Mana Mirror: Chapter Thirty (Patreon)

I spent the rest of the day on a short mission for the Wyldwatch. It didn’t net me anything of interest, but I wasn’t going to object to having a bit of extra silver in the bank. The following morning, Orykson arrived to teach me spatial magic. Much like Ikki, he arrived at exactly eight in the morning. 

Unlike Ikki, however, he didn’t bother to use the door. He merely appeared before me and began speaking immediately. 

“Goo–”

I let out a very deep, not at all undignified scream, and he cut off for a moment. I paused once I realized who it was, and Orykson looked at me. 

“Are you done?” 

“Yes…” I admitted, my voice laced with embarrassment.

“Excellent. Then, let us begin. I presume you have not yet mastered the Analyze Space spell, correct?” 

“Right,” I said, standing quickly. 

“Disappointing, but understandable.” 

I rolled my eyes at him. It had been a few days, and without having pills, potions, and elixirs pumped into me, there was no way I would have been able to master the spell yet. 

That did raise a question, though. If he was rich enough to have his simulacra drink third gate liquor, and he was an occultist, why wasn’t he doing exactly that? The only pill he’d offered me was the Fundament one, and while that had been impressive, it was still weird. 

“Why don’t you give me more magical training aids?” 

“It would ruin you,” Orykson said. “First of all, the ability to integrate external mana into your body and spirit without the aid of a harvesting spell is something your body needs to build up a tolerance to. But there’s a far more important reason. Let us pretend your legacy inured you to the effects of mana toxicity. If I simply poured potions down your throat, I could raise you to a Spellbinder in a week. The monetary cost would be extreme, close to half a million silver. I could do it, yes.” 

“But?” I asked. I wondered briefly if there was some inherent quirk of people with magically overwhelming power that made them want to ramble on, rather than cutting to the point. 

Then again, Ikki had cut to the point. Maybe Meadow and Orykson were just like that. 

“But you’d be ruined, like I said. Pills create inefficiencies in your mana-garden’s growth, and accelerating you that quickly would take well over a year of work to get them out. Even then, that could be repurposed, so it isn’t an entire loss. However, the inefficiencies would run into the foundation of your mana garden. Your ingrained spell effects would be weaker, your spells would grow slower.”

“Didn’t you offer me a massively powerful pill? Would that have wrecked me?” 

“It would have damaged your ungated mana, but that’s not a huge loss. It induces a repair coma after taking it to help mitigate such damage, and using a pill like that once or twice, especially early on in your development, when you will have plenty of time for your mana-garden to grow and repair itself would be acceptable. That being said, things like the Fundament pill are intended to only be used once.” 

“If I don’t use pills enough, my resistance to their mana toxicity is too low to make use of them. But if I use pills too much, I stunt my future development,” I surmised. “How do I know that I’m walking the line right?”

“You don’t,” Orykson said. “You simply have to use your best judgement. Now, let’s stop wasting time. Cast Analyze Space.” 

I did as he said, pouring mana into the spell for the first time. The world around me… Shifted. 

I wasn’t sure how I’d describe it, not really. I could still see just fine, but there were faint lines of gray and blue everywhere, mainly in the faint edges of my vision. A pattern of space that described the area that I was seeing. Distances became clearer. It wasn’t like I had some sort of inherent distance calculation in my vision, but I did understand the distance better. Looking over the shapes, I felt I understood their volume better as well. 

“Interesting,” I said. 

“Indeed. Now follow me,” he said. He snapped his fingers and a portal ripped open in the world. In my spatial vision, it glowed brightly, clinging to the strands of gray and blue, and twisting them into a circular braid. The braid was beautiful in its complexity. 

Orykson stepped through the portal, and I followed. I was struck immediately by a blast of cold, and I actually lost the spell for a second. 

“Primes, where are we? It’s Suns-Birth in a few days, how is it so cold outside?” I asked as I sketched the spell and looked around. We were on some sort of glacier or icy mountaintop, with the valleys underneath all blanketed in snow, dotted with the odd evergreen. 

“We’re atop a mountain in Dragontooth. Recast your spell.” 

I sketched out Analyze Space again and looked around. The spatial lay of the land over the area was radically different than in my bedroom, and the threads of space I could see stretched on forever into the horizon.

I studied the pattern for a while, and then Orykson opened another portal. This time we emerged in a skin scortching desert, the sun high in our heads over us. After that, we traveled to a steaming, humid jungle, then to a large university on a series of floating islands, then to an island in the sea that teemed with magical beasts, to a cave of huge amethyst crystals that bounced the light around wildly, to an inland sea with fish the size of my entire house in a rainbow of colors, to a forest where the leaves were made of fire, and a half a dozen other places besides. 

Each part of the world had its own pattern made out of thousands of threads of space. Each pattern was unique, and each one was slowly changing. 

We only spent a few minutes at each location, but I still had to convert almost all the other mana in my mana-garden into spatial in order to keep the spell running. But when I eventually ran dry, we appeared back in my living room. 

“That was…” I said, before trailing off. I wasn’t sure how I’d describe it. I honestly was highly regretting that I was just able to see those places as a training exercise. I would have loved to spend a week or more in each of them.

“Meditate upon the differences in space in each spot, and the changes each place underwent. I advise you to also travel the local area and look for the smaller, less obvious differences. I will likely not return until you have mastered the spell. Do you have any other questions?” 

I considered for a moment. 

“Do you know a place where I could get some spatial magic stuff? Both a plant, and something that’s purely spatial, in order to help balance my staff.” 

“Ah, yes, your staff,” Orykson said. “I admit, I hadn’t planned for you to start construction on one yet, but gathering materials early is probably a wise idea. For a source of pure spatial magic, I advise you to search out a spatial lodestone. For plants, I recommend you find a sample of young folding cactus. They’re native to desert regions, so you’ll likely need it from a greenhouse or nursery, but they’re quite useful. They appear rather small, but that’s because most of their growth is internal spatial distortion. As they grow, they can reach up to fifth gate, and a fifth gate folding cactus actually stores a significant amount of mass and water in what has, essentially, become its own miniaturized pocket plane.” 

“Any advice for something more… Local?” I asked. 

“Find a local plants expert,” he said with a half a shrug. “Anything else?”

“No,” I said with a sigh. 

“Keep working,” he said before he vanished into the air. 

I practiced my Depths of Starry Night meditation for a while, and I thought I was making some good process on it, but since it was still early, I went to find my dad. He was in the bakery room, using a small cutting spell to do some delicate chocolate work for the top of the cake. I waited until he was finished, then waved. He looked up and smiled. 

“Malachi,” he greeted. “What is it?” 

“I think I’m going to fly to South Valley Village,” I said. “I plan to gather some magical plants in the area with Kene?” 

It was still half a question – I was an adult, sure, but it was hard for me to shake the idea of needing permission at times.

“Kene?” my father asked, with the kind of tone that only a parent figure could properly use. 

Oh no. 

I was doomed. 

“Just… someone I met,” I said evasively. “They invited me to help them gather some plants for their alchemy shop in the forest around there, and since I mastered Fungal Lock, I can defend myself better.”

“I see, I see,” he said. “And this Kene. Are they cute?”

I felt the back of my neck heat up. 

“Uh,” I said. 

“Do you plan to spend the night with them? If so, you should bu–”

“No no no no no no no,” I said, waving my hands frantically to cut him off. “Nothing of the sort. I only sort of know him, I’m definitely not staying with him. I’m going to stay safe. From everything, ok? I’m going to be staying in an inn. It’s called the Heart Lizard Inn, because the owner has a big ol’ heart lizard that likes to hang out around the place.” 

He let out a deep belly laugh and shook his head. 

“I wish you could see the look on your face. But thanks for letting me know. Enjoy your trip with this… Kene.” 

I flushed again as I went to my room to grab my broom, my elixirs, and lifted up into the sky. 

I had to admit to myself, even if to nobody else, I was uncertain about the flight to the village. There were roads to follow, and there was an okay amount of traffic that flowed through them, in both the sky and the land, but this was the furthest I’d ever flown with the broom. 

The first hour or so, I didn’t push the broom to its top speed, but as the flight went on, I grew gradually more comfortable. By the time the second hour had gone by, I was zipping over the trees, and even felt comfortable enough to lean from side to side at times. 

It was… really fun, to my surprise. Flight wasn’t something I’d put too much thought into, but maybe if I got more money, I could try and upgrade the broom. This one topped out at only twenty-five miles an hour. Some upper end ones could go well over a hundred, and even the one Orykson had offered me had been able to go twice as fast. 

I was still loathe to burn the money on something like that though. A nicer newer broom like that would probably cost fifteen or twenty thousand silver, maybe more. I didn’t have that kind of cash at all, and even if I financed it, it’d still be very difficult. The down payment alone… 

While I could afford it, thanks to the forward that Orykson had given me, I didn’t want to dip into that – I needed it for the ore that he’d talked about. 

If I saved money from my missions, I’d definitely be able to afford the down payment eventually, but the monthly payments would still be pretty high. 

I was never the best with calculations, but oddly, I felt more focused as I navigated the broom through the air, and it tried to estimate the cost. I thought it would work out to probably be somewhere around four hundred silver a month or more. 

Definitely not something for the short term, then. 

But, once I was a Spellbinder, I’d be able to take on more dangerous missions, and those would have consummately higher rewards. Maybe I’d be able to afford one then? 

As I landed in the village, I set the broom to charging mode and slung it over my back. Questions for later. For now, I set out towards the apothecary to find Kene.