Mana Mirror: Chapter Fifty-Nine (Patreon)

For those of you who aren't on my discord, I just wanted to let you know that the audible release of book 2 of Journals of Evander Tailor is now out!

Audible Link: https://www.audible.com/pd/B0CFSMK2HQ/?source_code=AUDFPWS0223189MWT-BK-ACX0-363461&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_363461_rh_us

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That actually sounded really cool. I didn’t mind being a Goetíea librarian, at least part time. If I did decide to go with Meadow, then maybe I should consider taking up the librarian’s offer as well.

I did kind of wonder who exactly the person I’d spoken to had been. Some sort of powerful librarian, presumably.

It still weirded me out that Orykson apparently had somewhat of a rivalry with the public library.

“Well, with that taken care of, what did you come here for?” Alvaro asked as he began to walk us down the paths and towards one of the exits.

“Oh! I’m constructing a staff, and I needed a source of first gate death mana for it.”

“Really?” Alvaro asked. “I’m surprised you’re getting started with that so… early. I’ve only just started gathering materials myself.”

“We’re about the same age,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but… Well, since my mom’s a librarian, I got to have my mana testing done every year, so I got a start much earlier than most. My mana-garden solidified when I was sixteen, so I’ve got… A big head start. And I’m nineteen, so effectively, three years more experience than you.”

“Really?” I asked. “That’s… Huh. Well, I don’t feel nearly as bad about you already being a second gate now.”

“You shouldn’t feel bad at all,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ve only been practicing for, what… A month?”

“About seven weeks,” I responded. “I’ve had excellent fortune in that time, though. But why are you so surprised that I’m constructing a staff at first gate? I’ve heard someone else mention that it was normally done at third gate too.”

“Well,” Alvaro said, thinking. “It’s one of the main ways to create a resonance between the world and the self. Out of the options I know, it’s my favorite.”

“Which ones do you know of?”

“Daocheng uses domain weapons. They’re… Hmm, I think the best way to describe it is that if a staff bonds the worlds power into your mana-garden, the domain weapon exerts your power into the world. The resonance that it gives creates a weapon you can control with your mind, which serves as a channel for your magic, turning it destructive. If I made one, for example, it may cut at the mind and body together.”

“What would one constructed by someone with life, death, space, and time do?” I asked.

“If I were to guess? It would create a weapon that can cut through spatial barriers or slow spells, and vampirically drained your opponents.”

That was… Pretty cool, I couldn’t lie.

“Does it still do everything a staff does, though?” I asked. “I mean, the staff increases the power of all of your spells, mana regeneration, mana efficiency…”

“No,” Alvaro said, shaking his head. “That’s what I meant by it being the inverse. It draws from your mana to make a worldly effect.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Are there others? Kene mentioned a potion.”

“Who’s Kene?” Alvaro asked as we headed out of the astral plane, and to some sitting chairs. Dusk echoed my confusion, and so I gave a brief rundown on the mysterious alchemist.

“I’m no master of monster lore,” Alvaro said, “but… I can try to look up what he is, if you’d like?”

“No,” I said reflexively. “If they want to share, they will. I won’t pry into their life like that.”

“I can respect that,” Alvaro said, nodding. “Anyways, yes. Potions… Those are a method to form nascent truths. They used to be called ‘artificial’ nascent truths, but that was mostly just snobby people.”

“What?” I asked.

“Uh, basically, you can form a truth inside your mana that echoes the world around you,” Alvaro explained. “It’s got some major advantages, and some major disadvantages too. It’s come in and out of style.”

“Well, I assume it can’t be broken or taken away, like a staff or domain weapon,” I said.

“Right,” he said. “It also takes no materials to advance a nascent truth, it’s just a part of you. You have it forever.”

“Sounds great to me,” I said, “what are the downsides?”

“Well, once you form it, it’s… really hard to change or expand it. It enforces a lot of things, but it’s… Hmm, so imagine that someone made a nascent truth of swords, right? It could enforce their body and their magic very strongly, but only the stuff that has to do with swords. A lunar mage with a nascent truth of water would have their power very dependent on water spells, and somewhat on terrain.”

“It… Seems like the kind of thing that’s definitely better for people who only have one or two mana types,” I said.

“It is,” Alvaro confirmed. “I know the Sun and Moon Queen created a nascent truth of the eclipse – they’re actually pretty public about that. It enforces both of them, and when they fight together, their overlapping power makes both of them stronger.”

“They’re… Elohian Occultists, right?” I asked. History had never been my strongest suit. My history teacher in school had just used an illusion and droned on in a monotone voice, and so I’d blanked out.

“Right, and strong ones at that. They helped build Elohi into the power it is today.”

I wondered if they were the people who Ikki had been talking about.

“Are there any other methods?” I asked.

“Thousands,” he said seriously. “Mostly permutations on the existing ones. There is one other broad method though, grand arrays. Those are… Well, think of it like a staff on enhancement potions.”

“How so?”

“Instead of using a ritual to combine all the mana sources and physical representations of yourself onto a staff that projects your mana-garden, with a grand array, you have to create a physical copy of the mana-garden in the real world, complete with mana sources for every single spell you’ve got. They’re also extremely delicate, if someone walks in and chops down a tree, the whole thing can collapse.”

“That’s a lot of downsides, between resources and the delicateness. What’s the upside?”

“Power,” Alvaro said seriously. “An absurd amount of power. It does everything a staff does, with increasing the power of spells, increasing the regeneration of your mana, all that. But it also doubles the amount of mana you have, if not more.”

“Oh,” was all I could say in response. Dusk let out a whistle, and I stared at her.

“What do you mean, ‘you are a grand array’?” I asked.

“She’s a worldspirit,” Alvaro said. “Her internal world itself is already partly a physical manifestation of her magic. It’s not quite a grand array, exactly. Kind of the opposite, with her drawing from it, rather than it bolstering her. But it’s a fair comparison.”

“Will that bolster me?” I asked. I certainly didn’t feel like I had more mana.

“No, your bond isn’t that direct. Even a spellbinder bond wouldn’t, probably. Maybe with work you could terraform it so that it was a grand array for you, but that’d also limit her magic to becoming your magic, so…”

“Not worth doing,” I agreed. After a few moments of silence, I spoke again.

“Well, that was really interesting, but… I still need a source of death mana for my staff.”

I did feel a bit frustrated that Meadow hadn’t given me the choice. What if I wanted a domain weapon.

“I suppose there’s no harm in gathering them early,” Alvaro agreed. “And hey, if you try the staff and decide it doesn’t work for you, you can always repurpose all of the materials for creating a grand array, domain weapon, or potion to form a nascent truth.”

Oh.

Was Alvaro reading my mind?

That was highly illegal, but he was a librarian. If anyone would be able to access the basics of mind reading, it would be him.

I quickly imagined a pink elephant with purple spots doing a backflip on a skateboard while eating a bowl of pasta.

Alvaro’s face didn’t change in the slightest.

“What?” he asked, after a second.

“Nothing,” I said. “But yeah, so… The death mana?”

“Right!” he said. “Sorry, magic theory’s kind of my thing. I’m seriously thinking about going into it full time for spell design. But I’ll look and see if there’s anything you can handle that would let me reach into our treasure stores for a natural death mana source. Give me a few minutes”

He rose and headed back to the pillars, so I picked up Dusk and headed into the nonfiction section, showing her some of the books. She pointed to one about water management systems, so I took it off the shelf and opened it for her. She stared at the words.

I wondered what the mono spell was translating it to her. She spoke mostly in nature sounds. The text was standard Mossford lettering, but mono let the meaning carry across to her. Was she reading it as nature sounds? Did it effectively say ‘gush, burble, woosh woosh’?

That seemed unlikely.

After she finished the page she was reading, Dusk grabbed the next page and hefted with all of her tiny strength. A moment later, it shifted and flipped to the next one, and she went back to reading quietly.

Just my luck. Even my worldspirit had an easier time sitting and reading than I did.

Alvaro returned a while later with three slips of paper.

“I was able to find two Goetíea and one Almadel mission that were made public. We really only put them on the boards for the watches if none of our in-house people want to take them.”

He spread them out.

“Thus, none of these are glamourous, but they’ll pay well, especially for you.”

I bristled at that, and Alvaro’s eyes widened.

“Oh, uh! Not like that. Sorry. I meant in library help. You’re pretty close to a ruby seal with your work on the experimental spell. Any of these would push you over the edge and get you a ruby seal.”

“What does that mean?”

“Pearl is the basic one you have now. Ruby allows you to access combat spells, and enter the other parts of the library on occasion, as well as to more specialized rewards… Kinda like this, actually. Jade gives you access to those parts, though not the warded sections. After jade… Well, lapis seals require so much contribution that you’ll probably be an arcanist by the time you get one. That’s… Not an insult, by the way. You wouldn’t need a lapis seal until then anyways.”

I read over the details of the mission as I listened.

It was no small wonder that none of the librarians had wanted to take the job. It required me to fly out all the way north, well past the normal towns and villages, into the wilderness, almost all the way to the border of Dragontooth.

There had once been a border town called Stone there, but since the glaciers moved and the passage had shifted, the town’s trade had dried up, and over the last decade, the population had declined until it had finally entirely vanished a few years ago. The public library had kept a presence in the town, albeit a small one.

The library there had been emptied out when the town died, but in the accounting of the contents, one of the storage rings that held some of the battlemage books had been lost.

It was low priority, but with how far it was from any sort of civilization, and the fact that there wasn’t much reward to be had, it had been left to languish for over two years.

Unlike with the listings that could be found within the Watches, this had no listed rewards, which frustrated me a bit.

“This one’s gone untouched for so long I’m sure I could get you some silver in addition to the deathpapyrus,” Alvaro said. “Maybe even some sort of elixir or something, instead of silver.”

The next mission made me snort when I read it. It was – quite literally – hunting down overdue books. The library had the ‘Crimson Tattoo Parlor’ company take out some books for reference when it came to spell design and creating tattoos, and they hadn’t returned them. I’d basically have to shake them down to either get the books back, or get them to pay for some copies of the books to be made.

“Just the papyrus for that one, I’m afraid,” Alvaro said. “It’s a decent mission. Little risky, but not a four day flight from civilization. This'll probably only take you a day or two, so you could still do other things.”

The final mission was… Basic. Bland, even. I just had to help sort through a massive pile of new books that had been discovered from some rich person’s death, and so they needed help categorizing them.

I would have dismissed it out of hand, but Alvaro tapped it.

“This one will actually pay the best. It’s getting wildly out of hand, since we always have more work than librarians. I can probably get you both a death and time mana source if you’re willing to put in five days work of this.”