After weeks of punishing training in Advanced Arms, Reg knew the ceiling of the medical center well; he’d spent hours staring at a wood grain pattern that looked like a dark dragon while grumbling healers repaired whatever new damage the Instructor of Arm’s class had done to his body. When Reg woke up and saw that wood-grain dragon looming over the bed, he realized immediately where he was. How long had he been unconscious? How late was he going to be for The Self and the Other?
Reg started to throw himself out of bed, but his body felt weak and slow. His arms had all the strength of flattened mushrooms, and it took a gasping effort to even sit up in bed. He started shifting his legs, in preparation to stand up. Healer Zinnia—an apprentice healer whose makeup was even more vibrant than normal, golds and scarlets—strode over, chiding him. “No, no, no. None of that, Reg. You lie back now, right now. Funny as it’d be to see you try to stand up, Healer Leafwatch will have me sorting fire-nuts or milking the serpents or something awful if I let you get out of bed.”
Reg slumped back down. “Hey Zinnia. What happened?”
Zinnia shrugged, “I’m not exactly sure. Jackobee and that trainee with the eyebrows carried you up here after you collapsed. Your heart was beating like mad and you weren’t breathing right. Healer Leafwatch and I stabilized you, and you’ve been unconscious since. I’m glad that you’re awake, it’s been a whole day, and we weren’t sure when you’d come to. What did that blighted instructor have you doing? By the heart, I think he almost killed you.”
With a start, Reg reached towards his hip for his doll. It wasn’t there. He looked around and found it resting with his sling and ring-pouch on a side-table. He grabbed the doll with both hands and tried to recreate that feeling of releasing his strength and energy that he’d felt—had it been a dream? Had the doll’s eyes really lit up in that cavern, or had that been a fantasy as he was passing out? He stared into the doll’s eyes, and had the same feeling of his energy rushing out of him and into the tiny doll; its eyes lit up and Reg let out a loud, exhausted whoop. It still worked!
Zinnia was staring at Reg with a shocked expression: she’d asked what had happened, and he’d grabbed a child’s doll and started celebrating. Seeing her worried look, Reg started laughing—he should be reassuring her that he was OK, but it took him forever to get the words through his laughter. “The doll. Look at its eyes! I’m lighting them up! They’re pretty! The instructor—he fixed it. My block! I’m through my block.” Seeing her worried expression just made him laugh harder, and it was a struggle to calm down enough to stop Zinnia from sedating him. After calming down, he gave Zinnia a better explanation; the instructor had shown him how to get through his magic block by working him to exhaustion so that he could feel the magic that was sustaining him.
“Channeling magic into the doll almost killed you and the first thing you try when you wake up is channeling magic into it again?!?” Zinnia said, poking a thick ash wand aggressively in his direction. “Why would you do that? You have less brains than the muddy spawn of a mushroom and a moss-farmer. Give me that doll before you pass out again.”
Reg handed over the doll, but his joy remained undamped by Zinnia’s chiding; he’d gotten through his block! He still needed to figure out how to conjure a handful of sparks, but that obstacle felt surmountable. He tried to sit up again to head to class, but Zinnia glared at him until he laid back down: “Reg, I’m happy for you, but you were unconscious for a full day. We’re not going to let you run out of here and pass out again; we’re going to keep you here until at least tomorrow to make sure your body has a chance to fully recover.
“Now, if you’re feeling up for it, I can send a message to your friends to let them know that you’re up; they’ve been checking in between sessions.”
Reg nodded, “That’d be top fork. I really am feeling flourishing though—are you sure you can’t discharge me?”
“It’s not up to me, but even if it were, I’d keep you here for observation.” Zinnia said, before adding on with a grin, “If you’re actually feeling OK, you can help me sort these fire-nuts.”
Reg had woken up around lunchtime, and the afternoon dragged on slowly. Zinnia and Healer Leafwatch—a gruff elf with a wispy golden beard and thick frown lines—were busy caring for two guards from a recently returned patrol. One guard’s lungs had been damaged, and her breaths sounded painful and rasping while Healer Leafwatch muttered a low chant over her. The chant sounded impossibly deep coming out of Healer Leafwatch’s thin frame, and it sounded like there was an entire chorus there, chanting in strange harmony. The other guard was raving in a quiet, monotone voice, “He wakes. He wakes. His claws pierce the earth. He wakes.” Zinnia administered a potion of forgetting to help the guard block out whatever twisted madness he’d seen.
Reg ached to be doing something, but Zinna refused to give me back his doll, and Healer Leafwatch hadn’t been happy when Reg had tried to get up, “Boy, do you have any idea how simple it is to heal a snapped tibia? And do you know what kind of injuries Apprentice Healer Zinnia needs practice with? And do you know what people with a snapped tibia don’t do? They don’t talk mud about getting up when I tell them to stay still and rest. Understand?”
In the late afternoon, after the lung-damaged guard was breathing easier, and the raving guard was finally peacefully asleep, Reg’s friends came to visit. They clustered around Reg’s cot and spoke in low voices, glad to see him up. Yeva and Val explained what they’d seen—Reg collapsing suddenly in the cavern—and Reg explained how he’d gotten through his block.
Val gave him a hug, and Bartholomew hopped down from her shoulder to present him with a fine-looking walnut. Reg carefully took the walnut and put it into his pocket, which the little squirrel seemed to approve of.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Annise slugged him on the shoulder, “I can’t believe you’re going to miss the first throwball game. At least you’re through your block—I’m going to have you training spells to be a vanguard as soon as you’re out of here.”
Reg smiled at her, “Deal. I’ll do my best not to disappoint The Primal Panthers.” He chuckled at the pained expression that hearing her team’s name caused.
Yeva looked at him and said, “I’m right glad you’re up. The way you collapsed was blighted scary. Don’t do that again. ”
Jashal hit him in the same shoulder Annise had before saying, “I have good notes for you from The World Below, so you shouldn’t be behind there. Same for The Self & The Other”
Val sounded shocked, “You were asleep in The World Below, the way you always are! Those are my notes.”
Jashal laughed, “Never said I wrote ‘em, did I? Most of ‘em I copied from Yeva. She don’t use near as many high-branch poncy words as you do. Class has been slower than sap. Instructor Silliuk keeps droning on about old religions. Bunch of rot if you ask me. Not like folks worship anyone other than Arrowkiss no more.”
“Antebrumerian religions aren’t rot!” Val sounded offended. “Religious-based manifestations are common in old-world rifts that guards sometimes end up trapped in. And our ancestors followed these religions and performed miracles—Beltrund, Curnack, Gundalia. Even the primordial dragons! Although I don’t know why you’d worship them; it sounds like their clerics couldn't do much.”
Jashal nodded along, expression serious, “See? Bunch of rot.” And then flashed a smile at Val.
Val’s voice had risen a bit while defending the worth of old religions, and Healer Leafwatch came over right after and kicked the group out. Reg laid back on his bed. Despite his protests that he was feeling ready to go back to class, he still felt like he’d been flattened by a beetle, and it felt good to rest. He drifted off to sleep.
In the morning, Reg woke up to find Professor Ashsprocket staring fixedly at him and writing down notes. “Professor,” Reg said groggily, “what are you doing?”
Professor Ashsprocket beamed at Reg, “Regulus, you’re awake! And you’re through your block. Fantastic news.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you were abnormally physically gifted? I could have been taking more careful notes this entire time if I’d known what was happening. I wouldn’t have had any better ideas about exercises—I wonder how your arms instructor knew what to do? I’ll need to interview him as well—but I would have written down far more observations along the way. ‘Great knowings come from great note-ings’ as they say!”
Reg nodded, still trying to wake up. He felt far less wrung out this morning; having an extra day to recuperate had done a lot of good. “Professor, I didn’t realize there was anything special. I just thought I had a block?”
“Regulus, Regulus, Regulus,” Professor Ashsprocket said in a paternal tone, “you don’t understand the full import of this. It’s natural for you not to, you’re not an academic. But this is trunk-shakingly good news—this is the basis for a scroll that I could publish! Your name would be on it too, of course. I can even see the title, ‘Physically-oriented savantism in a young adult: a case-study into a magical block.’ I haven’t made much progress on any of my other scrolls while working here, but this is something that I might even be able to publish in one of the top collections, maybe even in Investigations in Evocomancy or Annals Arcanica. Oh, I can’t wait for Professor Idial to read my scroll. She was so dismissive about me spending a year here—this will show her.”
Professor Ashsprocket took out a scroll and a quill, and looked seriously at Reg. “Now, while your memories are still fresh, we need to take down detailed notes. Tell me, what felt different when you bypassed your block two days ago?” Professor Ashsprocket spent hours grilling Reg: “How long did it take you to learn to walk as a toddler? You don’t remember? I’ll send a bird to your parents immediately.”; “When you identified the feeling of magic sustaining you, where was it concentrated? Your heart? Interesting, interesting. Where was it flowing to?”; “What were you visualizing when you channeled your magic for the first time?”; “Did the doll’s belt glow as well? Or was it just the eyes?”; “How long did it take until you passed out?”; “What did the instructor say? Interesting.” The question kept coming, one after another. When the horn for the first session of the day sounded, Reg felt momentary relief—surely Professor Ashsprocket would have to go run his class—but when Reg pointed this out, Professor Ashsprocket explained that Annise was running the class in his absence, “Reg, we can’t squander this opportunity. Scholarship waits for no gnome!”
Reg was overjoyed when Healer Leafwatch come in for his rounds and threw Professor Ashsprocket out, “Professor, if you don’t leave this second and stop badgering my patient, I won’t share any of my notes on his collapse with you.”
Professor Ashsprocket looked horrified at this threat, and scurried away, after getting a promise from Reg to come by in the evening for “remedial practice and more scholarship!”
Healer Leafwatch spent long minutes checking over the two guards before checking on Reg. The healer poked and prodded Reg, listened to his heart through a horn pressed to Reg’s chest, and waved a burning yew branch over Reg’s body and watched the purplish smoke as it curled close to his skin. After those investigations, he fixed Reg with a severe look, “You’re healthy enough for me to let you out, but you’re to stay away from any exercise, magical or otherwise, for the next three days. That even includes archery and Instructor Mossgate’s sessions! Nothing physical, nothing magical, nothing mental. Don’t give me that look, you just went through an ordeal and your body needs time to recover. I don’t want to see you relapse and take up one of my beds. I’ve already let your instructors know, and I’ll have your oath that you won’t do anything more strenuous than walking up the stairs.”
After Reg swore on the Tree’s Heart, Healer Leafwatch returned his doll and released him. The next three days were miserable—he wanted to be going on morning runs, pushing himself in Advanced Arms, fending off mental attacks in The Self & the Other. By the stars, he even missed archery! But most of all, he was dying to make his doll’s eyes light up again and start playing with sparks. When the fourth morning dawned, Reg woke up early, pulled the doll out, and beamed at the light shining out of its crystal eyes; it was dim, but it was unmistakably there!