by Tao Wong
“Part of the ritual,” I replied. I took a look at the packages, sorting them quickly before I pushed the bag back toward Alexa. “Can you grind the first five ingredients together and then mix them into the paint?”
“The first five…” Alexa’s eyebrows furrowed as she stared at the list in her hand. “That includes the dung.”
“Unless you want me to stop carving pendants,” I said, gesturing at the strip of wood that sat waiting for my first attempt.
“For the children?”
“For the children.”
“I hate you.”
I flashed Alexa a grin as I picked up the hot soldering iron and leaned forward toward the wood. Ah, the privileges of being the specialized help.
***
By the time I was done with my first working wooden pendant, Alexa had the paint ready.
“Put this on.” I tossed the block to her underhand.
Alexa frowned, gripping the four-inch strip in hand and turning it around. “How?”
“Drill a hole, thread some string,” I said, waving my hand absently as I focused on the paint. It looked like the right color. “Just don’t mess up the runes. Oh, and if you can drill more holes in the wood strips, I can work around them next time.”
Grumbling to herself, Alexa quickly processed the wooden strip and dropped it around her neck. She tilted her head from side to side, as if trying to hear a difference. I ignored her though, since I knew it worked. After all, I had made it. And yes, tested it.
I picked up the bucket of paint and brush, muttering the spell to myself while I considered where to start. Over the entrance doors so it had the best chance to dry, and if someone walked in on me I wouldn’t lose too much work? Or start in the middle of the wall to get a nice flow going?
Decisions, decisions, decisions.
Muttering to myself, I decided on the door itself and grabbed a chair to stand on. Time to get started.
“You could use a ladder…”
“Ladder smadder.”
“What does that mean?”
Meh. I ignored her, propping the chair and standing to reach for the top of the doorframe. Now, where was I? Right, creating a multi-stage, room-wide ritual to contain mana from a decades-old spirit with store-bought paint, dung, and moss.
***
Breathing was hard. My chest locked tight as I dragged on the dregs of the mana within my body. The ritual had taken more from me to charge than I had expected, the corrupted mana within the building flowing into me at a significantly lower degree than normal. It meant I could not regenerate what I had used as efficiently, draining my internal stores further. And unfortunately, I didn’t have a mana battery of any sort, at least nothing I could drain myself. Stupid.
Still, as I painted the last circle and dotted it, I could feel the ritual snap into place. For a second, it stuttered as it drew upon my body for its initial charge and found my lack of mana disturbing. Rather than let the ritual fail, I bit my tongue and spat the blood directly onto the paint, watching the ritual flare back to life as it drew forth the very life essence I had gifted it. Of course, it wasn’t just any blood, it was blood that had a touch of my life essence. It was the reason why blood magic wasn’t something you could practice on yourself continuously. It wasn’t blood in terms of scientific blood but the life essence, the portion of your soul that burned and thrived. Do it too often, and you’d basically die.
But for a short burst of fuel? Nothing like it.
“Henry?” Alexa’s voice came from behind me, hesitant but concerned. I ignored it as I focused on the ritual to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake. Given the boost from my blood, the ritual finally managed to draw from the corrupted ambient mana and sprang to life, a protective bubble spreading across the surfaces of the room. It locked the mana within, stopping the flow of the corrupted mana from entering.
With a thump, I sat down and put my head between my legs, breathing deeply.
“Henry?” Alexa said, more urgently now.
“Pain killers.” I groaned around my knees as I tried to focus on my breathing. Right. Smaller room next time.
Dry-swallowing the pills proffered, it took me another half hour before I felt human enough to speak. By that time, the corrupted mana in the room had decreased significantly since the children who had been brought into the room slowly cleansed the mana through their own auras. As I looked around, I noted how many kids there were. And the looks they were giving me.
“Do I have two heads or something?” I muttered to myself.
Alexa, hanging close by, smiled wryly. “No, but you’re a mage. And they’re Templars-to-be.”
“Right. We’re all evil.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“But for the kids, it works out to that, eh?” I said, crossing my arms grumpily and glaring at the kids. It made more than a few look away, though one particular redheaded young teen met my gaze fearlessly. She even wrinkled her freckled nose at me.
“Just about. How’s your mana pool?” Alexa asked softly. A glance upward—which really made no sense, since it was always there—and I answered her.
“Twenty-one percent. I’m going to need to meditate.”
“Okay,” Alexa said simply, and I flopped straight down on the floor again. After a moment’s consideration, I stood back up and hunted down a more comfortable chair while ignoring the little snickers from the kids. I was no damn Buddhist monk.
Hours later, I finished the twelfth pendant and felt a crack in my back when I stretched. I tossed the enchanted device to Alexa while I took a look at the snaking sunlight from the high windows.
“This is going too slow,” I said to Alexa when she got back.
“Agreed. There’s nearly fifty children, and you’ve only got twelve done,” Alexa tapped her lips. “Suggestions?”
“Money. I can’t be the only one to have come up with the idea of aura-reinforcing enchantments. If we go shopping with the d… donated money, we should be able to find something,” I said. “Or you will.”
“What are you going to do?” Alexa asked with a frown.
“There’s a fence that needs fixing. At the least, I should see if it’s possible,” I said.
“Pretty sure it isn’t.” Alexa pointed to me. “You nearly fainted doing just this room.”
I hesitated but turned away from that rather uncomfortable truth. I was sure Caleb could fix this entire thing with a wave of his hands, but the damn mage had made his view on the matter entirely too clear. As it stood, I had a slim chance of putting up a ritual large enough to block the corrupted mana. For that matter… “Crap.”
“Language, Henry!”
“Sorry.” I bobbed my head at the glaring pair of nuns nearby while I spotted one precocious little kid mouthing my swear word. “But I realized there’s no way I’m going to be able to fix the ritual either. Not, well, not as it stands.”
“Because you don’t have the mana.”
“Right,” I said.
Alexa frowned even more at my admission, looking first at me and then around at the children. “That’s not acceptable, Henry. Start thinking. I’m going to go shopping.”
“It…” I shut up as I watched the blonde initiate stalk off, tension radiating from every step. After a moment, I sighed and sat on my chair, propping my head on one arm as I turned my thoughts on how to power a building-wide ritual enough to fix it and then fix the ritual below. All the while not really understanding either.
Chapter 14
“Is this going to work?” Alexa asked as she stared at my most recent experiment. I looked at the staff members of the orphanage I could see, a steel chain held in their hands as they circled the large stone building and the small, fenced-off grounds that encompassed the orphanage.
“Maybe?” I said with little confidence. “Theoretically, it should work. The chain works. I can draw the mana I need from those who grip the chain so long
as they’re willing, but it’s a lot of mana.”
“It’s not dangerous, right?”
“Not majorly so,” I said. “I’ve set up the runes to disperse the buildup if we fail. It costs more mana, but the buildup is significant enough that it makes sense.”
Alexa sighed while the abbess who had been watching quietly nodded her agreement for me to continue. The abbess herself was staying out of the ring, for reasons left unexplained to me. Probably a lack of confidence in my work. I’d be insulted if I wasn’t making it all up on the go. Thankfully, magic—or at least magic as I practiced it—was flexible. There might be more efficient ways of doing something, but if you had the right tools to start, you could patch things together.
In this case, it was just a much, much, much larger version of the room ritual. Except, this time around, I was containing the mana rather than letting it out. It did raise a few concerning issues, like what would happen to the continual buildup, but in the short-term, at least the neighborhood could get back to its usual state.
“Ready?” I called out. I walked forward when I received confirmation, laying a hand on the chain myself while I began the process of completing the enchantment around the fence. I was using a mixture of enchantments and empowerment on the fence. The initial enchantments had been inscribed—discretely—around the fence at intervals. I enchanted and reinforced each of those glyphs, creating anchor points for the ritual. I would then empower the remainder of the spell, giving it temporary life while we worked on fixing the source.
The enchanted-and-empowered spell was a perfect blend of strength and flexibility. Rather than draining all of us attempting to affix a permanent ritual in place, the mostly empowered ritual would give us the effects without the drain. Also, it was definitely less eye-catching since empowered runes were not visible to the naked eye.
Rune after rune layered the wall as I walked, one hand on the chain and the other outstretched to the fence. A part of me knew how weird this looked—a twenty-year-old Asian man wandering the circle of a building, hand outstretched while a bunch of nuns stood around holding a metallic chain with pained looks on their faces. I was just glad the polluted mana kept passersby out of the streets, leaving few witnesses. Of course, it only needed one with a mobile phone…
But I did what I could. And hoped everything else fell into place.
What surprised me the most was how clear and abundant the mana I drew from the staff was. While I knew they had a lot from my Mana Sight, knowing and interacting with it were entirely different things. There was also an openness to the draw, to the gifting, that I had never experienced before. I made a mental note to talk to Lily about this later as it made the entire day so much easier to work from.
In a short span of time, I completed the ritual. The final lurch of it kicking in drew mana from me and the ladies quite harshly, but with the shared draw, I found it somewhat easier to handle than the first rit. I still found myself slumped to the ground at the end, exhaustion and a headache wracking my body, but at least I wasn’t spitting out blood.
“Come on, let’s get you back,” Alexa said softly, one hand reaching under my armpit to lift me up.
“Can’t. Got to get more pendants…”
“They’ll sleep in the gym for now,” Alexa said, dragging me reluctantly along. “You need to rest.”
“But—”
“Do you want to blow up another artifact because you were too tired?”
“It was just a few wooden blocks,” I muttered disconsolately, but I did let her put me in the car. It was only when she was shaking my shoulder to wake me after we’d arrived when I realized how tired I was. With bleary eyes and a thumping headache, I didn’t even make it up the stairs, instead flopping straight onto the living room couch.
***
I woke to the smell of coffee the next morning. The hiss of cooking bacon and the aroma of freshly made coffee and toasted bread had me stumbling toward the kitchen table. As I sat, I realized with a shock how hungry I truly was and attacked the toasted bread ravenously. Strawberry jam and peanut butter were slathered on with wild abandon even as a cup of coffee was thumped next to me. Only when the black hole in my stomach had faded away did I look up.
“Feeling better?” Lily asked, head propped on her shoulder. At my assent, she wrinkled her nose before she grinned and waved a hand at me. “Congratulations.”
Level Up!
You are now a Level 23 Mage.
You have acquired a new spell - Cleanse
You have acquired a new spell—Increase Resistance
You have acquired a new spell—Enchanted Runes
Rituals Skill increased
“Trying a new format?” I asked, mentally dismissing the notifications. Surprisingly, my head didn’t throb at all from the new knowledge, though I noted I suddenly had a slew of new information in my brain. Presumably, Lily had deposited this information while I was asleep and only just now unlocked them.
“What do you think?”
“It could do without the unicorns, rainbows, and fireworks,” I said, fishing one of the pieces of bacon from what was added to the plate and then juggling it from hand to hand. “Hot, hot, hot!”
“Then wait, you idiot.” Alexa rolled her eyes as she returned to the grease-laden pan to add eggs.
“What’s with the breakfast? Not that I’m complaining,” I said.
“Lily mentioned you’d need more energy today. After the experience and mana drain,” Alexa said. “Also… thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” I finished chewing my bacon and swallowed it. “For what?”
“Helping. You didn’t need to. Especially the fence,” Alexa said.
“The job’s to keep them running. Having the orphanage close down because everyone on the block is freaking out is probably not a great idea,” I said, then paused. “Huh. Or not.”
“I don’t like that look.”
“I do,” Lily said with her head propped up on her hand and a mischievous grin playing on her lips.
“Well, they’ve got a problem with too-high prices and people wanting them out, right? Because the neighborhood is desirable?” I said. When I got nods, I shrugged. “If we let the mana leak out…”
Alexa hummed slightly in thought and turned back toward the pan to flip the eggs. I let her think about it for a moment while I continued to stuff my face.
“No. That’d be wrong,” Alexa said finally. “We can’t destroy other people’s livelihoods just because it’s more convenient for us.”
“Heee…” I said, leaning back. “Fine. So what’s the plan for today?”
“Mushrooms.”
I ended up making a face at her words but nodded. It’d been a few days since Corey had dropped by, which was a bit of a concern. I mean, by now, he’d have run the mana batteries out, so he should have come by to deposit our share of the mushrooms. Since he hadn’t—“Where to?”
“I have his home information.”
“Great,” I said and then speared another piece of toast. We would get right on it. After breakfast and my lessons.
***
Autumn was always a strange time. Everything was dying, sort of, getting ready for a winter. There were leaves on the ground, brown grass everywhere, and gutters overflowing. Yet, outside of the city, the signs of life could still be seen: the occasional darting squirrel, crows and hares scampering across a highway, and a weirdness to the mana flow, an ageing to it that made casting spells that require more concentration easier. I spent most of the drive exploring that sensation, pulling at the world’s mana and dispersing the accumulation after running it through basic spell constructs.
“We should be there soon,” Alexa said, and I nodded. I was surprised at how far out Corey lived. Or perhaps, I shouldn’t have been. Staying next to a national park meant easy access to the woods, where herbs and other supernatural materials might be found. Alexa had picked me up right after I finished with Cal
eb, which meant we’d been able to skip rush-hour traffic for the most part. Still, the entire drive had taken a couple hours.
“Great.” I shifted in my chair once more and dispersed the mana I held, absently checking my body for how much I was at. It was probably around 80 percent of my full, though that new full level I knew had once again increased. A quick check against my mana bar showed I was right, which made me smirk.
A turn and we were off the country road and entering a small side road. Within seconds, a large residential building appeared before our eyes. If it was a little more opulent and a little less rundown and practical, it could have been called a mansion. As it stood, it just looked like a very large, practical building. Perhaps even more surprising were the numerous plots of farmed land, each of which were separated by ramshackle fencing. I peered at the plants within, vaguely thinking I knew some of them, but I decided not to push it. After all, I knew my limits, and herbology was definitely one of them.
Perhaps just as surprising were the large number of individuals moving around the plot of land. There were at least a dozen kids rushing around, naked as the day they were born. Four feet tall and thin and grey, the mini-trolls acted just like human kids. Well, except for the one who was eating a centipede raw. As interesting were the four trolls, three women and a young male, who were working the fields, weeding, watering, and turning over the ground. When we pulled up, they stared until we exited the vehicle.
“Hi there,” I said, raising my hand and offering them a smile.
“This is private property. Didn’t you read the sign?” An older troll female walked up. I squinted slightly, letting the glamour she used come into focus and noted the middle-aged brunette who came into focus before I let my gaze sharpen again.
“We did, but we’re actually looking for Corey,” I said. A younger female troll’s face twisted at the mention of Corey’s name, concern quickly buried. Or at least, I hoped it was concern.