“The part that I fail to fully understand is why you think magic is a substance at all, aside from the fact that Magical Phenomena believes it to be true,” Aavspeyjh said, clasping his hands together and placing them in front of his mouth. I had spent around twenty minutes explaining what I knew about magic to him while we sat across from each other in two padded chairs in the library. Between us, a copy of Magical Phenomena was open on a small shin-level table. Aavspeyjh was as mystified by most of the jargon in it as I was, though he seemed to get the gist of the diagrams and the points made.

“The effects of magic are not a substance,” I clarified. “There is a fuel in the blood that is used as a power source to produce those effects and possibly even control them. You can think of it like oil for a lantern, except in this case it is some kind of substance that dissolves in blood and air, and instead of fire it creates magic effects when it is burned.” Specifically, it’s an endogenous material that most likely dissolves in oxygen and can bind to hemoglobin, I thought, it also must require some material that isn’t strictly necessary for the short-term survival of a human body, which is why I couldn’t regenerate magic in that cell in Vehrehr until I ate the beetles I found. What the material’s actual chemical composition could be was a question I had no answers to, but thankfully I only needed to know its properties.

“How can something dissolve in air?” Aavspeyjh asked. I knew he wasn’t being deliberately obtuse by his tone, but his lack of basic scientific knowledge annoyed me.

“It doesn’t matter, I could explain but the explanation would merely raise more questions,” I said quickly. “I’ve seen this material myself, I watched a small chunk that I pulled from the head of a man dissolve into nothing in seconds. The point that I’m getting to though, is that-”

“If you can extract and process this material you can grow your arm back more quickly, among other things,” Aavspeyjh finished my sentence. I nodded, and checked my heads-up display, seeing my magic levels still not back to full. One of my green bars was almost empty, and whatever nutrient it was must have been a key component in creating the “magic fuel”. Even if I had an infinite amount of food, it takes time for the cores to re-build their stores of fuel, and more when the source nutrients are low, I thought, I need a way to get more of the fuel itself quickly, and ideally store it for a period of time. I could try cannibalism but- “Can you show me how you re-grew your shoulder?” Aavspeyjh asked, noticing my lack of a reply.

“Not at this moment,” I tried to explain. “I still haven’t regained all of my power, it probably wouldn’t be effective. At best, I might be able to add a small amount of flesh onto what I already have.”

“Are you experiencing some kind of problem?” Aavspeyjh asked. “It has been a day, nearly, you should be fine by now should you not?”

“Regaining magical power requires the components of certain foods,” I tried to explain. Aavspeyjh raised an eyebrow, then removed a bottle from inside his tunic, passing it to me.

“This is ngveyjhzown,” he said. “It’s a traditional type of soup from Kahvahrniydah, invented by the first settlers of the area.” I opened the bottle and smelled the soup, which had a distinctive odor of iron. “It’s made of blood, fat, and ground-up kayyb,” Aavspeyjh continued. “I always keep a bottle for my afternoon snack. Since I’m not hungry, eat this, then show me as much as you can. I’m interested to see it.”

“I think I should stop by the kitchen,” I replied. “I need something that will help me build up my strength, not just a snack.”

“This soup is known to be good for energy, both physical and magical,” Aavspeyjh countered.

“I can’t know if this has what I require,” I tried to explain. “It would be better to just eat a wide variety of foods in the kitchen. Fruits, vegetables, and meats.”

“Just try it,” Aavspeyjh prodded. With a sigh, I took one last look at the soup, then put the bottle to my mouth and gulped it down as quickly as possible. The flavor wasn’t good, but it wasn’t as bad as it smelled. A number of green bars on my heads-up display started to fill almost as soon as I finished drinking, including the one that was extremely low. Could it be iron? I wondered, No, it’s silly to even think that these bars map directly to nutrients given how they don’t reflect the physical reality of digestion at all.

“It might work,” I said. “It certainly has a kick to it.”

“It certainly does,” Aavspeyjh agreed. “Now, please show me the technique you were using.”

“I need a few minutes to digest,” I replied. “I’ll show you once my stomach settles.”

“Okay, I’m ready,” I announced, rousing Aavspeyjh from his novel. It had been around fifteen minutes since I drank the soup, and my cores were at about seventy percent each. “The process is quite painful, and I wasn’t entirely conscious the last time it happened, so I apologize if there is any noise,” I added, grabbing my shirt and pulling it off. Aavspeyjh looked intently at my shoulder as if trying to memorize every detail of it.

“Begin whenever you wish,” he replied.

I took a few deep breaths, then squeezed my cores slowly. Instead of relying on the heads-up display, I relied on the feeling of pain in my body. It slowly rose, growing from a dull ache to a sharp stabbing heat as I willed my organs to release more fuel. In some parts of my body, mainly my hand, there was a sensation like small needles piercing the skin, though since my eyes were open I could see that no such thing was happening. My eyes began to lose vision, and so I stopped, holding my magical saturation steady, then willed my arm to grow back.

Unlike before I didn’t try to force the effect through using anger. Instead, I attempted to keep control of the reaction and not burn more power than required. The pain rushed into my shoulder, just like before, increasing in intensity until it was white-hot. Strangely, like before, I felt my consciousness struggling to hold itself together. All I could think about was the process of trying to grow my arm back, anything else just drained out of my mind as though it was a bucket with a hole in the bottom. I’m not in control anymore, I realized faintly, it just needs my permission to continue.

Sometime later a sound, faint and fuzzy, drew me back into the present. Like before I wasn’t sure how long I was out, but unlike before I knew I hadn’t moved and wasn’t disoriented. I blinked a few times and saw Aavspeyjh standing over me, tapping the side of my face.

“Are you awake?” he asked.

“Somewhat,” I grunted.

“You were staring off with your eyes open for about twenty minutes,” Aavspeyjh told me. “You looked to be in pain at the beginning, but then you went still, as though you were a statue. You were still breathing, but your mind was clearly elsewhere.”

“Did it work?” I asked, scratching my head. “It was different compared to last time.”

“Look for yourself,” Aavspeyjh said, gesturing to my right side. I looked over and saw that I now had around two centimeters of upper arm complete with partial musculature. I moved the nub, flexing what was inside it, and realized it was essentially a complete upper arm, just far under full size. Strange, I thought, the bicep is bound to the end, even though it should be bound to the lower arm. It must swap over once the next part starts to regenerate, or maybe there’s an even smaller forearm budding at the end, and that’s what it’s bound to.

“It worked,” I said. My stomach growled, and the room tilted from vertigo. “Hungry,” I added laconically.

“Indeed, and it was quite impressive to watch in action,” Aavspeyjh agreed. “I need to get back to work, but please stop by the kitchen and tell them to give you as much food as you need.” He turned and began to walk away, leaving me to get to my feet on my own. As I slipped my shirt back on, I heard his footsteps stop at the door. “I will look into getting you some alchemical equipment,” he said. “We probably have some laying around, and if not, we can repossess some. I am interested to see if you can apply this ‘magic fuel’ theory to produce something of worth.”

Two days later, Koyl came to see me in the office. Every worker except for me seemed shocked by his presence, but he just ignored them and asked me to step out to talk to him in the hallway. I told him to wait for a few seconds, finished up what I was working on, then walked out with him.

“My father got you what you asked for,” he said, glancing at my arm.

I had grown back around three-quarters of my upper arm through two more extreme sessions of healing, but was now finding it hard to physically eat enough food to replenish the nutrients required to produce magic fuel. Even though nothing appeared wrong on my heads-up display, the green bars were beginning to fill much more slowly than before, possibly as a result of draining myself repeatedly. Exactly what that meant was something I couldn't figure out, my best working theory was that the bars displayed a combination of reserves and immediately available nutrients. Regardless, in an attempt to compensate I had begun including cold cuts of raw meat in my diet, but even those were losing effectiveness.

“I didn’t ask him for anything,” I clarified. “He said he was going to get me some kind of ‘alchemical’ equipment.”

“That makes much more sense, actually,” Koyl sighed. “Follow me, I’ll bring you over to the little vaangpeymehpao he set up.” Koyl walked off in the direction of the library, and I followed behind him. Ever since regrowing my shoulder the looks of the servants I didn’t work with regularly had grown more cautious. I accidentally met the eyes of a young man as he passed by Koyl and me and he physically flinched, averting his gaze and jogging away.

“I don’t understand these reactions,” I said.

“Don’t mind him,” Koyl replied. “The servants just aren’t used to the kind of freaky shit you seem to be able to do. There have been some rumors floating around, nothing too terrible, but persistent enough that even my father is having issues stomping them out.”

We neared the turn to the hallway with the library, then Koyl stopped and opened a door to our left. He entered first, fizzling some sparks into a lantern near the door, then gestured for me to follow him inside and close the door. The room was, unlike most rooms in the mansion, almost entirely undecorated. The walls were bare brick, the floor was cement, and the ceiling was exposed wooden boards. In the center of the room there was a large table, and on that table was a set of primitive chemistry tools in a rough pile, along with several kitchen utensils and other miscellaneous items.

Koyl stood to the side of the room while I approached the table and began categorizing and organizing everything. Mortar and pestle, twine, nails, mixing jars with seals, knives, even test tubes, I thought, there’s no airtight chamber, but I can probably approximate one with this larger glass tub, I just need something to help seal it.

“This is good,” I said. “Do you have any-” I paused, then tried to come up with a description for rubber. “There is a material made of processed tree sap that is common for these types of kits where I am from. We call it rubber. It makes a good seal with glass, is stretchy, and is often used for lids. Do you have anything like that?”

“I don’t know,” Koyl shrugged. “I don’t even know what all this is for. My father is being very evasive about it-”

“Do you have any rats or other small animals?” I asked, interrupting him. Koyl frowned, then grunted to himself and rubbed his stubble. The dark circles under his eyes seemed to grow slightly darker for a moment as he mentally pieced something together.

“I’m sure the kitchen staff will know where to find some,” he replied. “I assume you need them alive?”

“Alive, yes,” I said. “They’re going to be used as test subjects, so it would be best if they were healthy and docile, but I’ll take what I can get.” Koyl looked like he wanted to say something, but for some reason he decided not to.

“I’ll go ask them and see what they can find,” he grunted, then he turned around and exited the room, closing the door behind him and leaving me to my own devices.

I need hypodermic needles, I thought, several hours later. The kitchen staff had brought me an entire writing bag of rats upon request, exceeding my expectations greatly. After restraining the rats and dissecting one, I confirmed that the rats had small versions of core organs in the same relative places that humans did: One in the brain, one behind the heart, and one under the stomach. The core looked to be a thin membrane of muscle tissue that wrapped around the solid mass of magic fuel. That fuel in question was crystalline in nature, though not very well-organized, and just like before it disappeared in seconds when exposed to air. If I didn’t know better, I would have said it was just a mineral deposit, I thought at the appearance: a yellow-green semi-transparent rock.

Exiting my new lab into the hallway, I surprised a servant woman with my bloody hand and shirt, sending her screaming away from me. When did it become nighttime? I wondered as I looked out the window nearby. After stopping in a bathroom to clean myself up a bit, I walked over to Aavspeyjh’s office, finding that he was likely still awake because of the lantern light flickering behind his door. After knocking, I opened the door and saw him working at his desk, and without looking he gestured for me to approach. When I sat down he finally looked up at me for a moment, then went back to his work.

“I see you put those rats to good use,” he commented. “Did you need something?”

“Hollow needles,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?” Aavspeyjh grunted, putting down his pen and directing his full attention to me. Just like Koyl, he had dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep.

“I need metal needles to draw and inject blood with, they should have a hollow inner section around this thick,” I explained, gesturing one millimeter between my fingers. While I could work around the lack of rubber using cork, wax, and a bit of magic, the lack of needles was a massive barrier to what I was going to be attempting.

“Do you have any idea how much that would cost?” Aavspeyjh snapped before catching himself and inhaling sharply. He sounds much more like Koyl when he’s upset, I thought. “My apologies,” Aavspeyjh sighed, calming himself. “There have been some other issues today, I am not upset with you, rest assured.”

“Do needles like what I described exist in Uwriy?” I asked.

“What you are describing is not something that modern techniques can create, as far as I know,” Aavspeyjh said.

“I’ve seen them in my home country,” I explained. “They’re created by rolling thin tubes of metal, as far as I know.”

“Then you should tell me what country you are actually from so I can import them,” Aavspeyjh replied. “Such fine metalwork is well beyond even the best smiths in Uwriy.” Damn, I swore internally, racking my mind for alternatives. Force magic can compensate for a lot of missing technology, but I need something to use for injection, I thought.

“What about glass?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Aavspeyjh asked back.

“A glass needle with a hole in it like that, can you get one of those?” I clarified. “It would be more difficult to use, but suitable for the work I have planned.”

“No, that cannot-” Aavspeyjh began, stopping mid-sentence abruptly. His eyes widened, and he blinked a few times then looked down at his desk and furrowed his brow, clearly thinking. Abruptly, he pulled open a drawer beneath the surface of the desk, removing a small box and flipping it open. From the box, he removed a necklace with an animal tooth on it, then passed it to me. “Would this work?” he asked, putting the box back in the drawer.

“Why would this-” I started to ask, before noticing the answer to my question. The tooth most likely belonged to a snake of some kind, judging by the structure. The pointed end had a small hole on the inside edge of the curve, and on the blunted end I saw a larger hole that presumably connected to it. Levitating the tooth with magic, I created a small light orb and put it behind the tooth, then increased the brightness until I confirmed the tube was continuous and connected.

“Interesting,” Aavspeyjh remarked as he watched me.

“Are these common?” I asked, letting the light go out and the necklace fall back into my hand.

“In this area, they are about as common as ngeyt,” Aavspeyjh replied. “I am sure I could procure dozens of them for you on short notice if you need them.”

“I need at least a hundred, just to be sure,” I said, tossing the necklace back to him. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to devote my main efforts to this task, rather than accounting.”

“I was going to offer that same thing,” Aavspeyjh replied, catching the necklace. “It is good to see we think so alike.”