Chương 14: Foreign Mana

After his fourth birthday in Erador, Arien's long and glorious career of "slacking off" came to an abrupt end. He was still too small for the fields, so Mari gave him Alia's old duty: watching the cows on the pasture near the forest and making sure none of the stupid animals wandered off, taking a farmer's fortune with them. Arien didn't particularly mind. The cows mostly ignored him, the pasture was far from curious eyes, and nobody asked why a four-year-old spent half the morning staring at his own hands.

The only real downside was waking up early. Fortunately, the cows knew the path better than he did. Fatty, the old lead cow, only needed an occasional shout to remember where she was supposed to go. That morning, as the cows followed the familiar path toward the pasture, Arien went over a list of experiments he had thought of before falling asleep. Most of them were far beyond his current abilities, but that only motivated him to keep trying. Practicing with mana felt like play.

He could spend entire days immersed in it if not for the stupid cows, which inevitably started wandering off whenever he ignored them for more than a dozen minutes. Unfortunately, cows did not respect genius. Every time he almost caught the edge of an idea, one of them decided the grass looked better three steps closer to the forest.

"What do you think, Fatty? If I ever figure out how to draw water mana from my surroundings, do you think I could fire it off like some kind of projectile?" he asked aloud as they reached a small hollow surrounded on two sides by forest, where lush grass grew between a few larger rocks.

"You think so too? But how would I even do that… You're not, by any chance, an enchanted dragon willing to share your boundless knowledge for free?"

"Moo!"

"That's what I thought. Well, I have no choice but to keep trying." Over the last few months, his Skills had continued to improve. He still had no idea how to influence the world around him with magic, but better control over his own mana and tracing its paths throughout his body had already earned him several Skill levels. He had to be doing something right. He would have happily spent the entire day lying around practicing magic, but as his body grew, his already poor coordination demanded constant attention.

So he forced himself to run a few laps around the clearing, encouraged by the approving looks of his enthusiastic little "herd." The exercise tired him out enough that he eventually dozed off in the grass. When something wet suddenly splashed across his face, he shot upright in confusion.

"Ha ha ha!" a familiar laugh rang out.

"What a lovely face."

"Sari is mean." He wiped his face on his shirt and looked up irritably at his sister, who was standing over him, tilting an empty leather bucket.

"Be glad I brought you lunch today. If Lisa had come, everyone would've found out you were sleeping instead of watching the cows."

"I was watching them, I was!" He took the sandwiches wrapped in linen from her hands.

"All of this for me?" he asked suspiciously. There were usually half as many.

"I may or may not have managed to 'borrow' a bit of food from Father." She sat down on the grass and motioned for him to join her.

"Besides, I wasn't that hungry. And hardworking little boys need to grow." Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Yes, yes, Arien will be big and hardworking. And then he'll buy nice things for Sari."

"How could anyone not love you?" the girl laughed, ruffling his hair. For a few minutes, they sat in silence. Or rather, Sari sat quietly while Arien devoted his full attention to the sandwiches.

"Arien, have you ever thought about what you'd like to be when you grow up?" she asked, and he glanced at her uncertainly.

"Arien will be like Father," he answered. It was safe, believable, and revealed nothing he wasn't ready to share. Sari cared about him. Arien knew that. He simply wasn't ready to trust anyone with the truth yet.

"Yeah. That's a smart choice. A safe one."

"And Sari?"

"Sari is stupid. Sari has all kinds of strange dreams. Sari would like to see what the world beyond the village looks like…" The quiet resignation made something tighten in his chest. Focused on his own worries, he had forgotten that the people around him had their own dreams and plans too. Sari was already fourteen, old enough that other people would soon start deciding what the rest of her life should look like.

"Sari is brave," he said, gently taking her hand. They sat like that for a while, neither of them speaking.

"Arien," she said quietly, "if you ever get a chance to leave, don't talk yourself out of it first." Then she stood up and walked back toward the house. Her words stayed with him long after she was gone. What did he actually want? Becoming a mage and growing stronger were only means to an end. More than anything, Arien wanted enough control over his own life that a priest, a lord, or one bad test could not take it away from him. He had already spent too much of one life waiting for circumstances to improve.

He did not intend to do the same thing again. If becoming stronger gave him more choices, that was reason enough. That evening, Arien lay in bed and practiced controlling the mana within his body, as he usually did before falling asleep. He pushed a thin stream of his own mana beyond his fingertips, and some of the ambient mana nearby shifted with it. For the briefest instant, a few particles even bent back toward his hand. Arien went still. His own mana had disturbed the currents outside his body.

What would happen if he tried to draw some of that mana back with it? He focused on the stream extending from his fingertips and tried to pull. A few particles of foreign mana followed it into his channels. For one brief moment, nothing happened. Then his own mana attacked. Pain exploded through his arm. He couldn't breathe as it raced upward like fire. Then it reached his head. He screamed. The sound barely resembled a human voice.

His vision blurred, the room spun, and somewhere through it all he heard his mother calling his name from impossibly far away. Then darkness. When Arien woke, the memory returned in pieces: the pull, the foreign mana, and the pain. He had known he didn't understand the rules and tried anyway. Stupid. He had known how little he understood and experimented anyway. That frightened him more than the failure itself.

"Arien, what's wrong? Where does it hurt?" His mother's voice shook.

"My head hurts. It's… better now," he managed to mumble. Morning light leaked through the window behind Mari. Only then did Arien notice the dark circles beneath her eyes and how disheveled she looked. She had probably spent most of the night beside him.

"Are you sure? Should I send Wod for the priest? That scream…"

"No. There's no need. Better now." He forced himself to sit up and wrapped his arms around her. They stayed like that for a while, until he felt her tears against his neck. The pain suddenly seemed less frightening than the thought of putting her through another night like this. He had a new family and a new life. He couldn't afford to waste either.