Mana Mirror: Chapter Forty-One (Patreon)

This chapter is a bit short, but it's got a pretty big choice at the end, so I didn't want to skim over that.

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The scenery around us shifted and blurred, and then we were in my mana-garden. She led us into my death gate, and to the nearly dead, skeletally white tree that was my Analyze Death spell. It had several huge branches, and many, many small ones, though they seemed to be mainly concentrated around the left side of the tree.

“What’s wrong with it?” Meadow asked.

“It… Looks dead?” I asked.

“This is a death gate, influenced by your life mana being the first type you unlocked,” Meadow said, shaking her head. “It looking like a dead tree is natural. No, it needs pruning.”

“Like the juice?” Ed asked, then blushed. “No, that was stupid. It was just the first thing that came to mind.”

“Pruning a tree is essential for its health as it grows,” Meadow said. “Which, all of your spells will. You need to give them consistent maintenance, though the first time is always the hardest. You’ll want to prune extra small branches that are overbalancing the tree. Cast the spell.”

I sent mana into the tree, and it began to glow. I was glad I didn’t need to sketch the spell, like Ed had – that would have been a pain.

“Now take off some of the short branches up top that are overbalancing it to the right. Not too many, just enough to balance the tree.”

I reached up and pulled on one of the branches. Nothing happened. I pulled harder, and the tree branch bent, but didn’t break. After a few long moments of me applying continuous pressure, the branch snapped off. I glanced at it. The snap was unnaturally even and clean, and hadn’t even left a cut node where I’d removed it.

“You can cut off the spell now,” Meadow said.

I did as she said, and the scenery around us blurred, and we were sitting in the normal world once more.

“Now, before I leave you all to practice removing or increasing the efficiency of your spells, I’ve one more thing to talk to you about, Malachi.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s about your life mana. You’re rapidly closing in on the point where it’s time for me to give you a spell, and the spell you pick will do a lot to determine your path.”

She held up a hand to forestall questions.

“Now, this is not me telling you to pick your path. The higher gates in your mana-garden have larger area to add more spells, by and large. You could potentially learn a random assortment of spells. But I find it’s best to pick a main specialty and grow that, with other supporting spells. For example, a summoning focused life mage may learn some healing spells, but instead of a focused, powerful spell, they may learn an aura of regeneration. And the categories aren’t firm, solid things. Many empowerment spells can affect the self just as much as they can others.”

“So, what are the general forms, then?” I asked.

“Empowerment spells, like the infamous body-based haste spell. It overlaps quite a bit with healing magic and transformation magic, and can even be considered the same at times. I could teach you the Quickfoot spell, which will increase your speed, and when imbued, will increase your body’s overall ability to absorb empowering spells. This is the category I least advise you to take – you already have a great number of mobility and self or group empowering spells from your temporal and spatial mana, and doubling down, while it would make strong, may be narrowing your focus too much.”

I didn’t hate the idea of becoming a physical powerhouse, but it didn’t especially tickle my sensibilities either. Pairing a time-based haste with a body-based haste would be nice, but I couldn’t really see myself zipping around and punching people either, at least not as my primary form of combat.

“This brings us to healing. Least Regeneration is a weak generalist healing spell I could show you, and the ingrained effect would increase the efficacy of all future healing spells. You’re not a doctor, and field healing is likely to be the best you could manage. I actually advise you pick up a third gate healing spell, regardless of which path you wind up following most of all, as it’s useful to have a bit of field healing. It will also highly reinforce your transitioning magic, as an added bonus.”

That wasn’t too bad sounding, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to focus too much on healing. Picking up an odd healing spell definitely sounded good, though. That being said, reinforcing my transitioning was a hard thing to argue with.

“Transformation magic is next,” she said. “Typically, these are short transfigurations to do things like grant yourself claws, scales, gills or the like. Eventually, full body transformations into birds, fish, or other animals is possible, but it’s a long way off. Transmogrify is a powerful fourth tier spell that lets you shift to a huge variety of forms, but it’s highly limited in the short term. I’ll note that it will have some synergy with your transition, but far less than you may expect, based on the method Orykson has planned, and may actually cause it to have less utility in the short term, given most transition spells begin with altering the flows of life energy inside yourself, much as transformation does. I can show you Scaleskin, which will grow a thin layer of scales on your body to allow you to take blows better, and, when engrained, reduce the potential negative interactions of your future transformations somewhat.”

I didn’t mind waiting for power, and transformation magic seemed pretty cool, but I hated the idea of limiting how I was going to be able to transition. It also was highly melee focused. It wouldn’t have as much double dipping as empowerment spells did, but it was still much more useful to punching than standing back and catching people.

“Now for the two paths I truly do advise,” Meadow said. “Plant magic and summoning. Summoning is another powerful and flexible discipline that can handle scouting, offense, and even some defense. It involves a great deal of forging solid mana and imbuing it with a degree of life energy flows and your own will to create semi-autonomous creations, which naturally means that the spells are extremely mana hungry. I could teach you to cast Swarm of Bees, which has utility as both a scouting spell and an area offensive spell, and its ingrained effect will boost the power of all your future summoning spells. Not only that, but it will pair well with the reanimation spells you’ll learn to do.”

That also sounded amazing, but in a totally different way. I could imagine forging a dragon made of mana around me to take attacks and destroy my enemies – not that I had that many enemies.

“Now I fully admit that I’m not an impartial judge when it comes to plant magic, as it’s my own specialty,” Meadow said with a laugh. “But it would allow you to fight well at range or in melee. Its spells are also powerful and flexible, ranging from good options for constraining people, to alchemy, to offense, to defense. You have, to some extent, begun to practice this path. Fungal Lock is a solid starting spell. I’d teach you the Briarthreads spell.”

Thin green threads wove themselves in the air around her, covered in sharp thorns at the ends.

“It’s a spell that combines both offense and defense,” she explained. “The threads rearrange themselves to injure attackers. It likely won’t stop a flamethrower spell, granted, but it’s a good incentive to not punch you, which a surprising number of mages do. It should provide some limited defenses against any physical attacks, magical or otherwise.”

To prove it, she tossed me a small rock. I tossed it at her, and the briars intercepted it, knocking it away and scoring it with small, sharp marks.

“But that’s only half of the spell.”

She flicked her hands outwards and the sharp threads of briars slashed out like a whip, slicing through the air

“Depending on the power of the attack, they can cause minor pricks and injuries, or they can open lacerations. I’ve enough power to slice them through steel, though admittedly, I’ve had years to let the spell grow. You certainly won’t be doing that right away.”

She let the threads fade, and smiled.

“When imbued, it will reinforce the power of all your plant-related spells, which will likely include Fungal Lock. Mushrooms aren’t plants from a biological standpoint, not even close, but it effects Harvest and Enhance Plant Life, neither of which are technically plant spells either. It’s certainly a fringe case, and one I’m interested in seeing the results of.”

It seemed like Meadow had been steering me down this path to some degree already, given my garden, but I couldn’t muster up the energy to be upset with her over that. Having a steady extra source of mana would be useful, regardless of which path I took. Having synergy in my power would be great, and while it lacked scouting options, it had excellent defense, offense, and utility.

“It’s a big choice,” I said.

“It is, but it’s not the one and only time you get to choose,” Meadow said. “As I said, at Third Gate, you’ll have much more mana to experiment with, and you can learn some spells from other methods. Not only that, but there’s plenty of overlap between the different methods of using life magic, such as summoning a small army of animated bushes. If you wind up not liking what you pick, you can remodel to remove it, though that will take time and effort. But yes, this is the first major step down your path. I recommend plant magic or summoning, but it is your choice.”