Out in the dark of the overcast morning, through the rain and wet and loosened terrain, I trotted through. The earth sucked at my feet; the ground was unable to rid itself of the excess water. Instead, it ran off along the top while it turned to slurry beneath the short grass around New Moarn. I couldn’t see the river from here, the one I had ridden the raft down on, but I could only imagine it swelling from the runoff.
At least the soil hadn’t been bone dry; that would have been prime mudslide conditions.
Powering through the mud while it did its best to weigh me down, I made my way to the tree line and found a whole lot of trees.
You would think it would be easy to find, even if I couldn’t see it; I should be able to feel it, seek it out with magical senses even if my eyes failed me, but even magical senses seemed to rely on my senses stat. I had never wanted to raise my senses since they were already keener than a Humans, so I had never gone for increases, but here they were, drowned out by the storm. Skills didn’t care that I had sharper senses; they were skills.
It was embarrassing to fumble around at the edge of the tree line, but it only took me a few minutes of walking to find it and get out of the curtain of rain. The path was well sheltered from above, rain rolling off into the leaf litter that eagerly absorbed the remaining, leaving the forest floor blessedly un-mucky compared to the field.
It was from there, a quick jaunt up to the grove.
The grove was a surprise; the rain ran off, tracing over an invisible bubble-like dome of magic. It was layered, like a bud, each pulling off extra water until all that was left was a drizzle—enough to water her plants but not much else.
It wasn’t even hard to get in. The ‘front,’ for lack of a better word, had a lip of sorts above it, creating a kind of transparent doorway and letting the water roll off to either side.
I stepped through, the familiar welcoming pressure of nature coming close enough to feel on my skin, a welcoming hug from an old friend.
And old and slightly guilty friend.
“Sorry, sorry,” It projected, a sensation of thunder coming through in an apology comprised of blunt force.
“I accept your apology,” I told it, “It wasn’t intentional, not for us anyway. We called on you, not the other way around.”
It shifted around for a moment, all watery and liquid before it sent both a positive and a negative, accompanying it with, “Yesss. But harm.”
Its words were accompanied by images—wounded animals, burnt or broken. Foxes are limping, coyotes with lame legs, birds with broken wings hunkered down in their nests and on the ground, and rodents are dragging themselves across the ground. A cavalcade of wounded wildlife, each life horrific in its suffering.
It made me grit my teeth in a wince. A gentile touch was not something the genus loci understood.
“I’m fine,” I told it.
“Our Druid is hurt,” it said, the ideas not so much an argument but more a statement of things. It was more like gravity telling me down was down and less like it confessing to doing harm.
I knew Anna was hurt, but the way it said it made my skin itch. Between the visions of the animals and the emphasis on hurt, they were ominous. She was hurt, but not seriously. She had been moving and talking. She was injured but on the mend.
“Give her something nice,” I told it, “A gift. Something to help fix her up or a nice set of flowers. Something to lighten her mood or keep her focused on something else.”
It, of course, didn’t understand that.
The idea of a gift was foreign to the land. The closest thing it could understand was probably food. Animals gave one another food as gifts unless you were a bird, then it was random nicknacks.
Perhaps it would give her something shiny, like a glass bead.
I didn’t know, but the point of a gift was not only the gift itself but the intent and thought behind it.
Also, could you imagine? That would be one hell of a story. ‘Yeah, the collective intellect of the natural world was sorry it hit me with lighting, so it gave me this glass bead as a get-well-soon gift.’
It didn’t understand the concept of a gift, and it seemed to try to wrap its weird magical head around that while I got my instinct to stop being worried over Anna again. It kept crying its freakishly loud shrieks and forced me to pick it up and cradle it before it started to calm the hell down.
Do you know how hard it is to hold something that squirms that much? It's hard. Worse yet, it was all in my head, so I had to catch it with mental muscles, not actual muscles.
Anyway, I checked on the grove with a freaked-out hold on the animal within and the land confused.
It was wet but not drowned out. The soil sucked up everything that fell on it, and most was good with the world… At least for the plants. The birds hid in the trees as the cool morning shaped their heat, and the foxes… Well, the foxes weren’t outside. They were huddled near the fire, making funny little fox noises at one another while their cub wandered around, being curious.
“Hey,” I called out to them, getting their attention.
They looked confused like they didn’t know what they were in the middle of doing, the little one included.
“Don’t look at me like that, you little stinker. Get, get! I can’t have you pissing everywhere and eating all our food. Get!” I told them, voice raised to sound big and significant.
They were unmoved because they were clever little shits, and so I stepped up and called their bluff, quickly shooting forward and grabbing them.
It was far easier to grab a real fox—even two real foxes—but then, the hard part was keeping a firm enough hold over them while they tried to thrash their way out of it, and try that, they did.
They did not like being picked up, and while they knew instinctively that I couldn’t hurt them and didn’t maul my hands, that didn’t mean they didn’t spin like a greased gear in a windmill while screaming like a hog. They freaked out, their smooth fur rubbing fast enough to give me a minor rope burn, but I carried them to the door before laying them on the porch while they made sure one another was, indeed, still alive.
What a miracle.
I returned and picked up the food scraps they had managed to get into and delivered them to them while they yipped inside, calling to their pup. Their pup, for her part, was very obviously busy sniffing everything and only called back.
I snapped my fingers to get her attention and then led her outside with the lure of half-eaten meat before giving her a nibble and distributing the loot among the foxes who made angry noises at me for taking them out of the lovely, warm den.
I returned and checked for their notable musk. You couldn’t get the damn stuff out of whatever it got into, but luckily, the other doors were closed, and they couldn’t climb, leaving only the living area… And the bedroom.
Walking in, I found the room in disarray; everything felt like it had been moved. It was a mess, but a manmade mess. I spent time putting things back in order, moving the dresser, and straightening things out.
I also took a pillow that smelled like a fox and brought it outside to them. It wasn’t hard to find; it reeked more than the chamber pots.
It took a short time and some basic effort to clean up the cabin and quickly thin out the grass. Far harder was drying it out enough to offer to the foxes as bedding to keep them warm and dry, which made them dislike me less when I showed up at the mouth of their den under the deck and proffered the grass.
Anna could have just pulled the water out, but it took me at least half a glass to remove the excess water and slightly firm it up. It was subpar, but the foxes accepted it, along with the pillow, which they shredded for its feathers and dragged down to line their den.
I watched as the tiny fox kit played with a feather and left her to her fun. She was safe here.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Then, with the cottage cleaned up as well as I could without a dedicated cleaner, I headed into the study and did as I should.
I studied.
I didn’t just read but skipped through, trying to memorize enough bits to fill out the board; then, in a moment of realization, I took a loose sheet of paper and started copying bits. Not every grit, many lines were Magelin adding to the detail to break it up in his characteristic way. Instead, I took short snippets that were important. If I could make a copy like that, I could carry it with me.
It was, quite possibly, the simplest thing I could have done, but something I had stupidly not done because I was a moron.
Note-taking was so basic that it should have been my first go-to, but once I started, each bit became easier.
Doing that also allowed me to pick important bits, which allowed me to fill out the diagram faster.
I scribed, fingers getting ink on them as I pressed too hard with the quill, ink mixing with the powder from the slate pen as I focused and did my due diligence. Ink stained harshly; even after wiping it up, a stain remained on my skin in a discoloured blotch.
The elements and the Natural came easily, though I added Life and Death to the list as well. The new mana types were different and strange. They were less real; for all that they existed, they were less everpresent. Water was water, the air was air, the heat was hot, and the beast was wild and semi-intelligent. They were connected to things you could touch.
The Celestial elements were… Less touch, more sight only.
Solar or sun mana was light, was light, but there were dozens of ways you could use it because the light from the sun was a kind of special light. Lunar mana wasn’t related to the moon, but night, darkness mana, except that some uses of moon mana required the moon to be out and about. Stars were beyond confusing, more about divining than anything else. It also didn’t need to be about light, but simply ‘heavenly light,’ and included auroras, which was something I absolutely wrote down.
Holy was… Holy was just bullshit.
Comparing Holy to the other Celestial mana types was just stupid because it was more like arcane mana than any of its category.
> ‘Holy mana,’ Magelin wrote, ‘is total horseshit. Now, calm down; if you're a [Cleric], don’t let that little bit of heresy get your small clothes in a twist. You, no doubt, will come to understand it better than the rest of us. This section is less for you and more for us normal mages. Holy mana is a mystery, wrapped in a cruel riddle, and none of you will ever give us a straight answer. When I asked my interviewee about the deal with holy mana, I was given a speech I would like to give you verbatim, young student, because it is the best you will ever get.
> “Holy mana is that greatest of mana types, granted to us by our gods; it is omni-capable, so long as you work to stay in their good graces and seek to do their great work on this mortal coil. If you wish to wield it or know its greater depths, you must give yourself over to them in an act of faith.”
> That’s right, students. As you can clearly see, that very descriptive explanation clears everything up.
>
> Now, you know I won’t leave you hanging; what does that mean? Well, I don’t know, but while I don’t know what that means, I can tell you how holy mana seems to work from long years of watching.
>
> Holy mana is granted by any deity, god or not, in return for things like prayer. Yes, even a shadowy demonic one. It seems to function for [Clerics], similar to how many other patron mages function, such as [Druids] or [Warlocks], where a [Cleric] can grant their patron mana, and the patron will return it, with interest, and provide specific mana types and guidance on spells, with the bonus ability to pray for it instead.
>
> There also don’t seem to be kinds of Holy mana, which is very confusing because each god also appears to grant different Holy manas, with each [Cleric] confirming that their mana is holy mana. [Arcane Clerics] even use it to create whatever mana type they wish. It can be assumed, then, that somehow holy mana takes on whatever form a god or their servant needs. That would mean that holy mana is typeless. A kind of mimic mana.
>
> That dear reader would explain why [Clerics] can do tricky things very easily. Do you need a limb regenerated? Well, you could figure out how to do it the hard way, botch it and kill yourself, or you could just ask a [Bishop of Life] to give you a quick [Regenerate], and they aren’t even necessarily mages.
>
> The downside, dear reader? Nothing is free in this world; gods grant mana specific to their function. A [Bishop of Life] could regenerate your arm but couldn’t hurl a [Fireball] because that is not in Life’s purview. You also don’t necessarily get what you want when you want it. A Mage controls their power, a [Cleric] controls their personal power, but you can’t force a deity to do what you want. Sometimes, instead of [Regenerate], you get [Mend]. If you don’t warrant their power, you don’t get it.
>
> Why, then, is this fickle mana in Celestial? Why, ask a [Cleric]. We can’t use the damn stuff; it was them that placed it where it is, not I. The tight-lipped bastards wouldn’t even tell me the why. If you disagree with it, go fight your local [Priest].’
I thought about it, I really did, but instead, I noted it down, along with its ‘golden’ colour. If it made less sense, that I wouldn't sit here tearing out my hair over it, I could figure that out later, I only needed to understand it enough to repeat it to Anna.
Surprisingly, the most confusing were the Arcane manas because they were so weird. They were similar to heat, where people thought they were fundamental mana, a kind of indivisible magical type. But they were also not normal. They could be found in material, but they weren’t that material.
I flipped through, not even taking notes because I feared I would get them catastrophically wrong, until I stumbled across the section, one of dozens, that focused on Quagmire, which was one of the four I needed.
Quagmire was, as it sounded muddy.
Very literally.
It was a mana type that was discovered from mud magic and was responsible for the altered properties of its two components, Earth and Water mana. It was a mana type that merged others together.
Following his instructions, I went and found some mud, which was easy enough. I sat down just a ways away so I didn’t ruin my clothes, and I closed my eyes to try to take in the world around me using just mana senses.
A curtain of Air and water mana whirling around me in a distracting haze. Plants around, above and below me, and the earth, my solid foundation, I let myself focus and blot out everything but the water and the earth beneath me.
I watched in my mind's eye as water rolled off the surface of the earth, but also seeped into it, flowing through miniature underground streams and down. The ground here, though, was full; it could not accommodate more water; it was at capacity. The water, with nowhere to go, was forced to merge with the earth, and both mana types pressed together, yet they were unable to change one another to their mana type.
Then, they clicked together, each building to create a new mana type before merging, water mana and earth mana incorporated into a kind of emulsion, and that tiny experience made it clear to me what Arcane mana was.
It was mana as a process instead of mana as a material.
With that in mind, I made notes on how it acted and what it did to other mana.
There were dozens of Arcane mana types, each a separate process, but the ones that were important to me were Conjuration, Evocation, Enchantment and Quagmire, and they were easy enough to wrap my head around once I had cleared that up.
Conjuration? It conjured stuff, turning mana into material.
Evocation? Made a regular material ‘magical,’ in the way that an ‘enchanted’ blade was magical, while a regular blade only had mana in it.
Enchantment was how you took mana and kept it from going bad, locking it into shape. It was responsible for magical gems and every enchanted item ever.
As I wrote that down it occurred to me why these types were the ones that I needed to know.
“When a young apprentice like me thinks of magic, they think of big flashy spells and magical items,” I thought, “How do you make a magic sword? How do you conjure a fireball? How do you make a fire to light a candle?”
They were the answers to some of the most fundamental questions an apprentice might ask. They were the textbook definition of, ‘Go read it in a book and stop bothering me.’
That made me laugh. I didn’t know if that was the intention, but even if it wasn’t, it was a brilliant idea.
You made a magic sword by imbuing it with evocation mana and then trapping it with enchantment mana. You could take fire mana and conjure a great big ball of fire; you light a candle by merging heat and air, creating fire mana.
I couldn’t tell if that was genius or not. I lit a candle and watched as the heat and air snapped together into the fire.
It was the same process as making mud. Only lighting a candle also conjured the flame.
I spotted in the arcane section, two more tidbits. Renewal and Decay, which told me to basically go read Life and Death in the Occult section, and do that I did, brushing up on life mana again. Life was present in all living things and encouraged stuff to live, renewing and preserving life. Death was… well, a bit more esoteric.
Death Mana wasn’t about killing but the concept of ending. It encouraged Decay, which took mana and converted it to death mana, breaking it down. A being died because it built up in its body until more of its body was dead than alive, and it converted its strength and constitution. Decaying them into just inanimate meat. It also explained why it was so damn good at destroying undead.
The undead had no life in them, no guard against it, and, as a bonus, they were animated by compressed mana. As it broke that mana, it also decayed its surroundings, breaking down the compression and turning whatever it was into looser mana that could decay into more Death mana faster.
It built on itself. If I could bring enough death mana to bare I could crack nearly anything, the issue was just in quantity and how I did it.
Life and death were a kind of cycle. Each needed the other to grow. Death mana needed life mana to create more mana, and for that mana to lose its energy and ‘die,’ life mana needed death mana to break down mana from complex things and exist to be renewed into life mana.
“Those clever bastards,” I muttered to myself as I pulled myself back from the board, the light from outside that managed to spill in through the shuttered windows catching me in the eye.
I had been doing it the long way, trying to fit myself into the text instead of fitting the text to me. I studied there until it got noticeably brighter outside, brightening from a low-hanging grey to a dim grey that you could at least see further than ten feet in.
It was probably a half-hour past noon.
I was late, probably. It was damn hard to tell with the ever-present grey of the overcast sky, but I was willing to bet I needed to get back so I could ‘work off my crimes.’
I would probably not have time to talk to Anna before I needed to go out and dig today, but we had a plan for tomorrow, so I would talk to her tonight if she would see me.
I hoped she would.
In the meantime, I would think that if there was one thing physical labour was good for, it was freeing up the mind.
With everything quiet and restored to its pre-fire station state, my extra clothes returned to the closet. I was about to leave and lock up for what little amount of locking there was when I stopped and, in a moment of premonition, walked back into the main room.
I couldn’t place what I felt was wrong until I realized it was just the quiet.
Stupid fox senses telling me the house being quiet was something to think about, that I was missing something.
It wasn’t until later that it would become significant that our forgotten house guest was quiet as a mouse.