Ana lounged in the sun, her back to the Waystone, until Messy found her. The afterglow of whatever Touanne had done for her cramps had left her feeling light and relaxed. She might even have taken a little nap; she wasn't sure.
It was, against all odds, shaping up to be a good day.
The pinks and purples inside her eyelids turned black as something blocked her sun. “This morning, I didn't think there was any way you could possibly look any more relaxed,” said an amused voice, “but here we are. Should I be jealous?”
“Hey, Mess.” Ana opened one eye to squint up at the woman. The sun was right behind her, and the corona that silhouetted her was almost too bright. “You look like an angel right now, you know that?”
“Stop!” Messy said happily. “Saying things like that is just going to get my hopes up.”
“Well, you look great. Give me a hand?”
“Didn't even drop off your purchases before passing out in the sun, huh?” Messy said as she pulled Ana to her feet. She may have relied on speed and technique for fighting, but she still had a decent grip on her. “So. Food! Any preferences?”
There were a few stalls to choose from, as well as the two small, permanent eateries that opened onto the square. Dozens of people came and went as Ana and Messy picked out some kind of skewers of grilled fruit and meat covered in a thick, sticky sweet-and-sour sauce. Meat in the splinter was either game or chicken; this time it was chicken.
Come to think of it, Ana hadn't seen any fresh dairy since arriving. No milk or cream or even yogurt, only hard cheese.
“Hey, Mess?”
“Mmm?” Messy was trying to get a piece of chicken off her skewer without getting sauce all over her cheeks. She’d been doing that the entire meal, and it had been slow going as a result; Ana had simply accepted the inevitable and had sticky cheeks.
“Aren't there any cows here? You could graze them in the clearing.”
“Probably could,” Messy agreed after daintily freeing the chunk of meat. “But a cow would be too expensive to get through to be worth it.”
“How so?”
“The transfer costs mana, which means work for a mage, which means money. The heavier the object, the more mana it costs. Anything alive multiplies that. For a young splinter like this, that isn’t even stabilized yet, cows, pigs, sheep, any large livestock just aren't worth it.” She gestured with her skewer. “Fertilized eggs though? You can get a breeding population of chickens going fast for cheap if you bring over fertilized eggs.”
“Huh.” Ana nodded and thought about it.
“Rabbits can work, too, but there’s so many wild rabbits and hares here that there’s no…” Messy trailed off and squinted across the square toward the Waystone. “Is that Jancia?”
Ana turned, and sure enough, Jancia had just run up to the obsidian obelisk. “Come on,” she told Messy, at the same time as Messy said, “What is she doing?”
Jancia had fallen to her knees beside the Waystone and looked like she was trying to merge with it, pressing her hands, cheek, chest, as much of herself as she could into its surface. She’d even pulled her shirt up so that she could press her stomach into the black stone. A few curious onlookers had formed a rough circle around her, but no one approached. When Ana got a little closer she heard that Jancia was mumbling, sounding dazed and repeating the same few things over and over. “Please, just a little. Just a little. I only need a little. Don't keep it from me. Please!”
“Jancia?” Ana approached the woman cautiously. She had no idea how Jancia had gotten out of Touanne's clinic, much less made it up the street to the square. “Miss Jancia, can you hear me?”
Jancia gave no sign that she heard a word that Ana said. She just continued mumbling, reaching high and dragging her hands over the surface of the obelisk, her nails making soft scratching sounds against the stone.
Looking around quickly, Ana saw Tellak hurrying up the street. “Listen, Jancia. Jay. Can I call you Jay? Tellak is coming. I’m sure she’s worried sick about you, all right? How about you get up so you can go with her?”
Jancia didn't stop pressing herself into the stone, but her eyes seemed to focus a little. “Telly?” she said weakly.
“Yeah, Jay. Telly’s here.” Ana stepped a little closer and offered her hand. “Let’s get you— What the hell!?”
Without warning, without a sound, Jancia lunged. She was off the ground in a single motion, her teeth going for Ana’s outstretched hand. At the same time Ana’s bonuses kicked in, and though Jancia was quick, it looked to Ana like she was moving under water. She simply stepped back, and when Jancia tried to grab her it was almost effortless to grab her wrist, pull her around, and put her on the ground. Ana even had time to be gentle about it, laying the sick woman down rather than throwing her. Not that she particularly felt like it when the bitch had tried to bite her.
“Sorry! I’m sorry! I don't know— I’m so sorry!” Jancia moaned as she lay on the plinth. Ana had put her face down, one arm behind her back while she pinned the other with her knee. About the same time as Tellak arrived at the obelisk, Jancia started sobbing. “I can’t feel you! You're touching me and I can't feel you! Why can’t I feel you?”
Ana’s bonuses left her as quickly as they had come, as unpleasant a feeling as ever. Even without them she could feel Tellak hovering over her.
“Ana, let her go.” Tellak’s voice was steady and soothing. “And Jay, I don’t know why you did that, but please don’t try it again.”
Ana considered for a moment, then got off Jancia’s back. She put both of Jancia’s hands behind her back, wishing that she had a ziptie or something, then looked up at Tellak. “Help her up. I’ll control her hands for now.”
“All right.” Tellak squatted in front of her friend and put her hands under her armpits, then gently helped her to her feet. “There you go, Jay,” she said gently. “What are you doing out? How did you get the window open in the first place? You could barely sit up in bed this morning.”
“Telly,” Jancia choked out. “It’s gone. It’s all gone!”
“What’s all gone?”
“My Connection!” Jancia wailed. “It’s at zero! My Connection is zero!”
There was a collective gasp and a fearful murmur among the onlookers. “Clear out! Show’s over!” Ana called out. She tried pushing with Intimidation as she looked around, and it worked wonders. People flinched or looked away as her eyes fell on them, and the small crowd began to disperse almost immediately.
Ana turned to Tellak. “Come on. Let’s get Jancia back to Touanne’s. I was going there after lunch anyway.” Then she looked at Messy, who’d watched the whole thing with a mix of shock and wonder. She noticed that Messy had brought the bag with her things, which Ana had put down while they ate. “Sorry, Mess. Going to have to cut this short. Dinner tonight at Petra’s?”
“Yeah,” Messy said breathily, her eyes wide. “Sure!”
“Great. Give my bag to Tellak, would you?”
“She’s sleeping again,” Touanne said no more than fifteen minutes later. Jancia had gone with them meekly, crying and mumbling to herself the whole way. Tellak and Touanne had put her to bed, where she’d curled up on herself, crying into the wall. “I don’t know where she found the strength to open the window and climb out, but it looks like it took everything she had.”
“Any idea why she’d try to bite me?” Ana asked. “Has she been violent at all before?”
“No, not once that I’ve seen. Tellak?”
“No. The only thing she’s even tried to do on her own was when she took my hand once. But if her Connection is really down to zero… she must be feeling so lost.”
Ana sighed. “Not the greatest mental state, then. Do we need to strap her to the bed?”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Touanne and Tellak looked at her with shock, but Ana continued. “She could try to run off again. The next person to try and help her might actually get bit, and we don’t know if she’s contagious.”
Touanne’s hair swirled as shook her head vehemently “I can’t do that! No, I’ll have the window reinforced so it can’t be opened, and I can have a latch put on the door, but actually restraining her? No. I won't have it.”
“All right. Your house, your patient. Just be careful, okay? She didn’t look like she really knew what she was doing when she attacked me. She might go for you next.”
“I can't believe that. Not Jay.”
“I can,” Tellak said. Touanne looked at her with surprise. “Oh, she's a kind, gentle woman. Usually. You haven't seen her drunk or truly angry. She can be vicious. Perhaps it’s better if I take care of her, just in case. She…” Tellak went silent, looking away for a moment. “Without magic, she can't hurt me.”
“That all right with you, Touanne?” Ana asked.
The Healer nodded, but she didn't look happy about it. “I suppose.”
“Good. In that case, I’m going. I’m heading out to the forest’s edge to practice, ah, drawing mana.”
Two weeks in, it still felt ridiculous to say things like that. Like she was attending one of those live roleplaying things Nic had gone to sometimes. Mr. Stamper had, thankfully, arranged for someone else than Ana to go with him to those. “Still want to come with, Touanne?”
Touanne looked at the open door to where Jancia rested, then turned a silent question at Tellak.
Tellak nodded. “Go. I’ll look after Jay and mind the shop, just like we said.”
“Right. Thank you. I’ll get my bag, then.”
They left via the southern gate, simply because it was closer. Ana didn't bother dropping off her bag; it wasn't that heavy to start with, and at twice her original Strength it barely weighed anything.
“How far into the forest should we go?” Ana said as trees began to envelop the road.
Touanne stopped and focused. “Here should be fine. I can't feel Earth mana nearly as well as Tellak, but the ambient mana is strong enough here for most purposes. If all Tellak said was to go outside the clearing, then here should be as good a place as any.”
“All right… maybe step away from the road?”
“Oh. Yes, that might be for the best.”
They walked a hundred feet or so along the treeline before the road was no longer in sight, and Ana took her boots and socks off. They could still see the outpost and a couple of the walled farmhouses, but at least they weren't making a spectacle of themselves.
“I’m gonna… I don't know. Try to get in touch with the earth, I guess.” Ana said. She felt more than a little silly, and it wasn't like she was immune to embarrassment. But this was Touanne. If she thought anything Ana did was weird she’d never tell, and that was nearly as good as not judging at all.
Touanne sat down on the grass. “Go ahead. I’ll be right here.”
“Did you want to do anything in particular, or did you just want to get out of town for a while?”
“I won’t deny that it's nice to be out here, breathing some fresh forest air. I usually keep myself too busy. But I did have something I wanted to do.”
She took out a small leather pouch from her bag, and from it she shook out two small, pale blue crystals.
“I removed these from Jancia together with some others. She… it hurt her terribly, and I had to replace them and almost wore myself out getting the flesh to knit back around them, but these were left when she stabilized. They respond to mana. I intend to study them for a few hours.”
“Uh, yeah, all right. Let me know if you need anything.”
Ana took the same stance she had when Tellak was testing her — strong, stable, almost rooted in the earth. She focused entirely on her breath, like she’d been taught when she practiced meditation, letting stray thoughts come and go without acknowledging them. Even the memory of Messy’s warm presence that morning, her arm wrapped protectively around her, was only allowed to linger for a moment longer than any other, and soon her mind became still and calm.
That should have been impossible; with her heightened Perception she could hear every little sound her body made, from her heartbeat to the tiny gurgles of her stomach to the blood rushing in her ears. But the same high Perception, and possibly some other Attributes, also made it easier to focus only on a single thing. Time became hard to track as her conscious mind focused inward and down, to the soles of her feet and the earth below, searching for that same stream of timeless strength that she’d felt the day before.
She didn’t know if it was because of experience or location, but that stream was easier to find now than it had been. She’d learned the day before that pulling on it didn’t work. Or perhaps it was the metaphor that didn’t work for her; everything to do with mana and magic seemed to be personal. For her it was more like she was trying to lure it. Draw it in, as Tellak said. She had to invite it. Seduce it, almost, sometimes approaching, sometimes pulling back and letting it follow. In her mind the mana was almost like electricity — she pointedly ignored the fact that there was apparently lightning-aligned mana already. She had to show it that there was an easier path to follow, and that path went through her.
Something inside her called to the mana beneath her. It wavered, then curved toward her ever so slightly, and then—
The connection snapped into place. Ana was filled with that same sense of strength and calm and destruction, and of life that endured and went on and persisted on a geological time scale. Of undeniable force that would crush anything and everything beneath it with the patience of a mountain and the cataclysmic violence of one tectonic plate subsuming another. She could be immovable, unstoppable, unbreakable, if only she could make this timeless force bend to her will.
She dimly felt her knees hitting the grass, but unlike last time the connection didn’t break. She didn’t let it. She kept drawing, kept allowing the life force of the stone beneath her circulate through her, and before she knew it she was trying to force that mana into a shape, despite her promises to Tellak. The stream inside her broke and split into strands, their ends swelling with power and swaying wildly as they searched for some place to connect and discharge, and if she could only force them into the correct shape—
A slap that made Ana’s ear ring broke her concentration utterly. The strands snapped back together, the building power returning to the earth as the connection broke, and Ana became aware of herself and the world around her again.
“Ana! I’m so sorry, but are you all right?” Touanne was above her, shaking the sting out of her hand, her voice filled with remorse and concern.
Ana was lying on her back, her legs folded under her uncomfortably. Her left cheek stung horribly, and when she touched it her hand came away wet. Her throat felt raw. “You slapped me,” she croaked up at the woman above her.
“You were about to kill yourself!” Touanne’s voice broke, and she radiated relief. “You were drawing more and more mana and giving it nowhere to go! Were you trying to cast something?”
Ana felt her face heat up. “I think I was, yeah. How did you know?”
“Ana, my connection is in the forties. The way you were drawing I could have felt it from a hundred feet away, never mind ten. The way you collapsed and started foaming at the mouth was a pretty clear sign that something was wrong, and I won’t describe the sounds you were making. But gods beyond, why? Tellak specifically told you not to! I know that she did, because she specifically asked me to keep an eye on you, and a good thing, too!”
“Yeah,” Ana admitted. “That was fucking dumb of me. Sorry. And thank you.” She started to try and get up, but Touanne kept her down with a hand on her chest.
“You stay right there for a few minutes. If I may, I want to make sure that you didn’t do any damage.”
“Sure. Yeah. Whatever you need to do.”
There followed a few minutes of Touanne sitting with her hands on Ana’s head, doing whatever it was she did to make sure Ana hadn’t hurt herself in her frankly idiotic attempt at shaping mana. Ana stretched her legs to a more comfortable position, but otherwise just relaxed. She’s been getting good at that in the last two weeks, at showing a little trust and letting herself just enjoy a little comfort and a lack of responsibility.
After an all too brief time, Touanne delivered her verdict. “You’re all right. There’s no damage that I can find, which hopefully means that if there is any at all it’s so minor that you can ignore it.”
“Thanks, doc.” Ana herself could hear that the word didn’t translate, and clarified, “That’s a word for a healer where I’m from.”
“You’re welcome, but if you truly want to thank me, be more careful in the future. I’m just glad you’re not hurt. No more attempts to shape until Tellak is there to guide you!”
“I promise. Really.”
“I’ll hold you to it. Now, I’ve not been having more success with the crystals. The mana here is stronger than I’d expected, and I can feel something, but I need more mana to really break through. Would you be willing to move another mile or so into the forest? We can stay close to the road, I just need some more distance from the Waystone.”
“Fine by me.” Ana got to her feet and was pleasantly surprised when Touanne handed her a waterskin. She hadn’t noticed, but she was suddenly thirsty. “How long have we been out?”
“Two hours or so. And by the sauce on your face, you had some of Eskil’s chicken skewers for lunch. Those always have far too much salt.”
“Tasty, though,” Ana said and took a deep drink, then handed the waterskin back.
Touanne snorted softly and smiled. “They are that. Try the ones with loquat if you haven’t. Absolutely delicious.”
They walked about a mile south until they found a narrow path that led off the road to a well used campsite, where they got back to what they’d each been doing. When they returned to the outpost some time before sundown they both felt like they’d made some progress, and Ana promised to take Touanne with her the following afternoon.
That night Ana met Messy and Ray for dinner at Petra’s. They talked and laughed, then went to the baths for a last call soak before bed.
“I’m heading out tomorrow morning…” Ray said as they sat in the hot bath. She didn’t verbalize the question, but the question in her eyes was clear enough.
“Sorry, Ray. I’m trying to get a handle on this magic stuff before I head out again. Hoping to learn something I can use. Tellak’s promised to guide me once I feel ready, and I don’t. Not yet.”
“That’s all right.” Ray sounded both relieved and disappointed. “I could use some time alone out there to think. But you’re welcome to join anytime.”
“Thanks. Maybe next time.”
“Maybe next time,” Ray agreed.
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