Mana Mirror: Chapter Fifty-Two (Patreon)

“I’ll take it,” I said. Alvaro pushed a pen towards me, and I began to work though the paperwork and sign off. I made sure to read each line carefully, and it was in more plain language than most of the legal documents that I’d read in my life.

“Excellent!” Alvaro said when I finished, then he handed me the spell.

The spell’s structure was… Strange. It was utterly foreign to me in a way I wasn’t sure I was able to describe. The pain relief spell that Meadow had shown me had been from a totally different set of spell design principles that Elohi used, and this was somewhat similar, but even more extreme.

It was also large, about the size of one of my Analyze spells.

“What does it do?” I asked.

“It’s a harvesting spell that works off the principles of physical distance,” Alvaro said, “but I’m not supposed to tell you much more than that. Now…”

He held up his hand and another sheaf of papers appeared in them.

“These are the research notes that we ask you to use,” he said, “alongside some notes about the spell structure.”

“Thanks, Alvaro,” I said with a smile as I took them and put them inside my key.

We left the library not long after that, and I drained a bit of extra mana from the plants to work on the debt, then tested the harvesting spell.

The sketch took a while to complete, and when it did, my mana drained abruptly, at least a fifth of my overall spatial mana vanishing in an instant. The trickle that came after that was slower, but still noticeable. I waited for the mana to start flowing into me, but nothing seemed to happen.

I frowned and scratched at my head. For just an instant as my arms and fingers moved, a tiny burble of mana entered my spatial gate.

I took a step forwards, and a bit more mana flowed into me. It still wasn’t much, but as I began to walk, I was able to recover about three quarters of the drain. When I jogged, I was able to nullify the drain’s cost, and recover mana on top of that.

I spent a while jogging up and down the street, allowing my mana to restore itself and flow into my mana debt, but eventually got tired, and returned to make dinner and head to sleep. The rest of the week passed by without much of note happening, though Ikki had me layer the combined effects of my Internal Pocketwatch, the ingrained effect of Analyze Space, and the new Harvest Distance spell – not its official name, but the one I’d decided to go with.

It was interesting. The spell did restore a bit of energy while fighting, and usually enough to pay for itself, but not always.

I was most interested to see what happened when I eventually ingrained it, though. Even if it didn’t add anything at all, the large reduction in mana cost would bring the spell from a useful way to generate a bit of extra mana to a good spell that could layer with other combat spells to provide a small but steady stream of mana.

I kept my missions short and inner city, just handling a couple of restless ghosts who’d not gotten the incense they were used to, and relocating a sparrhunk that had eaten some spirit fruits and overgrown its nest.

During the time I wasn’t working, I spent a lot of time training with my peacepyre and the new mana sense orb that Orykson had given me.

It was harder than I’d expected, but as I worked on it, I did improve slowly but surely. I could feel some sort of mana in the center of the orb, and there seemed to be nine layers of shell around it, each layer more complicated and requiring more advanced control of my mana senses to work through. By the end of the week, I’d gotten about midway through the second layer, and between harvesting from my plants, my new Harvest Distance spell, and my normal mana regeneration, I managed to pay off my mana debt as well.

It was a surprisingly nice and relaxing time, especially after the stress of rushing my advancement for so long. But all good things come to an end, and that Solsday, rather than Meadow showing up, Orykson did to begin our training.

“The first thing you need to master with this particular spell is forming the spatial points,” Orykson said as he led me through a portal and into a large, well lit training hall.

Despite the size, state of the art equipment, and bright lights, it gave me the creeps. It was entirely empty except for the two of us, and there was something unnerving about that. A gym or training hall was supposed to be full of life, but this was just… Cold and clinical.

“I have cast the spell,” I said. “I know how to create the spatial points.”

“Oh?” Orykson said. The portal snapped shut behind us, and he gave me a smile that reminded me of a shark. “Then by all means, let’s have a duel.”

“You’d win, you’ve ten times the power I do,” I pointed out. “Actually, ten times is a low estimate, it’s probably more like hundreds or thousands.”

Orykson took a deep breath and closed his eyes. The world around him shook with the power of seventh gate mana, my blurred for just a moment, and then he seemed to shrink in on himself. His shoulders slumped a bit, and his face became more weathered, heavier. The power he gave off began to drop rapidly until at last he was giving off the power of just first gate mana.

“I’ve reduced my power down to that of someone at about your level,” he said. “It should be possible for you to defeat me.”

He took several steps back and smirked.

“Let’s go.”

I withdrew the bone shard from my inner suit pocket and cast the spell, forming points in space right in front of Orykson. I would have put another in my hand, but since he seemed to be underestimating me, I put one above his head, then back behind his back.

Across from me, Orykson withdrew some bone shards of his own.

I released the spell, and the bone shot at Orykson. His own bone hovered over his head for a moment, then crashed into mine. Both stopped dead and fell to the ground, but Orykson’s ricocheted against the ground and impacted against my suit.

“Dead,” he said. “Let’s go again.”

We clashed again, with me taking a more defensive stance this time. I set the bone to rotate around me. Orykson sent his in for an attack, and I set a point to intercept it, but before they clashed, Orykson’s shot upwards, then spiked down and struck my chest.

I rubbed it self-consciously. Did he have to hit me there?

“Again,” he said.

Over next hour or so, it quickly became apparent that, while I was fine in shooting the bone head on or spinning it around myself, I wasn’t anything compared to Orykson, even with his power reduced to my level.

“What now?” I asked as my mana-garden was finally wrung dry of all the mana it had held.

In response, he walked over to the switches on the wall and flicked one of them.

My mana senses lit up as mana absolutely gushed into the room, and my mana began to rapidly refill. It wasn’t as extreme as a restoration elixir, but my mana was refilling itself as fast as it was naturally able to.

“Practice your Depths of Starry Night technique while you focus on the techniques that I used to defeat you,” he said. “I should commend you for that choice, by the way. Well done. Once your mana is recovered, we will continue.”

I fell into the stances and began forming the swirl inside my mana as the scroll had shown me.

Over the next several days, that was the entirety of my routine. I woke up, trained with Orykson, ate a quick lunch, went home for dinner, and went to sleep. Three days into the training, however, I managed to finally score a hit on Orykson.

He had his bone shard rotating around him in a defensive hexagon, and I sent mine up into the air above him, as if I was going to smash down on his head. As soon as he sent his up to defend, I stopped holding the spatial point. The bone fell, hitting Orykson’s defensive shard and bouncing off.

Then I formed a point right at Orykson's face. The bone struck him, and I let out a whoop and pumped my fist in the air.

“Excellent,” he said, nodding. “Are you ready to begin actually delving into the spell’s potential?”

“Yes,” I said.

Two more bits of bone floated out of his jacket, and then he set them about rotating around him. The original one flew to attack me, and when I intercepted it, Orykson fired off a defensive bone while pulling back the original attacker. The bone struck me, and he called out, “Again!”

I took out two more shards of bone to match him, and as I cast the spell, I noticed something interesting.

Each point in space I designated with the spell was active for all of the bones under my control, meaning that I could easily recall any offensive bones to a defensive point, or send a defensive bone firing at him offensively. It took a bit to get used to – a part of me was still trying to guide the spell with my will, as if it were my Briarthreads spell, rather than setting points for the bones to move between.

Four more days after we began working with three bones, I thought I had him. His three bones were all working on offense, and one of mine bounced off the floor to fire at him.

Then, out of the blue, his bone accelerated forwards, smashing its way past the one I’d sent to intercept it, and tagged me.

I recalled all three of my shards to my hand and frowned.

“What was that?” I asked.

“I overcharged the spell,” Orykson said.

“That’s… What?” I said. “This isn’t like Briarthreads, you can’t just pump more power into the spell to make more threads.”

“Not like that,” he said, shaking his head. “Did no-one really teach you the overcharging technique?”

“No,” I said. “You’re supposed to be my teacher, after all.”

“Hm. Well, it’s an essential technique to fighting those above your limits. It’s easiest to do with a spell you’re sketching, but it’s possible to do with any spell. Release mana into the air around you.”

I did as he said, letting a stream of mana billow out of my fingers.

“Now, condense it.”

I did as he said, my eyebrows knitting together. Ivy had suggested I do something similar when I’d been pretending to fight him, suggesting it would sell the story better.

“Keep condensing it,” Orykson instructed.

I did as he said, and as I compacted the mana, I felt something in it change. It was like the transition from water to honey, a thicker but smaller drop of mana.

“Pull it back into you, and immediately send it into your Fungal Lock spell, targeting me.”

I pulled the drop into me, and I could feel it almost immediately start to want to disperse and restore my mana, but I managed to wrestle the drop into my spell.

Mushrooms exploded over Orykson, large, broad capped, with thick strands of mycelium digging into him and pumping power away from his body. Sustaining the spell at this level put an absurd drain on my mana, and in moments it was depleted, but for maybe half a minute, the spell was expressing more power than even what layering multiple levels of the spell on him would have.

As the spell vanished, he nodded.

“As a general rule of thumb, you can push your power to match that of someone one gate above you, at least temporarily. That’s not to say you’ll have the same amount of power as one of them – you were able to match Mallory for a few moments without this, because she’s done a far worse job of constructing her power, not because she had less mana. But it’s a good technique to know to punch through a shield. Of course, it’s no substitute for truly being at that gate of power, so don’t expect it to.”

A small smile spread across his face, once again the sharklike one.

“Now, let’s get some practice in with you fighting up a level.”

His mana expanded to that of a middling second gate, and the bones unleashed themselves at me.

Midway through the second week, I broke through in my understanding of Pinpoint Boneshard, the spell growing deeper and richer in my spirit as it was ingrained. Inside the dead standing tree that was the spell’s spirit, there was a hollow, and I was able to move bone in and out of the hollow and into the real world. It reminded me of my key, oddly enough, with the way I was able to put things in and out.

Unlike my key, however, it only worked for bone, which was unfortunate, but Orykson actually gave me a tip.

“You can create a bone knife, and store it in your spirit, rather than in your key,” he said. “Saves a bit of room in the key. It’s hardly as useful as a steel knife, but it’s still a useful tool, and you can eventually use them as a part of your spell, likely around third gate.”

By the end of the two weeks, I was exhausted and more than ready to return to my normal life. Despite the fact that Orykson's methods were effective, his explanations were short, useful, and concise, and my skill with using the spell had massively jumped… it was exhausting.

When I was working on different spells, I could focus on one thing for a bit, then jump to another project, work on a project, sketch the spell while I was busy… But with working on just this one spell, I felt like my brain was a fried egg.

As Orykson opened up the last portal to return me home on the last day, he asked me a question I didn’t expect.

“Do you have any plans for the Carnival of Color?”

“No, why? Did you need me to work on something then?”

“No,” he said, then gave me a smile that seemed a touch fake. “Take the time off and enjoy it. It won’t count against your deadline.”

“Oh,” I said. “Thanks?”

“Yes…” he said, then sighed. “You have five weeks to master your remaining spells, apart from the Carnival, of course. Six if you count the carnival, which we aren’t. No reward for getting it done early this time – I want you to focus on upgrading and rounding out your other spells too. You should play with the mana control orb as well. Just keep the deadline in mind.”

Was he giving me a hint? I wasn’t sure.

“I… see,” I said. He waved his hand to dismiss me, and I stepped through the portal and back home.

The following morning, I met Meadow at the door eagerly as she entered the home.

“Good morning, dear,” she said. “I see that you’re up and ready today. Did you miss me that much?”

As she spoke, she headed into the kitchen and began to take out flour, oil, and salt, and started making a quick dough for a pancake or flatbread like bread. As she did, she nodded to me.

“Go ahead and start dicing green bell pepper, tomato, and two chilies.”

I took them out and started cooking, but gave her a questioning look.

“Is this… Training of a sort?” I asked.

“Of a sort,” she said, though she snorted as she did it. “Your mentor’s plans for your second life gate rather disrupted the ideas I had – I suspect that he didn’t share them at first for that exact purpose, in fact. But it’s no matter. Yes, many of the skills that you learn in the kitchen can be carried over into alchemy.”

She stretched the dough thin and started frying it in a pan as I added the vegetables into another pan.

“Now chop some spring onion greens,” she said. “Don’t add them to the vegies, they’ll get all soft and lose their crunch and flavor. They go on top in the end.”

As I chopped, she started to hum to herself.

“Malachi,” she said after a long moment. “Would you like to give up on Orykson? You’re almost at the pinnacle of first gate. I won’t lie – apart from life magic, alchemy, and general advancement theory, he’s going to be a better match for your mana than I am. I’ve also invested in things other than wealth and politics, so I can’t offer as many rewards as he can, or offer a ton of advancement resources. You’d lose a lot of opportunities by joining me.”

“But?” I asked.

“I don’t like him,” she said with a shrug. “I can guarantee protection against his anger. In truth, he’d likely direct it more at me than at you. You’re just a new toy. If you break, you can be cast aside. I can’t promise much, but I can promise to continue doing what I’m doing, and that I’d do the best I can to help you advance in all of your magic, even if I’m not a perfect fit.”

She gave me a conspiratorial wink.

“If you were to break on your own, and I was to take you up as my apprentice, then there’s not much he can do about that.”

I scrunched my eyebrows together in thought.

“And if I say no?” I asked.

“Go ahead and add four eggs into the vegetables, I’m almost done with the bread,” she said.

As I cracked them in and scrambled them, Meadow continued.

“If you don’t, then I’ll continue teaching you as long as I can,” she said. “Truthfully, I’m here on borrowed time. He wants you strong, but there’s already some issues arising. I suspect that he’ll have me stick around until you’re third gate, but once you’ve got your footing there, he’s going to decide that’s that.”

I contemplated that as we began to put the egg and vegetables onto the flat bread-pancake thing. Meadow drizzled a little bit of honey over each of them, which seemed strange to me, but she was a good cook, so I didn’t question it.

“At the end of the day, dear, it’s about what you want. If you’re pursuing power above all, then I’d suggest keeping with him. If you want to be yourself, the path I offer may be slower, but it’s gotten me far. And even if you say no, don’t be surprised if others give the option to jump ship. Some will be genuine; others will want to use you as a tool to get at Orykson.”