Chapter 18: Mages Don't Run (Patreon)

“Now, the trick to it,” Oliver said, “is that there’s no trick at all.”

The team was camped somewhere in the forest, surrounded by trees and nature no matter how funny the smell. They were deep into the night and Oliver had extricated Zed from the rest of the group for their long forestalled lesson.

The night wasn’t so dark since the moon was out, bathing everything in a gentle pale blue, and they used the little light that streamed from between the little gaps between the leaves overhead to see.

Oliver had tried to have Zed sit in a cross legged position, but when Zed had begun complaining after barely five minutes, he’d freed him to sit however he wanted. Even before the lesson had begun, they’d learned Zed was anything but flexible.

“Before we go on,” Zed interrupted, raising a hand, “why can’t Jason teach me this whole aura sensing thing? He is the strongest, after all.”

“He can’t teach you because of how strong he is,” Oliver answered. “He might skip steps without knowing he’s skipped steps.”

Zed tapped his lips and nodded sagely. “That makes a lot of sense.”

“Good, so as I was say—”

“Doesn’t that mean Ash would be the best person to teach me since she’s the closest to my stage? You did say she’s the one who taught you.”

Oliver sighed, seeming already tired.

“You want the truth?” he asked.

Zed gave him a small, knowing smile. “It’s going to hurt, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Go on then,” he said, with the exaggerated gesture of a man preparing himself to get punched in the face. “I’m a big mage. I can take it.”

“The reason I’m the one teaching you,” Oliver said hesitantly, “is because none of them think you’ll take it seriously. They think you’ll joke a lot and just end up pissing them off and it’ll be a waste of their time.”

Zed looked at him in mock suspicion. “But Ash suggested you teach me even before you all learnt of my charming personality.”

“That’s because I’m her younger brother and she enjoys delegating the annoying tasks to me.”

“Perks of being the older one, I guess,” Zed said with a chuckle. “And while I’d love to carve up a poster and protest to their idea of me, I can’t really argue with them. Just look at me, I’m already filtering out which jokes are proper for our current situation. One’s a tree joke, one’s a hunter joke and one’s a gay joke. But I don’t think that last one’s proper.”

Oliver’s brows furrowed in confusion. “Why not?”

“Because it feels homophobic and you could be gay.” Zed shrugged. “Don’t want to go losing friends I’m not yet done making.”

“One,” Oliver held up finger, “I’m not gay, I’ve got a girlfriend.” He raised another. “And two, you’re probably right. If you think it’s homophobic, it probably is.” He paused, then raised a third finger. “And three, don’t tell my sister I told you I have a girlfriend.”

“Why not?” Zed asked.

Oliver scratched the back of his head nervously. “Because she’s kind of still in a sort of technically still existing relationship.”

Zed paused. “Those are a lot of adverbs. Whose relationship are we talking about; your sister or the girl?”

“The girl,” Oliver answered.

“Oh, you poor fool.” Zed laughed quietly, more than aware of the silence of the night they sat in. “Even I know not to date another guy’s girl, and I have a problem with my brain.”

Oliver shot him a frown and Zed raised his hands in a gesture of placidity.

“I’m not judging,” he said. “I’m just saying I acknowledge the quagmire you’ve slipped your delicate self into and would like you to know that I won’t say a word.” He paused, suddenly thoughtful. “I sense there’s a dirty pun in there somewhere that I can’t find, so feel free to interpret that whichever way you please.”

Oliver groaned in exasperation and rubbed a hand down his face.

“That’s enough of that,” he said sternly. “Let’s just get to the reason we’re here please.”

“Sure.”

“Now close your eyes,” Oliver said. “Take a deep breath, and most importantly, don’t say a word.”

I get the feeling that last part’s more about me than aura, Zed thought into the silent sound of him not talking.

“Now,” Oliver continued. “To sense aura you must first understand what it is you’re looking for if not you won’t know when you’ve found it. Aura is the effect of a mage’s existence on the ambient mana. It is, like a mage’s mana, an imprint of themselves. My sister described it like smelling food and she’s right. But it’s more than that. The body is always doing its best to contain mana, and while it does that, like an overflowing cup or a pot that’s not sealed tightly, some of it will spill or its smell will escape. That small spill is what sips into the atmosphere and becomes aura. It is what helps us know when another living being is around us.”

As Oliver spoke, Zed listened. He breathed gently with every word, picking the important pieces of information. If aura was significant to everyone then it could be used to differentiate everyone. And if the body’s containment of mana was like a poorly sealed pot, then it was possible to seal it. It would be possible for a person to mask their aura, hide it from those around them so they could slip about like simple people. The idea fascinated him and he was forced to drag himself back to the task at hand.

He was here to learn how to sense aura not how to hide it.

“Just breathe,” Oliver was saying. “Pay attention to everything around you. The smell in the wind. The sound of falling leaves. The sound of children playing. The taste of your tongue. The fabric of the clothes you’re wearing.”

Zed heard no child playing and tried not to let how out of place the concept was from where they were distract him. Instead, he listened and inhaled deeply.

The night air was soft against his body, cool where he knew it was meant to be chill. It wafted over him, parting around him as it did all things. It slipped into his hair like a father’s touch, patting only its surface but not digging beneath it. It was gentle in all things with a promise of firmness and withheld power. He let it rule the world beyond him, giving it deference where it was due. When he breathed it in, it was a task not to shove it all away. It smelled of both life and death. He could smell the wood of the trees and the leaves newly sprouted. He could also smell the presence of dead things. Leaves falling after absorbing their last ray of light. Dead things succumbed to the wrath of time and the teeth of predators. There was a smell of decay and rot with a touch of trepidation and something else he could not quite name.

He shifted himself from it gently as it grew to a crescendo.

For fear of being consumed by it, Zed slipped himself from smell and into sound. Oliver was still speaking, using words in a gentle rhythm. Zed gave him only enough time to hear something about the birds in the sky and the sun on his skin before casting his senses elsewhere.

Sound came in the gentle whisper of broken rhythms. The first thing he heard was the soft beating of his heart and the filling of his lungs in every breath. Then there was the slow beating of his pulse which he realized actually wasn’t slow. It pumped faster than the average speed he knew, and he checked his breath just to be sure. He found it faster than it was supposed to be. He gathered that piece of information and filed it away under the list of things he blamed on magic.

Pushing away from himself, he listened to the world around him, grazing over the sound of Oliver telling him to envision the taste of honey on his tongue.

I don’t even like honey.

Zed listened to the leaves undulate to the gentle touch of the night's breeze, swaying and dancing to a song none could hear. He listened to the quiet chirp of birds communicating in sounds so low he doubted the other birds could hear it. He listened to life in its woody glory.

It was as it filled him that Zed felt something new. It was a touch in the air, the softest touch. Barely a graze, if he was being honest. He grasped at it as it came, more from a sense of curiosity than certainty. His mind was already slipping into his sense of touch. The feel of the clothes on his skin, as Oliver had called it. However, this was too light to be ignored and when he found purchase in it, it was odd.

The sensation was like walking into a room filled with smoke only without the sight or the smell, or walking into a mist. Zed could feel it all over him and could do nothing against it. Without thinking, he raised his hand and moved it slowly, waved it through the air, and felt nothing. It struck him as odd since the feeling was still there, still flush against his skin.

It was like the air was enriched with smoke from a million sources, some of it served to taint it more than enrich it. Some irritated his senses and others brought a sense of familiar calm to him.

Zed pulled them to him, and when it didn’t work, he pulled himself to them, trying to understand them; to find meaning in them. Each time he failed. Each failure was as woeful as woe had any right to be. At some point even the sound of his own pulse began to distract him. The steady thrum of irrelevance around him started to prove distracting, and more than once he had to fight the urge to tell Oliver to stop talking. To simply shut up for a quiet second so that he could hear himself feel.

The annoyance broke the flow Zed had held onto so fickly and it shattered like fine china. The force of it jarred Zed from his trance and he shook out of it gasping for air like a man almost drowned. He took the air into his lungs with heavy gulps, panting with his hands firmly on the ground to hold him up. It took him a moment to realize he was sweating.

When Zed raised his head, he found a satisfied smirk on Oliver’s face.

“What the hell are you smiling for?” he asked, his voice hard. He realized his annoyance at the distraction of the boy’s voice was yet to subside.

“You’re sweating,” Oliver said. If he had heard the tone of Zed’s voice and was bothered by it, he didn’t show it.

“Yes,” Zed said. “I know I’m sweating because I’m the one sweating. Is that normal? The sweating, not me knowing I’m sweating.”

Oliver nodded.

“But I thought mages don’t get tired so easily,” Zed said. “I’d assume someone that could walk for days without breaking a sweat wouldn’t sweat so easily.”

“Well, that much is true,” Oliver agreed. “But sensing aura is different. Your body is using mana to do something it hasn’t done before—something it doesn’t have an idea how to do. Think of it like training new muscles you’ve never used before, and very roughly at that.”

“A two-year-old carrying weights,” Zed mused, then nodded. “Got it.”

“Weird analogy,” Oliver said, with a touch of disturbance. “But I guess that works.”

Zed shrugged, his breathing finally calming.

“My skin hurts,” he said suddenly. “Does that make sense? I mean its sore the way muscles get. But instead of my muscles, it’s my skin. It sounds ludicrous. Exactly how it feels, too.”

Oliver shrugged. “I can’t say. It’s different with everybody. And its magic. I guess we can just wait and see if it goes down?”

Zed acquiesced with a nod.

It wasn’t long before his breathing returned and he was back to what he considered a normal state. Certain of it, he looked at Oliver still sporting his self-accomplished grin and remembered his annoyance at the sound of his distracting voice.

“Why are you still grinning?” Zed asked.

“Because I just found out that I might be a good teacher,” Oliver said. “I didn’t get to this state when Ash was teaching me until our third lesson. But look at me guiding you this far in just our first lesson.”

Zed stared at him flabbergasted.

You’re the one who broke me out of it in the first place! He thought with a sufficient touch of dismay before schooling his expression. Instead, he said, “I won’t argue with you on that. However, I do have one question.”

“What’s that?” Oliver asked.

“Why the hell were you asking me to feel the touch of the sun on my skin?” Zed asked. “We’re in the middle of a god’s damned forest. And it’s the middle of the night.”

Oliver’s paused, lips puckered in embarrassment. His answer was as pointless as his sense of accomplishment.

“Oh.”

Zed tightened his grip on the handle of his tomahawk. He was crouched behind a fallen tree, its girth almost as wide as he was tall. Beside him Jason rested his arms on the fallen tree like a man without a problem, staring at their current quarry.

“So,” Zed said. “Remind me again. Why exactly did we leave the others to come and stare at two monsters humping each other? Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for nature and its inverted beauties but I never took you for a pervert.”

Already accustomed to his random babblings, Jason didn’t give him the satisfaction of a response. The moment he’d found the creatures in this state he’d been waiting for a pointless remark.

“That,” Jason said in a low voice, gesturing at the creatures over twenty feet away, “is called a Moscovian sloth.”

Zed cocked his head to the side. “Nope.”

“What do you mean ‘nope’?” Jason asked, turning to him.

“Can’t be a Moscovian sloth,” Zed answered. “Look at the thing. It looks more like an overgrown Orangutan if it was dropped on its head as a child. That’s a Moscovian Orangutan.”

Jason shook his head. “That’s not the point,” he said. “The point is you’re going to kill it.”

“Oh.”

Zed returned his attention to the beasts and shuddered. His earlier assessment remained true. The monster on top was eight feet tall and covered in orange fur that looked like spikes. But rather than having the simple head shape most primates had, there was a depression at the back of its skull, like someone had taken a particularly blunt object to it.

Beneath the monster he could not see it’s mate and it’s hip was thrusting away with the exuberant vigor of an animal starved of sex for so long.

“That’s one horny monster,” he said to himself before turning to Jason and adding: “What do I get for killing it?”

“Corrections,” Jason said without batting an eye.

“Corrections?”

“Yes.” Jason looked at him from the corner of his eye. “Corrections. I’ll see the way you fight and tell you what you’re doing wrong.”

“I thought you’ve already seen the way I fight?” Zed asked, his mind flashing back to the monster in the building from a few days back.

“That was then,” Jason answered. “And I wasn’t watching for errors. I was waiting for you to use magic. So your errors then were the fact that you didn’t use magic when you were supposed to. Now that I know you don’t have any magic, I can assess you better.”

Zed nodded. “So once you’re done assessing, what next? Spellforms? Another rune lesson?”

It had been a few days since his first lesson with Oliver. They practiced twice a day, sometimes stretching it into three times and Zed was yet to sense aura. Each time, his attention ended hovering between that odd feeling of smoke and mist. His brain and body always told him there was something there but there was a part of him that just couldn’t connect to what it was. It was like solving an equation properly but stuttering at the final answer.

His only sign of progress was that he no longer sweated as much and no longer came out of it looking for air like a drowning man. He was even getting quite accustomed to the lesson, easing himself into a trance like state quite easily. If Oliver could finally learn to stop saying weird things, like asking him to remember the taste of his mother’s food, he’d be perfectly accustomed to it.

“No rune lessons,” Jason told Zed. “And no spellforms. Magic isn’t like school, you can’t dedicate yourself to more than one discipline at a time, especially when you don’t know something as basic as aura sense. Once you’ve learnt that one, you might be able to learn a spellform with enough time and dedication. For most people, it’s either spellforms or runes, and once you find your specialization, connecting to other types of mana feels like just a waste of your time.”

“Alright,” Zed said, vaulting over the fallen tree. “I just don’t know why you’re sending me after two monsters when you know I can’t use magic.” He was only two steps away when he paused and looked back. “They’re both Beta rank, right? I don’t want to go in there and find out they’re actually Rukh and this is just your excuse to kill me.”

“Beta rank, yes,” Jason confirmed. “And it’s only one monster you’re going to be fighting.”

Zed looked at Jason in confusion. He turned his attention to the monster and its mate was considerably harder to see. All he could note was its color, and even that was hard to see. It was like the monster was hiding its mate from the world.

“So what?” he asked, turning back to Jason. “One gets totally knackered after a good thumping? My money’s on the male because that’s usually how it is with us guys.”

A slow grin stretched Jason’s face and he looked like someone trying not to laugh. When he answered, Zed would’ve liked to say his words were the last thing on the list of things he’d expected him to say, but the truth was they weren’t even on the list.

“Sorry to take away your fun,” Jason said, still smiling, “but there’s only one monster there. The other one’s most likely some unfortunate animal, judging by its aura.”

Jason’s jaw dropped. “Please don’t tell me a monster’s humping a poor defenseless animal,” he said, easing back to the fallen tree without turning his back to the monster. “That’s practically rape. Oh, no. Is that why I’ll only be facing one. It’s going to hump the animal to death, isn’t it?”

Jason shook his head and let out an actual chuckle. “Not at all. Moscovian Sloths don’t have a mouth, not in the way we know.”

The shock and amusement slipped from Zed’s face as realization dawned on him. “No,” he said, refusing to accept it, his expression growing aghast. “It can’t be.”

“And yet,” Jason said, his smile ecstatic. “There it is, as clear as day.”

Zed looked back and couldn’t see any sign of the other animal again. He gagged once in growing disgust.

“That’s just wrong,” he shuddered. “That’s just very wrong.”

“True,” Jason agreed. “But that’s just magic. Some monsters can fly. Others look like abominations that should not exist. And a Moscovian sloth eats through its genitalia.”

Zed groaned.

“You know you didn’t have to say it,” he complained. “We already know I figured it out.”

Jason gave an apologetic shrug but there was no apology on his face. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying himself.

“Just thought I should make sure you know,” he said. “So that if it starts thrusting its hip at you, you don’t get the wrong idea thinking your wit and charming personality are a cross species thing.”

Jason laughed when he said it, the sound of his laughter drawing the monster’s attention.

Zed turned to Jason horrified at the fact that he’d given away his element of surprise and gestured angrily at the creature.

“Look what you did!” he complained, no longer keeping his voice low. “You took my element of surprise.”

“You never had one in the first place,” Jason chuckled. “Now go get your work done.”

Zed turned to face the monster and found it actually had no mouth. He twirled his tomahawk once, then approached it.

The creature took three loud steps forward, propelled by large forearms, beat the floor to a tremble and roared at him.

It was the most inappropriate roar Zed had ever had the displeasure of experiencing.

“If there was a monster court of law,” he mumbled to himself. “I’d sue you for sexual harassment.”

New Quest: [Moscovian Sloth]

You have stumbled upon the peaceful meal of a mana beast and have drawn its attention. There is no greater threat of a monster than one that has tasted the blood of a sentient being. Do not allow it become one.

• Objective: Defeat [Moscovian      Sloth] 0/1.
• Reward: Mana Beast core.

Zed met the monster with a swinging tomahawk and a suppressed fear. His first strike missed and he doubled with another. Each time he swung the monster moved with a precision he didn’t like. Its movement was too accurate for something so large.

When it chose to attack, it was in a way completely expected. It swung its massive arms, like a child playing with the air. The gust of wind each blow carried had Zed on the back foot, and he was forced to evade, while looking for a way forward.

Experience that was not his told him that opponents like these, with massive swings and perfect evasion couldn’t be handled easily. The only way to take them was with counter attacks.

He watched the hulking monster come at him as he absorbed the piece of information and refused. The sheer size of it was enough to dissuade anyone from approaching. To counter attack was to walk into its reach knowing the full potential consequence it entailed should he fail.

But as much as his fear demanded he turn and run from something that was beginning to remind him of a moving helicopter if it was all muscle and its fan blades were made of stone, he wanted to be stronger. He wanted the kind of strength that allowed him live in a world riddled with monsters without having to worry about a change of clothes each time he fought. He wanted the gift of creating fire with just words.

So counting on his regenerative attribute, he darted back into the monster’s reach. He ducked under an arm, trepidation dripping down the back of his neck, and came up on its other side. His tomahawk was ready and he was halfway through a swing when the monster moved again.

The creature casually stepped away from Zed and brought both hands up. Zed only had enough time for one action. He could match its attack, swing with all his strength and hope his tomahawk met it before its hands came down, or he could run from it.

Mages do not run, he chided himself, the words coming from the memory of an angry man that was not him, motivating, pushing him towards greater heights, for only in discomfort can a man grow and thrive.

Zed terminated his swing and dived out of the way.

The monster’s blow hit the earth and shook the trees around them. Its hands created a crater where they landed and Zed watched in terrified surprise.

“Mages don’t run?” he scoffed in disgusted. “What a load of bullshit. I bet that’s how we get dead mages.”

The monster roared at Zed again, and a sense of filth filled him along with his fear. It was akin to watching something disgustingly indecent while fighting a creature that could take a person’s head in one blow. Which it was.

This time, rather than wait for Zed, the creature charged forward. It moved with the wobbling grace of the primate family with arms too long and legs too short. It picked up a tiny earthquake as it came, crushing leaves beneath its feet and bodying trees as if it could uproot them with a simple shoulder check.

Zed re-evaluated his situation when it actually did. It smashed into a tree, throwing it off with a violent fuss. It ripped the tree along with its root from the earth and tossed it into another.

“Well that’s definitely not good.”

Unconsciously Zed found himself looking around for Jason as he backed away from the creature’s approach and didn’t find him. It seemed the monster was his to suffer alone.

With a small force of will, Zed reminded himself of the stakes of the fight. Learning to sense auras was a gift they would give him regardless of the outcome of this, but spellforms and runes were a different conversation. He was certain they wouldn’t be very willing to teach him if they thought of him any less than they already did. So he steeled his resolve, set his feet firmly beneath him, and threw himself into the monster’s attack.

He ducked a swing and came up on the side. Another swing came at him with the roaring wind in his ear and Zed rolled along the ground. He came up, guided by instinct, and barely avoided the kick of a short leg. The attack came at him, improvised, and the monster wobbled awkwardly.

Destabilized as it was, Zed saw his chance.

He put his weight behind a one-handed swing and drove the blade of his tomahawk into the monster’s back.

The weapon struck with Zed’s weight behind it and rebounded. Then the monster batted at him as if chasing off a fly and, while it missed, the wind from its blow ruffled Zed’s hair.

Zed backed up, staring at the blade of the tomahawk and at the monster. This matchup, he realized, had been planned.

Jason had placed him up against a beast he could not cut; a beast he could not win.