63 – Agonizing Wait

My talk with Theodore had taken much longer than I first expected. It was already past midnight when the old man chased me out of his domain.

It was a clear, starry night outside, so I decided to make up for lost time under the fruit tree. On the way, I picked up The Art of Magic from my room. I still remembered the practice I’d put into feeling out unseen shapes with my blood and was excited to adapt the technique to mana.

I’d barely slipped into the shaded path leading to the tree – Mathew had apparently completed his work while I was asleep – when a familiar presence homed in on me. Literally, familiar.

“You really are getting better at that,” I whispered to the bat halfway-elegantly landing on my shoulder. He puffed out his chest in pride. It looked comical, his stomach bloated with blood. I gratefully accepted his delivery. Small as it was, it was more than welcome in my current parched state.

His delivery done, my familiar accepted some scritches before taking off again. He was really growing into his vampire bat role.

I could feel just how relieved he was that I was okay, and how much he wanted to help me get better. The sentiment put a big smile on my lips.

Sitting down in my usual spot against the tree’s trunk, I began the mana sensing tests. It took a few tries, but I managed to partially adapt my growing mastery of blood control to mana.

Compared to the brick wall this exercise had been, last time I tried, I could actually make some progress tonight. The ‘exploratory threads’ I formed from mana were much more fragile than blood, with less sensitivity as well. But the approach of limiting the amount of directions I had to sense in was applicable.

To my slight surprise, I only failed twice before I completed my first full shape-encompassing border. At that point, just like when I tried this with blood, filling in the shape was easy.

When it was done, the metal lines covering up what I was doing actually moved aside, revealing the blotch I’d created on the page. As I had somewhat managed to visualize, it was an irregular polygon, with inner and outer corners forming ‘spikes’ of varying length and thickness. The filled shape glowed gold, then disappeared as the lines returned to block my sight.

Obviously the next puzzle had started, but I took a short break to refill my mana. Text appeared above the tangled lines.

‘Well done again. You continue to impress. Though you took a rather long break this time, are you practicing outside of this book as well? I can’t recommend it, not until you have a better grasp of mana.

It’s a willful thing, this mana. Releasing too much of it without proper control can be quite dangerous. Don’t you dare blow yourself up when you have such a great teaching aid available right here!

Keep up the good work.’

Well that’s not concerning in the slightest. To my recollection, I’d only pushed mana out into the air a few times, to see what would happen. It had dispersed quickly, so I’d considered the act useless for the moment and not repeated it.

And now I get a warning that doing it can be dangerous. Maybe say that a bit earlier? What if I really did blow myself up because the warning not to try something that can blow me up was too late in the book about teaching magic?! Of course someone who learns they can do magic is going to try it out!

I was lucky I’d decided to make progress in the book first. It wasn’t even a very thoughtful or considered choice, just happenstance. But it felt like I dodged a bullet I didn’t even know existed.

Maybe Anaster isn’t the greatest educator. Big surprise, really. Though his methods are decently effective, I guess. Just that the safety warnings should really come first.

It was notable that my blood hadn’t shown signs of going out of control at any point. No, when I didn’t actively control it, it reverted to behaving just like I’d expect blood to. Which might be a bit of a cheat?

If I could try out mana manipulation techniques safely on my blood, that was a huge advantage over other people. Though that did raise the question of how exactly I was making the blood move to my will? I didn’t really notice any drain on my mana reserves when I did it. And even in a world with magic in it, I couldn’t bring myself to believe in infinite energy.

Hmm. I’ll have to keep an eye out for that.

For the moment, I put these considerations aside and immersed myself back into the book. My time near the mana well was limited, after all. Though I could just have people bring me fruit whenever I want now, I realized.

Still, it was a good idea to take breaks from mentally challenging tasks, if only to recover my focus. Often, I’d made breakthrough realizations while I was doing something else too, so that was another point in favor of pausing every once in a while.

The next few hours were spent solving one hidden shape after another. Over time, my shoddy technique was polished up more and more, reducing both the time and mental effort required to complete the tests. I had occasional failures, but they were reducing in frequency.

Two more deliveries of blood were made over the course of this night. My bat familiar was obviously taking his job very seriously, which I was immensely thankful for. After the last delivery he took a rest on my shoulder and had me feed him the occasional fruit.

At some point my rat familiar had also joined me, curled up in my lap next to the book. He was just as glad I was okay as the bat, of course.

Unfortunately, night ended all too soon, forcing me back inside. My flappy friend flew back to his nest to sleep, while his rat companion accompanied me into my room for a while.

He left for some sleep of his own shortly before Mia knocked on my door.

Bright and early, as usual. Instead of calling out to her to come in, I went and opened the door myself.

“Good morning, Lord Steelheart. How are you feeling?”

“Morning to you too, Mia. I’m still quite hungry.”

“To the kitchen, then?” I was happy she didn’t look particularly afraid of me right now. Progress!

“Yes, that’s a great idea. Lead the way.”

In hindsight, I could have gone to get a midnight snack of blood sausage. My dinner had been digested a long time ago, despite its sheer volume. I just forgot. My strategy of distracting myself with magic practice worked a bit too well, all things considered.

When we arrived in the kitchen, the cook was already preparing breakfast for me. Scrambled eggs with fried blood sausage, accompanied by fresh bread still warm from the oven. I could barely wait for him to finish.

It was delicious. I dug in with gusto, demolishing what would probably have been two portions for normal people in one go. Combining normal, tasty food with blood products so I actually feel like I’ve eaten was such a great idea.

Resuming my normal morning routine, I headed over to the entrance hall to meet Lars.

Unlike during the storm, the other men weren’t here today. The hall was also freshly swept, all the nooks and crannies dusted. We were expecting guests still.

Training was much the same as any that didn’t include others. I did my warm-up exercises, followed by drilling the hand-to-hand forms and finally mock combat with Lars.

I noticed the spar was easier than before. It wasn’t clear whether I should attribute this to my increased experience from my brawls with the guards, some change in my body, or Lars going easier on me.

Maybe a mixture of all three, I decided. Lars really was being a bit more careful today, probably because I did just wake up from a multi-day coma yesterday.

Not taking the reduced difficulty as an excuse, I nevertheless focused on getting my attacks and counters done properly. And footwork, never forget the footwork. It only took getting swept to the ground a few times because of poor weight distribution or leg placement to ingrain that particular message.

Once we were done training, Lars called for staff to re-clean the hall, just in case. I couldn’t detect any dirt, but that wasn’t a reason to slack on our visit preparations.

Now, all that was left was to wait for my sister to arrive. How long could that take?

A long time, it turned out. It was already nearing noon, and there was still no sign of anyone approaching the manor. I’d even posted some of my rat scouts on the hill facing away from town and towards the rest of the kingdom, just in case they could see anything.

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While their eyesight wasn’t amazing, especially in bright environments, they were more than good enough to see the carriage I was expecting moving on a deserted road.

Still nothing.