like last time and for the display to change to 15/15, but it happened eventually and I contentedly ended the meditation.
I opened my eyes again and waited for them to adjust to the darkness. It must have been about an hour since we heard the scream. Since still no monsters had appeared, Orthok had probably been right. I was just glad he had stopped me from raising the alarm. I would have stood there now like the last fool, like a small child who is afraid in the forest at night.
A black shadow suddenly moved noiselessly toward me, causing my pulse to skyrocket. I could just suppress a scream when I realized it was the hunter. How did he manage to move so quietly and surely in the night? Reaching me, he said in a hushed voice, “You can sleep now, our watch is over.” He went on to wake our replacements. So it was later than I had anticipated, apparently I had spent more time meditating after all.
Oh well, all the better. I didn’t much feel like continuing to stare holes in the darkness, anyway. I wrapped myself in my blanket again and soon fell asleep.