Mana Mirror: Chapter Thirty Two (Patreon)

“We fight,” I said, my voice a little bit shakier than I would have liked. I had to fight, or at least try to fight. Kene had taken me along to defend him from threats like this, after all. If I ran away at the first sight of danger, how would that make me look?

Besides, if it went horribly, I could always run anyways.

Well, unless I was dead, but if the troll was so strong that it could kill me before I even got a chance to realize I was outmatched, I wasn’t going to be able to run from it anyways.

The troll turned, sniffing the air, and faced in our direction.

“Do you have any spells that create sunlight?” I asked, channeling mana into Fungal Lock. Mushrooms began to sprout all over the troll’s body.

“No, that’s a third gate spell, I’m only second gate,” Kene said.

“Plant manipulation?” I asked.

“A bit,” he said.

“Can you move the branches to let sunlight through?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Kene said. “It’ll take me a while.”

“That’s fine,” I said, flashing a cocky grin. “I’ve got it pinned, and it doesn’t seem to be able to resist.”

As if to prove me wrong, the troll rose to its full height and the mushrooms shredded off of it.

“Or not,” I said. “Go, get behind me, I’ll keep it busy!”

Kene turned and bolted back, and I could only hope that I wasn’t making a terrible mistake. I cast Fungal Lock on the troll again, and with my Analyze Life active, I could see why the troll had taken so long to shake it off the first time.

Normally, the spell’s artificial mycelium tendrils sunk into a person’s life energy and drained it, slowing them. But the life energy paths of a troll were very different than the ones that I’d seen in humans – namely, they had massively oversized flows of life energy that swirled through the heart, lungs, brain, spine, and more.

If Kene or my life energy flows were like a garden hose, then these were like the high-power blasts released from a fireman’s pressure crystals.

These made the troll able to recover from damage incredibly quick.

It also gave the Fungal Lock spell an ample source of power within the troll to draw upon.

When the spell locked onto the troll a second time, the mycelium roots grew rapidly, but the troll wasn’t mindless. It may not be intelligent like a person, but it still had enough animalistic intellect to recognize a pattern.

It let out a bellow, and more life energy flooded through its oversized flows, and shredded the mycelium apart.

My eyes widened. It was overwhelming the spell with little more than raw power.

I’d spent too long thinking though. The instant the troll was free, it snapped forwards, and a huge green hand slammed into me. I managed to turn and take the blow on my shoulder, rather than my chest, but it still sent me stumbling back. A sharp pain shot from my shoulder, and then my arm went numb.

I cursed under my breath and sent more power into casting another Funal Lock spell. The troll was caught in place again, and I took the moment to begin stirring my mana. I drained my temporal and spatial into more life and death, and then began to flood Fungal Lock. Once. Twice. Three times.

I layered the spell on the troll over and over again. It let out a bellow and began to intensify its regeneration, but for each layer of mycelium it shredded through, there was another there to take its place.

I glanced around, desperately hoping that Kene was almost done shifting the trees. I was running low on mana.

Then the troll let out a roar that was unlike any of the previous ones. It seemed to reverberate, shaking my body, and tearing through the remaining layers of Mycelium.

It seemed to take something out of the troll, though, as even free it didn’t move. I flooded the last of my mana into another Fungal Lock spell.

And the troll exploded into motion, ripping through my spell. I stumbled back, tripping over a root.

That trip saved me from a swipe of the troll’s meaty hand where my head had been, and I rolled between the troll’s trunk-like legs.

It sent another roll of pain through my shoulder, and I felt tears stinging the corner of my eyes. The troll sniffed the air, seemingly confused by the stunt, and glanced around.

I reached into my inner suit jacket pocket with my good arm and withdrew the elixir, as well as a single shard of cow bone. I popped the cap and swigged the small draft.

It was only a few ounces, a single good swallow, and I felt a burn in my mana garden as it flooded with mana. It wasn’t the steady tide of the elixir Alvaro had given me, nor was it the slow trickle of Mana Shock. It was as if I’d broken a light, and all the mana was now flowing into me. My hair stood on end, and I poured the power into a Fungal Lock spell. The layering technique had worked for a while before, and breaking it had clearly drained the troll fiercely.

Then, as the troll began to fight through the layers, I began to sketch out Pinpoint Boneshard.

It was slow going – the spell was complex for a combat spell, but with the troll trapped, I had time.

Kene appeared next to me, and I nearly broke my sketching.

“I thought you were opening the trees?” I whispered. I wasn’t sure why I was whispering – it wasn’t as if the troll was going to become more aware of us.

“I did,” Kene said. “But the clouds – it’s about to rain.”

“Primes,” I swore. “Hold on.”

I completed the spell, and felt an odd sensation wash over me. I had to target the spell, but it wasn’t a simple matter of will, like it was with Fungal Lock. It needed to lock onto a point in space.

I sent it firing at the troll’s neck. I felt bad, but the troll wouldn’t have shown us mercy, and given how strong their regeneration was, it would likely survive.

The attention I needed to give the spell vanished, and the bone shot out of my hand like an arrow, impaling itself in the troll’s neck.

Inside the troll, the flows of energy to the rest of its body slowed and weakened, redirecting to its neck. The shard slowly pushed itself out of the neck, and hit the ground, but the damage had been done.

Unable to pour the regeneration into tearing away layers of Fungal Lock, five separate layers of the spell had all sunk their greedy mycelium tendrils deep into the troll, siphoning away its energy.

The troll let out another pounding roar, the same one that had ripped through the multi-layered Fungal Locks before, but unlike the first time, it was almost out of energy. The roar wasn’t nearly as loud, and it didn’t reverberate through my bones the way that it had the first time.

It still tore three levels of the spell, but that wasn’t enough to stop me from converting my spatial and temporal mana and layering five more fungal locks right back onto it, fixing all the damage it had done, and then some.

The troll bellowed one last time, and then sunk to the floor.

I didn’t release my layers of spells, though. I held them steady until it fell apart, out of spare life energy to feed on.

“How long does that buy us?” I asked wearily. Kene’s eyes flashed with magic as they studied the troll. In my own vision, the troll looked… Strange.

On a purely biological level, it looked fine. Its heart beat, its lungs drew in air, its kidneys filtered toxins, as well as everything else important to life. But on the more metaphysical level, it looked wrung out, like a sponge someone had been too rough with.

“At least twelve hours,” they said. “Trolls rely on ambient life energy a lot more than humans do, and you took everything. It’s going to need good rest to even be ambulatory, and then it’s going to need a good meal.”

Despite myself, I felt a grin spreading across my face. I’d done it!

Admittedly, I’d had to use the elixir, which I would have preferred to not to do, but I’d still done it.

“You’ve hurt yourself again,” Kene said disapprovingly. “Come here.”

I walked over, and they scanned me up and down.

“Dislocated shoulder,” they said distantly. “Fair bit of damage to the tissue, probably from when you fell… If you didn’t get to a healer quickly, it would have some internal scarring. Pink elephants.”

He reached out and grabbed my arm and shoulder. I let out a yelp of pain as he sharply popped the arm back, and then felt a gentle warmth as green light spread from his fingers, running through my shoulder.

“This is only a regeneration to help you recover quickly, so it may still be a bit twingy for a few days,” they warned.

“Thank you,” I said quietly. “How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” he said. “You protected me from the troll, and you’ve helped me collect a bunch of plants. Besides, I invited you along. It’d be a bit of a faux pas for me to charge you.”

“Alright,” I said. I still wasn’t entirely comfortable with letting them heal me for free, but I wasn’t going to press or push that onto him.

“Good,” they said. “I was worried you’d be stupid and try to argue with me.”

“Would there have been a point?” I asked, trying to project exasperation into my voice, but only managing a half-smile. “But why did you say pink elephants earlier?”

“Nope,” they said, popping the p. “It would have been pointless. And it was a distraction, so you didn’t think or react too much when I put your shoulder back into its socket. I don’t have any pain relievers on me, or I’d give you one, but we can grab one once we’re back at my clinic.”

They removed their hand from my shoulder.

“There, I’m done.”

I rolled my shoulder, and felt a couple of mild twinges, but nothing like the strange mix of pain and numbness that had rushed through it after the troll’s attack.

“Thank you,” I said seriously. “You’re a good healer. And a good alchemist.”

The tiniest tinge of pink spread across his face, and he glanced away.

“Sure,” they said. “Let’s go find the troll’s cave, though. They collect all sorts of random junk after all, and some of it’s pretty valuable.”

“Why?” I asked. “Afraid of compliments? You’re great. Your combat boots look nice on you. You’ve got a good sense of humor. You can pull of the witch’s hat shockingly well. You –”

“I surrender, I surrender,” Kene said, holding up their hands and laughing. “Please, show me mercy.”

“Fine, fine,” I conceded. “It’s important for… What did you call me, a battlegaurd bodymage, or something like that? It’s important for those to have mercy.”

“Of course,” Kene said dryly. “I’m glad you’re adhering to their honor code, or I’d have to report you to the battleguard consortium.”

“Of course,” I agreed. I glanced at the collapsed body of the troll. “You’re sure it won’t wake up?”

“Twelve hours was my conservative estimate,” Kene said seriously. Actually serious, this time, no hints of a sardonic smile lurking just out of sight.

“Alright,” I said, nodding slowly. “Then, yeah. Let’s go look for the troll’s cave.”