“When considering your path through life, consider the tools you will need. Will you make them yourself, or hope equipment that can handle your greatness is provided to you? When children dream of being mighty warriors, they seldom give much consideration for where they get their sword.”
~Unknown
“Dad, I need to use the Mirrorscroll.” Tulos was gently dragging the flat of his axeblade over the recently constructed tabletop. Thanks to his Skill, the tool functioned similarly to sandpaper, but it was a mana intensive process; he had to take regular breaks. Tulos was technically at the same level of Advancement as me, albeit much further along than I was. I never bothered asking if he was already at the final bottleneck - it wasn’t worth bothering the man on that topic to sate my curiosity for its own sake.
It had rained the night before; not much, but enough to give the outside one of those ‘it rained recently’ smells, all damp and earthy. Tina had gone into town to talk to Hwan with a mind for reluctant diplomacy. Even though I was eventually successful in convincing the pair to be lenient for Jusep’s sake, part of me felt like it was invalidating their legitimate anger concerning the situation.
No, that’s not the right way to think about it, I scolded myself. I shouldn’t have regretted that they made the choice to support me. Better to be grateful for it instead.
Yesterday, after tempers had marginally cooled and the incident was discussed, Tina was still contemplating violence. Honestly, part of me loved her for it. It was such a raw demonstration of the depths of her love, that someone hurting me could inspire such an extreme emotion.
Mostly, I hated that she was put in that position to begin with. Tulos, too. Yesterday, for a split moment, Tulos reacted with unconsidered force and broke a table. Out of context, it might not sound like an issue beyond the property damage. Still, from what I knew about Tulos’ past, I was worried he was beating himself up about it.
Hopefully the Mirrorscroll will help distract him.
Tulos carefully finished his current pass with the axe before giving me his attention. A small frown replaced the concentration in his face.
“You will have to wait for your mother to return. I am low on mana and-”
“That is not an issue,” I cut off Tulos’ refusal. “I want to try and use it myself.”
“Is that so?” The frown was gone, replaced by Tulos’ version of amusement. I’d gotten better at reading the man, but the changes to his expression were marginal as he cycled through emotions. “Let me work until I need to take a break. It will not be much longer. We can sit down and try when I am finished.”
“Thanks, dad,” I chirped back, laying it on a little thick to underplay my injury. It would devalue my insistence that I was ‘fine’ if I winced or groaned with every other movement. My back was feeling notably better compared to yesterday, but it was still sore.
Since we didn’t own a mirror, I couldn’t confirm it for myself, but Tina had informed me that there was a sizable bruise over the affected area. Not being able to visually track the impact of Recovery was unfortunate, but I’d gained more proficiency points in the Skill yesterday than I had in weeks, so I had to assume my efforts were accomplishing something.
The reason Tulos wanted to wait for Tina was the same reason he wasn’t confident in helping me with the Mirrorscroll himself, not in his current condition, anyway. The expensive piece of Spellscripted parchment Lionel gifted to us would copy anything we wrote on it to the matching Mirrorscroll Lionel possessed. The problem was that properly operating the thing required the use of a technique not commonly utilized by people before their second Advancement.
***
Tina explained how to use the Mirrorscroll the first time she helped Tulos sit down to write a letter with it a month or so ago. There was a section of the scroll marked with a ring of spellscript that left a blank space within its borders.
“After cleaning a little bit of my mana, I can send it to my fingertip and push it into the scroll.” Tina held up a finger while she spoke as if to demonstrate, but there was no slowly accumulating glow or anything like that, not to my senses at least. After a few moments of concentration, she followed her own instruction, and my eyes went wide as a faint pulse of light briefly illuminated the Spellscript.
“Is that-”
“Yes, it should be something in the notes Lionel left you.” The excitement in my voice must have choreographed what I was going to ask. I was getting better at reading my parents, but so too were they getting better at reading me. Tina studied me with narrowed eyes. “I am impressed that you are properly following his instructions.”
She was referring to the warning at the front of the impromptu booklet he’d given me, the one full of little exercises to help me better manipulate and - eventually - recover my mana.
Tina, presumably you will be checking this over unless your husband and son decide to hide it from you. In which case, one of them will be perusing my musings here. If that is the case, it will be one of you two who are reading. Stop. Show this to Tina. I wish to pass as an elder with a content smile, not as a young man getting pulverized beneath the crushing weight of a mother’s fury.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Tina, these exercise sets are ordered as they are for a specific reason. Take the last four away until Will can demonstrate the culmination of the first six. Will should be encouraged to not move on or even read ahead until he is confident with the exercise he is currently working on. If he wishes to not heed this advice, so be it. It will set him back, but that would be his mistake to make.
-Lionel
At that point, the exercises had largely involved visualization, though in my case I found emphasizing the feeling of my mana was more effective. I had my suspicions Lionel’s booklet was priming me to unlock Mana Sense as a Skill, or at the least develop a foundational proficiency in the ability without System assistance. My apparent affinity for the tactile variant was an added bonus. I never specifically told the goofball of a Slayer that I’d turned down Mana Sense as an option during my first Advancement, just that I had doubts about the Skills I’d chosen. Even in that moment of vulnerability, there were certain details I had been too scared to reveal.
I decided to follow Lionel’s advice and tackle the exercises sequentially. Worst case, the warning was there to screw with me, but I wasn’t willing to risk ignoring solid advice to test it. Children often considered the words of adults as misguided, or their rules as too restrictive. Often, it isn’t until they actually screw up and learn from the mistake that they see the value of those lessons in hindsight.
I had already lived a life in which I fucked around and subsequently found out; those lessons were not lost on me.
***
The sound of Tulos moving around the woodshed drew me from the recollection.
“Are you ready?” Evidently, he’d caught me lost in thought.
“Definitely.” Tulos led me into the house, and I sat at the-
Oh yeah, Tulos broke the table. I sat on the floor, which made me wince as the motion tickled my injury in unpleasant ways. Tulos fetched me a blunt, metal stylus and the Mirrorscroll. Fudge padded in after us, no longer interested in playing outside - since it was no longer the place I was at - and settled down for a rest. His tongue lolled with each breath from the exertion, and I could just about feel the heat of it from across the room.
Tulos helped hold the scroll open and watched me curiously as I once again took in the elegant script and exquisite craftsmanship on display. I always envied people who could create with such dedication. My past tendencies to flutter from hobby to hobby meant that any truly impressive accomplishments were out of my reach, albeit through no one’s fault but my own.
I raised a finger, just as Tina did, and called upon Perseverance. Any lingering distractions were nudged to the wayside, for they represented a barrier between me and my goal. The second portion of Lionel’s exercises had me moving mana around my body and learning the limits of my mana pathways. This, too, came to me easier than I anticipated.
It was Recovery. At least, that’s the conclusion Tina and I came to when I asked her about it. The Skill let me guide mana to the source of my injuries, and that experience translated to an easier time with controlling my mana in general. Lionel’s exercises on the matter built on the foundation of visualization with concepts of movement; push, pull, twist, turn, they were all there. I didn’t want to put the cart before the horse, but I couldn’t help but suspect some type of Mana Manipulation Skill had to exist.
I called on the Recovery. Mana touched by the Skill - a lot of it - entered my system. I began to will it towards my arm. The mana was quick to respond, though I felt a pang of unexpected resistance. It wanted to go to the injury on my back. I wondered if-
Perseverance flared.
Right, irrelevant, focus. It required the equivalent of some cognitive elbow grease, but I was able to correct course and gather the mana in my fingertip. I had been wondering for weeks what Tina meant by ‘cleaning the mana’. Resisting the urge to read ahead was agony, but I - perhaps unsurprisingly - persevered.
The mana in my fingertip was, for lack of a better term, Recovery-Mana. The Mirrorscroll didn’t respond to Recovery-Mana. If it was keyed to do so, it would severely limit its utility. Instead, it was keyed to what was effectively unattributed mana, but no one had that.
Maybe infant babies had that, actually. Nope. Not important. The point was that I needed to clean my mana and make it unattributed. Lionel’s notes mentioned that people could achieve the effect in a number of different ways, and it was more a matter of practice and discovering a method that worked for each individual.
For me, it was the towel. Logically, it should have been a poor choice. When you wring out a towel, it’s usually still damp. You can get a lot of the water out, maybe even most of it, but never all of it. It wasn’t even one of the methods in Lionels’ booklet, just an errant thought I had that I decided to indulge. When I did, I considered the one time wringing out a towel actually does work; cartoons. Fuck, I missed television sometimes. That longing motivated me to adjust my mental imagery; my mana was a cartoon towel and with a single, exaggerated wring it would be dry as a bone.
It didn’t quite work out that way, not immediately, but it did work. I repeated the action as I stared down at the Mirrorscroll, my face furrowed as I focused on the mental effort. The Recovery-Mana formed into a bright, green, cartoon towel covered in little yellow flowers. With a force of will, I wrung it and slowly squeezed out all the colour like drops of wet paint. It took several minutes and just as many attempts, but finally the towel was devoid of pigment; my mana was unattributed.
It had also decreased in size significantly. Apparently, most people waited until they passed their Second Advancement before learning the technique barring special circumstances; it wasn’t exactly an efficient process. I wouldn’t have enough mana left to properly follow my usual training regime later.
I looked at Tulos and nodded. He quirked an eyebrow then reached over to give me a supportive pat on the back.
“Well done.”
“Thanks, dad,” the reply came easy. The mana was already coating my finger, so I pushed it into the Spellscripted circle. When Tina said she pushed it into the circle, that was only a half-truth. The Mirrorscroll did most of the work, and as I felt the mana drain from my finger the magical item pulsed with light. I grinned.