Published at 24th of February 2024 10:33 am

Chapter Book 2, Chapter 3

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Monster hunting was boring. At least, it was for me. There was a lot of tedious and time-consuming work finding the monster, a brief moment of action killing it, and then more tedium removing whatever parts of it were useful. Worse, I didn’t actually know what was worth the effort to harvest. Pelts were usually a good choice, but I didn’t have the equipment or the training to do it right.

That was probably why I leaned heavily on transmutation instead. Stone and metal were excellent mediums for that discipline of magic to work with, but what I needed now was something different. It had elements of enchantment, divination, and invocation to it, and ideally, I’d have supplemented all of that with a few choice potions. The lack of ambient mana precluded any serious attempts at performing alchemy, however, so I’d have to substitute alchemical aid for discipline and skill.

This time, I stood in the center of the ritual circle.

An enchantment that was laid directly into my body wasn’t a difficult concept, but usually they were done offensively. Spells like sleep and silence, also sometimes known as hexes, were prime examples of enchantments tied to a living person. Other spells, such as feather weight, were beneficial. The one thing they all had in common was that once the artificial mana core that powered them ran out, the spell broke.

What I was going to attempt was the sort of enchantment that was tied directly to my mana core. It would feed itself and become permanent, which also meant it would become a permanent drain on my mana regeneration. I wasn’t overly thrilled with that, but the utility was too great to ignore. Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have needed to worry about that, and when I finally got out of this mana desert, undoing this enchantment was going to be one of the first things I did.

I activated the crucible and started manipulating the pillars to give shape to the space I needed to capture. Threads of pure mana strung themselves in a square about five feet to the side, each one a string of connected runes in reality. I cast a quick glance back at my staff, waiting for me outside the ritual circle, then adjusted the rune threads into more of a rectangle shape about six feet by four. More threads burst into existence to make the shape three-dimensional.

Next came the hard part. I needed to convince that box that it was part of me, to bind it to my physical form despite not being connected. That was where the invocation element of the spell came into play. The magic reached out to that space and stitched it to my body like a phantom limb, nonexistent but sensed nonetheless.

Finally, I wrapped the whole thing in the divination component. I needed to not just be able to see into the box, but to know what was in it, to feel it like I could my own hands, instinctually and without thought. For the better part of an hour, and using almost twice as much mana as it had taken to transmute the core of my staff, I built my box in the air and bound it to my physical body.

When I finally finished the spell, I sagged with exhaustion. It was a good thing I hadn’t attempted this one last night, not as tired as I’d been. But it was done now, which meant it was time to test it. I stumbled my way out of the ritual circle and looked around blearily until I located a loose rock on the ground.

I scooped it up, gave it a soft toss up into the air, and let it smack back into my palm before activating the magic. Immediately, my new phantom coffer snapped the rock up and deposited it inside. The enchantment’s reserve mana dipped a small fraction, barely even enough to be noticeable. It reached down through roots woven into my mana core and pulled out replacement mana to top itself off.

I could feel that rock floating in my phantom space. I could see exactly what it looked like as if it were still in my hand, feel its weight and shape. For the next few hours, I’d leave it untouched, just to confirm there were no issues with long-term storage. In the meantime though…

I needed food. The supplies I’d taken with me when I’d left home had dwindled to almost nothing, and the few animals I’d managed to hunt down and eat hadn’t done much to supplement my larder. It didn’t help that I was at best a mediocre cook. It had never been a passion of mine, and I hadn’t cared to devote the effort to becoming anything better than just proficient. Once I’d reached the point where I was sustaining my body with nothing but magic, I’d stopped eating at all.

That was then, and this was now. And now, I was hungry. Worse, I was low on mana. It probably would have been better to wait another day or two to recover my reserves before creating a phantom space, but I was eager to wrap up my work and move on. My meager belongings would fit inside the space with no issue, and as soon as I was sure it was stable, I’d be sealing off the crucible to keep it from being tampered with, then resuming my journey to Derro.

I left the cave, my too-tall staff in hand, and went searching for my next meal.

***

That evening, I felt a tickling sensation in my mind. Smiling softly, I reached into my now full phantom space and pulled out a round mirror about six inches wide framed in rune-marked copper. It had been one of the very first pieces of equipment I’d made after leaving home, and despite its relatively simple nature, I considered it one of my most important.

I cast the scrying spell that would connect it to its counterpart back in Alkerist and a face appeared in the mirror. “Gravin,” my father said. “How are you?”

When the village council had decided to exile me, I’d left my family behind. In order to ensure their health and wellbeing, I’d also left behind a mirror I’d enchanted to assist with scrying and taught my father how to activate it. I’d also shown him how to keep the enchantment fully supplied with mana, and let him know that if at any point in time the mirror stopped working, I’d be making an immediate trip back home to find out why that was.

I’d made sure to let a few other people know that fact as well. For some of them, it had been a threat. Prior to my leaving, my family had spent a night in the local jail over some misunderstandings. My parents were not well-liked prior to the events of the last few months; me killing the mage who’d been grifting the village for an entire generation had caused more than a few people to point fingers at them.

Without me there to protect them, this mirror was the best I could do. The threat of retribution would have to serve as their shield for the time being, but I was hopeful to one day find a new place for them to settle down, somewhere outside this cursed mana desert. Convincing them to leave the village was an argument I wasn’t yet ready to have.

“Good,” I said. “I’ve just finished my final preparations. I’ll be leaving in the morning.”

“You’re still insistent on this then?” Father asked with a sigh. “I was hoping you would give up on it.”

“Too many questions, not enough answers. Maybe Derro will have them. If nothing else, it’ll give me the opportunity to get a closer look at the cabal that’s been profiting off yo- the village.”

I’d almost said ‘your village’ there. I’d only been gone a few weeks, and any connection I’d felt to the place was quickly fading. In truth, it had merely been a place I’d lived at for a very brief span at the tail end of a long, long life. For my family, it was the only home they’d ever known. For me, the Night Vale was my true home, one I was eager to see again.

That goal was still years off, and I had more immediate problems to solve.

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” Father said. “What happens when they find out about you? You’re delivering yourself right to the monster’s lair.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time I fought one of their mages,” I said dryly. “You’ll recall I won those fights.”

“You can win a hundred. You only have to lose once.”

“True enough, but I don’t plan on losing.”

“Well, you don’t lack for confidence,” Father said.

“Never,” I agreed. I felt it was well-earned. I doubted I’d run into a situation that I couldn’t handle, and if I did, I was sure I’d recognize it early enough to extract myself from trouble. In fact, I had a contingency specifically for that.

“Just… it would break our hearts if I went to use this mirror one day and you weren’t there,” Father said. “I know you’re not really a child, but you’re still our child. We love you, and we’re always going to worry.”

“I know, but you shouldn’t.” I paused for a moment, then changed the subject. “How are things on your end? Is the council giving you trouble? Any of the overseers?”

“No, no. Nothing like that. I think they’d all like to just forget we exist. They’re busy tripping over themselves with that woman from the Arborists anyway. She’s come by three times now to ask me questions about magic, like I have any of the answers.”

The last thing I’d done before I left was ignite the core of one of the villagers named Shel who’d been studying under me. I hadn’t had time to give her any practice spells, but the former governor of the village had some of his own notes that would give her a place to start. Admittedly, it would be a subpar education, but that’s what they got for voting to exile me. It really took away a lot of my drive to help when they’d made it official that they didn’t want me there.

If things had played out differently, I probably would have spent another year or two in the village. I wouldn’t have built my crucible in a random cave I’d found, and I wouldn’t be scrounging for food. Well, I was done with that last part at least. I had a few days of walking that I planned on speeding up with some magic, and then I’d be back in what passed for civilization around here.

“Did she pass any messages on to me?” I asked. Shel and I had an agreement about some special herbs I wanted grown in one of the arbor’s greenhouses. It was far too early for anything to be ready to harvest yet, but if she needed help or had questions about how to care for them, I wanted to address those now.

“No.” Father shook his head. “She did assure me that everything was going fine.”

“Perfect,” I said. “I’ll probably be back in a few weeks to collect my alchemy supplies from her.”

The conversation drifted from there, ranging from what my mother and my sister had been doing over the past few weeks to what kinds of equipment I’d made. I showed Father my new staff, mostly to help reassure him that I wouldn’t be going into Derro defenseless, and he got my take on a novice tier invocation he’d started to develop based on his own observations from using unstructured mana to enhance his physical capabilities. I pointed him in the right direction to further the spell, but didn’t outline the solution for him.

It was a nice chat, but as much as I would have liked to talk with him further, it was burning through my limited mana reserves to hold the connection open. I made my farewells with him soon after, then settled down to sleep for the night. Tomorrow, I’d begin my journey.

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