Pax felt his light mana trickle into the artifact at a slow but steady pace. He waited for something to happen, but other than the loss of his mana, it seemed like nothing occurred. He still felt just as exhausted and couldn’t detect any kind of effect that he would label as feeling like a sanctuary.

Then he looked up to say as much to Incedis. He immediately realized something strange was going on. It felt similar to the effect his Haste spell had, but not quite. Incedis moved with exaggerated slowness, almost frozen. His mouth opened so sluggishly it would take a minute or more for him to get a word out.

Stunned for a moment, Pax just stared in amazement. Needing to verify the effect, he spun around to check on the others. His sudden motion got an immediate reaction from the artifact. As soon as he moved, it pulled at his mana, greedily sucking much more down than when he’d held still. And then, like a line that someone had stretched too far, something snapped. With a wrench, the world around him returned to normal.

“—pay attention and let me know what specific effects it has, alright?” Incedis hesitated and peered at him. “Did something happen?”

A slow smile spread across Pax’s face. “I think you’re right. If this artifact does what I think it does, I’m going to kick myself for not using it much earlier, especially if it doesn’t have a time limit like my ring.”

“What exactly did it do?”

“It seemed to slow down the world around me at the cost of a small trickle of light mana. The menu says it only works on myself, and that seems to be true. The effect didn’t pull you in with me. Instead, you slowed down mid-word, even though you were sitting very close to me.”

A light of excitement filled Incedis’ eyes.

“Before you get too excited, I also couldn’t move very much without breaking the effect. So, I can’t use it to train my fighting and spell casting, while time stands mostly still. Well, I haven’t tested the spell part, but I definitely can’t move. I just turned my head to check behind me. The effect held for a moment and sucked down a lot more mana with my movement. And then it broke.”

Incedis leaned forward, fascination and curiosity on his face. “So, as long as you stay still, you can essentially freeze time?”

“Well, slow it down a lot. You seemed to be stuck getting out a single word, but your mouth was still moving. I’ll have to compare the mana cost to my Haste to see which is cheaper, because an extra few moments to think in a battle are crucial, if I can spare the mana. But for general use in a battle, it won’t help much. For a moment there, I was imagining myself zipping around a battlefield and killing enemies while they stood frozen.”

Incedis sat back with a look of awe on his face, seemingly unfazed by Pax’s complaints. “No wonder it’s a legendary artifact.” Then he reached out and smacked Pax across the top of his head.

“Hey! What was that for?”

“For letting a legendary artifact sit in your inventory this long without figuring out what it did.”

Pax gave him a sheepish shrug. “I guess I deserved that. The name Wand of Sanctuary just didn’t suggest any abilities that would help in all the fighting and spying we were doing. Still, it’s not the amazing training aid that I first thought. That restriction on movement is harsh.”

“For people who only train themselves physically. But for someone who uses their brain to improve, it’s priceless. Are you telling me you’ve never wanted a few extra hours to study, but didn’t have the time?”

Pax reconsidered, giving the ordinary-looking wand another look. It was only three inches long, and it had only a single remarkable characteristic: its extremely dark wood. He ran a finger along the surface. The visible grains and weight of the wand made it clear that it was some type of wood. But it was so dark and smooth that, without holding it and looking closely, Pax would have guessed it had been crafted from some kind of metal.

“And the name of the artifact makes perfect sense.” Incedis frowned at him with exasperation. “After everything we just went through back in Salman, what would you have given for a few hours of undisturbed peace that didn’t cost you any time?”

Now Pax was feeling a little foolish, especially when another thought occurred to him. “Could I activate this thing and sleep? That would gain me a huge chunk of extra time every day to train and practice.”

“Now you’re thinking.” Incedis smiled and shook a finger at Pax. “What are the considerations you need to test to make that work?”

Pax took a moment to think it through. “The two I can think of are how much mana it would drain while I sleep and what happens when I move during my sleep. Then there is the mana cost. I can’t wake up in the morning drained. We are out in the Wilds, and need to keep ourselves at half mana for emergencies. And I probably move a lot when I sleep. A little movement might be fine, but it would increase the mana cost. And if I did something like roll over, I might break the effect and not even notice.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“And then you’d wake up with the rest of us as usual, or perhaps a little early if you squeezed in a few hours of sleep before you broke the effect.” Incedis looked thoughtful now, his mind obviously considering various applications.

“The same thing would affect trying to study, too.” Pax tried to visualize the process. “I wouldn’t be able to turn pages in a book or move my head much. Though it didn’t seem to have an initial casting cost, so maybe I could turn it off and on between pages?”

“Definitely something to consider. What about practicing your spells? Is it just movement that breaks the effect? What about mana usage? I’m sure you’re skilled enough to hold still while you cast a spell, right?”

Pax’s excitement grew as he looked down at the simple wand. “I don’t know. I’ll have to try that next, because then it might actually work during battle if I held still and sent off a barrage of spells in little more than a second or two.”

Incedis shrugged with a skeptical look. “Considering that it’s called the Wand of Sanctuary and not the Wand of Spell Barrage, that’s unlikely to work. But you do a lot of your mana work inside your body, so leveling up your internal mana skills might still work even if you can’t cast actual spells.”

Now Pax had an excited grin that matched Incedis’

“I’ll test the spells first, since that would be the biggest benefit to me.” Without waiting for permission, Pax focused on the wand and activated it again. He was careful to hold still.

A blanket of subtle power seemed to settle over him, muffling sound in a way he hadn’t noticed the first time. Incedis’ movements slowed way down again. Carefully, Pax gathered up some light mana and prepared to cast his Ghostlight Illumination, figuring it was the least disruptive spell to try indoors with everyone else in bed.

To his excitement, he gathered his internal mana without trouble. Incedis had returned to the comical state of freezing mid motion while the draw of mana into the wand didn’t increase. Pax focused on a chair across from him. With a practiced flick of his mana, he marked it with his spell.

Or tried to.

The instant his mana tried to leave the confines of his body, the wand sucked in a matching surge. An instant later, the world around him tore free from the slowing effect. Only once the world was moving at its normal pace again did the spell land successfully.

Incedis sighed. “Going by your expression, I’m going to assume I was right. You can’t cast spells while you have the wand activated?”

Pax shook his head glumly but tried to force some cheer into his tone. “But I can definitely manipulate mana internally without breaking the effect. So, I can probably level up my mana skills. And it should still let me study as much as I want. Yay!” Sarcasm dripped from the last word. Yes, the artifact was very useful, but why couldn’t it work for fighting instead of bookwork?

“Ah, the expectations of youth,” Incedis snorted. “I think, in the future, you’ll come to value extra hours of sleep and pausing life to contemplate and study whenever you like.”

Pax nodded, knowing he was being a little unreasonable instead of grateful for the amazing abilities of his wand.

“So, here’s your assignment for tonight,” Incedis stood and brushed off his hands. “Pull out your light manual and use the wand to study as much as you can stay awake for. Then, once you head to bed, get comfortable, activate the wand again, and try not to move as you sleep. Got it?”

“Wait, what? You’re just going to leave me here and go to bed?”

“Well, there’s no need for both of us to lose sleep, is there? Besides, you’re the one with the wand that’ll give you extra time to sleep.” Incedis gave him a smug smile and walked toward the boys’ room before looking over his shoulder. “And since you’re the last one coming to bed, I’m sure you won’t mind if I move your cot to the spot in front of the door, right?”

Pax rolled his eyes and didn’t answer, knowing he had little choice in the matter. As silence fell over the living room area, Pax pulled out his box of books and student materials. He’d built a false bottom into it, as a last measure against someone with an inventory breaking skill getting hold of it.

Feeling weary again, he removed all his books and papers and piled them on the couch next to himself. He and Tyrodon had never been able to design a working model of a locking notebook, and had come up with this instead.

They’d glued a perfectly cut piece of soft black material to the bottom of the inventory box. Pax reached in and pulled up small sections on two opposite corners that they hadn’t tacked down, revealing a small hole in the wood of each corner.

He grabbed small wire hooks from the mess of items in his box of writing supplies and inserted them into two holes. Pulling upward carefully, the false bottom came loose with a puff of air, revealing his light manual.

Pax gave the apparatus a pleased smile. It worked perfectly and gave him an extra sense of security. It would be hard for anyone to find the sliver of a hidden compartment without knowing to look for it.

When he held the manual in his hands again, Pax had to admit Incedis was right about this, too. He should have been spending a lot more time studying and advancing with it than he had.

For a moment, Pax considered pulling out Fenix’s crystal so the old mage could give him some guidance. But then he imagined how Fenix would react if Pax asked for help without doing any work on his own.

Yeah. Nope. He’d put in a little time on his own first.

Pax laid his hands on the book and went through the now familiar requirements to open it and unlock the first few sections. He remembered how difficult it had been for him that first time, straining to force his light mana into the small sunbeam symbol stamped on the front. Then he’d worked so hard to fill the tree at the end of the first section and fought many times before being able to pass the test of combining different elements at the end of the second.

With how quickly he managed them all now, his enthusiasm for his late-night work returned. Section 3, titled Secondary Elements, had focused almost exclusively on a light mage’s own advancement. If he could get the fourth section open, there was a good chance it would give him clues on helping others with their mana development.

Pax quickly flipped to the end of the third section and the testing page he hadn’t devoted nearly enough time to cracking. He’d mostly just tried to throw various combinations of mana at it, with no real understanding of the purpose. Now he laid open the book, looked down at it, and activated his Wand of Sanctuary.

As long as he didn’t move, he had all the time in the world to study the page before him and think of new ideas.