Published at 24th of February 2024 10:31 am

Chapter 16

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I’d made something of a promise to my parents, my father specifically. One could argue the semantics, that I’d merely said I could help them ignite their cores, not that I would. But I wasn’t so petty as that. The real hold up was that I needed to finish constructing my mana crystal before I could do it. The storage crystal had only just barely had the capacity I’d needed, and once I accounted for a significantly lower level of skill from my parents, I expected it would take a much larger amount of mana to spark an ignition.

That day was still some days away, but that didn’t mean there was no prep work to be done. After we’d returned from our nightly appointment with the draw stone, Father and I had gone for an evening walk together. There was no privacy to be had in the village, but very few people wanted to return to the fields after their mana had been drained away.

It was interesting, the things the village of Alkerist grew. Most candles were formed from wax, but here, they grew some sort of plant with seeds that hung off of them like pea-pods. Those were collected, mashed, heated, and shaped. They didn’t last as long as the candles I’d known in my youth, but they burned cleanly and without the harsh odors I remembered tallow candles producing. The plant fibers themselves were processed into the rough paper the village used as well.

There were great patches of vegetables too, of course. The village would not survive on just the humble gardens near our homes, but out in the fields, they grew the hardier vegetables in large quantities, the ones that didn’t need constant care and an influx of mana to thrive. Corn, beans, carrots, peppers… all in rows and tended to as well as they could. The farmers’ mana was spent to keep their bodies moving instead of being invested directly into the plants themselves.

Anywhere else in the world, the ambient mana in the air would have been all that was needed for the crops to thrive. Here, the village had gone to great effort to dig a channel to the river coming out of the mountains a few miles northwest of town. They’d created an artificial stream to irrigate the crops and, not coincidentally, provide a little relief to the people as well.

“All of this,” I said. “So much time and effort to replicate what mana would do naturally anywhere else. I cannot understand why you stay.”

“Perhaps there’s a world such as you’ve described out there,” Father said, “but if so, it’s far, far from here. There is another village up here in the highlands, fifty miles or so away, you know. It’s the same there as it is here. In the basin far to the west, there’s a city with thousands and thousands of people. I can’t imagine it, personally. Maybe they have dozens of mages like Lord Noctra to protect them from the monsters. But still, there is no more mana in the air down in the basin than there is up here in the highlands.”

If that was true, then the cataclysm that had scarred this land was even more devastating than I’d initially assumed. “What about past there?” I asked.

Father shrugged. “Mountains. Completely impassable, just like the ones to the east and south of us. I’ve heard if you go far enough north and east, you’ll eventually find a lake so huge you can’t see the other side, where the water only makes you thirstier the more you drink. It is supposed to be a cursed place.”

I barked out a laugh, which brought my father up short. “Do you mean an ocean?” I asked. “They are filled with salt water. There’s nothing cursed about them. They are just incomprehensibly vast and deep. It takes a large ship and a good deal of preparation to sail across one, but people have been doing that for thousands of years.”

“I have not heard this word before,” Father said with a frown. “Ocean. Hmm. I suppose that’s as good a word as any. Now, what is a ship?”

“A vehicle used for travel on water,” I said, suddenly saddened by the thought of the isolation this village had endured. “Think of a cart without wheels, but much, much bigger, and the gaps between the board sealed with special oils created by alchemists to prevent water from seeping in.”

“That sounds like a sight to behold,” Father said. “But sadly, not one we’re likely to see around here.”

“No,” I agreed, “I suppose not.”

“Enough of that,” Father said. “You didn’t ask me to come out here just to talk about this.”

“You’re right. I got distracted. I wanted to check in with you on your progress, to see if you had any questions or if you were ready for the next lesson.”

The first thing I’d shown Father was how to resist the pull of a draw stone. Perhaps it wasn’t the easiest starting point, but it did seem the most relevant. Everyone in the village had already had some basic mana control drilled into them, even if it was no more than what was needed to use the most basic, shapeless invocations. In order for Father to practice anything greater, he needed to have mana to do so.

“It’s a strange feeling,” Father said. “But I think I’m getting the hang of it. It’s like trying to catch water with my hands, except it’s dripping through my fingers. Only it’s not just dripping. It’s being pulled along.”

“One part of it is willpower,” I said. “Your mana has to obey you. If you leave places for your mana to slip though, that’s what’s going to happen.”

Father laughed and shook his head. “I know, I know. I’m practicing. Spirits, this is so weird. I’m being lectured by a toddler. Sorry, I know you’re not really, it’s just… you’re so tiny and fierce at the same time.”

“I should have waited until after the lesson to heal you,” I told him. “That was my mistake for thinking the pain would distract you.”

“Alright, alright.” Father held his hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry for laughing. Please, oh great and mighty archmage, bring enlightenment to my unworthy self. Ow!”

“Serves you right,” I said, smirking. I’d used an act of minor telekinesis to tweak his nose.

“Ought to put you over my knee for that,” he grumbled as he held his nose with one hand. I gave him a glare and he shielded his nose with his other hand.

“As I was saying, the draw stone pulls at any loose mana in your core, so you need to actively oppose it with an equal amount of willpower.”

“And if my will is too strong, would I take mana from the draw stone?”

I shook my head. “There’s more to it than that. If you were talking about a storage crystal, it would be an effort of will to retrieve mana from it, but draw stones are a natural phenomenon. They eat nearby mana to power their vault. It only goes in one way, and getting it back requires some specific magic or tools. No matter how implacable your will is, you’ll never squeeze a drop of mana from a draw stone just by opposing its own attempts to consume your mana.”

Father looked like he was about to say something, but I cut him off. “Besides, it’s not worth it. From what I can tell, the Collectors are serious about their draw stones. If one of them starts coming up short, they’re going to want to know why. Let’s not give them a reason to look in our direction.”

“Fair enough. You don’t think they’ll notice when they’re not getting our mana though?”

I shrugged. “Forty to fifty people per draw stone, and they’re not emptying them every night,” I said. “That’s less than a five percent loss of mana. They might notice if it continues for long enough, but I think we’re safe for the next few months.”

As near as I could tell, the draw stones were each emptied about once every two weeks on an alternating schedule. I suspected that Noctra was the one to do it, as I’d yet to see anyone else with the sort of skill necessary, but considering how prevalent they were, it wouldn’t have surprised me if the governor’s manor had a set up to do it without his personal intervention. From what I’d heard, there were a few dozen more draw stones north of town in the arbor anyway. That would certainly be a time-consuming chore to keep them all emptied regularly.

“Anyway, let’s go over the exercises again,” I said.

“Good thing you’re not in charge of a field crew,” Father said. “You’re merciless.”

“If you don’t want to have an ignited core, that’s fine by me,” I told him. “I’m doing this as a favor to you.”

“No, no. I didn’t say that.”

“Good. Now then, let’s see you get that mana spinning.”

***

I kept working on my mana crystal throughout the mornings and afternoons. Senica returned to school after two days, but started regularly complaining about Cherok in the evenings. Mother and Father listened to her with grim faces, and I had a sneaking suspicion that Father was going to end up earning a few more lashings before this whole mess was over.

At least it served as a good excuse for why I wasn’t in school yet. It was customary for children around my age to begin attending class, if only to learn letters and numbers. Introductory mana control would be part of those lessons, I’d learned, but no one expected children to master much, not even enough to shift mana out of the core and perform basic invocations.

In addition to the lessons with Father, I gently coached Mother on how to sense mana. She was less interested in igniting her core, but she’d confided in me one day that if she’d had Father’s ability to sense mana, it would have made her work tending the garden much easier. I didn’t agree with her decision, but there was plenty of time to bring her around. In the meantime, learning to sense mana outside of her own core was an excellent first step.

It turned out that while Father might see mana better, Mother was far, far better at manipulating it. That made sense to me, considering that he spent his own mana internally on invocations to increase his strength, and she spent hers trying to nurture the garden.

We’d had a few discussions about the nature of mana and I’d shown her how to keep track of her own mana as it left her core and went out into the world. From there, it was a short step to learn how to sense other mana outside of her, one that I was sure she’d make with a bit of practice. My primary fear was that as soon as she got even a few feet of range, she’d give up on improving any further. I had the impression that something about learning magic didn’t sit well with her.

We were still weeks away from that being a concern, so I put it out of my mind for the time being. My mana crystal would be finished in the next day or two, and I was looking forward to being able to stockpile enough mana to do some big spells. Specifically, I wanted to start working on the mana lattice I needed to construct in my core to advance to stage two, where my mana generation would more than double again.

As always seemed to be the case, life was not content to leave me in peace to do my work. Four days after our Testing, the Collector showed up one evening with a serious look on her face.

“Sellis, we need to talk,” she said. “I don’t know why, but Lord Noctra’s asking questions about you.”

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