Chapter 19 — Not Seen as a Wound

I awoke feeling like a million bucks. Somehow Fren’s healing always made me smell like a spring meadow. Literally. Even my breath was fantastic. My head felt clearer than it had in weeks, or realistically since the last time Fren had healed me. If it didn’t take a lot of energy out of him—energy that was hard for him to recover— I would have slept every night this way.

Sometime in the night I’d rolled off my pillow and my face had been caressed by new roots grown from the ground. I just knew I had big red lines across my face despite how comfortable the felt, roots were not a pillow.

I stood slowly, rubbing my eyes and daring a glance towards Lana. She looked at peace like a child. I grinned, knowing this night might significantly help her resilience and path forward as she tried to reclaim her life. I felt a warmth rise in my chest, I hadn’t imagined the night before.

She had fought through the kind of thing that would cripple others and trusted Fren and I after. That was more attractive than anything else I could imagine. I watched her breath a few clearly content breaths. When I glanced up, I saw Fren’s tree had an eye upon it which winked at me. I shook my head but couldn’t get the grin off my face. Forget speaking, Fren would know from my pheromones more than I did about what I was feeling.

I stepped free of the glen, stretching quietly while letting Lana rest. She’d had an eventual day learning about magic but had handled it remarkably well. I kept worrying the next moment would be the one that broke her, that drove her to leave, but perhaps she was made of tougher stuff.

I ran a hand over my head, knowing what I would find, the bandage. I pulled it free fully confident I would no longer need it. The wound was gone, the scar would be a faint, barely perceptible line, basically the maximum perfect healing that the human body could imbue upon a wound, further fostered by magic under Fren’s direction. As I moved, I felt a pain in my chest which was very strange. I pulled up my shirt and looked down. The mark from my dream the night before was still there. It was improved—significantly so­—but it remained. If Fren had known why, he would have said something or woken me with his concerns. The fact that he hadn’t suggested it was hidden from his powers somehow… or worse, not seen as a wound.

I shivered.

Both were bad news for me, but there was nothing for it. It was healing, it hurt less, and I was home. I was safe.

Stepping out of the glen, I greedily stooped and picked up the literal power lying freely on the ground contained in the four monster cores. They would help me prepare for whatever might come in the near future.

There were spells, developed eons before I lived, that applied simple mathematics upon a wizard’s abilities. They were complex and I didn’t always have the time to use them. My prototype glasses used a modified version. Right now, with Lana sleeping, the world still, and a busy day ahead of me cleaning the shop and finding whatever had murdered Phillis. I decided I had the time to absorb these cores properly and to assess my abilities.

I was worried about the attack at the Sugar Loaf Inn, and now the attack by the pixies in my shop. Together they might indicate something more sinister afoot than simple coincidence. I let out a sigh, I might not ever know but I planned to prepare either way.

Kate would be in soon when the sun was fully up. I was supposed to be out of town, so she would be coming to opening the shop today. My senses, both magical and physical, let me know that I still had about an hour until the sun rose and that was roughly when she would arrive. I sat back down on the wooden floor amidst the ritual circles I’d set in the ground; I would have more than enough time to finish before she arrived.

I sat in the lotus position, calming my mind, an act that came much easier given Fren had healed the parts of my brain that were injured the night before. Probably nothing that would have been permanent in nature, but swelling, and feeling like I’d received a concussion for a few days from overdrawing on my mana was not something I wanted. I thanked my lucky stars that I had Fren and that I wouldn’t have to tough it out for a few days like I would have in the past, even if he was a barely passable wingman half the time.

My power ebbed and flowed. I felt it drawing into me from the wood of the building, the earth below, and the air around. Like priming a pump, a part of my core started pulling more power into it beyond my normal capacity increasing my hold of and reserves of mana. The rising swell of power was eager to be used.

I loved the feel of magic.

It heightened my senses, which was wonderful in a calming state like this, in a place where I could do more complex work. In a battle or fight like the night before it could make the horrors more present and my emotions more volatile as the powers fed into them. That was one of the many reasons why you didn’t try to create new spells on the fly, you were far more likely to mess up or do the enemies work for them by taking yourself out.

Here, in my sanctuary and guiding wards was the place where I could assume a state for creation. I could be completely calm, regulate my thoughts, focus my mind purely on my craft and hold emotions at bay while developing my spells and reinforcing my abilities. This state of mind or place of being with my magic was central to a wizard’s ability to control their gifts and not be driven by them. True masters could do it in even the thick of battle. I was far from that level of clarity and ability, but some day it would be mine.

Clair had made me practice for hours simply holding my power, not letting it overfill me, not letting it lash out in uncontrolled force with the desire to be used. I’d ruined more than one structure on her property due to failing in that regard.

I crafted the components of the spell I wanted. Focusing on creating lines of magic to supplement and utilize the runes on the floor. Strands of fine green and fiery red composed most of the construct. But a little white light, a black strand of shadow, and even the miasmatic force of death which showed as a sickly green and purple circled into the spell. Complex spells required a little bit of everything, and they were the reason most practitioners were warlocks rather than wizards.

A warlock, by the tribunal’s definition, was someone with only a single affinity to a power or if they had more, they were too weak to pass the wizard tests and thus had more restrictions on the use of their powers. They could be strong, but they couldn’t generally cast spells, at least not complicated ones like this. They were one trick ponies tied to a single element and since they were commonly from nonmagical families they generally went untrained and abused their powers. The strikers, or the tribunals task force hunted them down. Those with death affinities were the reasons we had so many rules about how death magic could be used and why so many cultures had fairy tells, folk stories, and myths about the dead rising.

My affinities lay more with earth and fire, and like any wizard I had to practice, study and work to develop each. I had the power to attempt most spells, but each took trial and error to adjust the spell to work for my own affinities. Some came more easily; others might possibly always be out of my reach. To be a wizard, to be a member of the general Tribunal, I had had to demonstrate some ability with dozens of core types of mana and show I could craft a number of various difficult spells with the correct desired outcome. Yes, death magic was banned but only with death-based or focused spells and spell crafting.

Everything was balanced—life itself was paired to death, and both were essential to complex spells like the one I now crafted.

The outer ring laid out in the floor, one made of cold iron, stopped my building power from escaping and running havoc on the electrical components through the neighborhood and my shop. I had painstakingly altered it with runes and inlaid copper to allow for energy to be pulled inward to help empower and craft spells, but to lock that energy inside like a one-way sieve. The artificery was designed with that in mind. I’d had to do a lot of extra work on this circle for several reasons and that had been the first. The second was that people and things could move around on the upper floor which would break the circle and make it useless or dissipate any energy I had collected. That would have been very detrimental to my shop and the neighborhood if it happened at the wrong time.

To fix that, I’d created a matching circle on the ceiling to ‘seal’ this circle between those two points. Like a contained cylinder which was more controllable and less likely to be disrupted as it only existed in the basement. It had been a pain to get right. Fren and I had had to work for months to test and refine it. On the lower ‘true’ circle I’d laid out runes, inscribing them with power to make them functional. I’d had to etch the iron, then fill the runes with silver as it was one of the few metals that could hold a ‘magical’ charge, then add copper to pull energy in. The circle was probably the most expensive thing I had in the shop, including my jeep outside. That didn’t even take into account how expensive it had been to craft.

Despite that, it had been necessary and very worth it. The crazy thing was that on the scales of crafting true magical items this was simple, cheap even. Sure, I wanted to recraft a wizard’s staff, my last having been destroyed by a spell I’d forged. I also needed to develop defensive clothes, magical weapons, shield bracelets, wands, rings, and rune imbued stones. But cost, time, and effort were significant limiting factors.

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Once the spell was laid out and the circle was increasing the magical gradient towards me and my core, I mentally double checked all the spells components, my mind slipping down the filaments of power like a spider checking over and sensing movement in its web. Once satisfied I willed the spell to feed itself on the energy coming into the circle and directly from my own core which was filled to capacity.

The room lit with color. The light was skewed in hews of green and red due to my increased affinity for those types of energy, but other areas which required me to use other strands of power radiated different light. From the pristine white of light mana, to a strange type of negative light that used to hurt my eyes when I saw it. It was like a line in the air devoid of anything sucking in light like a black hole, that segment was made of annihilation mana.

Once it was primmed, I raised the first orb in my hand, and pulled on the energy within until I was on the brink of absorbing it, then I allowed the spell to trigger. Information became known to me. It was different for everyone, their minds developing their own way of providing context to the information that the spell gathered through external sources and tried to relay to the senses. Mine had always been like text written before my mind’s eye, text that overlaid whatever my vision was seeing which forced itself into the forefront of my attention.

Spell based identification activated:

Mana core: Identified: ‘Rot Pixie’ Monster Core

Quality: 1st tier

Power value: Weak

Inherent power affinity: Body

Special Use: None

Other properties: May enhance blight, rot, or decay workings.

The information was generally what I had expected, but I still liked to check. My glasses had worked better than I thought, though they hadn’t gotten everything. I’d never seen a core with a special use, but I’d been trained on what they would allow. A special-use core would give an additional benefit or power if used solely for that effect. The first line, Quality 1st tier, basically meant that these creatures ‘monster cores’, the literal place they harvested mana and magic to imbue their bodies was rubbish. One of the cores Clair had given me once had been a 2nd tier. Still weak in power value, but it had provided me with even more progress after I used it.

Exceptionally strong creatures had a much harder time crossing over into our world from the Fae, which was a plain of existence rich with magic and dangers. While it sucked for my power growth had probably saved mankind a million times over the centuries, still it had crept into our legends like Avalon or Yggdrasil, places of magic, mystery and connection of worlds.

The power value was simple, my spell revealed how much power was contained in the core. I’d never seen any with a higher power level but hoped I would one day find one. As it was, I was already lucky due to Fren. He captured enemies that I wouldn’t have had any idea existed who surveyed my wards and protective enchantments on the building. Other wizards wouldn’t have that benefit and would have to create ‘traps’ to tempt weak creatures into a location where they could be dispatched more actively. I essentially got free advancement help from him.

I contemplated that for a moment.

I’d read books about magical dungeons leading people in to feed off their souls or death energy and it wasn’t too far off from some wizards defensive towers.

With Lana’s comments last night about wizards being energy vampires… I was beginning to see myself and wizards in general, in a new light. Are we the bad guys? I thought, then dismissed it immediately. I’d seen truly evil and heinous creatures. One was literally killing people in my city.

I’d saved some time with my home defenses because of Fren and his strength. Instead I’d been able to focus on crafting wards to protect my shop and home while running a business out of it. Unfortunately, since I’d been holding the door open, the pixies had been ‘invited’ past many of those same defenses. It was one of the downsides of having my home and shop in the same location. The threshold was weak, and I had to allow ‘hostile’ forces in under certain circumstances.

It had to be that way so I could allow in store patrons, police, possible human enemies, and anyone that might have a minor magical gift. My wards had significant flaws to allow that. The defenses were weak unless I actively beefed them up for a time. It was the only way I could construct them and still have people feel comfortable inside the shop or not risk getting hurt. Fren remedied much of that weakness. He was like an external scout with his senses and could warn me of dangers so I could respond in time. Theoretically. He was also tough and could cover for me while I readied spells.

Still, what I had developed repelled direct magic that was not mine or Fren’s within the shop. It would force beings who entered beside myself or Fren to lose access to a portion of their power. Their ‘cores’ would also have to actively fight to pull mana in while inside. That would limit any other creatures’ magic power by some measure. For creatures like the pixies, it would basically be a death sentence if they directly broke a window and entered, their lifegiving mana would be halted to the extent they would die in moments.

Looking at the monster core in my hand, I considered the next line of text provided to me. The ‘inherent power affinity’ meant that if I put these stones into ‘body’ I would gain a little more energy from them than in any other use. It made sense, the pixies could fly, a physically demanding task, and they were insanely strong for their size as well as resilient to external physical forces despite how effective my kick and rock spells had been at taking them out.

I thought through my options. Weighing the benefits to increasing my power, fortitude, or body attributes. The energy of the first pixie core was primed and eagerly awaiting my decision, I decided to place it into my ‘body’ attribute so I could get the most out of it. It would help with spell feedback as my brain would be more resilient, and against physical damage. It would make my body stronger, my senses keener, and my ability to heal and survive better.

Once I chose, the power flooded my body in a wave drawn in by the spell, making it so very little of the power could escape.

I closed my eyes, reveling in the flood of incredible vitality. I quickly picked up the second stone. It was identical to the first, they all likely would be, not offering any higher power value or tier of core. The ‘Other’ properties were the same, each a ‘Rot Pixie core’ that could be used in rot and decay workings. Thankfully the energy that was removed from the core and added to mine didn’t remain tied to rot. It was purified, but the idea of a fae creature tied to rot made me hate the creatures even more. I had no need for the ‘other’ properties and thus wouldn’t save these cores for any of my items or crafting.

I ended up putting two into my body attribute and two into fortitude. I already had so much inherent power in my attacks that I generally overused mana, and I didn’t have a lot to spare. My shields could stop bullets with ease, but I would tire out in moments. I could probably stop a cement truck traveling at highway speeds if it crashed into it. Clair on the other hand could hold a weak shield that would slow bullets to the point they were no longer an issue and hold the spell for an hour while using others, but larger attacks might get through. Head-to-head my shield would be stronger than hers for brief moments. Clair was a master wizard, she had remedies to that weakness, she was an experienced wizard.

The same was true for attacks—that was my one trump card—my power could overwhelm most creatures but if I used my powerful and expensive attacks at the wrong time, I would be incapacitated and dead to some simple creature like the pixies from the night before. I was the definition of a glass cannon, and I didn’t like that.

Once all four were used, I activated the best part of the spell. The ‘webs’ of power folded inward, resting on my soul, body connection and my own core. Instead of evaluating an external source, the spell now assessed me. Information flooded my mind.

Spell based identification activated:

Mana Core: Identified: Human Mage

Quality: 1st tier

Power value: Strong

Inherent power affinity: All

Power: Rank Three 65/100

Fortitude: Rank Two 83/100

Body: Rank Two 95/100

I grinned at seeing what I referred to as my stats. Older wizards called them anything from divine rank, astral affinity, cultivation levels, or even soul powers. They liked to bicker and argue about who’s definition was right—or so Clair had told me. I preferred cultivation and generally referred to it under those terms. I didn’t care so much about the name but knowing my power was wonderful. The recently used cores had helped significantly. Strangely my ‘Power’ rank had been at a three for as long as I could remember. Even Clair had been surprised but figured that was why I stood out to her and perhaps it was due to my inherent ‘power value’ being strong. Clair had never told me her own and had told me never to share my details with anyone else.

I was curious if I could push this spell further. The power that assessed my core didn’t reveal as much as it did on others. I didn’t know if that was because I was alive… or if it was some limitation of the spell in the first place. I would have loved to know if my core had any special use properties… but that would only be useful for someone else, if they could harness my core. That had never come up in training.

I shook my head to dispel the thought. I’d experienced my ‘fortitude’ and ‘Body’ attributes each rank up once with training, meditation and growing from the core’s I’d gathered on my own and the few Clair had given me. Over time each category would increase slowly with simple training, but cores jumped the process forward.

The last time I remembered looking at my ‘Body attribute’ It had been 76 so the three I’d used from Pixies over the past few days had advanced me months of my own practice and training. I grinned at that. Body took physical activity to increase or even more difficult tasks like recovering from poisons, sicknesses and wounds. Eating healthy as well as meditating while focused on my body could also assist, but it progressed along at a glacial pace. Having monster cores jump forward that process was an amazing boon and would let me focus on working on the other areas I enjoyed more.

These cores had had more affinity for ‘body’ and gave me more growth in that category than they would have another. Each tier was more difficult to progress through, training and refining techniques each more important. I had no idea what high-level wizard’s powers would look like. They guarded those secrets carefully and even Clair had never told me her cultivation levels. Still, anyone could die from the right attack or from being unlucky in a battle. Tiers and power didn’t mean everything, but they did help.

Done, I opened my eyes to find Lana watching with Fren standing on the floor beside her whispering information in her ear while I had been working.