Chapter 29: Determination (Patreon)

“No,” Festus said, face calm but voice impatient. “That’s how you do it when you want to sense aura. You reach out to the world, touch it, then act as a magnet and draw it to you, then you let it wash over you until it is all you can feel. Connecting with mana is different.”

Zed was seated in the room Festus had slipped into earlier. He sat on the ground in a corner of the room with his eyes closed and his breathing tempered. He was trying to connect to the mana around him and was failing. Each time he tried, he found himself touching on the aura in the room, and there was a great amount of it, each of different aspects but most of the force variety. Unsurprising since Festus was a force mage. If he had somehow found a way to increase the mana density in his own house, it was definitely going to be as much force mana as he could get.

“No,” Festus’ voice filled Zed’s ear once more. “I didn’t ask you to temper your core, this isn’t some Chinese meditation room. Don’t go looking for what’s inside you, go looking to connect with what’s outside.”

Zed fought back a groan, unwilling to do or say something that would anger his best chance at learning runes, or possibly learning spellforms. He ignored his slow turning core and reached out again. This time, when he felt the aura in the room, strong but discordant, he ignored it.

“You’re doing better this time,” Festus said. “Connecting to mana should be easy in here. I have a mana rune up somewhere around here that’s channeling ambient mana into this room, so its chuck full of it.”

Zed listened to Festus as he continued to reach for the mana around him, sitting on the edge of struggle as nothing came to him. There was a prickly feeling reminiscent of the fresh air of the colorful forest of his beginning but it was prickly where the forest had been clean. It ruffled his senses and played with his attention.

There was something there, and he was more than certain there in lay the connection to mana he was looking for, the heart of spellforms. If he could understand it, he could pluck it from nothingness and create fire, or force, or water. At this point it didn’t matter what he created.

Whatever it was flowed around him, but not into him, and he reached for it cautiously, keeping himself away from hurry as he had done when learning to sense aura.

“You’re connecting to mana not sensing aura,” Festus said. “You’re not supposed to run from it. You’re supposed to grab it and understand it. It’s not some skittish cat you need to trust you.”

Zed fought the urge to open his eyes and give Festus a sufficiently sarcastic look. Instead, he tempered his caution, moved it to the side, and reached for the mana like a licentious king goes after the palace maids.

He grazed it like a barely missed gunshot and incomprehensible sounds flitted through his mind and touched the tip of his tongue. His lips parted as the sounds grew, words slipping by and growing in the distance. Then the words came to him in bits and pieces, light and heavy as a mother’s touch and a father’s voice. They beckoned him to speak, to say the words, to use them.

And he did.

He opened his mouth and a single word spilled from his lips.

“Bleh.”

Festus burst into cackling laughter and Zed opened his eyes. The words had fled him as Festus’ tiny voice filled the room.

“I swear I had it for a moment,” Zed complained.

“Nope,” Festus disagreed, still laughing. “It had you, but you never had it. Connecting to mana is easier than sensing aura. Every mage can do it easily, instinctively, even. The fact that it took you this long to connect to it shows you really lack an aptitude for it.”

“What do you mean this long? I’ve only been here, what, twenty minutes?”

Festus laughed again.

“No, kid,” he said. “You’ve been here for four hours, struggling like a goat in water. It’s already evening. And if you weren’t a mage I’d be sending you off to go look for your dinner.”

Zed sighed and leaned against the wall behind him. “Does this affect my ability to learn runes, too?”

“Nah,” Festus said with a dismissive wave. “Nobody has an affinity for runes except rune mages. And even they don’t have a much better connection to it than the rest of us. So don’t worry about it.”

“Any idea why?”

“Because runes aren’t things we’re supposed to know. If spellforms are pouring a cup of world coffee for yourself, runes are the coffee beans themselves. Using runes is like extracting the coffee beans from the already steaming cup of coffee.”

“I think something’s wrong with your analogy there.”

“Really?” Festus said with an amused smile. “And what’s that?”

“Extracting coffee beans from already made coffee is impossible. But creating runes is clearly possible. You already do it.”

“There’s magic now, boy,” Festus said. “Nothing is impossible anymore. There are only things we know how to do and things we either don’t know how to do or aren’t powerful enough to do. And no one creates runes, boy, just the way no one creates a mountain. Like all things in nature, they are discovered. They already exist. Everything is made of mana and runes are the building blocks of mana.”

“So, now that we know spellforms aren’t for me,” Zed said. “We can dive head first into runes, right?”

Festus nodded.

“So what are we starting with?” Zed asked.

“Something simple but necessary for a hunter,” Festus answered, reaching for a pen and paper on the table behind him.

“And what’s that?”

“Every mage who takes the path of a hunter needs it, and I’m sure you will,” Festus said, placing the pen to paper. “And for a hunter, there are a lot of things you need to stay alive when everything out there is trying to kill you. So I teach every young hunter the simplest necessary spell I know.”

He scribbled something on the paper quickly and deftly, then held it up.

Zed looked at the piece of paper. It was what he could comfortably describe as a simple rune.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“A defensive rune,” Festus explained. “A shield rune, to be precise.”

Zed raised his hand. “I have a question.”

“And I hope I have the answer.”

“Why don’t people just go around carrying papers with inscriptions of runes and use those?”

“Mages do, actually,” Festus said. “But mostly the ward runes. The ones used to create safe zones and the likes are sentry and ward runes.”

“But not runes for fighting, I take it.”

“No, not fighting runes. Runes on a piece of paper are less than efficient. By the time you’ve pulled the piece of paper from wherever you’ve kept it safe enough to survive, then open it and channel the proper amount of mana into the paper to activate the rune without destroying the paper, your enemy would’ve done quick work of you with a simple spellform.”

“Oh.”

“Oh is correct,” Festus said, then he shook the paper at Zed. “Now come take this from me before I change my mind.”

Zed hurried off his feet and took the paper from him. He went back to where he’d been sitting, a part of him accepting it as his designated place in the study, and sat down. The piece of paper spread out on the ground, he bent over it and studied it.

First he dedicated his time to looking without comprehending. He already knew what trying to comprehend a rune could do to him.

The rune Festus had given him was a simple design of two lines that met at the top like a triangle and a spiral at their centre that somehow touched both roots of the lines. Zed did his best not to wonder at how it was even possible even as his mind wanted to.

After staring at it for a good while in a silence not encumbered by the sound of anything, he steeled his resolve against the possible outcome of his next action and did his best to understand how the circular spiral touched the foot of both lines while it was at its centre without touching any other part of them.

Zed had barely touched the concept when his vision blurred. Unwilling to fail, he struggled to hold the shape in his mind. A part of him expected this to be the time when Festus would offer some piece of advice or the other, but Festus said nothing.

Zed forced himself to stare at the drawing, to absorb as much of it as he could, to understand the unrealistic form it took. A slow migraine grew at the centre of his head like someone had taken a nail, placed its point on top of his head and struck it lightly with a hammer.

It pierced his mind confidently.

Zed gritted his teeth against the pain and forced himself to continue even as he felt something wet and warm roll down his nose. He couldn’t see what it was and didn’t bother to wipe it clean, but he knew it wasn’t snot.

Festus watched Zed struggle over the single shield rune with a soft smile. As simple as it was, it was the first step in learning how to cast a proper defensive ward. Most mages knew this rune but failed in creating the other runes that could stem from it. In fact, most mages learnt the one rune and never went ahead to learn the remaining runes for a full ward. Zed looked like a nice kid and Festus found himself hoping he would be good at runes.

It was already a tough world out there without spellforms. Festus knew what the world was like now and wished its torture on nobody. If he could teach Zed one defensive rune and one offensive rune, then he would be at least happy for him.

He turned away from Zed and took out a small book, old with a leather back. It had been a long time since he’d looked through it. Before the second awakening it was within it that he’d asked any mage he’d come across with any mastery of runes to inscribe whatever runes they were willing to give him. Sometimes he traded what he knew with what another mage knew.

Festus opened it, flipping through the small pages as Zed continued to struggle over his task. Festus could feel Zed’s determination. It was in his aura, no matter how discordant and odd it might be. To his senses it was as if Zed was still learning how to manifest his aura and it came out strong in some places and pathetic in others, which wasn’t meant to be. All mage auras were equally the same in all parts. The only difference in mage auras was in the density and quality. And Zed’s was unnaturally dense for his rank. Dense and vastly different… odd.

Feeling it was like staring at a sleeping animal in the wild. It was sleeping and, thus, harmless. But it didn’t change the fact that the animal was feral. It didn’t change the fact that the animal was capable of very deadly things when it was awake. He’d never seen the kind. Mostly, this was how powerful auras felt when the mages kept them under tight wraps. But Zed’s wasn’t under tight wraps.

He wondered what that was about.

As for how patched and discordant it was, that was a different subject. Normally, if Festus ran into a mage with an aura that looked like Zed’s, he would consider running. Something like that was only meant to be intentional, and anyone with enough skill to do that was capable of using their aura as a weapon.

Festus was halfway through the small book when he looked up from it and saw a trickle of blood crawl down Zed’s nose. It was the second time since Zed had entered his home. Despite this, Zed’s futile concentration didn’t wane. Zed didn’t look away from the rune or let his pain distract him.

Festus liked that.

Perhaps Zed would be different, after all. He didn’t have the distraction of spellforms to weaken his resolve. He didn’t have alternatives.

Festus looked back down at his book and flipped some more, holding the few runes he was close to perfecting in his mind for as long as he could. He was currently working on a rune, trying to manipulate it into a use he had not done before. To do that, he needed to go back to the roots, and thus far, the roots had been failing him.

Festus was near the last page of his book when a thud distracted him. It was the sound of something heavy falling and he looked up to find Zed slumped forward, his head against the ground over the piece of paper and blood flowing from his nose.

Festus didn’t panic, neither did he worry. Instead, a slow excitement bubbled in his stomach. The strongest rune mage he knew currently worked for the VHF and Festus still remembered the first time he’d seen the man manifest the infamous destruction rune, even if in a pathetic state. It had sufficed to wipe out an entire platoon of soldiers and had left him unable to cast a single rune or connect to any spellforms for almost a week.

The main thing that he had noted when the man had succeeded in manifesting the rune was the massive nose bleed he’d sported. It was like a heavy lifter attempting a deadlift that was meant to be way beyond his limit.

To see Zed bleed from his nose while trying to understand the rune was impressive enough. It was proof that while the rune was beyond him, he was willing to push past his limits to learn it. Most people just trained and studied and took breaks until they became strong enough to simply call on the runes without struggling too much. But to be so determined that he passed out, that was one for the books.

Festus had never seen anyone pass out while trying to learn a rune.

Closing the book in his hand, Festus walked out of the study, momentarily leaving Zed to his devoted task of bleeding all over his floor. He went to the door of the house, unlocked the sealing rune, and opened it. He stood at the entrance, waited until he saw one of the children and beckoned them with a small gesture.

As Zed had aptly put, in the town he was more like the mysterious sage with a mental case hiding in the forest. At least that was what most of those in the town thought. Festus didn’t mind it since it made sure they didn’t disturb his research by stopping by whenever they could. Their wariness of him translated into fear in the children and no child dared go against him.

Thus, a simple beckon was all it took to get the child walking towards him, terrified out of his mind. As the child drew closer, Festus pondered on Zed and a maniacal grin spread along his face. The expression on the child’s face worsened and Festus was certain his smile wasn’t helping his case. The child might’ve even wet himself.

But what could he do, just thinking about what Zed might be capable of if he kept his determination going was too ecstatic.

Maybe, Festus thought as the child came to a stop in front of him. Just maybe, I can make a proper rune mage out of him.