Chapter 1.6

Karson

It was Ax that hit on a solution to our mana shortage. He pointed out that if he could use mana to make fire, it stood to reason that you could use fire to make mana. That made perfect sense. Heat was used to generate electricity after all. This was just energy of a different type. Of course, magic also violated the Laws of Thermodynamics blatantly, but in this world they seemed to be more like guidelines than laws. At least if you had magic, that is.

I spent the afternoon trying to figure out ways to increase our survivability. Theoretically, I posited that there must be some way to create a magic shield to deflect blows or stop them from hitting altogether. Perhaps some form of bubble around the caster. But I had to set that train of thought aside, because I couldn’t envision how to make it happen with my limited understanding of how magic interacted with the physical world around it. Strangely, that line of thought got me onto how magic interacted with the fabric of the world itself, and how Chaos could be shaped. That actually made a lot more sense to me, but I couldn’t think of any practical way to put it to use right now.

Once again, I was back at square one. The most logical place where I could help right now would be to make our actual bodies more capable and durable. Sadly all of the boosts I’d gotten from eating souls had worn off, so I couldn’t study that interaction. I was also disappointed that I hadn’t thought to examine either the cynocephali bodies or the gigantes bodies before they were tossed in the burn pit. I could have gleaned some really useful information, and some clues as to how to strengthen our own bodies.

Experimenting it would have to be. But first, I had to figure out a few things that I knew we needed. I’d had the thought earlier in the day to make healing rings of some sort. Also, the way the silver ring had retained a residual charge of mana from its creation made me realize that we could create batteries of a sort. If I constructed a spell correctly, I could give an object a pool of mana that could be accessed later.

I had Ax split up the copper ball he had conjured into eight small ingots, which could easily fit into a pouch. One of those ingots I had him split into a handful of flat squares for experimenting. Another I had him make into a handful of copper rings, half sized for him and the other half sized for me. I was prepped, and Ax was off fiddling with iron and leather and such.

First of all I had to focus on mana, as that was our biggest shortfall. We had enough for a handful of spells, but we’d burned through what we had far too quickly. Ax’s magic required a lot of mana to manipulate earth in a meaningful way during the fight, and he told me that he’d run out with that last earth spell that had failed to trip the gigantes warrior. I’d had a bit left that I used to heal the injured villagers.

I thought first about what I’d done with the silver sight ring that I’d made for Ax. I had pushed mana along with the spell into the creation of the enchantment. That meant that enchantments could hold mana. I began the same enchantment again, weaving it in the air, and began to study the individual components of the spell. It took mana to hold a weaving in place without either completing it or enchanting it into an object. Thankfully, its mana draw was very low and wouldn’t drain me very fast, which gave me time. I recognized the piece of the spell that actually did the heavy lifting. That piece was what modified Ax’s vision so that it could actually see magic. That part was interesting but irrelevant, since I fully understood it. There was another piece that tied the spell to his mana pool, which I had woven specifically and thus ignored. The final piece was what bound the enchantment into the ring. This part was woven intuitively, and was what I needed to study.

There was a portion of the binding that specifically indicated the ring itself. This binding was what had to integrate deeply into the metal, and had taken the longest to push in while I was enchanting. But there was a small piece of it that was designed to hold mana so that the binding had a chance to connect the various other pieces of the spell into the object. After close study, I realized that the whole enchantment would unravel and collapse without it. There is a few milliseconds in the casting between the initial weaving and the enchanting where the binding is no longer tied to the caster, in this case me, and is not quite tied to the object. Without a pool of mana, no matter how small, the entire casting would unravel.

I extrapolated a new spell from this piece. My first weaving unraveled in my hands before it even made it to a test square of copper. My second and third followed suit. But my fourth actually held, and I was able to see a few places where the spell would fall apart over time. My fifth one held flawlessly. I had a square of copper that could hold mana. I pushed mana into it, and was pleasantly surprised at how much it could hold. I emptied my own mana completely into it, and it was still not full. I pulled my mana back out, and the enchantment held.

I had tied the magic-sight ring to Ax’s mana, but I didn’t want to do that with this enchantment. I wanted these batteries to be able to charge off of the ambient mana around it. The environment all around me had diffused mana, and magic users recharged their own mana pools naturally by absorbing this mana. If I could make the battery work the same, it would recharge automatically. After a few experiments, I was able to weave a charging spell into the battery, and as an added kick, I added a linking spell that would tie multiple batteries together.

After a few hours of work, I turned two of the small copper ingots into batteries, as well as two of the rings. I made the each ring the master link for four copper squares, so that the squares could be tucked in a pouch but still usable, and so that the wearer could simply draw from the ring as needed. Then I turned my attention to a healing ring.

Healing is a very specific type of magic, and when wielded efficiently, is targeted to the injured area. It was a very intimate magic, sensing the insides of a person that you were healing. But without my brain to direct it, any type of healing could only be general and indiscriminate. I finally settled on a basic spell that sought to repair any injury it could detect. This I set to draw from the mana ring, but with a thought, could draw from the wearer’s mana instead. I linked it to the mana ring the default so that it wouldn’t deplete personal mana. I then gave the ring its own small mana pool, as the metal couldn’t take very much, so that it could collect some energy on its own.

Once I had the construct of the spell down, it took very little time to make two rings. The longest part was to steadily and slowly push the spell into the rings so that the enchantment would be strong and stable. When I finished, I looked up to see a small boy sitting in the dirt a half-dozen feet away from me.

“You doin’ magic, milord?” asked the boy. He looked to be about thirteen or fourteen years old, scrawny and wearing only a loincloth. It was probably the only article of clothing he’d ever worn. From the looks of it, small village children tended to run around naked until about this seven or eight. After that, the boys wore loincloths or chitons, and the girls wore undyed chitons or peplos, depending on social status. The boy was probably a slave, based on how scrawny he was and the poor state of his loincloth.

“I am,” I said. On a whim, I picked up one of the copper squares I’d been experimenting with. The enchantment wasn’t set very deep and it wasn’t linked to the mana rings I’d made, but it was one of my final tests with its own mana pool and mana absorption. It had a minor flaw, a quirk in the spell that I couldn’t quite identify. But when I tested it, the healing had worked correctly. My assumption was that the enchantment would unravel in a few weeks. I tossed the square to the boy.

“For me?” asked the boy in sheer wonder.

“Sure,” I replied. “How long were you sitting there?”

“Maybe an hour or two,” he admitted.

“Consider it pay for guard duty.”

“Thanks! I got to go show my mom!” he turned and ran off before I could even tell him what it did.

“That was mighty nice of you,” said Ax from behind me. He’d wandered off while I focused. His style of magic was far less esoteric and way more tactile.

I shrugged. The copper square didn’t matter much to me. We’d be gone in a day or two anyway, so there was no harm in leaving some beneficial magic behind. Maybe it could help.

“Here,” I said, handing the fruits of my labor over to Ax. “A mana ring, linked to that ingot. The ingot is a mana battery, it absorbs mana from the environment. You can draw the mana through the ring. The other one is a healing ring, that also draws mana from the ring. If you focus your intent on the healing ring, it can draw from yourself instead, but will revert once your attention is elsewhere.”

“Got it. I’m getting to be quite stylish with all these rings,” he said. I laughed, as he was now up to three rings to my two.

“Erxandros has invited us to dinner,” he said. “And afterwards, I have a few goodies for you, too.”

Dinner was under the peristyle, only this time an awkward young man was sitting with us. This was Polybius, the suitor for Erxandros’ daughter. Over the course of the meal, it became apparent that the boy was quiet and a hard worker, evidenced by how he was able to hold up his discussion about the village’s business and the callouses already forming on his hands. The boy would do well, especially marrying into the village master’s family.

After the meal was complete, Erxandros began to look nervous.

“Alright, out with it,” said Ax. “What is bothering you?”

Erxandros reddened slightly, but said, “Not to press you on your business, but I was hoping you might be able to share with me… how long you intend to stay?”

I laughed. Two days and we’d already worn out our welcome. “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”

It was Ax’s turn to laugh. He answered, “we’re hoping to leave either tomorrow, or first thing the day after. We’re wrapping up our travel preparations. To that end, I was hoping I could buy some provisions from you. Also, here is that coin I borrowed this morning.”

Ax handed Erxandros his silver drachma, and held up a gold drachma bearing our stamp.

“Is that… gold?” said Erxandros in surprise.

“It is,” said Ax. “Would that suffice for a supply of food and various sundries we would need to travel?”

“It would, err, yes, that is more than enough. I believe that would cover food, and perhaps some better sandals and traveling cloaks?”

Ax smiled. “Perfect. We are going to go walk to settle our food, and return at dusk. We won’t be leaving the village.”

I followed Ax out of the house, and around to the back where he’d been working. There I found Lacedaemon and the woman who had helped Ax with his bath. Lacedaemon was busy with a dozen lengths of wood, each about eight feet long. He had an iron rasp and was smoothing the wood into long staves. Five were already finished. The woman, on the other hand, had a large clay bowl, and was working leather in it.

“Karsos, you remember Xene from last night,” said Ax. “She is Latona’s slave and part of her dowry. However, she is also a leatherworker, so I’ve hired her to do some work for us. You remember Damon here, he’s showing me how to make spear shafts as he learned when he was called up last year.”

Ax picked up a pair of leather bracers from the ground where he’d been working, and showed them to me. These had been reinforced with strips of iron across back of the hands, with thick finger bands like fingerless gloves going across the knuckles. There were thongs on the bottom that could be laced up to make the fit right. On the back of the forearms, where the leather was thickest, was two flat iron strips. Altogether, each bracer probably weighed a little over a pound.

“It’s a start,” said Ax. “We don’t have what we need for steel, so these will do for now. Also, for you.”

Ax picked up a set of knives, one long one and two short ones. The long bladed knife was about ten inches long, with a leaf-shaped double-edged blade, and a handle wrapped in leather strips. The shorter knives were simple iron shanks, with a rough crossbar and iron handle. “I know you’ve always preferred a blade. Xene will work on a sheath for them shortly.”

Then he pointed at a pile of spear tips.

“Are those all for us?”

“No, three of them are for us. The rest of the spears are going to stay here in the village, so if another raiding party comes through, they can defend themselves.”

I nodded. “Sounds like we gather up supplies tomorrow and make last minute adjustments, and we hit the road?”

“Sounds like it. Have you figured out roughly where we are?”

“I have.” I had asked around about things nearby, and found out that the city of Passaron is five days’ walk north, and the Temple of the Great Mother at Dodona is two days walk south, with the city of Assos just a bit beyond that. The trail out of the village leads up to a Mycenaean road.”

“Good, then you and Damon can navigate.”

“He’s coming with us?” I asked in English.

“He’s got nothing left here,” said Ax apologetically. “If we’re going to start collecting followers, no better place than here and now. He’s freeborn, we’re not going to piss off our hosts or anything. God, this whole slave thing grinds my ass.”

“When we have the money, we’ll start buying up and freeing the folks that we can. Offer them jobs and protection. But we have to get ourselves set first.”

“Yeah, I get it,” said Ax with a frown. “I offered Xene to help her buy her freedom, but she refused. She said she couldn’t leave Latona alone in a new house.”

“Loyal,” I said. “We are definitely strangers in a strange land here.”

“Make sure and tell the kid that he’s welcome, okay? He’s been waiting on your approval, since I told him we both had to agree.”

I nodded and turned back to Lacedaemon. “Welcome to the team.”

Damon smiled, and Xene clapped. She was a pretty woman, and if I hadn’t known she was a slave from Ax, her nice clothing wouldn’t have given it away.

“Congratulations, Lacedaemon,” she said. “That’s so awesome for you! I hope you do well!”

“We need to try out that reverse-fire thing,” said Ax.

“Let’s do it. Shoot some fire, let’s take a look at what we have.”

It took a few tries before I had a rough grasp on the magic involved. Ax was far more of a sorcerer than a wizard, it would seem, and struggled to grasp the core concepts of spell components and how they interacted. But I didn’t need him to understand, really. I just needed him to be able to construct the reverse of his fire spell. After a bit of explanation and experimentation, he followed along readily enough. After all, it was no different than manipulating earth for him. Just like earth or metal could be conjured or banished, he could do the same with fire. But rather than banish completely, we needed to convert that fire back into mana. There would probably be a loss in the conversion, but even a fifty-percent efficiency would be better than nothing at all.

After walking Ax through the spell itself, I had him hold the weave in place and I began to weave my own spell through it. I linked the converted mana into a new mana battery, and constructed a simple intent control to allow it to be turned on and off. Finally, I pushed the entirety of the spell into the iron bands on the back of the bracers. The iron didn’t take the spell as well as the copper did, requiring nearly twice the mana to get the same level of permanence. I settled for a weaker enchantment, since we still had two more sets of bracers to do.

It was surprisingly efficient to cast spells alongside someone else. The mana drain from maintaining the spell during its weaving was far lower, and the effort to push the finished result into the bracers was easier despite the material differences. I felt less drained when we finished, but despite all that, it wasn’t something I wanted to make a habit of. The linking of two magics was soul-baring. Ax’s magic was blunt and straightforward, much like Ax himself, and it gave deep insights into him as a person. I could sense his loyalty and the underlying ruthlessness, and no small portion of ambition. None of this was new, as Ax and I had literally grown up together and had been best friends for nearly as long. But just the same, I know that I had bared my soul to him just the same way, and he’d likely sensed me the same way I had him. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

When we finished the first pair of bracers, it was nearly full dark. Lacedaemon was tying the last spearhead onto the spear. Three of them also had butt-spikes, and were stabbed into the ground so that they stood upright on their own. The rest were neatly laid out in a pile. Xene had vanished, but the other two sets of bracers were completed.

“She’s had to run off to attend her mistress,” said Lacedaemon. “She said she’ll be able to finish the rest tomorrow. Her mistress gave her permission to help you during the day.”

“That’s good. We should be able to finish everything tomorrow, with your help, and be on our way the morning after,” I said.