Alex’s Wizard’s Hands flipped through the pages of Life-to-Mana’s spell-guide as he gently scratched the skin around the dressing under the sling on his left arm. The healers had warned him that his arm might get itchy, but to never remove the elbow splint or the dressing on his forearm.

If he didn’t mess around with it and made sure to exercise that hand, then they should be able to take the splint and sling off in a couple of weeks, and finish whatever healing he might need to his forearm with blood-magic. There were times when he thought he’d go crazy from the itching, so, as far as he was concerned, those weeks couldn’t pass fast enough.

One Wizard’s Hand kept turning the spell-guide’s pages until he had it stop at what he’d been looking for—the description of the spell-array and the accompanying diagram for its magic circuit. Over the years, other mages had scrawled little notes and reminders in the margins…complete with doodles.

Some of them were pretty funny. There was one of an odd looking vampire wizard with the caricature of a heart skewered on top of a pointy staff which made Alex laugh out loud. It seemed someone had kept their sense of humour even while taking such an intense course. That sounded like his kind of person.

He took out a page of notes he’d made with a detailed plan on how to tackle learning the spell. Since he’d never practised blood magic before, he wanted to be extra careful, so he’d gone over past experiences learning other spells to come up with his plan. He looked at the notes one more time, took a deep breath to calm his mind, then began the first words of the incantation.

Immediately, previous failures slammed into him but he guided himself through, slowly and methodically, taking his time with the spell-array.

There was no rush: he had no classes to worry about, preparations for Theresa’s birthday were well underway—he and her parents had been enjoying themselves in conspiring when she wasn’t around—and Shale’s Workshop was closed for a few more days out of consideration for what had happened on Oreca’s Fall Island and at the arena.

So there was just him, and the spell to worry about.

For at least an hour, he spent his time making sure he’d forged the first part of the magic circuit correctly, and that the foundation for the rest of it was solid. The last thing he needed was a sloppy beginning. Once he was sure the first part of the spell was constructed, he…

…went over it in obsessive detail for another half hour. There was no room here for careless mistakes.

“Alright, alright,” Alex finally said to himself as he was starting to go cross-eyed from concentrating so hard. “Time to move on now, man, you’re just delaying the scary part. Let’s get on with it.”

He referred back to the spell-guide to make sure he hadn’t missed anything for the next step: the second part of the magic circuit was the section responsible for connecting his mana pool with his lifeforce. This was where things could go horribly wrong, and it was also one of the most complicated parts of the spell-array.

When activated, this part would generate a sort of ‘gated funnel’ to serve as a bridge between his lifeforce and mana pool. Within the funnel, there’d be three ‘gates’ acting like carefully controlled filters, sort of like the strainer Theresa used for her pine needle tea. The first gate was like a dam, controlling the amount of lifeforce that flowed into the funnel; it would quickly close after the proper amount had run in.

The next one filtered the lifeforce: life energy was as complex as…well, life itself. Some forms of it were very similar to mana, while others were completely different: it was like how a glass of wine was actually composed of multiple different substances, something Alex had learned during distillation practice back in an early alchemy class. He snorted at the memory: still surprised that no one had tried drinking the stuff. After all, they’d actually distilled pure alcohol…then again, maybe the quicksilver incident had scared everyone too much.

In this spell, the ‘gates’ would filter the lifeforce so that only its energies most similar to mana would be channelled into the mana pool. The other energies were necessary for a living being, but would be much harder to convert to mana, so they’d be pushed back into the rest of his pool of life. The ‘funnel’ would then disintegrate, breaking the connection between his lifeforce and mana pool so there’d be less chance of something disastrous happening.

Once the life energy was in his mana pool, another part of the magic circuit would act as a sort of ‘conversion chamber’ and change the life energy to mana. The chamber would then release the new mana into the rest of his pool, and the magic circuit would fade as the spell completed.

Alex was amazed at the efficiency of the process: very little energy would be lost through conversion. These sorts of spells hadn’t always been so efficient because with early versions, there was no ‘conversion chamber’.

If a wizard kept casting spells, exceeding the amount of mana they had and used it all up, a magic circuit would have to rely on life energy instead, weakening the caster’s life force. It was similar to what happens to the body during a famine—as he’d learned in magic lore—when starvation causes it to break down muscles, fat, and even the organs as it tries to stay alive. Alex shuddered, remembering the diagrams illustrating the process and end result.

Originally, blood-magic spells functioned in the same way, and weren’t only inefficient, but very dangerous. But because of a blood mage named Liza Athori, the discipline had gone through a minor revolution when she created the ‘conversion chamber’ part of the magic circuit. Her discovery had saved a lot of wizards' lives.

“Maybe I’ll think of something that’ll get me one of those fancy footnotes: some new process that’ll be named after me. Maybe the dungeon core substance…” Images of priests sprang into his mind. “Or maybe not.”

While the conversion process was important, Alex was a lot more concerned with making sure the funnel was formed correctly; he focused harder on that part of the spell array than any other part. If any of the ‘gates’ were malformed or didn’t form, then his lifeforce would gush into his mana pool like a river until his body turned into a dried out husk.

Since he had no interest in being mummified—despite amusing images of himself scaring his family and friends—he kept his focus on avoiding mistakes there.

Alex took a deep breath, centering himself, then cast the foundational part of the magic circuit again and began creating the funnel. It was a very tricky process. The Mark’s interference, complexity of the spell, and nerves combined, and he kept repeating the same mistakes.

Soon, he was damp from a cold sweat, battered by a constant stream of past failures at spellcraft—and now, a steady throb was beating through his skull.

‘Ugh, now I’m frustrated and soggy,’ he thought, wishing he’d brought along something to dry off with. He took a few breaths and dove back into the spell.

He kept himself focused, slowly making progress constructing the funnel while sweat dripped down his hair, face and…wait, that was a lot of sweat. What was going on…had he sprung a leak? He stopped the spell.

Alex blinked, shaking himself and looking around for the first time in what felt like hours. At some point, the sky had clouded over—the weather magic preventing rain during The Games had been cancelled—and rain was pouring like it was making up for lost time. People ran through the parkland; some casting wind and rain shields on themselves, struggling with wax covered umbrellas, or simply getting drenched.

Alex wiped his face with his shirt, then froze.

“Oh shit, my books!” he cried, looking at his basket of books beside him on the bench. To his pleasant surprise, they’d hardly gotten wet, considering how hard it was raining. He looked up. ‘The bench isn’t sheltered by a tree or anything so how come they-’ He startled: Claygon’s arm was extended and his hand was open over Alex and the forceball, partly protecting them from the rain.

“Did…did I do that?”

He wondered if—when he was wishing he had something to dry himself with—his thought had been transmitted to Claygon. But, that didn’t seem very likely, which meant…his golem had initiated an action on his own.

Maybe.

“Big guy, can you hear me?” Alex said, excitement rising in the pit of his stomach.

Claygon remained perfectly still. Alex reached over and patted him.

“Hello?” he said.

No movement.

It looked like—if there was a mind forming in there—then it wasn’t fully conscious yet, or it didn’t want to talk to him yet. He was a little disappointed, he couldn’t lie.

“That’s okay, take your time,” Alex said, casting wind-and-rain shield three times: once for himself, once for his books—to be extra cautious—and once for Claygon. Then he went back to the spell.

“Okay…I think I can get this in a few more tries. I’m almost there.”

Diving back in, he continued constructing the funnel. On the fifth attempt, he got the first gate right. Then, after a few more run-throughs, he formed the others perfectly. He repeated the process a dozen more times before feeling satisfied with the results.

“Alright,” he said. “Only one thing left to do.”

Once again, he constructed the funnel—guiding his mind through The Mark’s torrent of failures—and then allowed that part of the circuit to activate. The funnel attached itself to his lifeforce and mana pool, forming a bridge. Alex gasped: it felt like someone had poked him with a stick somewhere deep inside his being. A heartbeat later, he felt a new sensation wash through him. It was strong, even through The Mark’s interference.

Lifeforce began running through the funnel and into his mana pool. It was not…a good feeling. In some ways, it reminded him of how he’d felt when the mana vampire was draining him, though this was much less striking. In heartbeats, it was over; Alex felt an odd shifting inside, quickly followed by a slight mana jump.

Without the conversion chamber though, he didn’t feel his mana increase by much compared to the fatigue setting in.

“That conversion chamber must really get that efficiency up,” he said, standing up and stretching; his left arm had begun to hurt. Around him, the rain had lessened, but it was turning dark.

“Jeez, how long have we been out here?” Alex absently said to Claygon. “I guess maybe we should get going.”

With his two Wizard’s Hands and his one good one, he quickly packed up and started toward home after noting his progress in his blood-magic notebook.

25%.

All in all, he’d gotten a little faster at learning spells.

On the walk back to the insula, he began thinking about the expedition and skills he might want to learn before it began.

“I don’t have a way around The Mark for capturing Burn-Saw alive,” he said to Claygon. “I’ve got quite a few solutions for killing things, but really nothing for taking them alive. I mean, I could always just have you grab them, but if there’s anything that the fight on the beach taught me, it’s that you can’t always be there to smash or grab stuff.”

He needed something that he could use to capture things directly. His alchemy textbook contained plenty of potions to make people sleep: he might be able to come up with aerosolized versions of those like his other booby-trapped potions. The ingredients for them weren’t cheap—though he did have more coin now—and they weren’t ones that he could get from his lab-time with Professor Jules.

No, they would be for later. What could he use from the potions he could make?

“There’s got to be a way to slow things down. Can you think of anything, buddy?” he asked Claygon.

No response.

“Enh, worth a try,” Alex said, returning to the problem. “I wonder if I could somehow reverse the effects of a Haste Potion? Yeah, maybe try that, but I can’t just keep relying on gassing things with potions. So many folks in The Grand Battle had Orbs of Air around their heads…I need another tool.”

His mind returned to the idea of creating a staff…but while his winnings from The Games were a nice boost to his funds, staves could be extremely expensive and he didn’t want to burn that much coin on tools and supplies. What he could do was begin looking up ways to craft one and make a plan.

For ingredients…

“…if I used more dungeon core substance—like I did with you, buddy—then I could probably replace some of the more expensive stuff…but what can I do before the expedition? How to capture things…a chain, maybe? That’s not a weapon, and if I put shackles on-Naw.” He shook his head. “The Mark’s definitely gonna get pissy if I start swinging a chain at someone. A net, maybe? Or maybe a rope? Bolas?”

He’d have to look around and see if there were any rope tricks that people used to tie up enemies or other creatures from a distance.

“Okay, so I’ll check out the rope stuff tomorrow- No wait, can’t. Theresa’s birthday and the closing ceremony is tomorrow. Next day, then.”

When he got home, he’d have to check on the preparations for the party: see what else the Lus had been working on. Even Selina had-

He paused as a figure caught his eye.

There was also a familiar three headed hound padding through the rain on the path ahead but, it wasn’t Theresa walking him.

Selina had one hand clutching an umbrella, while the other held Brutus’ leash. A bag hung from her shoulder, and she was walking slowly, looking more toward the sky than the direction they were walking in.

Something about her seemed different.

Older.

Grimmer.

The wind blew, billowing her cloak as his eyes caught sight of the sheathed knife thrust through a leather belt around the waist of her trousers. Through the rain, it was like he wasn’t seeing his little sister, but rather a hint of the woman she would grow up to be. “She looks a lot like mom.” He whispered.

A wave of emotions swept through him, only interrupted when she spotted him and Claygon and waved from across the grass. She gestured with her umbrella, telling him to come closer, then pointed at her bag.