Chương 44: A Cloud Hawk

Jonny woke up in the middle of the night, and at first, he did not realize why. Then, he heard the sound of limping footsteps in the snow, and immediately sat up. The moon was high in the sky, shining down on Igrette's form as she trudged back through the pillars toward the center of the mana well, sword in hand dyed red with blood.

"A bear was sniffing around nearby," she said quietly.

"I took care of it, you can go back to sleep." Jonny watched her climb back onto the stone table and start her healing meditation again, then lay back down. His sleep the rest of the night was much less restful, and he woke up right at dawn, still half-groggy. Igrette was still healing herself when he sat up, and he stared at her blankly for a minute or so before realizing that he needed to go to the bathroom. He left the circle to do his business, and when he finished, he was much more awake.

The memory of waking up that night came back to him, and he glanced back toward the stone circle, then walked further out in the direction of where they had killed the deer. That was the direction Igrette had been coming back from, and it made sense that the bear would have been there, if it was scavenging for food. He saw the corpse through the trees long before he arrived, but he didn't realize that's what he was seeing at first.

It just looked like a blob of pure darkness between the trees, and it was so large that he couldn't believe it was the bear at first. Even collapsed and lying on the ground, it was more than twice as tall as he was, and its head was large enough to swallow him whole if it wanted to. There were no obvious wounds at first, but as he circled around it, he noticed that there were blood icicles hanging from its throat, and when he looked closer, he saw that its neck had been cut.

It was not a clean beheading, but it looked like Igrette had severed its windpipe and major arteries and left it to die. In its final death throes, it seemed to have taken out two trees, which, now that he thought about it, was probably what woke him up. Even after so long, he could still sense residual mana in its body, slowly leaking into the atmosphere. It had to have been at least third layer to still have so much mana left this long after it died.

He walked a bit further until he reached one of its paws, and reached his hand out. It wasn't even as big as a single one of the bear's toe pads, and the claws were long enough to cut right through his arm. And Igrette had killed it in a single strike, probably without even using any mana. He was once again filled with awe for how powerful she was, even in her injured state. At the same time he felt excited. He was going to be able to do this one day.

Perhaps not with a sword like her, but he would be able to effortlessly defeat beasts the size of buses. He walked further, then stopped when he heard a strange noise from the other side of the bear. It sounded like crunching, but it wasn't the crunch of something chewing, nor was it the crunch of footsteps in the frozen snow. He walked cautiously around the bear, peaking around its rear end toward where the corpses of the deer lay, then froze. There was another magic beast there.

It was a bird that was bigger than he was, and as he watched, it bent down, stabbing its beak into the frozen corpse and wrenching a chunk of meat free, crushing it and swallowing it. At that moment, it seemed to notice him too, and it paused its movements as well, staring at him with bright yellow eyes. It had bluish gray feathers, and looked more than big enough to carry Jonny off if it tried. Jonny prepared for a fight, because he knew that a magic beast that close to a mana well was bound to become aggressive.

Especially in winter time when most of them were looking to form layers on their cores. However, rather than attacking him, or even trying to scare him off, it took a cautious step to the side grabbing the antlers of one of the severed deer heads with its talons, then flapped its wings, shooting upward with a gust of wind far stronger than it should have, blowing snow up and into his face.

He watched it fly away, deer head in tow, and as it got further, it also got hazier and hazier, a cloud of mist forming around it.

"A cloud hawk." Jonny jumped in surprise, and turned to find Igrette standing behind him, watching the hawk fly away.

"They usually aren't scavengers, but no creature would pass up this much free meat." Jonny nodded. Now that she had said its name, he remembered her talking about them a few months back, when they were on the way to Jonny's layer formation ritual. She had said they were one of few magic beasts smart enough not to be aggressive toward humans.

"The fact that you didn't notice it means that you need to work on your mana sensitivity," continued Igrette.

"Even if you weren't paying much attention, it should be impossible for you not to notice another living creature in such close proximity. We'll add that to your training plan. Mana sensitivity is an essential survival technique."

"Okay," said Jonny. Being able to sense living things from far away sounded pretty cool, so he didn't have a problem with that. Unless it was something like internal gravity magic…

"I'll get some meat for breakfast from the bear," Igrette said.

"Go start harvesting the deer antlers while I do. Glass deer antlers are lightweight and valuable. If y– we can hold onto them until we get to civilization, they'll be good to have." Jonny didn't miss her slip of the tongue, but chose to ignore it, nodding and drawing his knife to go cut the antlers away. As soon as he touched the antlers, he understood immediately why they were called glass deer.

The antlers were clear and smooth like polished glass, though they felt to him like they were probably a bit more durable. Actually, he had experienced their durability firsthand when he was on the back of the lone doe. Real glass would have broken if he gripped them that hard. As Igrette said, they were very lightweight, and after successfully removing the first one, Jonny learned that it was because they were hollow.

They were a little unwieldy, though, and when he finished collecting them all, it took two trips to get them back to the stone circle. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. When he returned, Igrette already had meat cooking in the fire, and she was slumped against one of the pillars, looking up at the sky. Jonny sat down across the fire from her, turning the meat slightly before leaning back against the stone table.

He didn't say anything at first, just watching the meat and occasionally glancing around until he remembered the question that he had asked the previous night and not gotten an answer.

"Are all mana wells like this?" he asked.

"Hmm?" asked Igrette.

"With the stone pillars and table and stuff?"

"Oh. Yes, for the most part. In this part of the world, at least. No one knows exactly who built them. Well, maybe some historians or archaeologists have some guesses, but I've never heard them. They're thousands of years older than the Antarian empire, and I haven't heard of anyone who was able to decode the language carved into the stones."

"Huh," said Jonny. He glanced around at the pillars, then behind him at the table. The letters carved into them were faint after so many years, but he could still make most of them out. He had no idea what they said, of course, but he peered at them, wondering if maybe somehow it was a language from Earth. If it was, though, he didn't know it. It definitely wasn't English, and it didn't look like Chinese or hieroglyphics, and those were basically the only other written languages he knew about.

"We probably won't be able to stay here for too long," said Igrette suddenly.

"This mana well is too exposed. The bear was the first, but it won't be the last, and every time I have to fight, I undo all the healing I got done. And everything we kill creates a stronger blood scent to draw even more scavengers. If anything shows up in a larger group, we'll have to leave." Jonny nodded.

"Until then, I want you to focus on training with every ounce of free time you have. You have replenishable mana, so burn through what you have. Take advantage of this, because you won't be able to later." Jonny nodded again.

"While we wait for the meat to cook, let's work on some basic mana sensing exercises…" Their breakfast passed quickly as Igrette walked Jonny through a few drills to help him sense the mana around him better. Thankfully, it was nothing like internal gravity magic, and he started to pick it up fairly quickly. Igrette said that he was already not half bad at it, when his eyes were closed and he was concentrating. He just needed to work on doing the same without needing full focus.

The bear meat finished cooking by the time Igrette had finished explaining things, and once they ate, they moved on to other training. Igrette had Jonny show her his progress in all the other things he was working on, and gave him a few pointers. She told him he was free to push himself a bit further with his mana breathing, since his body was adapting well. It was fine if he was a bit sore afterward, as long as he didn't push himself into the danger zone.

For his internal mana technique practice, she praised his progress, saying that it wouldn't be long before he could learn some basic techniques. They wouldn't be useful for combat, but he could start practicing small movements like bending a finger, or an ankle while keeping internal mana technique principles in mind. He had been making especially good progress on infusing his skin with mana, though he had already known that, based on how little the cold was bothering him these days.

The lectured him for a little while on some survival tactics, particularly in regards to threat assessment for magic beasts, but as the sun approached the apex of its arc, she was visibly slowing down. She winced whenever she shifted her weight, and occasionally went on tangents that were slightly too long, almost losing her train of thought.

"I think that's enough for today," she finally said, blinking and rubbing her eye.

"I need to get to sleep. You know what to do the rest of the day, right?"

"Yes."

"Good. You're doing well. Keep working hard." With that, she stood up and got back into her position on the stone table, laying down and starting her sleep meditation thing to recharge her mana. I forgot to ask her how to do that, Jonny realized. It was too late then, though, so he sighed and walked away to start training. The rest of the day was uneventful. Jonny made progress on his first two goals, and once again failed to achieve anything.

That night, when Igrette woke up, she told him another story from her childhood about a time when she had "accidentally" destroyed her teacher's favorite chair during some sword practice and was punished by being forced to apprentice with the local carpenter and make him a new one.

Jonny thought that would have been a pretty reasonable punishment, if not for the fact that her teacher made her redo the chair twice when he thought it wasn't good enough, and had her do all her usual training on top of her carpentry, meaning she only got a few hours of sleep each night until he had a satisfactory new chair. When she was done, she got back onto the stone table, healing her arm and side while Jonny laid down to sleep. He was having a bit of trouble getting a read on Igrette.

At times, she would seem confident about recovering, and at other times, she talked as if she was certain she was going to die. He knew that she wasn't the type to just give up, but sometimes, it seemed like she thought it was inevitable, which Jonny didn't like at all. I need to get stronger, he thought as he stared up at the stars. If I'm stronger, she won't have to fight as much, and she can heal better. He clenched his fist, then unclenched it as he rolled over onto his side and closed his eyes.

Just a little longer, he thought. If I can just figure out gravity magic… He fell asleep soon after, dreaming of a trippy, magical professional wrestling match, where the wrestlers were using internal gravity magic to crush the stage and shatter the ground. He was one of them, but he couldn't figure out the gravity magic, even in his dreams, so all the crowd just laughed at him when he couldn't break the ground like the other wrestlers.

In the dream, he got so fed up with the laughter that he decided he would silence them all once and for all, climbing up to the top of the highest diving board in the arena—because of course they had diving boards—and preparing to swan dive into the ground, diving straight through the ground and coming out in China where people would appreciate him more.

He jumped off the diving board, and the moment he felt the weightless sensation, he woke with a start, only to realize that he had somehow become weightless in real life too.

"Wha–?" He was looking down at the ground, which was a few feet down, and flying past rapidly. It seemed to be night still, based on how dark it was. His eyes widened and he started flailing wildly until whatever was holding him dropped him face-first into the snow.

"Get up," said Igrette's voice above him.

"We need to move. Now." Her tone was as serious as Jonny had ever heard, so he wasted no time getting to his feet and breaking out into a run beside her. He was still a bit confused after having just woken, but it only took a second for him to realize why they were running. Behind them, he heard the sound of dozens of wolves howling.