Published at 24th of February 2024 10:34 am

Chapter Book 2, Chapter 14

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I was up early the next day. It had taken a bit, but I was finally starting to pull my schedule back around to sleeping at night. My first act of the day was to go over my progress, especially important since I planned on invading enemy territory soon.

My phantom space was once more whole and fully charged, and I’d managed to increase its size slightly. My staff was in perfect condition, and the mana crystal was a little under half full. That was enough for twenty or thirty small spells or a few big ones. Ideally, I would wait another day so that I’d have the reserves needed to pull off a teleportation, but in the worst-case scenario, I’d use the beacon I’d tied to the scrying mirror I’d left with my family. That would shave enough of the mana cost off to allow me to escape, although I’d need to be careful that whoever had forced me to flee couldn’t follow me.

Once I thought about that mirror, I realized I hadn’t spoken with my family since arriving in Derro. On the one hand, it was bad timing to do it now. It would cost me mana I might need later today. On the other hand, I was about to walk into a place I might not return from, so this could be my last chance to ever speak to them.

The thing that tipped the scale for me was that I should make an effort to confirm the teleportation beacon was still functioning properly. I was relying on Father to keep the enchantment from fading away and short of actually casting a teleportation spell on it, there was no way for me to check to confirm it was still active. It wouldn’t cost me too much mana to start and abort the process once I confirmed the beacon’s condition, but if I was spending it anyway, I might as well use it to have a conversation.

That also reminded me that I’d been planning on setting up a new teleportation beacon here in Derro. Between the mess with teaching Tanner, dealing with the leech stones, the multiple times someone had tried to grab me just for looking like a homeless child, spying on the Repository, and finding some food after subsisting on nothing but mana for a week, it had slipped my mind. I didn’t like that. I never used to just forget to do things like that, but back then, I’d spent a great deal of time and energy modifying my own body.

I’d had a habit of writing things down the first time I was a young mage, just starting out. It had served me well, right up until Katirin had gone snooping and learned things about my activities we all would have been better off with her not knowing. Things had escalated, people had died, and a rather large town had burned. I’d stopped writing things down for a long time after that, and by the time I was in a position where I safely could again, it was no longer necessary.

Perhaps it was time to get back into that habit. If I wrote in Enotian, no one else would even be able to read it. Besides, I had a phantom space to store it in now. The real hang up was that I didn’t really have anything to write with, and only a pair of books I’d taken from Noctra’s library when I left home as a source of paper. I could clean the ink off the pages, but that would defeat the point of bringing them in the first place.

Well, there were plenty of shops and stalls in Derro, and I could easily fill a tenner or two to afford supplies. There had to be somewhere to buy what I’d need if I wanted to start writing things down, and it was starting to feel like that was exactly what I should do.

Forgetting to set up a teleportation beacon until now wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t need it yet anyway, and it actually worked out better this way since it saved me a few days’ worth of wasted mana powering it. But I hadn’t done it that way to be economical, I’d just forgotten. The fact that it was the smarter decision was purely coincidental.

Was I losing my edge? I’d made more than a few mistakes over the last couple of months, bungled some interactions, lost my temper once or twice, and completely miscalculated my mana generation rate with my new lattice. I still couldn’t figure out why that was happening, despite hours devoted to examining it and redoing the math.

The magic part was still easy, but then, I rarely cast anything harder than what a second or third-year apprentice would be capable of. What if, once I regained the capacity to regularly cast advanced or master tier spells, I found a serious degradation in my abilities there as well?

Perhaps I was worrying over nothing. I’d accounted for having an infant’s brain when I’d been setting up my reincarnation failsafe invocations. It could be that my struggles had nothing to do with my abilities and everything to do with my physical body being underdeveloped. I might very well find my full faculties returned to me in a handful of years.

Then again, I might not.

It was a sobering thought, one that I resolved to do a great deal of research into in the coming years. It was not, however, a problem I could solve right now. If my child’s brain simply wasn’t capable of supporting my thousands of years old consciousness in its entirety, then that was a limitation I’d need to work around.

Right now, what I could do was set a teleportation beacon up inside my hideout. It would be safely hidden behind wards, which would make it harder to target, but not impossible. In the event of an emergency, I’d still likely end up using the one back home simply because it would be faster. Better to have to waste a bit of extra mana teleporting to two beacons than to get killed trying to lock onto one that was deliberately shielded and not getting out at all.

That did mean that I still needed to check in with Father. I’d do that as soon as I finished setting up the teleport beacon. Then it would be time to find Tanner and get his decision from him. Busy, busy, busy…

***

“Gravin,” Father said, referring to me by the name I’d been born with in this life. “I was just about to start working. It’s not that I don’t want to talk, but…”

“I understand,” I said. “Let me make this quick then. I’m going to be infiltrating the inner city today, where I suspect the cabal that attacked us is located. It’s just an exploratory pass, but if the worst should come to pass, I plan on using the teleportation beacon built into your mirror to retreat. I just need you to confirm that the enchantment is active and full on mana.”

“Right, let me check,” Father said. “I know I put some in last week.”

He was supposed to do that every day. A safeguard that expired because it wasn’t properly maintained was worthless to me. If only I could have built the enchantment to feed on ambient mana, I could have avoided this problem completely. Of course, if I could do that, I could have avoided almost all of my problems. Time would be my limiting factor instead of mana.

That was the world I’d planned to be reborn in, but I’d been particularly unlucky. Instead, I’d had to scrimp and save and budget with my mana until just recently, when I’d managed to successfully install a mana lattice in my core and raise it to stage two. Now, I had plenty of mana for small projects, but I still had to be mindful not to waste it. It was a closer balance, but mana still beat out time in regards to what I was in shortest supply of.

“This looks about half full?” Father said as much as asked. “I’m not really sure how full it was to begin with. Maybe it’s a little less than half?”

That wasn’t a good sign. Enchantments would start to degrade around that point. It was possible to repair them simply by infusing more mana into the enchantment, and it wasn’t like it was broken in any fundamental way, yet. But little things could and would start to go wrong. Father knew all of this; I’d told him before I left.

“Please put as much extra mana as you can into the enchantments,” I said. “My life could literally depend on that teleport beacon functioning properly if things go wrong.”

Father paled and said, “Right. I’m sorry. I’ll give it some of my mana to it right away.”

I couldn’t see the mana, not through the mirror, but Father always got the same look on his face when he was concentrating. I watched for a few seconds, but it really wasn’t worth the mana to stare at his face. “I’ve got to get moving,” I said. “It was nice seeing you again.”

“Wait!” Father said. “Before you go, uh… It’s about your sister.”

“What about her?”

“Did you teach her any spells you didn’t tell us about?” Father asked.

“No,” I said, frowning. “Why, what happened?”

“I think she’s been playing with fire,” Father said. “We’ve found burns on her clothes a few times, and once she had a blistered hand. We haven’t actually caught her doing anything, but…”

“It’s possible. Elemental Manipulation is a fairly standard spell for new mages learning to cast conjurations. She might have an affinity for fire. Still, it’d be impressive for her to figure it out on her own at this age. Hopefully, I’ll be done in Derro in a few weeks and I can come back to see what’s going on.”

“Hopefully,” Father echoed. “Be careful, son. I know you’re smart and capable and powerful, but I’m your father. I’m always going to be worried about your safety. If you need to come back here, you do it, the council be damned. We’ll figure something out.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I think it’ll be fine, but I wanted to have some precautions in place just in case I encounter an unexpected amount of resistance.”

“Good luck,” Father said. “Don’t get yourself killed trying to fight a hundred mages at once.”

“I’ll do my best to avoid that situation,” I said.

The image faded from my hand mirror as I let the connection break. That got stowed away in my phantom space and I gave my hideout one last look to ensure I hadn’t forgotten anything. Other than the pile of leech stones off to the side, most under a quarter full, and the small sand pit I’d been sleeping on, it looked just like any other abandoned hovel. Maybe it was less dusty than it should have been.

It wasn’t until I’d ascended to the roof and prepared to drop back down to street level that I sensed something was wrong. I couldn’t see any of them from where I was crouched down, but I could feel far more mana than usual moving around, and in much higher quantities. Either a bunch of people were walking around with full halfshards or shards on their persons, or there were more enforcers out and about.

It had been close to a day since I’d killed that enforcer who’d attacked Tanner. It was entirely possible that his fellows were out looking for answers now. It was even possible that they’d found the body. I hadn’t done all that much to keep it hidden beyond remove it from view of anyone who happened to glance down the street. That was still one more day than we’d have gotten if the man had lived to report back.

None of the large concentrations of mana I could sense were near my hideout, possibly due to luck but more likely because my wards had convinced them there was nothing here worth finding. Still, it would be best to collect Tanner as soon as possible so we could be about our business. Luckily, the way between my hideout and the home the street kids were all squatting in was free of enforcers.

I dropped down onto the street and started walking in that direction, all the while keeping a close eye on the movement around me. Just because the way was clear right now didn’t mean it’d stay like that, and I didn’t plan on being penned inside my safehouse for days while I waited for this to blow over.

Luck was not with me. As I got closer to the street crew’s home, I kept having to dodge more and more enforcers. It didn’t seem likely that it was just a coincidence, not after yesterday. Once again, I wondered where Tanner had gotten the shard and whose toes he’d stepped on doing it.

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