Chapter 32

The next few days passed in fits and starts, ranging out and hunting creatures, getting more practice using my new staff to amplify and direct my powers. I figured out a way to use it like a cutting torch, burning through trees with a quick slice. Channeling fire into the staff the way I’d use my flame-wreathed fist resulting in a big blast of fire on whatever I hit with the head, or I could slam the base into the ground to release it in a big circular explosion. Even without channeling the spell directly through it, I found I could conjure firebolts into more specialized shapes with ease, spitting darts of flame or hurling blazing discs with just a little bit of attention and energy. I even figured out how to stop my attacks from setting things on fire; I just pulled the flames inward as it passed, returning that energy back into the attack itself. It didn’t make much of a difference as far as damage, but it was nice not having to worry about starting another accidental wildfire.

Accidental, anyway. I burned clear a pretty big patch an hour or so away from the town, for practice. Meditating inside of a firestorm felt nice, okay? It was training for my Fire Manipulation, and gave me some okay EXP from anything that couldn’t get out fast enough.

More importantly, it taught me to see my wildfires as a weapon rather than just an environmental effect. I created a large circle of flames around an area, and then willed it inward, managing to set a whole chunk of the forest aflame in a handful of seconds. This, however, introduced me to the next oddity about magic; a topic I was coming to learn had quite a few of these ‘oddities’ to it. Certain shapes, even accidentally formed, seemed to have power. I tried sketching out a few of the strange runes that had appeared on my staff, even going so far as to trade for a couple of leather-bound notebooks and something surprisingly closely resembling a graphite pencil.

A few of the runes, when drawn, would cause the page to burst into flames without warning, so I figured those were probably related to Fire itself. I figured out that if I watched my energy very carefully I could prevent the runes from becoming fueled, and they’d remain as inert markings on a page. Another one gave the paper the ability to self-repair, knitting together little tears and burns, but it wasn’t at all effective if the piece was actually missing; the ragged edge would become smooth, but it wouldn’t regrow the lost paper. Another rune turned the page hard but brittle, the paper becoming almost like glass, and snapped off when I tried to turn the page.

It was about this point I started scratching out symbols on chunks of bark, trying them out before committing them to my expensive paper. It was okay to fuck around and find out, as long as you wrote it down afterward; that’s what makes it science. I enthusiastically applied my scientific principles for most of a day afterward, trying to combine the runes in different ways and shapes, finding that they often had leading or trailing tails that seemed to fit with others like puzzle pieces. Most of the combinations did nothing, whatever innate power they had independently fizzling out when improperly matched. I discovered one pair that seemed responsible for increased durability without also making it fragile as glass; to my surprise, when I circled it for emphasis, the rest of the page lost the reinforcing quality, but the piece within the circle seemed even further reinforced; the weight of paper, but the rigidity and strength of a quarter, and about the same size. Encircling other runes seemed to have the same effect; the fire runes would only burn to the edge of the circle, the auto-repair runes would only knit holes within. I found the circles only really worked if they were properly circular, with uneven edges tending to ‘break’ the effect or misdirect it. Squares would fail almost immediately at the corners, I learned, unless the square was surrounded by a circle touching all four corners. I tried different combinations of shapes, discovering that it was important for the circles to be ‘balanced’; I couldn’t have a square in one corner and a triangle in the other, or else it would destabilize and break the circle. And the piece of bark I’d drawn it on.

Some things didn’t play well with others; durability and flame, for example, had a tendency to crumble, and putting two or more of the fire-related runes connecting together tended to burn unevenly through the substrate. On the other hand, a daisy chain of fire and self-repair runes around the inside of a circle led to the page burning without seeming to actually lose any mass; it only shed light and heat like a candle, but there were definitely possibilities.

My next step was using my smithing to extrude an ingot into wire – a process that had no right to be possible with only basic smithing tools, but damn magic is a powerful aid – and shape the wire into shapes approximating the runes. While my artistry definitely wasn’t quite up to the task, enthusiasm and persistence made up the gap. Durability and self-repair runes seemed to work great, and when I carefully heated and embedded a durability rune into a large chunk of bark, it became as durable as a shield; what had been flimsy and brittle now felt as hard as iron, and even stood up to multiple strikes of my hammer before breaking apart.

Suddenly, I was one of the most popular guys around. In exchange for borrowing a magic item for a few hours so I could copy down the runes, I was reinforcing items, turning mundane armor into magical. Sure, it was nothing incredible or super powerful, but not having to sharpen your sword twice a day after battling was a quality of life improvement that I couldn’t craft enough of. It turns out, there are even several different runes for weapons; some making them sharp, or heavy, or fast, or in one case extremely conductive; the owner let me keep it and traded for another blade; he was tired of accidentally burning his hands if he left the blade too close to a source of heat, and had been struck by lightning once during a storm. That sword had a happy new home as the backup weapon for a very enthusiastic lightning mage who seemed to mirror the chaotic energy of a storm, and couldn’t seem to stand still at all.

The ones that kept coming back, however, and discomfited me the most were the ones asking me to teach them how to fight. Only a few of them could even use magic, most of them warriors or rogues of various stripes, and it took me days of chasing them off with apologies and claims that I couldn’t help them before I realized what they were really looking for. Strength. These were people who wanted some trick, some secret to becoming powerful without having to risk their lives. At first, the knowledge that there was no secret to it dissuaded a few; I would show them the scars that still wrapped my arms and throat, and many of them would become disillusioned and leave. A few, however, kept coming back.

Strangely enough, among them was Lyrella.

She would never approach me directly, never speak to me personally, but I caught her hovering nearby, in quiet conversation with someone else near enough to hear me speak, or helping repair someone’s tent in the next plot over.

“The first obstacle I had to overcome was pain,” I told a young, scared-looking man, his partner a step behind. “Every cut, every strike will hurt you. That pain will never go away. I’m strong enough now that I can kick a damn tree in half, but getting stabbed still hurts like hell; you just get used to it. The next obstacle was fear of dying.” I paused, considering how to word my next statement; I didn’t want to tell the circumstances of my specific introduction too much. “But the world keeps getting stronger. Have you noticed the animals becoming more aggressive, more numerous? It’s important to travel in groups and keep fighting; use your skills to balance each other. Create openings for the other to exploit. If you fight smart and recognize that you have to fight, you can overcome your fear of dying. It’ll never go away, but…” I shook my head. “But there is no other option. It’s either risk death, or die anyway.”

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The two men nodded at me, the one behind with a little more certainty.

The next occurrence was more concerning. I had been commissioned to make a lot of small metal bracelets in varying sizes; it didn’t take much time or effort and kept my hands occupied while I talked to people, and I often traded them for things that helped me out; in one case, I learned how to make the most of the space within my tutorial sash, such as the knowledge that the space was a cube about five feet on each side and I could put anything in it, regardless of weight. My blacksmithing satchel was more limited in what I could put in it, but far more spacious than even that, capable of fitting an entire blacksmith’s workshop of items within it. The sash I’d picked up from the tower could only hold small items of a few different varieties at once, but it could hold several of each; one of the spaces within it now held a feasts’ worth of food, aided by the discovery that perishable items would stay fresh in the appropriate kind of spatial container. I learned there were many different kinds of spatial containers specialized to various purposes; one man had a bracelet of charms that could turn into an armory’s worth of weapons and armor, jingling and jangling as he walked by on his daily patrols.

When I found out what the bracelets were being used for, I became less certain of their sanity, however.

One of my regular visitors was favoring his right arm, keeping his robe tucked over it and clumsily using his left for eating and drinking. When I finally pressed him about his injury, he had drawn back the cloth, to proudly show me a circular scar that enwrapped his forearm; it matched the twisted shape of the bracelet that hung around his wrist, a knotted rope-like burn that resembled the ones that twisted around my arms and torso. When he confessed that he was trying to ‘be like me’, enduring pain by intentionally scarring himself, I turned him out and closed up shop, immediately leaving into the forest to get some space to think.

I wasn’t expecting to hear a voice from the other side of the tree, much less that it would be Cenna.

“Do you see the danger in that kind of talk, David?” Her voice was soft, and if I’d been less attentive I might’ve missed it. “You’ve got quite a following. Lyrella’s convinced you want to steal the village from her; that you’re starting a cult. I’ve told her it isn’t true, but she doesn’t seem to believe me much. She’s started to treat me with suspicion, too.”

I leaned aside, peering around the tree. The rogue leaned against the bark, her leather armor nearly blending into the coarse bark. “What are you doing here?”

“Finding out the truth. Do you want to take over the village?”

I shook my head quickly, repelled by the thought. “Not a chance. Be responsible for that many people? Be tied down like that? Not a chance,” I repeated.

“Lyrella’s falling behind. She’s only reached level sixteen since you arrived. She’s so busy patrolling the village and spying on you that she’s entirely neglecting her own training. Her guards, too.”

“You’re not one of them?”

“No. I’ve been going out hunting every day. I’ve… passed her up.” Her voice became small. “I… passed her up several days ago, actually.”

I nodded at her, slowly. “She is going to get them killed. If she wants to be the strongest person around and is still too weak to fight, she’ll get them all killed. You know it.”

“ The old world is dead, ” she answered, her tone only half-sarcastic. “Yeah. I know. You’ve told her. You’ve told half the village at this point, even if not in so many words.”

I settled back down, staring out at the forest. “I’m level twenty four,” I admitted to her, with a sigh. “Close to twenty five, I’m pretty sure. Was hoping to reach it before I set out again, to start taking down those Guardians.”

She whistled, softly. “ Twenty four? That’s… incredible. I’ve only reached nineteen yesterday, and I thought I was working hard. How do you manage it?”

“Never stop pushing. Even when I’m talking, when I’m sitting around; if I’m not fighting, I’m thinking about fighting, preparing for it, making more tools and practicing my magic. Actually, the blacksmithing has been a great source of experience, and it’s given me a lot of time to figure out where I’ve been going wrong, and what I can do to fix it.”

“I need you to help me make Lyrella become stronger.”

The demand came out of the blue, her tone hardening; it was clear it had been on her mind, and she’d been dancing around it. Perhaps making up her mind.

“Why should I?” I asked her, softly. “Her weakness isn’t my problem.”

“I love her,” Cenna murmured, “I can’t watch her waste away like this. She’s losing her mind; she can’t stand being weak, but her fear is holding her back. I need your help.” She paused. “And you… Can’t defeat the Guardians alone. You will need help. Our help. That’s my offer.”