Azrael sat back down in his throne, thankful that the falling of night hid his red face in shadows. The large fire was the only illumination in the entire village, shining upon the villager’s revelry. Or, at least, it was the only source of light in the village, until one of the villagers – a young boy – began walking around the village with a stick. One by one, lights appeared in the village – lanterns illuminating. Attempting to distract himself from the reverent gazes of the villagers, Azrael watched the boy with curiosity and focus.

The boy would walk up to one of the unlit lanterns, reach up with the long stick and then continue on to the next one when it started emitting light. The longer he watched though the more confused and the more curious he became. The lanterns were by no means lit with fire. Though lantern was possibly the wrong word. They were just flat stone plates. There was no wick, no fuel andost telling of all though was that the light did not flicker, much like the light of his own stone lanterns at home. It was almost as if it was…

Azrael turned to Hugh, who still sat beside him.

“What are those?”

“Pardon?”

“Those lights?”

“Ah, those my lord are Kalen and Elara’s mana lights. The children and indeed the entire village is quite proud of them.”

Azrael watched as the boy – Kalen – lit the last of the mana powered lanterns. He had been right, they were powered by mana.

He scoured through his memory, trying to match the name… Kalen… Kalen… Kalen! Kalen was the young boy he’d given one of the runic spinning tops to, at the winter solstice festival. Elana was most probably his sister.

However, that didn’t really explain the existence of the mana lights in the village. It was highly unlikely that Kalen had discovered the rune for ‘light’, though, admittedly, it was one of the simpler runes. There was no way that Kalen had managed to learn runes from his spinning top. Even if he had, there was no rune even vaguely similar to light in their construction. Did Alena lend them her pocket torch? Would she have done that? He knew how hard it was for her to part with the item. Maybe they’d gotten some runes off of his stone lanterns? How had they powered them though?

Disregarding the fact that one needed mana to power the rune, in order to prep a rune the entire runic structure needed to be carved out using mana and then completely flooded with mana in order for it to function. Could Kalen use mana? He thought a [Villager] couldn’t use mana. Just how had he done it?

“Would you like to ask him yourself” Hugh asked, and Azrael realised he’d spoken that last thought out aloud.

Before he could say anything Hugh had already called Kalen over, the boy leaning his long stick against a house wall and rushing over.

“M’L-l-l-lord” The boy stumbled out in his haste “You called me?”

“All good, Kalen.” Azrael waved away, “It was nothing, just a bit of curiosity.”

“Lord Azrael was inquiring about your mana lanterns.” Hugh supplied the uncertain youth.

“Ah. Ah! Of course, my Lord! It’s still nothing compared to your great skills! Forgive me for assuming-“

“Kalen.”

“-it was wrong of me to assume that I could even compare to your great-“

“Kalen.”

“-Of course, I couldn’t resis-“

“KALEN!”

“Yes?”

“Just stop and take a breath.”

“I apologise my lord, forgive me for-“

“Kalen!”

“Sorry.”

Alex stared at the uncertain and nervous youth before him. A few heads had turned toward their direction, but Azrael ignored them. They were currently not important.

Focusing on Kalen again Azrael studied the youth before him, noting with some surprise that he was probably even younger than he’d first though. Most probably even younger than Alena. Village life had given him a slightly harder look, but even so he still retained a lot of features of youth.

With a careful application of mana, Azrael levitated a bench up onto his raised dais, setting it down just behind Kalen, without the boy noticing.

“Sit.” He said, gesturing at to the bench.

Kalen jumped high enough that Azrael was worried he might sustain fall damage on the way down. Luckily it wasn’t so and the boy recovered from his surprise rather quickly. He was still plainly very nervous, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. The only small mercy he could grant the boy would be to finish this as quickly as possible. After all, he was very curious.

“Kalen, tell me about your lanterns, will you?”

“Uhhh, … um… uh, well… um.”

Azrael smiled calmingly. Hugh began to open his mouth, but Azrael gently shook his head. He didn’t need Hugh to chastise the boy for not answering.

“What did you make the lantern out of? How did you make it? How does it run?” he prompted.

“Uh, um… so… well. Well, yeah.. um.. the lanterns. They’re madeofstone.”

“Pardon?”

“Thelanternsaremadeofstone.”

“I see, so how do you make them?”

“Well, so…um… we… uh, my sister and I, we carved out the rune into stone.”

“Where did you learn the rune?”

Kalen looked up alarmed.

“I’m sorry, please forgive me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorr-“

“Kalen. It’s ok. It’s all good. You’ve done nothing wrong. I won’t punish you. Deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. That’s the way. Deep breaths. Now, again. Where did you learn the rune? Take your time.”

Seeing Kalen visibly relax allowed Azrael to let out a tense sigh of his own that he’d been holding. Kalen’s nervous energy was tough to handle. He was here to play a game, act a bit as the lord and have a good time, not help children cope with anxieties. Anyway, he was here now.

“Uh, so… Alena’s torch stopped working while you were away and she came to the village to see if our spinning tops were still working, which they were. And I sortagotcuriousandmighthaveactuallytriedtohavealookathertorchandImighthavesortadroppeditanditmighthavebrokenandImighthavealmostdiedIthinkandIgottheruneformthereandI’msorry.”

“Ok…right. So, that’s how you got the rune, how did you make the lanterns. That wasn’t enough was it?

“Uh, so… when it broke. I didn’t break it! It fell! It was an accident! I promise!”

“Kalen. It’s Ok. What happened when it fell?”

“Uh, right, so when it fell, the mana crystal also fell out. I tried to put it together again, but it didn’t work. Alena was going to murder me. She’s scarier than Mum. And I promised her I’d fix it, so she wouldn’t kill me. So, um… I tried fixing it, but that didn’t work, so then I tried making a new one. That didn’t work either. So, I only tried drawing the rune again and again, but that didn’t work either. So, I though ‘what if it has to be carved into something?’ Hugh helped me a lot and we worked together, but that didn’t work either. Durkov and one of the other dwarves helped me carve it into stone, but that didn’t work. Nobody wanted me to die though, and I didn’t want to die, so I kept on trying things. I tried carving using the old mana stone, because I though maybe you need that for the magic, but that didn’t work either, except it sorta did. The mana stone broke when I was carving and the rune that I’d carved out with the mana stone sorta glowed for a few second.”

“So, the rune glowed while you were scratching it out with the mana stone, or when the mana stone broke?”

“When the stone broke. Except Alena was angry again and I didn’t want to die, so I begged for one off the hunting group and tried again. This one didn’t break though. I still have it. Anyway, the rune didn’t glow again, so I asked Elana to help me and we went around the village asking people about magic and new people were coming in, so we hoped someone knew something. The old Granny did. She came from another village and they used to have a shaman. She bakes us nice treats. Anyhow, she and Elana figured something out and Alena brought some weird blue magic herbs the next day and Elana and I played around with them. In the end Alana boiled the herbs with some mana stones and some shiny purple crystals and the crystals dissolved and we poured that on the rune and it worked, until we poured in so much that the rune overflowed.”

“So, you made a mana fuel?”

“Yeah, well, Alana did. Wood didn’t work because it soaked up all the herb juice, but stone was good. I couldn’t make a torch, but Alena didn’t kill me, so I guess that’s ok.”

Azrael replayed the conversation in his head, discarding a lot of the irrelevant information.

“So.” He said, trying to sum it up “you carved the rune into stone with a mana crystal, then pour this crystal and herb juice into the rune and it works?”

“Yes!”

Azrael stared at the fire thoughtfully. It made sense, sort of. Kalen had substituted for his on lack of magic by utilising the magical properties of other materials. First was the mana stone, where instead of passing mana through a stylus, he’d used a naturally magical mana stone as the stylus. As he carved away, microscopic bits of mana stone dust would grind off, lining the rune. Next he replaced the actual mana required to activate and maintain the rune with an alchemical solution. The blue herbs and purple crystals were no doubt the [Unknown Herb] and [Pure Mana Crystal] from his house. Both would warrant a further exploration of uses.

Azrael smiled and looked up from the fire.

“Well done Kalen. Thank y-.”

He looked around. Kalen was gone. Hugh watched him amused from where he was seated beside him and chuckled.

“He took of as soon as you got lost in your thoughts.”

Azrael just nodded, accepting it. He could understand it perfectly. It was almost exactly what he would have done. Promising himself to check in on both Kalen and Elana, and their project, in the next few days, Azrael turned his attention back to the villagers.

It was a quieter mood now, some time having passed during his conversation with Kalen. A few of the younger, or elderly, had retired for the night, but most were still caught up in the festive mood. Azrael relaxed back into his fur-lined throne, simply enjoying the moment.

He let his gaze wander across the remaining people. Most of the younger hunters were in a group by the fire, drinking, while Alena and the chief were playing chess. A few people formed other, smaller groups and one couple were simply sitting on a bench leaning against each other. It stirred a feeling somewhere in him, but he left it. It was just one of those things.

Distracting himself from the pair, Azrael looked over to the largest group. Centered around James, all the dwarves and a fair few of the men were next to the statue in the village square. James had just finished arm-wrestling against all those gathered around him. Unsurprisingly, he’d won all of them, though there were a few close calls with the dwarves.

Azrael watched James finish a conversation, before looking for something else to do. His gaze landed on the stone pedestal in front of the massive statue. Azrael realised a second too late what James was thinking. Everything went in slow motion from there. James turned and Azrael rose from his chair. In the time it took for James to take the step closer to the pedestal Azrael had crossed most of the village square, passing straight through the fire. James’ hand came down on the stone plate, just as Azrael arrived by his side.

A blue screen flickered into existence, hovering above the status plate for all to see. If James was surprised, he did well in not showing it.

All he said was “Well Damn.”

Azrael could only agree.