Mana Mirror: Chapter Seven (Patreon)

I decided to start with the easiest task first, so I swung by my work. I was able to acquire a quarter of a pound of cow bones for two silver, and I went home to clean them out and break them into shards.

After that, I headed off to the tailor’s shop. The tailor, an old man, and his apprentice, a young man with paler skin than I had and brown hair with a green cloak, laid out the five suits that Orykson had gotten for me.

I nodded appreciatively at them.

The first was a black dinner jacket. After that came a charcoal single breast, a black double vest, and a navy single breast. Finally came the one I’d been the least interested in – pale colors weren’t my favorite – a light tan summer suit.

“These are all made from Tenebrous Lacewing silk?” I asked curiously. The tan suit looked like it was made of linen or something similar.

“They’re mixed into the weave,” the old man said. “The silk mixes into it with the help of a spell, and that makes it resemble the fabric it’s laid into.”

Huh.

I thanked them and took a carriage to the pharmacy, not wanting to risk the walk and ruining the suits. Orykson may have said the suits were grime resistant, but I wasn’t in the mood to test that out just yet.

I directed the coach driver to the nearest pharmacy and headed inside.

I hadn’t bought energy drinks for a few years, and even when I had been an avid caffeine junkie, I hadn’t been drinking the mana-infused variety. Thus, it took me a moment to even find the part of the store with the drinks. They were amongst the dried herbs, teas, common medicines, and assorted foodstuffs.

One brand called Thunderjolt looked promising, but it was imported from the Redsummer Isles and too pricey for my tastes, so I settled on a brand called Mana Shock.

Apart from price, the reason I settled on it was that it boasted a mild, fruity taste.

As I was paying for the case of Mana Shock, I broached the topic of the pills.

“Hey, have you ever heard of Verdant Pasture pills?”

The pharmacist, a young woman with gray eyes who was only a few years older than me, gave me a curious look.

“Yeah, I have a few in stock. They’re about three hundred silver a pill, why?”

Primes, that was expensive.

“What do they do?” I asked.

“Life mana expander,” she said. “If you haven’t opened your first gate, then taking one is a pretty common way to flood your body with enough life mana to almost be guaranteed a breakthrough. If you have opened your first gate, it’s good at expanding your base of mana.”

“What if you’ve already tapped out your first gate and the growth has slowed?” I asked.

“It’ll help expand it, but it’ll be less effective. The pill is designed to imbibe you with first gate mana; even though it takes much more potent mana to create, it doesn’t help with anything past first gate.”

“I see…” I said, nodding.

Orykson would be paying me what broke down to about six hundred and fifty silver a week. I could, in theory, afford one of those pills and whatever the death mana equivalent was.

But that wasn’t really right. I picked up dinner fairly often, and I needed to be able to afford other things, too.

“Are you looking for ways to rapidly expand your life mana?” the pharmacist asked.

I looked up and nodded.

“Yeah, I’ve got some spells I’m practicing. They’re pretty draining.”

“Oh, what spells?” she asked.

“Analyze Life,” I said, and she winced.

“Ah, yeah, I remember when I was working on that one. Do they still make you master it for the end of the year test?”

I nodded and she gave me a conciliatory pat on my shoulder.

“I’m sure you’ll get it. What school are you going to?”

Now I was in an awkward spot, so I said the closest thing to the truth.

“None right now. I’ve been taken on as an apprentice, and he’s running me through it.”

“Huh. Sounds pretty standard for right now. You’ll probably move on to Lesser Regeneration once you’ve bashed your head against the Analyze Bodies wall for a few more days.”

I wasn’t learning Analyze Bodies. That sounded like the sort of thing Meadow had been talking about – a subcategory of the larger Analyze Life spell.

Even still, I nodded and smiled.

“You asked about me expanding my life mana?” I asked, trying to steer back to the point that was most relevant for me.

“Oh, yeah. If you’re looking for a cheaper method to expand your life mana, there’s one trick that helped me through my first year of school: Lithetic Tea.”

“Lithetic Tea?” I asked.

“It’s a type of tea, imported from Daocheng. It’s got a small amount of life mana in it naturally – barely more than ungated mana. But it’s still external life mana, so your body has to work hard to process it. Drink a cup before bed, and your body will work through processing it overnight, letting you train some in your sleep.”

“That’s… fantastic, thank you!” I said.

“Of course! I’ve been there. Well, I went to school, but close enough. Here, I’ll show you where the tea is.”

I followed her to pick some up. It was more expensive than I would have liked – fifty-two silver for a case large enough to last me two weeks.

But that was a lot cheaper than a Verdant Pasture pill.

I left the store and took the carriage back home. On my front step was a note, written by Orykson again. I wondered how he was getting these notes to me, but given that he was an Occultist Spatial mage, I felt like he could have gotten it to me anywhere.

The note was quite simple – it said that while I was out on the job, I would be expected to be in uniform.

There was only one thing that could mean.

I headed upstairs and changed into my black, single-breasted jacket, with a white shirt and a loose black tie. I clipped on a silver tie clip and cufflinks, said bye to Dad, picked up one of my Mana Shocks from the icebox, and then headed out to find the ghost.

I’d decided that would be better than the lilies, at least for now. I wasn’t likely to be the top performer for the competition anyhow, and it wouldn’t let me exercise my Analyze Life spell in the same way.

The paper had said that it was most commonly spotted on Twenty-Second Street, so that’s where I headed. I burned through my life mana on the way, looking at the various trees and the life auras around them, as well as around plants and animals.

Once I was on Twenty-Second Street, I sketched out the Analyze Death spell and pumped mana into it.

I could actually see the faint purple outlines of death mana wandering around the area, but it looked more like the lingering afterimages of where the ghost had been than the ghost itself.

That was annoying, but ultimately expected.

So, I headed into the bodega and asked to climb their roof. To my surprise, the owner actually barely put up a fuss – maybe the suit was giving me an air of authority, combined with the fact I was on a job from the Spiritwatch, so they quickly showed me the trapdoor that led up onto their roof. I thanked them, then sketched out the spell and cast it again.

It took me a while to look through the neighborhood, but eventually I spotted two stronger points of glowing purple light and headed back down from the roof.

I dropped the Analyze Death spell as I returned to the street and cracked open a can of Mana Shock.

I took a sip and blanched. The label had said mild and fruity, and the fruit was definitely there, but the mildness was not. It tasted like I’d mixed pineapple juice, maraschino cherry juice, and orange juice with isopropyl alcohol, then licked a chalkboard.

It wasn’t… terrible. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t terrible. I may have to see if there were any milder options, though.

But as I walked around, I could feel it enhancing my natural mana recovery, just as promised. I headed in the direction of the first large blob of death energy that I’d seen and sketched out the spell again.

A few minutes later, once I was done with the spell, I pumped mana into it and looked around.

I’d gotten fairly close. The death energy was still a few doors down, so I headed over to it.

It was a seedy looking apartment building, with concrete walls and cheap wallpaper. I followed the trails of death energy to one particular door, where the majority seemed to be leaking out of.

I raised my hand to knock on the door, then hesitated.

It was possible that this was just some normal death mage living here, who’d bound some spirits or something like that. But I didn’t really know, and I didn’t want to annoy someone who lived in a place like this.

I took another sip of Mana Shock and turned around to leave. If the second spot of death energy didn’t turn up anything, then I could always come back.

I paced up Twenty-Second Street, headed for the direction of the other source of powerful death mana that I’d seen earlier.

With the Mana Shock helping me recover mana somewhat faster, I left the spell up as I walked, trying to trace the patterns of death that I saw in the air.

It took me almost two more hours and the entire can of Mana Shock, along with a thirty-minute break, but eventually I stepped into an alleyway where I could see a middle-aged balding man staring aimlessly at the trash bins.

That would have been a bit odd, but nothing too unusual, if it weren’t for the fact that he was positively radiating death energy.

“Hello?” I called uncertainly.

He turned around and stared at me, then blinked.

“Help me get home,” he said. “I was taking out the trash…”

He gestured at the trash heap.

“Do you remember where you live?” I asked.

“Can you help me get home?” he asked again. “I was taking out the trash…”

Well, that wasn’t great. But maybe his body was what had been giving off all that death energy?

“Follow me,” I said and turned to walk away, glancing over my shoulder to make sure the ghost was following.

He drifted behind me, and I walked back to the place where I’d seen the death mana emanating before. I pointed at the door.

“Is that your home?”

The ghost looked at me, then looked at the door. He let out a sigh of relief and faded away into nothing, his death energy dispersing.

Well, that had been… interesting.

I headed into the nearest station to report my success to the Spiritwatch. The Spirit, Light, and Wyldwatch all shared office space, each one dominating one level of a four-story building, with the fourth for holding cells.

I explained the location of the ghost and the ghost’s body to the person behind the desk, and she had me wait in the lobby while a cleanup crew went to retrieve the body and sanitize the place.

While I was waiting, I took a moment to look around. Interestingly, it looked like the mission I’d completed had come from a jobs board. Anyone could take a copy and mark it to indicate that they’d be working on it. I’d have to move quickly with the quests that Orykson sent me, or else someone else may be able to claim them. There was also a ranking system based on the difficulty of the quest, along with the recommended gate of mana for it, if applicable.

I didn’t have to wait too long before one of the crew sent back a Whispering Wind to report that the body had been found and identified, and a few minutes after that, I was leaving the Spiritwatch with a new first gate Mana Restoration Elixir and twenty silver.

That was two of the three missions completed, but there wasn’t nearly enough time to hire a carriage out of town to look for the unpicked moonwater lilies.

There was always a chance that there would be a few left unpicked in the canals or parks, so I decided that I may as well walk home.

I passed through a few parks that I knew had some water in them and over a few canals, but I wasn’t able to find any lilies. It was still nice to stretch my legs, though, even if I did have to take a break every once in a while to stop myself from overheating in my binder.

When I finally got back home, I found Ed and his girlfriend sparring in the street in front of the bakery.

Because of course I did.