Darius rested awkwardly, huddled in a broken blanket while trying to keep the holes of the blanket closed. The bed was not as comfortable as he remembered, but still, Darius drifted to sleep, half awake, back to nightmares and back to salvation of reality from them. He saw blood on his hands despite washing them in the river. He saw dead neighbours arguing and bickering about pointless things in life. A life that had already left them. He sometimes found himself in odd corners of the cave eating apples and potatoes with worrying speed and, at some point, lying outside in the sun and trying to drink water at night to get rid of his dry thirst. Darius tried to redo the wound healing with medical paste, but half of it went on the ground. Needless to say, Darius was totally screwed.

There weren’t many options. Food was ending too early before Darius could hunt or scavenge anything. His body hurt more the more as he stayed awake. Delirium of fever had passed to the more mundane phase of feeling so sick that even the basic movements were difficult. After eating the last apple and looking over his items on the floor, Darius fixed his eyes on the magic book.

*Well, in all honesty I didn’t immediately become an alchemy god by opening the book. How about.. Yes, there is this other book on magic.*

In a sluggish crawling position, Darius knelt towards the book and collapsed on it without strength. After a while, he somehow managed to drag himself back under the blanket with another book without covers. The second half crumbling page had glimmering golden letters. He wondered why someone had wasted so much money on the ink for a while. The dedication text at the beginning of the book was marked not only in gold. Somehow the text seemed to be alive with lush gold, all the light dangling and gliding on the surface of it. Darius started reading it with the expectations and eerie feeling that he might sell his soul if he read further.

‘This book is dedicated to my peerless friend who sacrificed his whole career and life to study higher mathematics of magical equations. Refounding the ninth circle, the daring mastery of the gravitation magnified by a factor of five. Beautiful modular theorems of magic in multiple fields, I dare say not understood by anyone. Alas, my dear friend magus Vindel Percival Frost, the archmagister of the empire. I regret you had to leave us in the dark.

For the heights of magic and Leiden empire!

1. T.’

Maybe it was the loss of parents, perhaps it was the situation, but Darius teared a bit by the valour shown by the author to his friend. He reached his eye by reflex. With the back of his hand and took off the teardrop from the corner of his eye. After continuing reading, Darius noticed that it was exactly this book that he had the chance to glance at a few pages years ago. Still wondering why he didn’t see the golden letters before, his fingers started franticly turning the pages to the part where he had been interrupted.

*Finally, I might understand more of the practice that had kept me going in harder times in the village for two years.*

Darius had followed a few pieces of advises on meditation that were supposed to help something with magic, but he only remembered a few parts and nothing else.

After reading and figuring out the details for an hour, Darius knew that he had done partially correct things but not everything needed for meditation to succeed. The book introduced different particles that had something to do with meditation. The book mentioned that it would be good to have only certain types of particles and not all of them to form a better foundation for magic. The following pages were an introduction to the particle knowledge and magical tools to measure and use these particles, but further Darius read, he could not continue because words and content became almost unreadable. He knew how to read, but there weren’t enough explanations for each word used within the book. Darius did not know what particles were. There were supposed to be several main ones, many unknown variants, and mixed particles constituted magic.

Darius could understand the underlying general idea. A typical mage started with several main types of particles, and the struggle of mage was to hone their body through meditation to circulate these particles for years. The results, however, would depend on the individual, and it seemed that the body, mind, control, and something called apprehension had something to do with how it would go. Darius did not have the luxury to know much more about it, but for meditation, he could read a few pages that he could not read two years ago at the entrance hall of the witch’s house. Darius had succeeded in calming himself with the meditation, and sometimes it had felt that it had benefitted his mind and body, but he could not place the feeling to anything other he knew. The book explained what he had lacked: the knowledge of the control and targets and half of the meditation practice. It seemed that by doing it wrongly, the body would be harmed by different particles fighting or colliding, resulting in painful deaths in some cases. As Darius was alive, he assumed he had not done anything terribly wrong either. Though the hair back of his head rose and cold sweat dribbled on his forehead, Darius thought about what could have happened if something had gone wrong in two years. It was a clear first reminder of the dangers of practising magic.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

*Not that my life so far had been a cakewalk either with the village ruined, me dying here sick without food. Enough of this uselessness. This might be my only shot to stay alive at this point. I cannot move so well anymore, so the only thing I have left is half of the pot of water that will go bad in a few days and meditation and some dry herbs that I cannot use for anything.*

Darius glanced at the items scattered everywhere one last time, and he raised his shoulders to give several deep breaths to clear his mind. He had to focus despite the fever. Darius put his back on the rocky wall of the cave and slid down on the stick and hay bed. With slow reoccurring rhythmic breathing and thinking of symbols that Darius had read in the book, the meditation started to feel first time difficult. It felt tense, and there was an invisible wall or force that he had to go against while doing more rhythmical meditation. After a moment, Darius started shaking and sweating more, and shivers went over him. He felt something bad in his mouth and spit on the ground blood, and something black mixed in the blood. It made him almost lose focus, but somehow, Darius managed to regain it. Darius kept pushing, and his heart was running and drumming, and he could even hear the wind’s hollow echoes outside and the rustle of leaves carried within it.

Darius woke up. His face was full of dry blood and dark spots, almost like tar. Assumably, he had passed out in the middle of the meditation. The earlier meditation had been just lazy, but this was the real deal.

*Progress or death, I must continue.*

This time it was easier. The feeling of pressure was lesser, but his body was already exhausted and mind drifty at best. Sometimes Darius hit his face to stay focused and awake. Or he tried, but he almost tumbled down from the bed. Darius felt like he had a million hooks in his lungs while trying to breathe rhythmically, and when he pushed everything out, sometimes it felt like something else was being released too with the breathing. Darius could not put his head around this feeling. At first, it seemed that his condition kept worsening every hour. But after waking up several times, he could sense that strength of his body was returning in a very vague manner. It felt impossible since Darius had not eaten anything, and at the same time, it felt like the body had been harmed in every imaginable way. Still, the heart kept pumping, and Darius felt more awake than ever. Clear even, but he kept focus on the practice. Only the dimming of light told him that the third night was coming. Darius sipped the last gulps of water from the pot and continued meditation.

On the following day, he noticed how those signs that he had to memorize kept changing their shape on their own. It felt like something was planting them into his mind, but these symbols were not dead entities.

*Symbols seem alive, or are they only alive because I am a living being?*

Darius could not tell what the truth of the practice was. He planted each symbol in the arrangement of a large triangle, and when he was done, he folded the triangle open multiple times, repeating the symbols while meditating. The folding of this symbol triangle got slower and slower and more painful with every folding. When Darius had five folded triangles open, he vomited black blood on the ground and had to wait a while before continuing. Sixth fold, seventh fold, eight. Darius passed out again.

While waking up again, he felt like he had been repeatedly beaten and his flesh minced like meat. His throat was dryer than ever, like a piece of leather parchment scroll on the floor mixed with stone dust from the cave and lack of cleaning. His eyes hurt, and he felt like he had cried, but there were no tears, only dry blood. Darius drew a triangle on the floor's dust to reassure himself and continued meditating.

Darius passed out after each new folding of the symbol triangle was ready. Repeating and growing pain woke him up. Darius forced himself not to think of anything else than the symbols, almost fearing that they would somehow disappear if he spent any second on anything else. After the eleventh folding, he was getting desperate.

*How many would there be?*

Darius tried to check the book, but it did not mention how many times folding had to happen. He kept losing consciousness and waking up the next moment in an increasing manner. His clothes were in old blood, tar-like black substance, and maybe vomit if he would have had anything to eat. After the twelfth fold, Darius lost consciousness for a longer time, and it seemed that he had skipped a day entirely. The light was dimming once again when he woke up or tried, but he was just lying down in wrenching pain while desperately trying to continue meditation.

There was no memory or remembering of how Darius had managed to do it, but somehow, he woke up and could even rise from the bed. In his mind, Darius could see the thirteenth fold opening, and as a whole, the colour of the symbols had changed from golden to dark. No, dark was the wrong word. It felt like nothing or less where the symbols should have been.

“Fucking thirteen and not a fold before.” Darius sight in tired mockery.

Then he realized that he had been standing on the dry black sticky pool of smelly tar-like liquid on the floor, but he could not focus on it because he could move again. After opening and closing his hands, Darius watched his almost skeletal arms, but the wounds had almost fully healed, and his mind felt clear. The body felt stronger than in days despite lack of food and fever. After a hesitant start, Darius went outside to drink water. After slow drinking of cold water, he felt better than in days. Darius did not know how many days it had been. According to his vague memories and aching body, it had been almost too long. Darius continued feasting on grassy plants and clear water while lying on the ground in the moonlight.