My throat is as still raw, my eyes hurt, and the cold began to feel cold again.
My breaths came heavy, my head felt clear for the first time in, a long time.
As much as I felt cold, I also felt painfully warm.
The clearing had gone silent, Allen's Ki was frozen in what was probably annoyance, he was clearly uncomfortable, so I slowly let go of him, and backed away.
And for the first time, I really took notice, that my inner critic was was replaced with a void of silence.
The leather gloves had fallen apart at the seams, they were finicky, I had to use a mana string to guide the leather strips into the holes.
Just how reliant had I gotten on it?
Mana, the System, Runes…
Speaking of Runes, I needed to get my sled back, since it was pretty much the only stuff I had left.
Allen had stood up, and was looking at me in worry, that's nice if him- oh, that medical bill, 'three hundred Yul'? Something had been bugging me about that for some time now, I'd heard simple check ups at the clinic could cost upwards of tens of thousands of Yul, let alone an actual operation.
It was because of the lack of medical staff and traditional medicine here, sure a healer can fix your bones with magic, but things like allergies, or contracting some one in a million illness that nobody's ever head of -which is pretty common here, since you know, border Town that's extremely close to a GMZ?- it was incredibly rare for a person to have spells that could heal that kind of stuff.
So medicine, and other kinds of specialized healing equipment are needed for more complex surgeries, the kinds of surgeries that were often necessary due to the nature of the Guard, and the Hunters too, so, things get expensive quick.
I'm getting distracted, sled.
But as I began walking, I make a note to ask him about it, and pay him back if he had a hand in the lightening of that payment.
I act too much in reaction to what others do, and rely too much on temporary power.
Or wait, no, I thought that wrong, I have mana, I have power, just not enough to fight in anything like a prolonged fight without using tricks and loopholes, luck, and things like that.
I stopped at the sudden mix of shame and bitter melancholy that fell on my shoulders, at the fact that most of what I had done was luck, but, it is true.
The simple truth is that I am a scout, and a hunter.
The only combat experience I have is surprise attacks, traps and hit and run tactics, not actual prolonged, combat.
And on top of that, I'm too impatient.
In combat with the hydra, I wasted my Mana doing tricks and showing off, rather then actually killing that damned thing.
That secret boss was worse, though.
Not only did I idiotically enter into the fight running on fumes and adrenaline, I only tried to make a move after I had already lost a good chunk of my face!
I haven't had the chance to look in a mirror yet, so that's also going on the list too.
As I had been thinking, I had also been absentmindedly walking, though my Ki was still extended- the feeling of being aware of every life within kilometers of me wasn't actually very similar to the analogy of an eye.
And the ability to 'reel' that sense in, and sort of, pack and fold it into my body also wasn't very applicable to sight.
My body began to feel a bit more stable, as my Ki was brought back to me.
It was a slow process, I still wasn't good at controlling it in most ways other than just, flooding it out, and weaving it into myself like I did is mentally draining, and is like a vacuum for my stamina as well, which is also why I scrapped the mana formation version too.
Allen was speed walking at me, he had been talking, more shouting at me to stop or tell him where I was going, it was rude to ignore him, so I turned around, and stopped walking.
I then told him that i was going back over to my sled to retrieve my other stuff before we went back to his place.
There was a feeling that I should be putting more thought into my words, but for some reason, I didn't really feel like it at the moment, maybe it had something to do with the representation of my mental state shattering?
Hmm, I wonder why, I thought sarcastically.
Allen was speechless, apparently, I had said something strange, but, having informed him, I turned back around and continued on my way.
As I walked, a cloud that had been covering the sun finally reached the other side, and as it's light hit me, I near immediately felt slower.
It seems that cloud cover lessens the power of the de-buff, it's the same thing for the moon's buff, at least, it seemed that way.
The way it slowed me, was not at all like a resistance band, but more like I had simply been slowed by half.
It was strange, I was walking with the same amount of force and effort I usually do, but only making half the distance I normally would.
How does that work?
The sun doesn't have any inherent slowing properties, is it the solar radiation? Or the magic of that celestial body, because apparently they have that…
On that point, what constitutes a single unit of mana?
Up until now, I've been using the mana formation Mana Bullet in it's unaltered state as a means of measurement, but I don't know if my unaltered version is better or worse than anyone else's, I just know too little about it if I want to use it as a base for every other thing can cast.
Magic is -from what I understand- the physical energy of your body, mixed with the spiritual energy of your soul, which I am under the impression makes Mana, that mana then becomes Magic when mixing with what might be the mental energy of your mind, in the form of orders and directions applied to the mana itself.
A spell is therefore any kind of magic that has been expelled from you with direction and order? What constitutes a spell?
The mix of mana with mental energy is itself a hypothesis, more so, a guess based on how that works with runic arrays.
With arrays, the stabilizing shape, on the outside and near the center, acts in a way similar to a full circuit -or what I remember as calling a full circuit- it keeps the mana flowing within the rune without stagnating the entrapped Mana.
the guiding lines are there to bring the mana further into the space inside the shape.
Connecting these lines allows for the runic orders to remain consistent with what you want, if there were no lines, then the mana would enact every rune it could get in contact with at the same time, that makes the whole thing more 'confusing' for the mana, and more likely to explode as a result, and it would be a weak explosion at that!
its sort of like a sentence, runes are like words, the guiding lines are similar to punctuation, and the stabilizing shapes are like capitalized letters, and font.
It's probably odd, that I'm getting a headache just from my train of thought not getting joltingly interrupted and/or derailed by some part of my mind or body yelling for attention.
Even so, all those are good questions, I think, what I really need, is a journal, Ironically, blank paper is more expensive than already written books in the forbidden realm, books are rather uncommon as it is, it isn't unreasonable for a peasant to have one or two, but during the off season especially? A single piece of paper can be as, or more expensive than a single book.
Of course I'm no exception, as I had bought two books before this whole mess, but -as is common with books that are allowed in the forbidden realm- they were thin, low quality, sparse on actual detail, and were not only still expensive for the budget of a normal peasant salary, but also were both sold by merchants I've never seen again, one of whom was the Wizard king in disguise! so, of course I had hidde-
by the time that my mind had caught up with my body, I was sprinting back into my clearing.
'Form the circle, Runes: heating- acceleration- line, retention- upside-down fire- line, curled expression- inverted mana expulsion- line, add on center circle, temperature latch- mirrored cure latch- addition latch- inverted mirrored expression latch- complete.'
'Size: 8 ft by 10 ft = 80^2 ft, 80^2 ft -wont be enough, raising both by one- Sqf. Size: 99^2 ft. Rotation: null, Casting.'
as I entered the lot, mana string (spell?) in hand, I cast it out to where I needed it, and the thin strand of mana (magic?) with it's instructions engraved into it's movement paths, began to engrave the the array into the dirt under the snow.
by the time I reached where it was at -around the ruins of my house- it was already half way done.
the array will rapidly heat up the environment within it, absorb that heat, then 'kill' it, after that it'll absorb more mana and the cycle will repeat until the average temperature has gotten to a certain point, at that point, the center circle's runes will activate, and all mana within the array will get 'infected' with a command over the course of five cycles of the rune's mana, and once everything is 'infected', all the orders within the mana will 'pop' like a cell getting killed, and if it all goes right the mana will all disperse harmlessly because of this, to hinder any more mana from getting in, the string also has orders to disrupt the stabilizing shape after an hour, or after all the mana has escaped.
as the air began to slowly heat up more and more, I wasted no time, and started throwing the rubble of my ceiling out of the way of my cot.
once I got to the cot, the snow began to slowly melt, my body began to prickle with sweat.
after throwing the burnt thatch to the side with all the rest, I cleared the area of ash, looking for a certain notch in one of the planks, all of which were only slightly burnt.
I then wrenched the plank open, revealing that only the top layer of wood had been effected.
Behind that notched plank, a small hole carved into the clay and stone foundation laid, untouched by the flame.
within the secret compartment, was stored two books, and a bag of Yul.
the two books I talked about before, and what amounted to my savings.
Sighing in relief, I picked the cold books and bag up, and tucked them into the hand-warming pouch I had stitched into the leather outer shirt.
They weren't very big, so it was rather easy.
As I stood, I felt a change in the air, and a warm wind began to rush all around me, as disarrayed mana scrambled to escape the rune, and as it all left, the small bit of my mana still in the array did it's job and ruined the engraving.
It was as I turned around, that I noticed something was off.
The rune had done well, in ridding the ruins of snow, the debris was mostly just wet now.
It revealed something a bit odd.
To preface: when dealing with a fire, the best way to find the source is to look for the most burnt thing, or so I vaguely remember from my last life.
When I looked around, I noticed a few things: one, that my house did not fall onto itself, but rather, it collapsed backwards, meaning it fell away from the wall with the door.
On top of this, the three logs, that are still sticking up are all slanted, but the logs they secured are all free and scattered on the scene and in the clearing, probably under the snow.
And finally, the wood flooring under my cot was although covered in soot, none of it actually experienced fire damage…
"Hey, Oldman, when ya got to tha scene, 'as it like all this? Or…" I left the ending dangling, waiting for his response.
"Ahh, Shep, 're we- Ahh fookit, nae, yer shack was burnen like a damned pire, I may 'ave been a bit too forceful en me act o' killen tha flame," his voice was filled with frustration, that fell to something more like a begrudging conformation.
So, that means…
Just how much force did he use!?
But, that may be enough to understand what's going on here.
I walked over to one of the pieces of rubble that used to be a wooden roof panel.
See, my roofing, was in a very shoddy box gable, with thatch in the attic space, with a plank ceiling under that to keep it away from potential sparks.
The roofing half-logs, one side of their wood was nearly burnt to a crisp, but the other, was still mostly intact, the bark had protected them.
Though there still in pieces all over the place.
The flooring, walls and ceiling outside of what was under the remains of the cot, is burnt from the outside, in.
But the wood under the cot there, might suggest that everything had begun to burn after the house had fallen.
Although, a bit of rubble could have fallen onto it early, and with it pressing into the floor, the wood wouldn't have enough air to keep alight, as the cot was thatch.
The patterns of oddly spotted char underneath the cot, where the flames could have gotten through the rubble, and scorched only small bits of it.
Though, I don't know enough about fires to give a concrete answer.
It seems that someone threw a fireball at my house.
The most obvious bit of evidence of arson and not a mistake on my part, is the fact of the circumstances before the fire began.
Both my window, and my door, were wide open and blowing in heavy blizzard winds into the house from two directions. The flame would have died in minutes, let alone actually escape to the fireproofed floor.
That all being said.
"Somebody set my house on fire." I say as I turn to Allen once again.
"Shep, what- how 're ya so bleedin calm!? Yer house burnt tha hells down!" As he said it, he got closer to me, with a mix of confusion and shock on his face.
Am I, calm?
Looking inward, I realized that yes, I was calm.
Was.
"Who did this," I asked calmly.
He looked at me, conflicted, before taking a heavy breath in and moving to sit down infront of me, sighing as he did so.
"Shep, ya, really need ta watch what ya say."
Behind him, the form of a very slightly see through black board with dull tarnished brown edges made itself known with the noise of something like a rock hitting one of the metal edges.
[Ding]
[Quest board activated: Error: Find the Arso- wait, what?
QUEST OBJECTIVE: erR-]
[RE-INITIAT-]
[—Shutting down.—]
- - - -
Hheee heee, hoo, hoo.
Hope y'all have a good one.