Mana Mirror: Chapter Eighteen (Patreon)

CW: Mentions of previous self harm.

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I scratched at my chin for a few moments before I decided that it had to be the blood carnations.

While the green star sapling would be useful indefinitely, banking on the idea that I’d be reaching all the way to fifth gate was a bit foolish, regardless of what Orykson promised. If I somehow did get that far, then I’d probably be able to acquire a sapling to use.

The purpletongue thistle would be great, but all it would do would be to further the gap between my growing life mana and flagging death mana.

I found one of the Wyldwatch members who was attending the plants and handed them my paper.

“Can I get a cutting of a blood carnation?” I asked.

She glanced at the slip of paper and tucked it into her apron, then nodded. As she led me to the flower, she glanced over at me.

“We don’t really get many requests for a cutting of those. Do you have both life and death mana?”

“I do,” I said, nodding.

“Ah, good! I’ve got both as well – there aren’t too many of us. What are you planning on using the cutting for?”

“My teacher wants me to start raising a garden to harvest mana from,” I said, “I figured that I could probably harvest mana for both my life and death gates from the plant.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” she said. “I’d wait a bit before you tried to do any harvesting though, to let them grow back to full strength. What month is it right now… Petal-Bloom? That’s a bit late to start planting carnations of any sort, even a blood carnation. Two months ago, during New-Life would have been the best time to do it. But, since you’re planting a cutting and not sprouting it from seeds, it isn’t too late. Do you have any enchantments in your garden to prepare them for autumn?”

“No,” I said.

“If you want, it could be worth looking into. Carnations are perennial plants, so they’ll come back in the spring as long as you take care of them, but they’re going to start withering in Hearts-End or Harvest-Fount if you don’t, which could be an issue if you’re using them for mana harvesting. Hmm, do you know how to take care of a blood carnation, as opposed to a regular one?”

“No,” I repeated, mildly stunned by how much she was talking.

“Blood, of course!” she said, with far too much cheer, as if she’d been talking about the weather. “You need to feed it a few drops of blood every day to get it to keep growing. There are a few plants like that – grizzleroot, bloodroot vine, stingbulb, that sort of thing.”

“Ah,” I said, not really sure what else to say. Thankfully, I was saved by us arriving at the blood carnations.

They were bigger than most flowers that I’d seen before, almost the size of my entire palm. The stems all bunched together at the bottom, but spread out as they grew. Unlike most plants, the stems were gray, and they had an almost eerie vibe to them – though maybe I was overprescribing feelings to a flower.

The attendant reached under the planter they were on and withdrew a cheap paper pot, then scooped a bit of soil into it, then grabbed a knife and gently cut away a couple of the carnations, roots intact, and planted them in the loose soil. She handed them out to me.

“There you go! And make sure you stop by again sometime. If you’ve got both death and life mana, you could probably pick up a bit of part time work in the greenhouse.”

“I’ll… keep that in mind,” I said, taking the plant. “Thank you for all of your help.”

With that, I turned and left to head home. As soon as I got home, I grabbed one of the spare shovels that we had tucked away in a closet. It wasn’t a real shovel, only one of the hand sized ones that my mother had probably owned, but it would get the job done.

When I went into the backyard, I was pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of the clover had begun to sprout. It wasn’t full grown clover leaves yet, but there were small green shoots sticking out of the earth all over the place. I found a spot near the sides, where it would look good, and went to work planting the blood carnations. Once I was done, I cast the Enhance Plant Life spell and drained my death mana into them, then added an equal amount of life mana, before finally adding a bit of water.

Now for the blood. I bit my lip and headed into the kitchen, then returned and used it to prick the side of my upper right arm, where I already had a few scars. Several drops of crimson blood welled up, and I splashed them on the carnations, which seemed to swell for a moment. I washed the knife and put a bandage on.

I wasn’t entirely sure that I’d done everything exactly correct, but nothing awful had happened, and Meadow would be coming tomorrow anyways.

I glanced up at the sky. It was getting late, so my hopes of being able to fit in the mission to find the sol-bees were just about dashed. Still, I had several hours before dinner, so it wouldn’t hurt to work on mastering my spells.

I spent the rest of the night practicing my magic and making dinner, and I put a few drops of the mana enhancer into my tea that night before bed, bracing myself for the ache the following morning.

The following morning, Meadow arrived bright and early, as always, and I opened the door with a small groan. She patted my hand as she moved inside.

“Remind me to give you a spell later.”

I glanced down at the tiny old woman with new interest.

“Thank you,” I said, seriously. She simply chuckled and nodded.

“Now let’s go look at your garden.”

As soon as we stepped out back, she wandered over to my new plant and leaned down.

“Ah, Malachi… Blood carnations, I see?”

“Yes,” I said, a bit nervous as to how she was going to react to them, but she simply smiled and nodded.

“A good choice for your particular mana composition,” she said. “Do you know how to take care of it?”

“Only the basics,” I admitted. She nodded and gestured to the ground.

“Sit, sit,” she said.

I took a seat and she spent a good while talking about the proper care for them. She was a good teacher, running through the concepts slowly enough for me to pick up on them, and not bothering that I spent the entire lesson fidgeting with my shoelaces, looking around, and picking at the dirt – something that would definitely have gotten a scolding in school.

By the time she’d finished, Ed had wandered outside and flopped onto the grass next to me, wiping the sleep from his eyes.

“Ah, good, good,” Meadow said, smiling at him. “Now that you’re both awake, we can begin.”

Meadow had me invest most of my power into my new plant before I did simple exercises – running, jumping jacks, pushups, and more. Ed was made to practice with his spear, and join me in the exercises. Before she left to make lunch, Meadow had me spread some nutrients over the burgeoning clover, as well as prepare some patches of the garden for other plants. When she turned to go, I finally spoke up, asking something on my mind.

“Why do you have me do so much physical training?”

“Other than the fact that it’s good for the heart? I’ve spoken with your mentor about his plans for you, and it should help quite a bit for when you open your second gate life mana.”

I frowned. Orykson had promised that I’d be able to start the medical parts of transitioning within a year. I thought that I’d need to be third gate for it, but maybe I’d be able to get away with being second gate for a few basic body spells? Ed’s Skin of Stone spell was second gate, if I remembered correctly.

Meadow came back a while later with a peanut curry, and we spent the rest of the day enriching the garden with mana. As dinnertime began to approach, and Ed left to visit Liz in her home, Meadow gestured for me to sit.

“I believe that I owe you a spell,” she said. “Two, actually.”

“Two?” I asked, scratching the scab on my arm.

“Yes. The second one is crucial to your training, but I think you’ll find the first one quite useful.”

She reached into her pocket and withdrew a pen and notepad and drew two spells on it.

One of them was clearly a life spell of some sort, though I didn’t really understand what it was. It didn’t resemble analyze life in the slightest.

The other… I had never seen a spell like it. It didn’t resemble any of the spells I’d seen or heard of, and none of the core elements of spells that would let me at least recognize the mana type were there. It was too complex to be an ungated spell, but I didn’t know what else it could be.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the weird spell.

“That is a spell in the Elohi style,” she said, “it’s an ungated spell that helps to reduce or eliminate aches and pains in the body or Mana Garden. It doesn’t actually fix anything, mind you, it merely reduces the impact.”

I stared at her for a second, then let out a long breath. I could think of a lot of ways I could use a spell like that, and I wondered why Mossford’s spell traditions had never created something like it. I could get pain reducing alchemical pills, but an ungated spell was far more useful.

I released my ungated mana around me and shaped it into the new spell. It was harder than I thought it’d be, not because of the complexity or power of the spell, but simply because it was shaped so… weird. It was like trying to write with my right hand, instead of my dominant left.

After a bit, I wrangled it into the right shape and cast the spell. A cool relief washed over my Mana Garden and body. It didn’t fix my pains, exactly, but it was like the best parts of a heatpack and icepack at once.

“Thank you,” I said seriously. She smiled and pushed the other paper towards me.

“This is the Harvest Plant Life spell. It allows you to drain some of the energy from a plant. Not enough to do any serious harm – you won’t be withering any trees, though you may shorten the lifespan of a grass – but it will still convert it to mana and refill your life mana, as well as any other aspects that the plant happens to have. I wouldn’t advise you use it on your carnations for at least another week, but after that, you should be able to draw mana from it. Just use your instincts, don’t overdraw it.”

I studied the spell and nodded.

“Thanks. Is there a death version?”

She smiled and patted my hand.

“You’ll learn one from Orykson before too horribly long, don’t worry. For now, I’d advise you to just continue working. If you really want to help your death mana, ignore it for now and convert everything you don’t feed your carnations into life mana, then Master your Analyze Life spell and convert your life mana into death, and work on Analyze Death.”

I considered her words for a moment. I’d been splitting my focus between Analyze Life and Death. Even though converting from death to life mana meant that I’d lose most of the mana in the transition. But even still, I’d essentially be adding a large amount of life mana into my training, and I could do it in reverse like she said.

“Thank you again,” I said, rising and offering her a hand up. She took it and smiled.

“Of course. Helping people’s just what any decent person would do.”

I didn’t necessarily agree with that, and I thought that there were a lot of people in the world who weren’t decent. But as Meadow headed off to do… Whatever Meadow did when she wasn’t teaching me, I banished those thoughts and went to go make dinner.