Mana Mirror: Chapter Twenty Two (Patreon)

I bit my lip and then let out a low sigh, then started the walk back home.

As much as the two thousand silver did call to me, Orykson had been willing to drop five times that amount on my suits. There were decent odds that whatever he gave me would be valuable. Maybe even more valuable than the two thousand silver would be.

I comforted myself with the fact that, even if the gift was trash – which I didn’t think it would be, but that wasn’t the point – I’d still be permanently increasing my magical prowess.

When I got home, my nose twitching to the smell of someone cooking, I almost took out the elixir to drink right then and there, but I stopped myself. It was late, and the nose-promised dinner would probably be in an hour or two. I put the bottle on my nightstand and just practiced the spell with the mana I’d recovered.

I still had a little bit of time, so I dug around in my closet for a bit, then withdrew a journal that I’d never used before. It was a dark navy blue, with faux silver edge gilding, and a design of a serpent in more faux silver on the front.

Over the course of my life, I’d tried to journal several times, to varying levels of success. I’d often be incredibly invested in the beginning: buying new notebooks, pens, and other accoutrements. I’d start out journaling every day, sometimes multiple times a day.

But eventually, I’d miss a day, and my entire rhythm would be thrown off, or else my motivation would slowly drain away to nothing.

I’d never had anything especially interesting to write in my journals, however. Maybe now that I was doing a lot more exciting things, I could keep it up. It couldn’t hurt to try.

I spent a while outlining all of my goals, both completed and uncompleted, as well as any rewards that were particularly noteworthy.

Fetch Cow Bones: Complete

Finding Runaway Ghost’s Body: Complete, one first gate Mana Restoration Elixir.

Set Cemetery Spirits to Rest: Complete, one Lesser Marrow Death Mana Extract.

Catch Acidbubble-Toad: Complete, cutting of Blood Carnations.

Catch Paperbeetles: Complete, Trickle Death Mana Restoration Elixir. Pearl Library Seal.

Master Analyze Life and Death: One week remaining. Unknown reward.

Ingrain Analyze Life and Death: Three weeks remaining. Unknown reward.

Pay Off Broom: One hundred and forty silver per month for five years. Broom was eight thousand silver, though. If I pay off more, even just a little bit, it should help pay it off faster.

Keep Working for Library: Higher seals? Probably? I don’t know. Higher rank seals apparently let you check out secret parts of the library, like combat spells. Might also let me check out some other types of spells.

Forage for Magical Plants with Kene: Magical plants. Could be useful for expanding the magical plants in my garden, and if Meadow is to be believed (and I think I trust her more than Orykson), this is a key element to growing stronger.

I hesitated for a moment, then added one more goal.

Decide on Final Mana Gate: Need to decide before I’m about to reach second gate, or right after I do.

I still wasn’t sure on which mana types I actually wanted, so I decided to list out the pros and cons for each of them on the next page.

Solar/Lunar:

- Pros: Very flexible mana types, with a lot of different spells, like illusions, purification, light, fire, ice, shadow, water, and stealth. Liz may be able to help me learn some Lunar magic. Some overlap with Lunar magic and some death spells. Most classic spells fall into these mana types, like flamethrower, fireball, or water wall.

- Cons: Classic spells mean well established counters, and more obscure spells have some quality control problems that could lead to needing to change them later. Redoing parts of my mana garden would be a big waste of time, if I did need to.

Telluric/Tempest:

- Pros: Good combat options for offense, defense, and utility. Flight can be achieved with both of them. Combining the two would let me fly fast and far under my own power. Ed can help me with Telluric magic. Some overlap with bone spells and Telluric magic. Has a lot of well-known spells too.

- Cons: Just like Solar/Lunar, having well-known spells means a lot of well-known counters. Not a ton of non-combat uses (other than flying) that interest me. I don’t want to work construction.

Temporal/Spatial:

- Pros: Orykson can help with both of these, and probably has stuff lined up for it. Gives me amazing combat mobility with teleporting and haste, and some defense too. Gives me the best out of combat powers, like growing extraspatial pockets, long range teleportation, and summoning things. By combining my life magic with temporal magic, even as just a Spellbinder, I can easily live an extra several decades. Longer if I really make it to Arcanist, like Orykson claims.

- Cons: Not a ton of offensive power.

Physical/Mental:

- Pros: A lot of use for both combat and non-combat applications. Just as much as Solar/Lunar, but in different ways. It also allows flight, though not as well or synergistically as Telluric/Tempest. It has plenty of well-known spells also, like force missile and shield…

- Cons: Same as other well-known spells. Outside of that… Messing around in people’s heads without their permission is super illegal and unethical. Even if it was legal, I’d still not want to do it. I don’t want to become a mental healer or only use mental magic on animals, so I’d be giving up almost half of what I got…

Knowledge/Abnegation:

- Pros: Tracking magic and counter magic could be useful for tracking down rogue shades or animals, or when fighting them. Abnegation also has some good general defensive spells too.

- Cons: Even less offensive power than Temporal/Spatial. It can also walk on shaky territory ethically and legally, like with tracking people. Not as bad as Mental mana, but still can be pretty bad. I don’t really want to be a member of the Lightwatch or the Library – the library wouldn’t be bad, but that’s a completely different career path.

Creation/Desolation:

- Pros: Really flexible, more than anything else. Liz can also help teach me desolation mana.

- Cons: The spells are huge gluttons for mana, and my Mana Garden is of an average size. Desolation is only offense. Most importantly, this would break my apprentice contract, and I’d be in deep trouble. If I had three gates to pick out, not two, this would make an awesome support, but on its own?

I sighed as I paused my writing. There wasn’t an easy answer. Solar and Lunar magic were great, but so was Telluric and Tempest, and Spatial and Temporal.

A greedy part of me wanted all of the mana types, but that would be impractical – I was already burning a lot of time with mastery for spells for two types. If I had fourteen, I doubted I’d ever be able to finish anything at all.

Besides, that was nothing but smoke and wishes, so I put it out of mind, then went downstairs to eat dinner. To my pleasant surprise, Ed and Liz were both down there, though my dad had been called away – someone far richer than us wanted custom cakes for his party.

A far less pleasant surprise was that Ed had been the one cooking.

My brother wasn’t an awful cook, but of the three people who lived full time in the house, he was the only one who had taken to it from necessity, rather than enjoyment.

“Evening, Mal,” Liz said as I sat down across from her.

“Don’t call me Mal,” I groaned. “That makes me sound like… I don’t know. The kind of villain that would appear in a cheesy romance novel with dragons and damsels.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Malbad,” Ed teased.

“Ugh,” was all I had to say in response.

“So, how’s the apprenticeship going?” Liz asked as she poked at the chicken on her plate.

“Well enough, I suppose,” I said. “I’m still working on mastering one of the spells, but then I’m going to move onto ingraining them.”

“Oh, he’s one of those?” Liz asked.

“One of those?” Ed said, asking the question before I could.

“A mega perfectionist,” Liz responded. “And a crazy person. Mastering a spell without really using it much first is like giving someone a sword without training them with a stick.”

“On the other hand,” I countered, “my goal isn’t to master the spell. It’s to ingrain it. Ingraining comes from understanding the spell.”

“Which is like handing someone a sword, and then training them with it,” she responded. “It’s too easy to access the power and hurt yourself with it.”

“I mean, it isn’t a combat spell,” Ed said in an appeasing tone.

“True enough,” Liz conceded. “But it’s still dangerous. You should take care if he ever teaches you a combat spell.”

“I will,” I said seriously. “Thank you.”

There was a moment of silence after Liz’s nod, so I decided to fill it.

“How’s guild work going, Liz?”

“Well enough,” she said. “The sea estragon are going to be migrating through the channel in about two weeks, so there’s going to be an open call to deal with any of them that are harassing people. If either of you are up for it, we may actually be hiring help.”

“I’ll help!” Ed volunteered happily.

“What’s an estragon?” I asked Liz. “It sounds like estrogen, which I know you may like, but it’s not to my tastes.”

Liz let out a snorting laugh at that, and so Ed responded instead.

“A non-sapient magical species, distantly related to dragons, hydras, drakes and the like,” he said. “Sea estragon usually have natural magic related to… the sea. Lots of water magic, some pressure. They’re usually somewhere around first or second gate, at least from what I’ve seen. Some mages like to take estragon as familiars or pets, so there may be some people bonding them or trapping them. Normally, they’re very solitary, but every Suns-Birth, they go on a mating frenzy up north, so they’ll be moving here.

A curious look came over his face as he said that, but I didn’t press him, partly because I was chewing on a roast carrot that hadn’t been cooked all the way to the core.

“What’s the actual job like?” I asked.

“Nothing too hard,” Liz said. “The migration usually only lasts about a week, give or take a few days. You may be helping to catch them for people who are taking them in, locking down the ones that get mad about humans existing and returning them to the sea, and preventing them from destroying any property, be it private or public.”

“Interesting,” I said. “I may be able to help on my days off. Does it pay well?”

“Decent,” she said. “About fifteen silver an hour for a freelancer, bonuses if you’re a member of a guild.”

I did a quick mental calculation. I’d probably be able to work about seven hours, since I’d need a break for lunch, so that’d be roughly one hundred silver. That wasn’t bad at all for a day’s work. It may not come with bonus items, but it could still be worthwhile. I’d have to look at other opportunities, when the time arose.

We finished up dinner, and since Ed had cooked, Liz and I did the dishes. Dad would likely be busy until well into the night, so I took out the trash, tossing it into the nearby bin where the Moldmongers would pick it up, and then went to practice flying with my broom in the backyard. Liz and Ed wandered in and out, and Liz gave me a few tips – her family was wealthy enough that she’d gotten a second hand broom at sixteen – but primarily they spent their time together, playing a board game inside as I practiced.

Eventually, though, it came to an end. I enhanced the lethetic tea, drank a cup, and went to bed, eager to finally test out my new elixir in the morning.