Published at 24th of February 2024 10:31 am

Chapter 6

This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl

Okay, options. I could keep denying it. It wasn’t like anyone around here could tell I’d ignited my mana core. If I played dumb, eventually the whole thing would be dismissed as the overexcited ramblings of a child. But it would put me under some immediate scrutiny.

Option two. I could play along, and as soon as I had the mana built up for it, I could hit Senica with a memory erasing curse. It had the benefit of completely removing the problem from my perspective, but two major flaws. First, I would need more mana than I could hold, which meant relying on a mana crystal again in order to cast such a complex spell. I’d want to make one anyway, especially since my storage crystal had shattered when I’d broken the seal, but that would take time. Second, it would need to be anchored in her own mana core in order to sustain itself, and I wasn’t at all sure she could produce enough mana to make that work. There was also the possibility that, even if she could, someone would notice when they came by to do the Testing.

Option three. I could go along with her. I could admit that I’d felt the mana, insist that I didn’t know what it meant, and hope she didn’t connect my mana drain spell with everything else. Even for a six-year-old, it didn’t seem likely that she wouldn’t put two and two together.

Option four. Screw secrecy. Senica had a natural talent for sensing mana, and I could work with that. It would mean shedding my disguise though, at least to my immediate family. That was a big risk. If our parents decided that I wasn’t Gravin, that I was an imposter who’d stolen their child rather than actually just being Gravin with the awakened memories of his previous life, they might cause problems for me. I’d just ignited my mana core bare minutes ago; I was still a long way away from being able to take the entire village on by myself.

Plus, even if option four worked out, that would place a huge demand on my time. I’d have to start teaching Senica for real, and while I was sure two grown adults could keep things secret, I was less confident that Senica wouldn’t do what all kids do: Run her mouth and show off her new abilities. As fun as the idea of sticking it to Cherok with my superior techniques was, it was a bad strategy in the short and long term. Unless my goals shifted radically in the coming months, I didn’t see a way coming clean ended well for me.

Options two and four were right out. Options one and three were longshots, but if Senica was dumb enough, they might work. I’d start with option one and shift gears to three if it looked like it was failing.

“I didn’t do anything!” I said, putting a little heat in my voice. It had been made abundantly clear to me over the last half a year that acting was not among my considerable talents, at least not when it came to acting like a toddler. In my defense, it was pretty difficult to lead a life so boring and pretend that it was anything but.

“Did too!” she snapped back. “Fine, I’ll just go tell Mom, and you’ll get in trouble.”

She finished that with a triumphant note, climbed off the bed, and ran for the doorway. I watched her go silently, then laid back down. It took pretty much all of the mana I’d made in the last few minutes, but I put together a basic invocation to sharpen my hearing. Normally, I’d use a spell that enhanced all of my senses, but when starved for mana, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“Mom! Mom!” Senica said as she charged out through the curtain that served as a door to our hut and over to the edge of the garden where our mother sat on a low stone wall next to the nosy neighbor, Malra. “Gravin did something to me.”

“He did?” Mother asked. “Did he hurt you? I’m sure it was an accident.”

“No, it’s not… I…” Senica cut herself off and she shuffled in place. “Can you come see? Inside?”

Interesting. She wasn’t ratting me out right away. I couldn’t fathom the reason why, and the biggest part of me was sick of trying to figure it out. I was a two-thousand-year-old archmage who’d successfully transferred all of his memories and magical skills to a reincarnated body, damn it. I did not need to dance around the whims of small children and dirt farmers.

Except I was still three years old, and even though I was the most powerful three-year-old in existence, that didn’t mean I could brute force my problems. Damn. Just give me a year to advance my core to stage two and become a proper mage again, and I wouldn’t have to sneak around hiding anything.

Mother came into the hut with Senica holding her hand. “What’s going on in here?” she asked. “You’re supposed to be napping, Gravin.”

“She woke me up,” I said, pointing the accusatory finger in Senica’s direction.

“No I didn’t. He was awake already. There was a bunch of mana in the air, and then it all disappeared, and then he took my mana from me too. He admitted it!”

Her words came tumbling out of her mouth in a rush, so fast that I had trouble understanding what she was saying. Mother just blinked down at her and said, “Try again, sweetie. A little bit slower this time.”

I heard footsteps outside the hut, sneaking through the garden and up to our window. No doubt Malra was lurking nearby, snooping around again. This was none of her business, and her knowing anything about it couldn’t possibly lead to anything good. The best thing to do was to expose her and let Mother take care of it, but I was still practically out of mana. I could barely power the most basic of conjurations, but then, I didn’t really need anything better than that.

Our windows had no glass in them. Much like the doorway, they were just square cut holes in the wall with a thin curtain for privacy. It was so light that a stray breeze would be enough to make it flutter open and reveal someone standing right outside. I could manage half a second of moving air.

I drew every last scrap of mana out of my core and shaped it into the conjuration needed for elemental manipulation, then used it to pull air in through the window. The curtain blew straight out and up, giving Mother a clear view of Malra standing wide-eyed in front of the window. The two made eye contact, and Malra let out a nervous laugh.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Mother asked. She took three extra-long steps over to the window and pulled the curtain off to the side as it fell back down into position.

“Er, no, no. I just thought I saw something in your garden and was going for a closer look. Seems to be gone now. My old eyes playing tricks on me I suppose.”

“I see.” Mother made no attempts to disguise the disbelief in her tone. “I appreciate you taking a look for me, Malra.”

“Right. Yes, anytime. Glad I could help. If you’ll excuse me though, I just remembered that I have a thing, I need to, that is…” Malra made some vague gestures towards her own hut and walked off in a hurry.

“Alright, what were you trying to say, Senica?” Mother asked, turning back to look at us.

“There was a whole bunch of mana!” Senica said. “It was… not inside us? I could feel it in the air, and then it went into my core when I tried to touch it. Gravin did it, but he won’t tell me how. And then, he grabbed my hand, and he took my mana from me, and now he won’t give it back.”

I could see just by the look on Mother’s face that she didn’t believe Senica. Perfect. I’d just play dumb until this whole problem went away. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean I’d just get to stay silent on the matter.

“Gravin, did you do something to your sister?”

“No,” I lied. “I was sleeping. She woke me up.”

“Did not,” Senica said.

“Did too,” I retorted. I was a veritable bastion of wit here.

“Okay, stop that, both of you,” Mother said. “Senica, are you hurt at all?”

“No.”

“Gravin, are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Then I think we can put this behind us. I sincerely doubt your little brother took your mana, not unless he found a chunk of draw stone in the garden,” Mother said.

“But—” Senica started.

“Enough. Nobody was hurt, nothing was broken. Put this behind you and play nice with each other.”

“Yes, Mom,” Senica said.

“And Gravin, if you did do something to your sister, you’d better not do it again, you understand?” Mother asked. I nodded my head, and she added, “Good. I’m considering this matter closed. Now, I’m going to go out and sit in the garden. Why don’t the two of you join me?”

I crawled off the pallet and stretched, then smiled idly as I felt more mana filling my core. Step one was complete. I followed Mother and Senica outside, but made a detour to the outhouse before joining them. It smelled about as bad as it always did, but I supposed I couldn’t blame the villagers for not having access to magical plumbing. My experiences over the last half a year had convinced me that as soon as I managed to establish a home of my own, I would be heavily investing my mana in some decent bathroom facilities.

Lost in pleasant daydreams of marble tubs that were basically small pools and cool, crystal-clear drinking water that didn’t require a trip to the pump at the end of the street, I didn’t notice the sound of a wooden hammer being pounded against a sheet of metal at first. It was only after I’d finished lacing up my trousers and stepped back out of the outhouse that I heard it.

People were running around, shouting at each other and passing out farming tools. My mother appeared out of the crowd, a pitchfork in one hand and Senica held close to her with the other. “Gravin, there you are! The both of you need to go back inside right now.”

“What?” I asked stupidly, only partially listening to her as I watched people scurry.

“Inside, I said. That’s the alarm for a monster close to the village. I need you two to get somewhere safe while the adults form a line to repel the monster until Lord Noctra shows up to kill it.”

With that, we were rushed into our hut, given strict instructions to stay put, and left to ourselves. Mother joined several other women from our street and together they set off toward the western fields.

It was somewhat nerve wracking to be sitting there with basically no mana and my body so physically weak. I didn’t even know what kind of monster it was, but the whole village was taking it seriously. That probably meant it was a threat.

Senica had it worse than me, I think. I knew that I could fight if I had to. My options would be severely limited, but they existed. I could make a run for the village square, burst into the building where the Collectors kept their draw stones and tap into one. There’d be a lot of questions after, but if I had to do it, I could. Senica was still a child, and one I’d mana drained not half an hour ago. She clung to me, hard, and I made no effort to disentangle myself. I was ancient, not heartless.

“It’ll be okay,” I told her.

“What if the monster kills Mom or Dad?”

“It won’t. Lord Noctra will kill it first.” Probably. I’d never met the man. I just had to assume he was competent by village standards. Everyone else seemed to think so.

“What if he doesn’t get there in time?” Senica whispered.

“He will.”

Ultimately, words could only do so much, but I let her hug me close, and that seemed to help. There was nothing else I could do but wait, recover my mana, and see what happened.

Share