Mana Mirror: Chapter Forty-Six (Patreon)

No major vote this week, but next week's choice is a DOOZY! The kind of thing that will help shape the future of Malachi's growth!

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I let out a long sigh and told her the story as we released the slipshark, and when I told her about Mallory punching the poor creature, she visibly winced.

“There’s a reason that we primarily kept Qwin on defense. If Mallory gets hurt…” Diana trailed off, then she shook her head. “She’s a decent person, she really is, she just gets aggressive.”

By the time I’d finished the story, someone had returned with a functioning barrier piece to replace the one the Slipshark had broken, and Diana and I went off to gather a few witnesses, including the man who’d sold me the skewers. We returned to the center management tent where we’d first checked in a few days ago to find Mallory, Ed, and Liz all waiting for us there.

“So,” said the worn-out manager. “Mallory here says you attacked her and prevented her from doing her duty of putting down a dangerous animal. She’s not pressing any assault charges, but she does want you barred from taking any Watch freelance work again. I assume that you’re going to deny this happened?”

“I don’t deny that I did attack in order to stop her from killing an innocent slipshark,” I said. “But I do deny that I stopped her from doing her duty, and argue that if anyone should be barred, it’s her. She needlessly attacked an animal, not once, but twice.”

I proceeded to repeat my version of the story for the second time, and a few of the people we’d gathered made sounds of assent. When I finished, the manager turned to face Mallory and nodded.

“The slipshark was in a crowd of people,” she said. “It needed to be put down. Sometimes death is a part of the job. That’s just reality.”

“We brought some witnesses,” Diana said, stepping forwards. “Four people who saw the fight.”

There was a flicker of mana in the air, and Mallory’s eyes widened. I frowned, and then it clicked. Diana had hidden the witnesses from Mallory’s sight with her mental illusions.

“The boy’s tellin’ the truth,” said the mustachioed street vendor. “He was tryin’ for a peaceful solution with the shark. An’ it worked! The wolf chick was the one to attack out o’ line. And hey, by the way, he paid me part of the fee for the meat he used, but I still gotta file a claim for the rest.”

I winced when he said ‘wolf chick’, though I still appreciated him standing up for me.

There was a murmur of agreement from the rest of the people we’d gathered, and Mallory heard it this time, because her pale skin began to turn red with anger.

“Of course,” the manager said, sighing and wiping her hair out of her eyes. She looked at Mallory, and then at the other people we’d gathered.

“I… May have been too hasty,” Mallory admitted. She sounded like she was in physical pain to admit it. “I… Apologize.”

“That’s it?” Liz said, incredulously. “C’mon! You were about to kill the poor slipshark!”

“The rest is up to me, Elizabeth,” the manager said. She turned to Mallory. “Six months suspension from taking Watch jobs, and no letter of recommendation for the Nightheart Guild.”

Mallory’s eyes went wide and she jabbed a finger at the manager, her shadow writhing beneath her feet.

“You can’t do that! You promised that you’d give me that letter! I was just one more thrice-cursed job away from getting it!”

The manager crossed her arms, and suddenly third gate power radiated over the area, much denser and more solid than that of Diana’s, or even Ivy’s. She may have been stuck at third gate, but she’d had years to grow within it, and her spells carried a weight that nobody our age could match. Ed’s own magic swept out a mere second behind her, still third gate, albeit much less, and much weaker.

The manager crossed her arms and stepped forwards, until Mallory’s finger was aimed right at her heart.

“Mallory Emsley, you will put that spell out, or I will put it out for you.”

With a visible effort of will, Mallory’s shadow calmed, and she took a long, deep breath.

“Fine. You can send the pay to me remotely.”

With that, she turned and stalked off, her shadow boiling around her again.

As soon as she was gone, the manager’s mana swept back into her mana-garden and she nodded to all of us.

“You all can go. Take the rest of the day off, it’s almost over anyways.”

As we walked back to collect our brooms, Ed swept me up in a tight hug, followed by Liz.

“M’ glad you’re safe,” Ed said. “It was pretty impressive what you did.”

“Stupid,” Liz said. “But impressive.”

“I’m sorry about all the trouble,” Dianna said, turning to face us. “And I am glad that you both made it out with little more than dented pride. Though it does sound like congratulations are in order for your rive. At least if I interpreted your story correctly.”

“Yeah!” Liz said, and even Ed nodded.

“My… rive?” I asked, not having heard the term before. “Is that how I mastered the Briarthreads spell in time to stop the strike?”

“Yeah!” Liz said enthusiastically. “It’s pretty uncommon. Of course, if rumors are to be believed, some real geniuses will rive all of their spells without any downsides.”

“But that’s not true, really,” Ed said. After a moment, he added “I’ve never rived a spell. Not that I’m some genius, but it’s still never happened to me.”

“I have, but only once,” Liz said. “Acidcutter. I was fighting an artic fox, and one of its ice spears was coming right for my head. I knew that I couldn’t dodge, I didn’t have any defensive spells mastered. Everything slowed down, because I knew I could use the acid to burn though the ice, and then it just sort of snapped. The spell came out of me.”

“Two,” Dianna offered. “My version of an invisibility spell and Project Fear. They both rived from the same… Event.”

I nodded, and Dianna split off not too long after, muttering that she was going to tell Qwin about what had happened.

“Is there any way to force a rive?” I asked. “I mean, I’ve got two spells I need to master, and Briarthreads was not one of them. If I could rive my Pinpoint Boneshard spell…”

“No,” Liz said. “It tends to happen in really tense situations, where your body, soul, and brain all just sort of force it. Unless you’re a genius who can force your default mana flows to alter with a thought, it’s gonna strain all three, and make it harder to actually advance your spells for a bit. Plus, there’s no real way to make it happen.”

“Just as often, people with the perfect spell for the situation wind up dead,” Ed said. “And riving a spell isn’t all good, either. It’s definitely not something to try to force, or to rely on.”

“Right, Liz added. “A rived spell tends to have way more flaws in it that need to be worked out than one that’s been mastered through dedicated practice, and the flaws are a lot harder to work out. All the time you save by mastering the spell right away is paid back three times over in working imperfections out.”

“Fair enough, it was just a thought anyways,” I said as we arrived at our own brooms. “Also, I need to stop by the Silver Barrow. Did you all want to come with me?”

“Sure,” Liz said. “Babe? Drop you off at home, or are you coming with us?”

“I can come,” Ed said as he kissed the top of her head.

“Gross, physical intimacy,” I joked, sticking my tongue out at them. Liz stuck her own silver-studded tongue back at me.

“You’ll get it when you’re older,” Ed drawled, then shrugged. “Unless you don’t, in which case, fair enough. Buuuuuttttt, given the way you talked about a certain healer… Or maybe a librarian? Or both, if you’re good at communication.”

“Not both,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, want seriousness? Too bad.”

I put on a very serious face, as if I was about to break the news that someone had died.

“Truthfully, while I do think Kene, Alvaro, and Ivy all have the potential to be attractive, I have not spent enough time with any of them to develop a full attraction. As my attraction to one develops, if it does happen at all, my attraction towards the others will drop off, until I likely don’t even note that they could be. You see, I happen to be inflicted with a particular brand of interest that aligns only with one person at a time, and takes a decent amount of time to begin to fully crystalize, and thus, your dreams of me finding a dashing librarian, alchemist, and lawyer to date are sadly nought but dust.”

“Primes,” Liz said, rolling her eyes, though I saw the small smile she was hiding. “You know you could have just said that you were an allo-demi.”

“I could have,” I admitted, and a small grin spread across my face. “But then it wouldn’t have been nearly so dramatic.”

We landed at the Silver Barrow not long after. The store wasn’t really a store. It was a massive warehouse, with a front desk reception area, and a handful of offices that were adjoining it. When we walked in, the man behind the reception desk looked up and gave us a bland smile.

“No public restrooms, even for those on estragon wrangling duty, sorry.”

“Nah, it’s not like that,” Liz said. “We want to make an order. Or at least, Malachi does.”

“I need some Structure-ore,” I said.

“Let me get a sales person,” he said. He pressed a small button on his desk, and tempest mana buzzed as he spoke into it. A few moments later, tall woman with a short-cropped afro came in and led us into an office. She introduced herself as a local sales representative, and we went down to business.

“Now, don’t think you can haggle much on the price here,” she warned. “We do offer some discounts for bulk supplies, but if you’re purchasing a small order, what you see is basically what you get.”

I glanced at Liz. She’d know better than me if this was true, and when she nodded, I turned back to the sales rep.

“Alright. How much is it?”

We spent a short while discussing the details of the Structure-ore, with me wanting to keep some money in my bank for emergencies, but the ore’s price being sharply reduced from normal. In the end, I left with five ounces of the ore, while still keeping a decent enough amount in my bank account that I felt confident that I’d still be okay.

Each ounce was separately measured, formed into perfectly smooth marbles of a bluish-gray stone that was surprisingly small for being an entire ounce.

Once we were outside, Ed sketched the Analyze Earth spell and stared at them.

“Weird,” he said after a second. “It’s like I’m staring into a lake. I can see that it clearly goes deep, but I don’t know how deep it actually goes.”

Curiously, I sketched Analyze Space and looked at the stone.

It absolutely blazed with spatial energy, many times more than what my paltry natural spatial lodestone did.

It wasn’t as powerful as Orykson’s portal had been, and it was far less complex as well, but it still dwarfed anything else I’d seen.

“You’re rude,” Liz said, and I blinked, surprised.

“Huh?”

“I said, you’re rude. Ed has telluric mana to look at the rock, you have spatial, and what do I have? Nothing that lets me look at rocks. You are looking at a rock I can’t look at.”

“You still have your mana sense,” I pointed out.

“Suurreeee,” Liz said with a teasing tone, and I laughed. We flew back home, and I headed out into the garden to drain some power from my plants. I then reinforced all of their mana-producing aspects, and sketched out Pinpoint Boneshard.

I was getting more familiar with the strange blend of mostly death and a bit of spatial mana, but it was still far more complex than most of the other spells I learned. I took a slow, steadying breath.

I had seven days remaining to master it, as well as Analyze Space, at least if I wanted to get the enhanced reward. I could do this. I just needed to buckle down and work hard.