Mana Mirror: Chapter Eight (Patreon)

“Oh, hey Malachi!” Liz called as she finished tracing a spell in the air. She rapidly filled it with a mix of lunar and desolation mana, then sent a lance of pressurized water firing out at Ed.

Ed crossed his arms in front of his face in an x-shaped block, calling on his spell to give his flesh the strength of stone, and the water stream broke apart into a harmless spray.

Then Liz’s legacy activated.

The spell she had cast earlier lingered in the air, and with only a little bit of mana – far less than the initial casting – she created a twin of her first spell.

It lanced out at Ed’s legs, but he twisted and kicked the spell out of the air, shattering it.

Ed raised his hand and called his own legacy. The street melted around his hand and formed into a stone spear. He then poured power into two other mastered spells and threw the spear at Liz’s chest.

She raised her hand and released a spell of her own.

Desolation mana wasn’t well-suited to shielding spells, so I was surprised to feel her channeling it. I’d expected her to use lunar mana, since that was far more flexible.

A stream of some liquid shot from her fingertips, draining her first gate rapidly. It hit the spear dead-on and started to eat through it.

Acid.

I wondered why she’d put in the work to master an acid spell, but not her water spell. I felt like water was generally much more useful.

I continued to watch them spar, and by the time it wound down, Ed was using a spell to repair the cobbles on the street that their fight had caused.

“So,” I asked them. “Can I ask why you decided that the street was a good place to spar?”

“Well, your teacher said that we couldn’t use the backyard anymore, since that was gonna be a garden. So… we used the front. But since we don’t have a front yard, that meant the street.”

Ed said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Ed, my dear idiot brother… You’re a member of the Lightwatch.”

“Yeah?” he said, clearly confused.

“You have training facilities. Ones with physical mana enchantments to keep them from getting torn up while training.”

“Come on, Malachi,” Liz cajoled, “you know how boring those places are? They’re just gyms.”

“Elizabeth Davis,” I said, putting my hands on my hips to glare at her. “Don’t give me that. Your family has training rooms, too – you have even less of an excuse than Ed. Not only do you have your house’s training facilities, you’ve also got your guild’s.”

Liz sent a blast of hot air at me with ungated mana and stuck out her tongue, her silver piercing shining in the evening light.

“You’re no fun. By the way, how’d your test go? That was a few days ago, right?”

In response, I let some of the power from my life and death first gates leak out into the air. Liz nodded, opened her mouth to speak, then a look of confusion came over her. She double checked the mana in the air, then her eyebrows shot up.

“Life and death?” she asked.

“Yep,” I said. “I got a legacy that lets me choose a pair of mana types for each gate I manifest, so when I chose life mana, I also got death mana.”

“Nice!” she said. “Having inverse mana types is super rare. Your legacy sounds pretty decent. I still prefer mine, or even your brother’s – his all-around increased efficiency with telluric mana is really good – but it’s definitely better than your dad’s legacy.”

“Thanks?” I said, not sure what to make of that.

“So, are you gonna join the Lightwatch, or did a hospital snatch you up? They’ve probably got some pretty competitive offers; I doubt the Watches could compete… My guild may be able to, though.”

“He did even better,” Ed called from where he was studying one particularly busted-up section of the cobblestone.

Liz glanced at him, then back at me expectantly.

“I got an apprenticeship to an Occultist named Orykson.”

Liz froze in place for a moment, and I felt a knot of dread in the pit of my stomach.

“Orykson, Orykson?” she asked, then pressed on before I could answer. “Of course it’s that Orykson. There aren’t any other Occultists out there with that name, and nobody would be stupid enough to try and imitate him.”

“What do you know about him?” I asked curiously.

“He’s definitely an Occultist, and no Occultist is weak, but Orykson seems to command a lot more respect than even the other three that live in Mossford. He lives in an old castle in Mortshire, and he rarely takes visitors.”

“What does he actually do?” I asked.

“Whatever he wants, generally speaking,” she said. “From what I’ve heard, he’s primarily a researcher. He’s interested in new spells, cutting-edge magic, that sort of thing. Last year he donated ten million to the library system.”

“Huh,” I said. I wondered why he’d want me as an apprentice, then. He’d said I met the parameters for one of his experiments. Was he going to have me casting experimental spells?

That actually sounded sort of cool. Dangerous, too, but I assumed it wouldn’t be anything too bad or it wouldn’t have been approved for human testing.

“Yeah,” Liz said.

We lapsed into silence, but before we headed inside, I needed to get something out of the way.

“Liz, Ed, can I have your help with something?”

“Sure!” Ed said with a grin. “with what?”

I tugged at my suit jacket.

“Orykson said that this was resistant to grime, physical attacks, and magical attacks. He suggested that I’d have to replace it at Spellbinder, so no third gate attack spells, but…”

I wouldn’t have risked it if the suit hadn’t possessed some ability with self-repairing, but I’d rather know the limits that it could handle.

“Oh yeah!” Liz said. “It’s always a good idea to know the limitations of your equipment. So, let’s try it out.”

She raised her hand and began to sketch out the second gate water spell that she’d been attacking Ed with earlier, and I rapidly backed away.

I’d been assuming that we’d start with something relatively harmless and work up, but it seemed like she’d heard not to use third gate mana, and jumped to using second gate.

It was too late, though. I wasn’t able to scramble out of the way before the water shot at me. I crossed my arms in front of my face in a poor imitation of my brother’s block.

The piercing force of the spear of water hit me and I stumbled back, lowering my arms. I tried to examine the suit, but another water spear was already headed my way. It struck me in the chest, and I let out a ‘wumph’ noise as I was knocked onto the ground.

“Sorry ‘bout that!” Liz called as she rushed over to help me up. Ed, for his part, seemed to find it hilarious and was doubled over with laughter.

“Second gate attacks, right off the bat?” I demanded as I looked at her.

“You said not to use third gate!” she said.

“You did say no third gate,” Ed said as his legacy formed a throwing knife of stone in his hand, which thudded into my arm. I let out a groan of pain, and rubbed my shoulder, then my arms, then my chest.

“Okay, I think that’s enough,” I said.

“Nah, you haven’t tried it against first gate mana yet,” Ed said, “My knife was purely physical, though it was reinforced some. I’ll stop if you want, but I do think you should try at least one first gate spell.”

I gritted my teeth.

“Fine.”

Liz raised her hand and a whip of shadow coalesced, then struck me.

To my surprise, it barely hurt at all.

A moment later, I remembered Orykson mentioning that tenebrous silk reconstituted itself when it was left in shadow. Even though the whip was a shadow attack, rather than natural shadow, the silk must have retained some natural affinity for it that allowed the suit to resist the attack. That was good to know.

“Okay, water now.”

She nodded and a spinning ball of water struck me. This time, I felt the force of the blow fully, and I stumbled back. Once I was up again, having taken Liz’s twinned version of it as well, I looked down to examine the damage.

My shirt and suit had several small rips and tears, but they looked like the kind of thing that would happen to a normal suit from falling – not the sort of thing that you’d suffer from an attack.

I felt sore all over from where the attacks had hit me, and I was certain that I'd get bruises where the spears hit me, and maybe from the spinning water orbs as well.

But I wasn’t bleeding at all, and if all that I suffered was a few bruises after taking a small barrage of different attacks? That was pretty good.

“What’s it made of?” Liz asked curiously as Ed started to fix the street again.

“Tenebrous Lacewing silk,” I said.

“Oh, nice!” Liz said with a surprised look. “Guess being his apprentice has some benefits.”

As soon as Ed had finished fixing the street, we all headed inside. Dad was more than used to having Liz over for dinner at this point – she and Ed had been dating for almost a year. That night, Liz and Ed invited me to do some basic physical exercises, which I reluctantly joined them for, then I fixed myself a cup of the new tea that the pharmacist had recommended to me.

The tea tasted grassy, kind of like green tea, with a hint of mint in it. I added a spoonful of honey and drank it before I fell asleep.

I had a restless night tossing and turning, and when I woke up, my mana-garden felt sore. My life mana in particular felt like I’d spent the night casting – the effect of processing the foreign mana, most likely.

My death mana didn’t feel like it’d had the same exercise, which was what I’d expected – I’d half hoped that since they were crafted out of the same base gate, expanding one would expand the other, but that had been a long shot at best.

Either way, I went through my usual morning routine of draining my mana dry, then opened my closet curiously. Sure enough, the suit had entirely repaired itself – I couldn’t even tell that it had been ripped up the day before.

It was no wonder that a single suit cost thousands of silver. I just had to make sure that I successfully completed my apprenticeship so that I didn’t have to pay all of that invested money back.

Mulling over my future and my plans for the day, I went down for breakfast.

I’d head to the outskirts of town to look for the moonwater lilies, but I wasn’t nearly as excited about that as I’d been about the ghost. Maybe I was just a bit macabre, but I thought the ghost had been way more interesting.

After eating some of the leftovers from the day before, I went up to my wardrobe and contemplated what I was going to wear today.

I didn’t like the lighter colors, but I was going to be outside all day, and the heat difference between black wool and tan linen was too much for me to reasonably ignore, so I’d go with the light summer suit that Orykson had insisted on.

After a moment of indecision, I elected to skip the binder for today and go with a sports bra. It wasn’t as concealing as I felt comfortable with, but I didn’t want to risk going into heatstroke.

Finally, I grabbed a simple alchemical self-defense concoction, pepper-fire extract, and tucked it into my jacket pocket. Then I grabbed a bag to carry the moonwater lillies in, along with two bottles of Mana Shock.

Fully prepared, I headed downstairs and took a carriage to the edge of the city, where the city walls bordered on the Trollstone Forest.

On the ride there, I let my mind wander some.

Despite the name, nobody had ever actually been attacked by a troll in Trollstone Forest for years – the Wyldwatch did a good job of making sure they stayed well away from the city and surrounding forest. Even still, it was wise to be cautious, which was why I’d brought the pepper-fire extract.

That, and to defend against other people. People could be far worse than trolls.

Mossford was a fairly small country and had pretty low crime rates overall, but I could never be too cautious.

I was really hoping that I’d be able to find lilies, otherwise I’d be wasting a fair bit of money on the carriage there and back. I’d gotten a bit of silver yesterday, but it wasn’t enough to pay the round trip fare, and I didn’t fancy a twenty-mile walk just to save some cash.

Since I didn’t need to walk, I used the ride to practice my spells, sketching them out and funneling mana into them.

Eventually, though, we passed through the gate and headed to the edge of the forest, out where the trailheads started. I paid the driver and stepped out, ready to search for the moonwater lilies.