The next day, I attended my mother’s funeral.
A week later, I traveled to the City of Northwind.
As these events unfolded, a disconnection between me and the outside world covered me like a shroud. I only packed my transmutation equipment because Beltane reminded me before we left.
The caravan to Northwind held four members from the Koravin household, five members from the Feldrast household, three guards, and Beltane. Melissa was set to go with us, but Eadric stayed behind. With Lord Riomed temporarily not in Sableton, Eadric was put in charge of the town for the brief period that its rightful liege was gone.
Most of the packing was done by guards that I had never met before, and my room was a center of activity as the various things in my room were packed up. I was vaguely aware as various people tried to say words of comfort to me, but I barely heard them. Their words were just noise that bounced harmlessly off the cocoon of self-pity in which I had wrapped myself.
During my next flash of awareness, I was sitting in the front seat of one of the carriages in the caravan to Northwind. My carriage was the second one from the front, and Beltane was sitting next to me with the reins in his hands.
In my peripheral vision, Sir Eadric came running up to the side of the carriage. We were seconds from leaving town, and he arrived just before we left.
“Lord Thale!” Eadric called out just as he reached my side of the carriage. “I found something that belongs to you in the manor.”
Sir Eadric held out a small pine box about the size of a man’s palm. Written on the side of the box in fine, stylized letters, was my name. Wordlessly, I took the box from Eadric’s outstretched hand.
“I believe this is your second gift,” Sir Eadric said, an inflection of sorrow clear in his voice. “A guard found it in your parents’ bedroom while they were… cleaning up.”
“Eadric!” Beltane loudly chastised the knight. “Do not remind the boy of such things!”
“Yes, I apologize,” Eadric bowed to Beltane and me. “I just came to deliver the gift. I did not look inside.” After a long pause, Eadric spoke one more sentence. “I truly hope that you can get some use out of this gift.”
Sir Eadric disappeared back into the town, and the caravan left a few minutes later. As the carriage moved through the outskirts of Sableton, rhythmically shaking me in a way that I found oddly comforting, I opened the box.
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Inside of the pine box was a small circular mechanism coated in silver. A small silver chain sprouted out of the top of the mechanism. With a small amount of surprise, I realized that the mechanism was a pocket watch. I removed the pocket watch from its fur-lined display and held it in my hand. With a light press, I unhooked the latch at the top of the watch, causing the mechanism to open, revealing the watch face within.
The watch face was almost identical to those from Earth. The only difference was that the numbers on the outside of the watch face were Ferrum’s runic equivalents to real-world numbers. The two hands of the watch were stuck at the “twelve” position of the clock.
I slowly turned the pocket watch around in my hands, and I saw incredibly small arcane runes inscribed into the side of the watch. These were not runes for the automatic telling of time; these were runes meant for binding spirits to objects.
A small part of my brain, the part that was still active, knew what this was. I held in my hand a phylactery, though it was a comparatively simple one. A phylactery like the one I held in my hand was meant to hold spirits and force them to do the bidding of the one holding the object. Technically speaking, the pocket watch I held was a sub-type of phylactery called a soul cage.
Absent-mindedly, I poured a small portion of mana into the pocket watch. It had been a week since I had used all my mana healing people and attacking the Red Knight, so I had just recently returned to 100% of my mana reserve.
Once my mana started coursing through the pocket watch, the hands started frantically spinning as if someone was adjusting the watch’s time. After a few seconds, the hands stopped spinning, displaying a time of 10:27. I looked up to the sky and saw that the sun had not yet reached its zenith. I had no way to confirm the veracity of the clock’s declaration, but it seemed true enough.
“Wow…” Beltane muttered, looking at the watch as its hands frantically spun. “That’s…” upon seeing my expression, Beltane stopped in his tracks, “nevermind.”
I placed the watch in my pocket. It was another reminder of my mother, another reminder of my own failure.
After a few minutes of us traveling in silence, I spoke. “Hey, Beltane. What happened to me during the fight with the Red Knight? I still had plenty of mana, but I couldn’t use any spells.”
“Right, that…” Beltane said, seemingly happy to have an opportunity to say something to me. “We call that mana burnout. Mana needs to travel through your body like any other substance. In rare cases where a mage’s mana conductivity far outpaces his physical body, mana burnout can occur. Your physical veins and arteries were unable to keep up with the amount of mana you were using all at once, causing severe internal damage. This is usually only a problem with incredibly old mages as their body breaks down. Mana burnout stops being a problem when your physical stats hit six or above.”
I had never heard of that. In the game, it was impossible to reduce any of your stats at character creation below six. That would open the game up to a bit too much min-maxing.
As expected, the news merely drove me deeper into the pit of self-pity. With my [Sickly] Trait holding me back, it was possible that my physical stats would never increase above five. I wondered if mana burnout would be a problem for the rest of my life.