Published at 24th of February 2024 10:31 am

Chapter 8

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In the end, the benefits of a wand didn’t outweigh the drawbacks. I was a couple thousand years past the point where it could aid me in directing my magic, and while the typical wand did include a mana crystal, they weren’t generally high volume. It was expected that the wand would pull in ambient mana to power itself, and that wasn’t going to happen here. The storage aspects were minimal compared to its other uses, certainly not enough for the next stage of my own advancement.

Then there was the fact that even if I made a wand that just looked like an ordinary stick, I wouldn’t be allowed to just carry it around everywhere I went. I knew because I’d tested the idea with an actual stick I’d scavenged from one of the few shade trees that grew in the village. Everything had been fine outdoors, but it had been promptly confiscated and discarded when I tried to bring it inside with me.

Nobody would have tried to take my staff from me just because I’d walked into a building with it back when I was Keiran of the Night Vale, not that they could have. I would have found the attempt amusing. Gravin of the village was not afforded the same respect.

What I ended up settling on was a peculiar flat rock tucked into the corner of the garden. It was large enough that nobody wanted to drag it out of the way, but small enough that I could still work with it. Best of all, I could sit on it and pretend to watch Mother while I wove strands of mana through it. It wasn’t ideal; I’d need to visit it three times a day to drain the mana I’d generated, which was bound to get awkward. It might be worth it to make a second mana crystal inside the hut later on if it proved to be too difficult to slip outside that often.

Using the garden stone for mana storage meant I had a fantastic amount of space to work with. By my best guess, once I was done enchanting it, it would hold roughly two hundred times the capacity my mana core had. Even with my enhanced mana generation, it would take me close to three months to fill it. It would also be fully shielded from casual detection, and the transference loss would be under ten percent. All in all, it would be a massive improvement from my original storage crystal.

I was practically salivating at the thought. Right now, I was severely limited by the maximum amount of mana I could work with at once. I could cast any novice level spell about once an hour, and if I waited eight hours for my core to fill completely, I could cast most basic spells once. Soon, all of that would change.

I sat on my stone, working quietly while I watched Mother work. Unfortunately, I was still expected to help, and she seemed to think my change of routine to sitting in the corner was some traumatic reaction to the monster coming near the village. It was unexpectedly difficult to get the time I needed.

“Come here, Gravvy,” Mother said, holding a hand out to me.

I dutifully climbed to my feet and walked over to her, then looked down at a bundle of leafy stalks growing out of the ground with a trio of pale green squash tucked under them. Each one had a set of jagged yellow veins running down its skin. I had very little interest in gardening, not in this life or any other, but even I could tell there was something wrong.

“What do you think happened?” she asked me.

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

I’d released mana into the air to use as part of my ignition, and between Senica and myself, we’d recovered almost all of it. Some of it must have made it outside and been absorbed by the squash. It couldn’t have been that much, or the whole garden would be contaminated.

The scarring was probably due to the sudden influx of mana. Something like a normal piece of squash would have a mana core a hundredth the size of a human’s. Being exposed to ambient mana like that after growing from a seed in an environment completely devoid of it had likely caused them to physically swell in size. I wouldn’t be surprised if they continued to grow into prize-winners.

“To me, it looks like someone tried to help them grow and wasn’t gentle enough with them,” Mother said. “Did you do that?”

I shook my head again. Technically, it was my mana, but I hadn’t been trying to help them, so it wasn’t a lie.

“Gravin,” Mother said.

“I didn’t.”

She didn’t believe me, but playing dumb had served me well so far. Thankfully, nobody here had the magical education to understand half of what I was up to, and outside of my immediate family, nobody had any reason to suspect me of anything. If not for Senica almost sabotaging my ignition and then running to our mother to tell on me, not even they would be watching me.

“Hmm. Well, we’ll keep an eye on them and see if they ripen out of it or if we’ll have to throw them out,” she said to me.

“Okay,” I agreed. I waited a second to see if she was going to draw my attention to anything else. When she didn’t, I went back to my rock to sit down and get back to work.

***

Despite the disturbance yesterday’s monster sighting had caused, draw stone tithing continued uninterrupted. We’d gone last night and we’d be going again tonight. No one was allowed to miss it without a good reason like being old and bed-ridden. Even then, some Collectors went around with small draw stones to visit the villagers who couldn’t make it to the square but weren’t so bad off that they were exempt from tithing.

Between dinner and our nightly visit to the square, Mother pulled Father out of the hut and into the garden to show him the squash. “Gravin said he didn’t do it,” she said quietly, “And I know Senica didn’t do it. They weren’t like this yesterday. Do you think it has something to do with the monster?”

“I doubt it,” Father said. His voice was so soft that even though my back was pressed against the wall under the window, I could barely hear him. “You’re sure you didn’t make a mistake?”

“Of course not! When have I ever afflicted anything with mana burn?”

“Never,” Father said placidly. “I didn’t suspect you did.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

“Making sure I’ve got all the facts straight.”

Well, that didn’t sound good. The fact that they were standing not ten feet away from my partially completed mana crystal—which was not yet shielded in any way, shape, or form—only made it worse. Neither of my parents was likely to stumble across that, not unless they literally touched the rock, but it was right there. It could happen.

“What are you thinking?” Mother asked.

“Nothing I’m sure of, not yet.”

“Okay, what are you not sure of then?”

Father didn’t answer her, at least not with words. They stayed together in the garden for a few minutes, then came back in to start getting us ready for the evening tithe. Senica dragged her feet, as usual. Perhaps it was some sympathy for her after how traumatic yesterday had been, but Father let her take her time and by the time we made it to the square, we were at the very back of our line.

The stars were starting to come out by the time it was our turn. Overhead, the moons Tuamar and Felacitous studded the night sky like two great, mismatched eyes staring down at us, one purple and the other green. Usually, Amodir chased after Felacitous, but not tonight. In fact, I had yet to spot Amodir on any of those rare occasions I’d managed to stay up late enough to do a bit of star gazing. Strange, that.

“Evening, Dracken,” Father said. “Busy day?”

“Unbelievably so,” the Collector groused. “That slave driver Iskara is having us go through every draw stone we have in the next three days to check for leaks.”

“Ayaka told us when she came by to let us know our Testing was getting pushed back.”

“Oh, right, I forgot it’s your month. That’s going to cause problems too. We’ll be behind for weeks on that too. We don’t have enough portable draw stones to do extra Testings to catch up. Lord Noctra is going to have to personally pull the mana back out multiple times a day for a week or two, which you know is going to make him cranky. Like he’s the one who’s got to carry them two miles both ways just to get to his manor.”

“Sounds like a pain. Well, let’s go ahead and get this over with so you can pack up and get home for the night,” Father told him.

“I wish,” Dracken muttered. “Soon as we’re done, it’s right back to checking inventory. Everything we’ve got here in town has to be gone through tonight so we can start up at the arbor tomorrow morning.”

Mother and Senica went first, then Father lifted me up so I could reach the draw stone. Maybe I was imagining things, but there was a look on his face. He was studying me. Whatever he was hoping to see, I had no intention of showing it to him. But just to be safe…

I placed my hand on the draw stone and let it take a bit of mana from me. Last week, it would have taken twelve hours to generate that much mana. Now, it was about ninety minutes of wasted resource. I let my shoulders slump and my hand fell away. Truthfully, I had given up far too little mana to feel any sort of exhaustion, but I’d had hundreds of examples of other children after they’d completed their tithe. It wasn’t hard to mimic that.

Apparently satisfied, Father lowered me back to the ground and gave me a few seconds to make sure I was going to stay upright before removing his hands. “Good job, son,” he said. “Ready to go home?”

Silently, I nodded. Whatever he’d been looking for, I hoped he was satisfied with the show. I’d even given up a bit of mana to the draw stone, just in case he was able to feel it. I didn’t think it was likely, but he did have physical contact with me at the time. It didn’t get much easier than direct contact when it came to sensing another person’s mana core.

I didn’t think Father could sense my mana core, but better safe than sorry and it wasn’t like it was a real cost to me. Even if I’d emptied my entire core into the draw stone, it was going to be full again when I woke up tomorrow. Until my mana crystal was completed, I was going to be wasting some mana. I’d have to spend it all before I went to sleep so that I didn’t end up generating a cloud of ambient mana overnight. I did not need my parents sleeping in that all night and then waking up with full cores. That would just lead to awkward questions. If I didn’t have skin contact with them, it would have all safely dissipated, but as close as they were, there was a possibility that some of the overflow would seep into them.

If I’d been able to get my own pallet to sleep on, I could probably have snuck out to the garden at night while everyone else was asleep. That idea hadn’t taken off, unfortunately. When I’d tried, I’d been told I might get one for my birthday. Until then, I was stuck sharing. I’d have thought they’d want me out of their bed as soon as possible, but apparently not.

We got home and started getting ready to sleep. It had been an exhausting day and things were getting a bit too tight for comfort, but so far, I was deflecting any suspicions.

“Come on, Gravin,” Father said, holding out a hand for me.

“What?” I asked.

“We’re going to go for a walk.”

“I want to go!” Senica said. She sat back up and started to climb out of her pallet.

“Not tonight,” Father said, not taking his gaze off me. “I need some time alone with Gravin.”

Maybe I hadn’t been as successful as I’d thought.

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