(TPOR) Chapter 140: The Sound of One Hand Clapping (Patreon)

Panic filled Daniel’s mind. He’d allowed much happen during the spars because the ship had enough health potions to restore almost any and all injuries. They were high grade alchemical concoctions, created by the finest mages and alchemists in VHF.

But it couldn’t bring a person back to life. It couldn’t raise the dead.

It was his fault. He’d miscalculated, thought a Beta rank mage couldn’t do much damage so quickly. It had bolstered his confidence that a Beta rank mage couldn’t do much to a Rukh rank mage in battle.

Then why didn’t you worry that a Rukh rank mage could inflict real harm on a Beta rank mage? He thought. Why didn’t you worry for the Beta?

He couldn’t really give an answer to it. He’d only be worried for the training room, and since he was confident they couldn’t dent it, he saw no reason to worry. Zed’s safety, as well, had never even come into question. In some consumed part of his mind he had seen Zed coming out of that battle with minimal bruises, if not healthy.

But he was facing a Rukh rank? Why were you so sure he was going to be fine?

With the sight unfolding in front of him, the questions seemed unfounded. The real question should’ve been why he didn’t worry for the Rukh—why he didn’t worry for Chris?

Chris punched Zed in the face with what was supposed to be the best executed counter that could’ve ever taken place. Then Zed countered her counter. His hands came up, mana trembled, runes came to life, and he birthed a monstrousity.

The room exploded in a sea of fire. Daniel felt the room shake, his feet already on the move even though they knew he could not save Chris. He wasn’t the only one moving. The dark kid, Oliver, was already leaving his seat. Daniel’s mind filled itself with self-reprimands. If Ven had been here things would never have escalated this far. They wouldn’t have lost Chris. As he moved, instinct pushing him with all the reaction and movement speed of his rank, a small part of his brain asked a simple question.

Where’s Festus?

……………………..

Zed felt the heat, and the pain, and the panic. He’d wanted to kill Chris, craved it even. But there had been no part of him that had truly believed it possible. Here and now, however, stuck in a world of pain and fire, he doubted himself. Just exactly how powerful could simple runes be in the right conditions?

The space between him and Chris was constantly growing. It was disappearing, if he was being honest, being replaced by the bright orange of fire undergoing a catatonic transformation. He’d seen what [Fire] applied in a confined space could do. He’d seen the power of [Explosion], felt it even.

He would survive, knew it as the dead know the end. His mind paused. Ok… that was dark. As the dead know the end? What are you; a monologuing emo teen?

And why the hell is an explosion taking so—

Every fiber of his being seized. The fire licking at his skin and his clothes halted like a movie on pause. The pain remained but it seemed a forgotten existence of reality, as if it had forgotten to grow, to live, or to die. It was fixed, stagnant. Never rising and never falling. Yet, despite how wrong it felt, Zed couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more.

The air stilled around him, thinned as if he stood atop the highest mountains. But he knew it wasn’t the air, after all, he wasn’t breathing. His mind registered what was happening a moment after. Somwhere in its crevices where the current pain failed to reach he realized the ambient mana had somehow lost itself. Stuck between the rise of an explosion and its acme—its inevitable conclusion—something had changed.

The mana around him quaked. The world shook soundlessly, quiet to the point of deafening. Then a new force blew him away. As it came, it took with it the force of [Explosion]. No, Zed corrected as he was flung through the air, staring at the now empty space in front of him as Chris was thrown back too. Whatever had happened hadn’t taken away the force of [Explosion], it had taken away [Explosion]. Wiped it clean as a wet napkin wipes a stained surface.

As Zed’s back struck the hard wall, he knew that [Explosion] was gone. Simply wiped away.

Mana raced out of Zed’s core. It ran through his mana channels, destination primed like the target of a missile. It flowed through, a wave of deep blue and suffused his face. Bones shifted into place, fractures healed. His face slowly rearranged itself around a broken nose.

At the door of the training room, Festus stood with a frown on his face. The mana around him was chaotic, flawed somehow. When he spoke, his voice was firm and hard, carrying across the room easily.

“This was supposed to be a spar, a contest of skill to help me better understand what I am working with. To help you better understand what you are capable of. Not what you have made of it.”

Zed stared at the old man and he looked nothing old in this moment. As short and weathered as he was, in this moment he was an anomaly to Zed’s senses. Staring at him was giving Zed a headache. He was surrounded with hovering pieces of broken lines and incomplete curves slowly dissipating about him. The ambient mana was a mess of aurora, if someone had somehow taken a cleaver to the beautiful colors of the northern night skies.

Zed frowned again. When did I get so poetic?

He turned his gaze from Festus, eyes unable to keep witnessing whatever was happening around him, whatever Festus was doing to the mana around him. He knew it wasn’t an effect of aura—he knew what an aura working looked like. At least, he liked to believe he did. Now that he thought of it, he’d never seen an aura working before, not really. He’d felt the weight of one or two but had never really seen it truly weaponized.

“What do you have to say for yourself, kiddo?”

Zed turned his head, looked back at Festus. He did not focus on him, did not meet his eyes. He did not look upon him and the mana still cantankerous around him. Instead, he looked close to him, close enough that Festus was within sight but far enough that he hovered at the edge of his periphery while his core channeled mana to heal his current migraine.

“Kiddo,” Festus pressed, patient for his answer.

Zed did his best to comport himself. He licked his lip and tried to get a general sense of his throat. Certain he would speak without stuttering and his voice would carry, he answered.

“Did I win?”

To his greatest surprise, he was met with the collective sound of one hand clapping. He turned, his head looking about him. Had someone just slapped their forehead? Had someones just slapped their foreheads?

…………………………..

Daniel strolled into the training arena. His steps had carried him with haste, barely keeping his movement from seeming panicked. Now that he was in the room, he had to step past Festus. Being taller, he didn’t need to do so to see the scene within the room.

Zed, the mage with hair of red that seemed as if it didn’t want to be red, specifically, was half-lying and half-sitting on one side of the room. His clothes were a mess, scorched on multiple sides. It was the effects of heat and not actual flames but it was clear. The parts of his body that were revealed beneath the scorched clothing had the unhealthy bubbling of burn marks. From where Daniel stood, it looked severe. How the mage still managed to comprehend conversation beneath all the pain was anyone’s guess.

More impressive, however, was how quickly he was healing. The burns were slowly scabbing over already, soothing out into normal skin. Daniel watched with concealed astonishment. He’d heard Zed’s attribute was regenerative but this was far from anything he’d ever heard. In his life he’d only seen one attribute mage with regeneration and it wasn’t that far.

He moved a gentle hand, touched the dying burn marks. Zed hissed in pain.

“I know it’s healing but it still hurts like a bitch,” he scowled. Then his eyes narrowed as he looked past Daniel. “How’s she doing?”

Daniel fought back the surprise of a Beta mage checking on a Rukh mage mere moments after a fight. Then again, Zed had more than held his own.

“I’ll go check,” Daniel told him, rising to his feet. Before he was fully standing a voice called out for him.

“Boss!”

He turned at the alarm in it. On the other side of the room, Lenny was leaning over Chris. He held her upper body up with his head, supported by a raised knee. His hand tipped a small vial of mint green liquid against her lips, its contents flowing easily into her mouth. She was not swallowing, clearly unconscious. But no one bothered for the unconscious. It was the beauty of potions. The alchemical solution was naturally dragged into the drinker’s mouth, drawn in by the basic existence of mana within them.

It did not take long for Daniel to know why Lenny panicked. When a healing potion takes effect, it speeds up the healing factor in a mage. While some aspects of the healing aren’t always immediately visible, mages with serious enough injuries tend to release a steam, like hot iron dowsed in water. Chris released no such thing. And her burn marks were clearly severe.

The Mage was not healing.