Eight: Chapter 15

Dr. Otter was nowhere to be found. I called for her, but the Glen was empty. My bandage was soaked through and bright red, but at least the bleeding had stopped.

I drank some water, washed my face, and flopped on my back to wait.

A while later—about an hour, judging by how far the sun traveled—there was still no sign of Ikfael, and my stomach rumbled. I hobbled over to the refrigerator to cut a couple of steaks from the deer’s shoulder, then got the fire started. It took a couple of minutes of sparks flying everywhere before one finally hit where it was supposed to. Thankfully, I kept a stack of materials ready, so I didn’t have to search for kindling and wood.

The food helped, but it was hard to enjoy a meal while in pain. Afterwards, I had the crazy idea to test the stiletto’s anesthetic properties. It was either that or let the worry building inside me take over.

I briefly held the spike over the fire to disinfect it, and then once it was cool, slid it under the bandage, careful not to puncture myself again. The pain lessened, but not enough. I enchanted the stiletto with qi and nature mana, and only then did the pain disappear completely. I breathed much easier with it gone.

With nothing else to do, I grabbed some cedar bark to braid into cordage. It’d help to keep my hands occupied, but my mind was left free to mull on my fear-thoughts. I worried about how long it would take Ikfael to return; the last time had been three days.

I struggled to remember if I’d seen any plants that fought infections. Honey was supposed to help, but the only place I’d found bees was near the Meadow of the Evil Death Mushrooms. Not a place I ever wanted to visit again.

Ugh… what about worst-case scenarios? Did I have the guts to self-amputate if necessary? If so, how would I even prepare for that?

After half an hour, I realized my thoughts weren’t helping, and my calf was still numb. The enchantment was lasting longer than expected. Putting down the cordage, I drew the second stiletto to examine it, but there was nothing special to see: faint striations in the surface and a bit of muck I’d missed when cleaning it.

I infused the stiletto with nature mana, and while I didn’t see any changes, my fingers grew numb while handling the blade. The addition of qi strengthened it, and I sensed the network of old meridians inside. The qi moved through them, like water flowing through dried-up riverbeds.

I gasped. The qi revealed a pattern in the way the meridians were laid out—a line with eight branches, the rune for Nature Magic! It was larger than the rest, like a transistor on a circuit board, and the rest of the pattern flowed away from it.

After a minute, the infused qi was used up, and the meridians disappeared from view. The numbing effect continued though. I added more, and the runes became visible once again. Now that I could see them, I switched to nature mana and the meridians shimmered as they absorbed the energy, just like when Ikfael cast her spells.

I licked my lips, excitement building inside me. The key to magic. Runes are the key to magic.

For the next experiment, I poured pure mana into the pattern, and it was first drawn to the rune for Nature Magic. There, it was absorbed and distributed to the rest of the meridians. They shimmered again.

I’d solved the puzzle! Pure mana was converted into elemental mana via a rune, and it was then fed into the rest of a runic design to create a magical effect. Effectively, it was a multistage process.

More evidence. I needed more evidence to prove this wasn’t a one-off magical effect based on some peculiarity of the bone spikes, because if this really was how magic worked, then I had a shot at working out how healing magic worked. I could save my leg without having to rely on Dr. Otter.

I jumped up and hobble-ran to the refrigerator. The Antler of Icy Breath was too cold to handle directly, so I wrapped it in what was left of my shirt.

Gah! I was out of qi, and the mana inside the antler was too faint to sense without its help. There was nothing to do but wait for my qi to recover.

Or was there?

I closed my eyes and focused on steadying my breathing—on letting my thoughts, both dark and distracted, go their way—until I had a firm handle on my emotions. Only then did I use yi to lead qi; my mind applied pressure to speed up the flow through my meridians. Except, it wasn’t just qi. I also felt for the cool, elusive touch of mana and willed it to follow along.

My thoughts kept coming loose—to chase after worries and excitement—but every time they strayed, I re-centered and continued to push. I kept on doing that until I felt myself gain in qi and mana. Meditation could speed up the recovery rate of both!

I only needed a couple of points of each for the next experiment, so I meditated until I didn’t feel quite so empty. Then, enchanting the antler revealed a rune of three wavy lines connected to a network of meridians. Similarly to before, there’d been a brief shimmer when the mana was converted into a magical effect. When it faded, the pattern did too, but I’d seen enough to believe with some confidence that the key to casting a healing spell was finding the relevant runes.

Unfortunately, discovering them on my own would be tough. The runic design that created the anesthetic effect included several loops and whorls, and the same was true for the antler’s cold effect. The runes weren’t so messy they’d be impossible to memorize, but they were more complicated than I’d likely be able to work out with just Skill-Sensei’s help, especially given that I’d have to constantly wait on my magical energies to recharge for any experimentation.

No, the best way to learn the healing rune was from… I slumped in disappointment: Ikfael. I’d gone full circle. The answer to staving off infection was still Dr. Otter.

Well, I’d just have to manage long enough for her to return. And if she didn’t come back in time, then—I took a breath and strengthened my resolve—I’d just have to do what was necessary on my own.

The next morning, I frowned down at my leg. The flesh was swollen and red, and the muscles felt tender to the touch. My efforts infusing the wound with qi and mana over the last eight hours had only slowed the infection down, not fought it off completely.

I grimaced and hobbled outside. The first blush of dawn peeked over the trees. The cold mist clung to me as I circled around the pool. “Ikfael, are you here? Hello? Hello?”

Ikfael didn’t respond. By that point, she’d been missing for a couple of days. Was she on another three-day journey? A longer trip than that? There was no way to know, and that scared me.

Easy now, Ollie. Panic never solved anything. One step at a time.

I unwrapped the wound and left it open to the air. Now that it was officially infected, the bandage would only make things cozy for the bacteria inside. I also pumped my leg full of qi and nature mana, hoping they’d continue to slow the infection.

In the meantime, I got a fire started and gathered the things I’d need in case I did have to amputate. My hands shook, and I had to work extra carefully to re-knap the flint hand ax. Luckily, I still had the cordage meant for tanning the deer hide. It’d come in handy for tying off the stump and—

I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it. There was no way I was going to amputate half my leg. There had to be another solution. Had I missed anything yesterday? Any hint for what the healing rune might look like?

I’d already consulted with Skill-Sensei, but checked again.

The rank increase from 0 to 1 had come from the realization that magic was a multi-stage process. The initial rune converts the mana into the relevant domain, and then runes turn it into a magical effect.

The rune with three wavy lines had turned out to be Aeromancy.

There was a new notification too:

Interestingly, both Spear Arts and Stealth must’ve ranked up overnight.

There was an article I’d read years ago that talked about memory encoding during sleep. Supposedly, the lack of sensory inputs made it easier for the sleeping brain to stabilize and consolidate memory, which, when I thought about it, was what the System did—preserving memory in amber, forever within reach.

Funny how the article came to mind just when I needed it. Or was that my 5 in Biology at work? Maybe. Possibly. Probably. Even though it felt just like me remembering something by happenstance.

Focus, Ollie. This isn’t the time to get distracted.

I picked up a stiletto to refresh my memory of the runes inside, and then closed my eyes to remove any visual distractions. It took a while to calm the oscillations in my mind and ignore the watery fear in my belly enough to build a mental image of the Nature and Anesthetic runes.

My mana poured into the combined runes. The feeling of something fresh and lively flashed through me—filling me like a balloon—before it overflowed and spilled out. The feeling hung in the air, and in that moment anything seemed possible.

But only for a moment. Directionless at the cusp between potentiality and reality, the spell threatened to dissipate, so I willed it toward my injury. The throbbing disappeared. In fact, I couldn’t feel my leg at all. It was as numb as a rock.

The rest of me felt relief, and underneath that—below the terror of potentially losing my leg to amputation—was jubilation. I’d been excited before to move water with my will, but this was a proper spell, my childhood dreams realized.

As a kid in little Sherwood, Oregon, I’d been a freak and an outsider. I’d done my best to assimilate. I learned to dress like the other kids, to talk like them, and cuss like them. I learned to play football and basketball. I even gave up on speaking Spanish. But none of that mattered. I was a halfbreed born to a traitorous woman who married a Mexican man.

Then, when I found science fiction and fantasy, that had just sealed the deal. I was a freak, an outsider, and a geek. No one wanted anything to do with me.

The stories gave me refuge, as did the woods out behind the family house. If it wasn’t for them and for mi abuelito, I don’t know that I would’ve made it. And now, here I was, making magic. Real, visible magic, just like in the stories. It was so damn satisfying.

All the time I spent hanging out in my imagination with Merlin, Pug, Harry, Kvothe, and all the other magicians—it hadn’t been for nothing. The feeling ran deeply through me. I was moved, down in my bedrock, like my whole existence was validated. There was still work to do—I didn’t have time to celebrate—but for a moment I felt whole.

There was a feeling of emptiness too. I’d been burning mana and qi off and on through the night, and the spell cost me the last quarter of my mana tank, about four points worth.

After a minute, the numbness in my leg faded, and the Anesthetized condition disappeared. I also received notification for a skill rank up:

“I dub this spell Anesthetic,” I muttered. “And so we keep going.”

I visualized the Aeromancy and antler runes combined. My mana tank was practically empty, but a space for the spell opened inside me anyway—only there was nothing with which to fill it. Without enough mana, the spell wouldn’t trigger. I still felt the potential, though, and interestingly, the Aeromancy skill also ranked up.

“And you? You’re Cold Snap.”

My understanding of how magic worked was growing, and now it was time to really push to see how much support the System gave. I mentally gathered everything I knew about magic into a tidy bundle, and then sat with the information in a meditative trance, holding myself open to any stray thoughts that might lead me to the healing rune.

There were flashes of insight and slight epiphanies for how I might extend what I knew, imagery and ideas from the novels I’d read and the games I’d played, and a whole host of thoughts and ideas, but nothing that had any heft and weight. There wasn’t anything to the degree of holding the spear or drawing the bow.

Even after a couple of hours of me sweating in the sun, doing my best to keep calm and focus, the healing runes evaded me.

The longer I sat, the more my nerves frayed and the harder it was to maintain my focus. The frustration grew and grew—and the fear too—until I couldn’t sit still anymore. I’d slowed the infection, but hadn’t stopped it completely. My life was still in danger unless I found a way to heal the injury. That or amputate.

I fled from the meditation and hobbled around the Glen, searching for anything that might contain the healing runes. I pulsed qi through the trees, plants, and flowers. The results were nil.

Well, what about traveling to the farms to the east?

They were only, what, three or four miles away. That was a couple hours’ hike in difficult terrain—longer injured, of course—but I could make a crutch easily enough. Wasn’t that a much more sensible plan than amputation? What had I been thinking earlier? Why didn’t I even consider making contact with the people of this world? There was no need to worry about them mistaking me for a plant creature in disguise—all I had to do was bleed red to show them I was human—and I could pretend to be deaf and mute, then mime my way through asking for help.

My fists clenched.

No, that wasn’t the problem anymore. The fear was that they wouldn’t help even after knowing I was human. I was an outsider, after all. Weak and injured too. It’d be easy enough for someone unscrupulous to take advantage of the situation and steal the soldier’s coins, the only things I had to trade.

Did farmers even have a remedy for infection? How common was healing magic in this world? What if, while I was away, Ikfael returned to the Glen and then left again? If only there was some way to message her or find out where she went, then I could—

The rest of the thought vanished as an idea exploded in my mind: Ikfael attracted spirit mana. I was so taken by surprise that, for a moment, it disarmed me. I stood helpless as the implications rolled through me.

I couldn’t make a spirit ball fast enough—all it needed was a tiny bit of mana—and then when I let it go I hardly breathed as I watched it drift and sink under the pool’s surface. About a yard from the bottom, the spirit ball shimmered and disappeared. That hadn’t been a trick of the light. I was sure it had shimmered.

I lost track of the second spirit ball before it reached the bottom.

The third one definitely shimmered, as if passing through an invisible boundary, moving from one plane of existence to another, which was likely exactly what had happened. When Ikfael had led me on the spirit journey, we’d passed through into the spirit world right around there.

I took a breath to get my emotions under control and began to sculpt a small statue of me with a blotch on my right leg. Not sure what would help, I poured my intent into the sculpture and even whispered into its ear, “Ikfael, please contact me if you can.”

The sculpture sank to the bottom of the pool and disappeared.

After twenty minutes, I sculpted a second figure, this time of Ikfael. To ensure I caught her attention, I absolutely loaded the sculpture’s arms with fish.

The third sculpture was the most complicated yet. It was of Ikfael and me together, crouched down while we waited to ambush the buck. The sculpture wasn’t as detailed as the others—I didn’t have time for that—but the figures’ postures captured the feeling of tension and waiting.

I meditated in between messages to recover my mana. The sun was high in the sky, and I sweated profusely, even with the mist from the waterfall to keep me cool.

The water splashed, and I thought—hoped— it might be Ikfael returning, but instead a pillar of water rose from the pool to about my height. The top flattened into the shape of Ikfael’s tablet, the one she used during her rituals. An image appeared on the screen of Ikfael sitting in a chair, her back straight, a stiff smile on her face.

There was a lit sconce on the stone wall behind her, but most of the room’s light seemed to come from a roaring fire out of view. A mug of something hot steamed on the table in front of her, along with a series of sculptures, the ones I’d sent through.

I sagged with relief. Everything would be all right now. But where is she? Likely somewhere in the spirit world, a place represented by a stone room, but that was all I was able to tell from what I could see through the tablet.

The question must’ve shown on my face, because Ikfael tilted the screen. The view panned, and I saw Diriktot sitting across from her.

The last time I’d seen him, he’d been wearing a suit. Today, though, he had on a leather apron over a linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The coarse black hair on his arms couldn’t hide the powerful muscles underneath. Behind him was a forge burning brightly.

The god waved.

I just about died, which was something he’d seen before, but still… I. Just. About. Died.

A twinkle came to Diriktot’s eyes, and he started talking to Ikfael. As soon as he did, Ikfael let go of the screen, which swung the view back to her, and she nodded along to whatever he was saying. Her own brows climbed, and at one point her jaw dropped.

Whatever it was, it must’ve been a hell of a story. Why wasn’t there a microphone attached to the tablet? I wanted to listen in too—to find out what was going on and be able to explain the soon-to-be dire straits in which I found myself.

Ikfael interrupted Diriktot with a question. His answer must’ve satisfied her, because she turned to gesture at the screen. More water rose from the pool to form a second pseudopod next to the first. It cleared the bank of debris and left behind two bowls.

The first was made of stone, and looked like the ones I’d seen Ikfael use before. The second was made from polished wood, stained dark. There was a design inside, but I’d have to look closer to see it. Both bowls were full of water.

Beside the stone bowl, the pseudopod left a collection of water sculptures: a stack of five fish and a deer’s hind leg and haunch. Beside the wooden bowl, the pseudopod left the same sculptures, but also included a stiletto, a rolled-up hide, and the Antler of Icy Breath.

Events had taken a strange turn, and I had a lot of questions—very important questions, like why Ikfael was hanging out with a fallen god—but they had to wait, because it looked like an offer to trade was being made. The water in the bowls promised healing in exchange for the stuff represented by the sculptures. That was good—very good—but why were the trades so freaking expensive? The stone bowl wasn’t bad, but the wooden one—

“No way. I’m not trading Antler-Sensei.”

It had taught me the Cold Snap spell, and maybe there were other things I could learn from it. More importantly, the antler was the key to being able to store food long term.

I could afford to trade a stiletto away. The hide would be a more painful loss, as every inch was needed for my planned projects. Still, I could potentially hunt another deer. The antler, though, was irreplaceable unless I found another unideer.

Just what exactly had Diriktot told her to inspire her to make this trade? I was dying to know, but first I had to make sure I didn’t really die, while also holding onto as much of my stuff as possible.

“Can we negotiate? I’ll give you two haunches, a stiletto, and anything I can make over the course of a day—spears, axes, whatever you want and however many you want—but I keep the hide and the antler.”

Ikfael picked up the spirit sculpture of me with the blotch on my leg, then tore the leg off. She waggled it in front of the screen, the message obvious: either accept one of the trades or be prepared to lose a leg. There’d be no negotiation.

She’d taken a hard bargaining position, which didn’t seem like her at all. Was it a test? A leap of faith of some kind? There was a god involved, so maybe it was? Diriktot was out of view of the tablet, but Ifkael occasionally snuck glances in the direction where he’d been sitting, so I presumed he was still there and paying attention.

She watched as I struggled with how to respond. Her eyes weren’t unkind. She wasn’t being a hard-ass just on a whim. There was something about the wooden bowl that I didn’t understand.

I gestured, encouraging Ikfael to elaborate on why it cost so much, but she quirked her head in response and smiled, not giving anything away.

I pretended to pour the water in the wooden bowl on my leg to heal the infection.

Ikfael nodded yes.

I pretended to keep the bowl and—

Ikfael shook her head no.

“What? I don’t even get to keep it?”

If the trade wasn’t for the bowl, then was it the water that was special? Did it provide a permanent benefit or a powerup of some kind?

I gestured, “Can I examine the bowl and water?”

She nodded yes.

Inside the bowl, a snake was painted in gold, spiraling outward from the center to the rim, and the design was reminiscent of the carvings I’d seen at Chichen Itza. The water inside looked normal. I sniffed, and it smelled clean. If there was any mana, it was too faint for me to sense.

I made the signs for magic and water. “Can I enchant it?”

She shook her head no, and instead gestured toward the bowl itself.

“Magic the bowl?”

She nodded yes, so I took a closer look. The wood was mahogany and was well worn with age. There were also tiny gaps in the gold paint. I got the feeling that it was something precious and belonged in a museum.

I gathered qi and mana in my hands and let the energies seep into the wood. They swept in like a slow ocean tide, and then they found the meridians, dropping into the runnels to flow through the patterns hidden within. I recognized the water mana rune, and attached to it were a series I didn’t know.

I licked my lips, hope rising. Are these—are they healing runes?

I carefully set the wooden bowl down and picked up the stone one. Enchanting it revealed a random network of channels within it. Nothing that looked like a rune though.

Ikfael smiled at me, her eyes crinkling in pleasure. She gestured to tell me to take my time. I had until sundown to decide if either bowl was worth the price. Then, the screen and pseudopods fell back into the pool.

For whatever reason, Ikfael was giving me the opportunity to learn a healing spell. That was what it looked like anyway. But why the convoluted approach? She could’ve easily said, “Here’s the rune. Heal yourself.”

It was mystifying at first, but then I realized that underpinning everything she’d done for me was some kind of exchange for either food or labor, whether it was fish or helping to get rid of the pests who’d come to the Glen.

The only time she did something without a clear benefit was when she’d healed me after I was poisoned by a devil vine. Except that was apparently done as a favor to Diriktot, according to Ikfael’s Blessing, so it was still an exchange, just with someone else.

Well, I wasn’t one to let an opportunity go to waste. I mean, even if it turned out that the runes weren’t for a healing spell, they’d still likely be important given the lengths Ikfael and Diriktot were going through to get me to learn it. And I still had access to treatment for my infected leg—all I had to do was purchase the cheaper Healing Water in the stone bowl.

All in all, it looked like I’d come out of the situation with a new spell and a healed leg, no matter what. So, I spent the rest of the day frantically memorizing the runes in the wooden bowl. I briefly considered sketching them with chalk, but the runes had to be perfect to work. Anything I drew would be hopelessly imperfect. I even tried to take a picture of the rune with the Status camera, but the result was an error.

Everything was put on hold while I focused on the task at hand. I didn’t eat, didn’t train, and didn’t do anything that wasn’t related to meditating and memorizing. I circulated my energies faster and faster, and every half hour, I enchanted the bowl to commit the runes to memory.

Partway through, it occurred to me that if this process was a training montage, it’d be the dullest in the history of film. All I was doing was sitting by a pool and staring into a bowl of water.

Then I realized I was being foolish and ate lunch. My brain needed nutrition to function at its best. I wolfed down the meal, and went back to meditating and memorizing. Then later, when the light started to dim, I ate the leftovers for dinner.

Thirty points worth of qi and mana later, I had it.

A pillar of water rose from the pool. The screen re-formed to show Ikfael watching Diriktot as he assembled a machine. New black iron gleamed in the firelight. The various handles and levers were shiny brass. There was a hopper at the top and spout at the bottom.

The machine looked familiar, and then it hit me. I’d seen enough industrial coffee roasters to recognize what they looked like. This one was big enough to easily process ten pounds of beans at a time. Behind it was a stack of man-sized burlap bags full of—heaven help me—Ethiopian coffee beans. That freaking Diriktot had brought back souvenirs from my world.

“I chose,” I said through our improvised sign language.

The screen followed Ikfael back to the table. She hopped into the chair and got herself comfortable before gesturing: “What decision?”

I got out a bowl of my own. It was just a stone that happened to be concave enough to hold water, but it’d do. I brought the runes I’d just memorized to mind and connected them to my mana.

My skin flushed and my eyelids fluttered as the magic flowed through me. Heat and coolness mingled. My body, mind, and spirit filled with the potential, and then, when the energy was at its peak, I let it all go into the water.

The water glowed briefly. That was all, but it was enough. I’d seen the same thing when Ikfael had cast her spell. The water sizzled and stung when I poured it over my leg. The feeling turned cool and soaked into my skin.  Then the wound closed, and a quick check of my Status showed that the negative conditions were gone.

Ikfael grinned at me. I grinned back.

A pseudopod came to take her bowls back, which were still full of water. She shrugged, like it was no big deal that the trade had fallen through.

“Wait,” I said before the screen retracted.

Ikfael quirked her head, confused, but the screen waited as I’d asked.

I ran—it felt good to run again—to the refrigerator to retrieve two quarters of the butchered deer. I placed them in front of the screen, along with one of my stilettos, the one with the hickory hilt. I made the sign for fish and indicated twenty of them. Then, I put my hands together in prayer and bowed. I had no idea if she could feel my intent, but I was ever so grateful.

She was fair and kind. Perhaps she’d originally helped me as a favor to Diriktot, but I didn’t think that was the basis of our relationship anymore. Oh, no doubt he was involved in the decision, but from the way the Taoism skill glowed within me, I knew Ikfael hadn’t needed to let me study the bowl for free. That was a gift, and I wanted to show my appreciation in return.

Ikfael’s grin got bigger, and she stuck her chest out, pleased. She turned to chirp at Diriktot, but I didn’t get to see what came next. The pillar grabbed the deer meat and stiletto, and fell back into the water.

I’d lost the opportunity to ask questions of Diriktot, but it was important to me to show my appreciation to Ikfael for everything she’d done. I was a man who paid his debts and was grateful for good fortune.

Apparently, relationships are everything, even in sales.

I fell back, exhausted and energized at the same time. The fire was down to embers, enough for a small glow. The moon was up and climbing up into the sky.

I couldn’t sleep. My mind spun around the spells I’d learned: Anesthetic, Cold Snap, and Healing Water. All three were useful, but the most important was undoubtedly Healing Water. With it, I could take more chances, make a few mistakes, and be able to recover from them.

I would be able to finally—finally!—stop needing others to save me and instead save myself. A few more abilities and maybe I’ll even be able to handle meeting the people of this world.