The Caverns, Near the Town of Eldor. Troug, 11th.

Olea Munroe

So, mana induced comas are a thing.

I had awakened in the presence of my worried little entourage covered in a new blanket and suffering the scrutiny of my fallow captives.

Saying they had been worried about me was a bit of an understatement. They had apparently been beside themselves after calling the guard to report my sudden blackout. No one liked calling the guards as it was normally an effective way to skip meals and secure a little rougher treatment if they felt you were wasting their time.

It was a good thing then that I was in a right proper mana-induced coma. I swear if my story ever finds its way into a book, they will surely title it something like ‘Confused Chronicles of Coma-Girl.’ Yeah, probably not. Even the make-believe title sounds flaky.

It had been a day since then and I had made a new discovery, slavery. Yeah, nothing new there, people had been doing in on earth for over eight centuries, they still were in many places; though there was less outrage somehow as if it being out of public eye made it less heinous.

My savior, the only elf I had met other than the one in the mirror, had given me some valuable information. She had also given me some more intelligence on my captors.

Andrea Avery was a local politician; it should have been obvious, I know. The slave, Matilda rather, informed me during the first visit of my new daily scheduled visits. A thing I had not really understood at first.

I had annoyed the lady of the house be getting sick, and Matilda had lied about the nature of my illness to cover up the fact that I knew far more magic than is normally permitted to be known among the general population of captives. It seems that my conjuration ability had not gone unnoticed by her, and only passed by unnoticed by the higher ups because of their seemingly innate disdain for elves, or anyone not of the human species.

I had been told that I would be seeing her every day until the end of Turning, I was still not quite sure what that term meant in the grand scheme of things, though the way she said it led me to think that it was an important thing in the wider world. It was also soon, as the time for the Turning in this season was set for the second twelve-day week of the second month of Spring with its counter being the middle of autumn. That would be the extent of my definitive knowledge.

And now it was time for another of those little meetings.

“Stand back, against the wall!” shouted the guard at the entrance to the cage, though we had no idea which wall to stand against as it was still a round cage we just backed away from his little door and gave him his ego boost.

Mallory, Mouse, Quinn, and Derek all stood together on the opposite side of the cage to me knowing that I was the intended object of scrutiny after yesterday’s meeting. They were at least less frightened today than yesterday, though they were failing to hide that in front of the guard. Mouse would win no awards for her fake-frightened face, not a one. I mean, she was nearly giggling behind the hand she had raised as if to shelter her face from some perceived threat; it was well-bad.

In walked Matilda, pulling the door closed behind her as the guard reset the small locking mechanism. The guard turned around and walked off, not bothering to ask whether the little slave was sure they would be fine.

I saw more than heard Matilda cast a few spells, incantations nearly silent in the noise of the cavern. The soft moans and small noises that cannot help but be propagated when this many bodies were present in one place. I knew one of the spells to be Detect Magic but the others I could not quite discern.

She was apparently a healer, with a small amount of offensive magic, magic only taught to her after her own enslavement several years earlier. Apparently, one needed to be able to serve multiple purposes when one worked for the esteemed Madame Avery.

“You seem to have recovered well,” she started as the guard walked away, “no lingering shadows or fraying can be seen anywhere in your aura. How do you feel?”

“Fine.” I said, not sure of the point in answering if she could just see everything.

“I ask you this as I wanted to be sure of your abilities being restored, it is always difficult to gauge the recovery of someone’s mana channels without their input, however unimportant it may seem.”

She pulled out a small bag then and began mixing several dry ingredients into a small flask of water, my medicine. I had been somewhat slow yesterday and had taken the tea down without asking about its contents and then been scolded by Malory for accepting something from one of them before the nurse mollified her with some use of elven charm.

Not a spell per se, but more like a kind-hearted smile, the kind you can just feel is genuine and packed with true emotions. It was the kind that showed all the emotions one would think a slave had suppressed for countless years being brought up from the darkness to show the benevolence of a kindly grandmother. A kindly grandmother with her own problems that showed you that smile knowing that her woes were not your woes and understood that anything less than a smile would ruin the façade she had established to make you feel better about the sorry state of the world.

Ok, enough rambling… I needed to stop that train of thought right there; memories and projecting could wait MUCH later.

“I am sure it is fine now; they are fine now. I am not sure what phrasing to use here…”

“That is fine, though I must say, given your heritage I suspected your grasp of the language to be less than ideal until you spoke with me yesterday.” she said while looking me over again, “Could you cast a few spells for me, the first of which will need to be Create Food.”

“Okay…” I replied, not entirely sure of what this exercise would show. Aside from my inability to make anything truly tasty.

I had spent nearly fifty mana when the healer told me that would be enough.

“And now, how is your mana and regeneration holding up?”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I cast my thoughts to the all-powerful status window and quickly found that my mana regeneration was only slightly lower than normal.

“Still getting almost two mana per minute.”

A look of slight disbelief flashed over her face before she asked, “Even with your mana at half? Your regeneration should be a little lower than that.”

“Naah, three quarters full on mana.”

“May I ask, how high are your mental attributes?”

“Is that not a rude thing to ask?” She was a healer, and I knew she was simply curious, but I could never fully get into the whole moving along smoothly thing that many people adopted to keep conversations going without a small derailment. Most people just said that my issue was technically nothing more than me being a bit of an ass. I would stick to the claim that I was just thorough, I had to ask the questions as they appeared in my mind, I just could not help myself.

“I only wish to ascertain the baseline of your current ability to further aid you in your recovery.” She said the last as if it was fully understood that the term was a joke and I was fine, which I was.

“Fine… I have sixteen Intelligence and eighteen Wisdom.”

“Oh, oh my… Yes, I can see why that would seem like nothing then.” She put her hand to the side of her face as she regarded me for several moments. “What spell were you casting when you suffered the blackout?”

“Conjure Elemental Spirit.”

“I find it strange that a thirty-mana spell would cause such severe drain.” She spoke.

“Oh no, it was sixty mana. I doubled down for a full power cast, even used blood and stuff.” I corrected her.

For some reason she just kind of zoned out then, staring at me as if pondering my very existence. Was it uncommon to invest so much in the spell, or did she just not know that was an option of the spell, either way I was starting to think that I should practice a little more in the department of limiting my answers in the future. These moments just made me feel awkward, I could see that even Mallory was shocked.

“You cast a fully imbued spell using blood as a catalyst? That could explain the problem then. How often do you use that spell, and how long has it been since you have cast the spells that are a prerequisite to that spell. I hope your answer is not something like you never casting the spell after learning it from your teacher.”

“Counting the time that I cast the conjuration skill that had me visiting you?”

“Yes.” She was the short reply.

“That was it.”

“Ok, so being that you have only cast the… wait. That was the only time you have ever used the spell, seriously?” Her voice rose ever so slightly as the calm she had been working to regain dropped.

“Yeah, first time.”

“Disregarding the fact that that would be impossible as your teacher would have had to guide you through the first cast to awaken the pathway in the first place, what about the prerequisites for the spell? You must have used those several times before?”

I had to check my list:

Piety - Rank 4

* Armor – Rank 2

* Command – Rank 3

* Conjure Elemental Spirit – Rank 4

* Create Food – Rank 2

* Create Water – Rank 3

* Cure Wounds – Rank 2

* Detect Aura – Rank 1

* Detect Magic – Rank 1

* Dispel Magic – Rank 3

* Protection from Evil – Rank 2

* Vigor – Rank 3

* Water Breath – Rank 2

* Water Walk – Rank 3

* Wind Walk – Rank 4

“I have cast Protection from Evil once. I have used Armor, Water Walk, Detect Magic, Detect Aura, Wind Walk, Vigor, Cure Wounds, and Create Water a few times each, with Create Food getting a lot more attention, though I cannot recall using the others such as Dispel Magic, Command, and maybe Water Breath though I might have used it once; I tend to suffer occasional bouts of unconsciousness.” I explained before shrugging. “Most of those are at Rank one though some have climbed the ladder so I could max out the conjuration spell and Wind Walk.”

Mallory was openly gawking behind Matilda with Quinn and Mouse both cycling between stares and head shakes while Derek was just looking on with a slightly dumbfounded look before he noticed me looking.

“That should not be… cannot be.” Spoke Matilda as if it were some ordained laws of the galaxy, really, I could understand the sentiment after the things I had learned in the past month or so.

“Would you like to see?” I asked concentrating on my status the way I would normally while also tickling my Soul Link skill ever so much. I had not used it before in any way whatsoever, but I felt that it could be possible after I had strengthened the bond with my Companion. I just had to do some mental gymnastics to assure that the link was only strong enough for a brief glimpse of what it could be if truly formed. There was no way I would let the skill fully take hold with a stranger; I was not getting stuck with anyone like this for the entirety of my life.

Matilda gasped in a small breath as I felt the thought become action and I knew she was now able to see my full status screen, if only temporarily. Now, I know this was a big jump in trust for someone I had only recently met, but something told me that for the moment I could trust the elf and besides, once I got out of here I would be doing so much more to improve those stats that anything she learned would be old news in a very short amount of time.

“Just what are you?”

“Rude… All that aside, knowing those little things right there, what were you thinking regarding this whole thing? It cannot possibly be acceptable for you to remain stuck here, and I wanted out.”

She spent a few moments gathering her thoughts, or her sanity, and then continued. She laid out her plans and ideas, as well as some sound advice. Several times during the discussion she would not-in-anyway casually glance at the silver anklets that she wore, especially whenever she was discussing the spells that I had, particularly Dispel Magic.

I may be slow, but I could notice the not-at-all subtle cues of please free me. I was assuming there was some silly rule in place to prevent her from being blatant about getting free of her master via some magical control. I would do what I could.

She told me that I needed to strengthen my mana conduits, the happy things that allowed my mana to flow through my body in an organized way that would avoid damaging my weak body, which is why I had been struck dumb in the first place.

It would seem that when learning a spell, your teacher would aid you in the activation of the spell through some form of connection established by the system at large to facilitate the process, which explains why me saying I had never cast the spell would have broken her brain for a few moments. Yeah, I tend to do that in conversation.

She advised me to use each spell I had, every single one in order of acquisition, until I had stopped feeling the discomfort or tickling sensation when casting the spell. The tickling sensation was apparently the early signs of my own mana channels being melted away like iron in an acid bath.

I offered to give her the helpful boon she did not ask for before she left but she declined the offer and said that she would be seeing me every day until I was due to be shipped off to some lord’s manor for a delightfully unpleasant stay.

She also took a moment to gather up several pieces of fungus, the food I had created earlier. It would seem Andrea Avery was too cheap to pay for the food her own guards would be eating. I did not complain overmuch, I was getting tired of potatoes that tasted like horseradish.

The very last thing she said to me before the guard could get closer to the call was that my spell Conjure Elemental Spirit had an extraordinarily long range and power and that there were several small monsters of immense variety residing in the waterways that we so often had access to.

At that point I was led to wonder at why a little voice in my head was chanting the lyrics, ‘Rising up to the challenge of our rival.’ I really needed to work on keeping my thoughts my own.

That also made me wonder where my companion was on the food delivery, I know I told him to pick up some actual food and stow it away while he worked on securing some measure of safety for my escape.