Living in the depths of the forest was not, by any stretch of the imagination, what Lux would ever call comfortable—let alone luxurious. Yet, it offered one priceless perk: the profound, liberating absence of anyone breathing down her neck. No soldiers. No sanctimonious sermons from priests. No softhearted fools asking if she was "okay," their pity a condescending weight. Here, in the wild green embrace, she was truly alone, truly free.
She'd found a cave after days of searching. It was dry, remarkably hidden behind a curtain of thick vines and moss, and surprisingly spacious enough for one. Not exactly the grand, echoing palace of her mother, but it would do. And best of all? Her spoils from the hasty, brutal raid on the Duke's convoy—loot, trophies, call it what you will—were unexpectedly generous. A sturdy pair of well-made leather boots, softened with wear. A handful of decent daggers, their steel still sharp. A few dented plates and cups, remnants of human civilisation, and even a half-used oil lamp that cast a comforting, flickering golden glow in the dark. Not much, perhaps, but enough to play at civilisation in the untamed wild.
Six days bled into seven, marked only by the shifting light through the trees.
During that time, she trained—obsessively. Not her body, which was already honed to a lean, quick strength, but her newly awakened perception of mana. She meditated, visualising the invisible currents, strained her senses until they throbbed with an almost physical ache. And the grueling effort paid off. Subtle patterns began to emerge from the chaotic background hum. Whispers in the current. A language slowly revealing itself.
Mana truly was everywhere. That much became astonishingly clear. It pulsed in the hard, unyielding stone of the earth. It flowed through the rich, dark soil beneath her bare feet. It resonated within the warm, vibrant flesh of every living creature, herself included. And it danced with raw, untamed energy in the heart of a leaping flame.
One crisp afternoon, crouched beside a narrow, murmuring creek with her waterskin, she noticed something profoundly odd. The mana within the crystal-clear water moved—but not like the dense, slow mana she perceived in the solid rocks. It pulsed differently. Slower, perhaps... smoother, with a more fluid rhythm, like a slow, deep breath.
Does the material affect the mana's movement? she mused, a spark of intellectual hunger igniting within her. Is it an affinity? A fundamental difference in structure? Or density?
She began pacing along the muddy bank, a frantic energy possessing her, her thoughts spiraling with raw excitement. This was a puzzle, a code waiting to be cracked.
Over the following days, the forest became her laboratory, and she conducted her own crude, yet meticulous, experiments. She bled her kills—a rabbit, a pheasant—into the stream, watching—truly watching—as the mana from the fresh, dark crimson blood rippled and flowed, interacting with the mana of the water itself. She observed, recorded mental notes with a laser-like focus, and hypothesized, testing her theories against the subtle, shifting realities of the arcane. Then came the breakthrough, the truly startling discovery.
A thread.
Thin as a single strand of hair.
A faint, almost ethereal silvery-blue.
It pulsed faintly beneath the damp earth, near the roots of ancient trees, like a dying vein in the body of the world.
A mana capillary? A leyline? The words her mother had whispered, concepts too vast for her young mind then, now resonated with sudden clarity.
Whatever it was, it actively pulled mana toward it—like nectar to bees, or hungry blood to leeches. It wasn't just ambient energy diffusing. It was organized. A network. A hidden circulatory system beneath the world's skin.
By high noon, she was back in her cave, seated cross-legged before a crude altar fashioned from stolen goods and forest detritus. A gleaming silver knife, cold to the touch. A rabbit corpse, now stiff and unmoving. Some dead insects, their husks dry and brittle. A jagged piece of rock, rough and elemental.
"No clue what I'm doing, really," she murmured with a wolfish grin, a flash of white teeth in the dim light, "but that's precisely what makes it interesting."
She fiddled with each object, trying to sense resonance, trying to make mana move, to coax it, to manipulate it with her will.
Still nothing. The connections were there, the perception clear, but the *control* remained elusive.
On a whim—or maybe a deep, primal gut instinct, an ancient echo stirring in her blood—she dragged the cold edge of the silver blade across the palm of her left hand, letting a trickle of her own warm, living blood, a startling slash of bright crimson, fall onto the faint leyline thread pulsing near her cave's entrance.
And it reacted. Instantly. Visibly to her newfound perception.
The mana moved. Fast. Spiraling, condensing, shifting with an almost violent energy, drawing the blood-mana into its shimmering current.
Lux's heart raced, a frantic drum against her ribs, as she clutched her bleeding hand, watching the incredible phenomenon unfold.
"Finally," she whispered, her voice a rough gasp, the word tasting of triumph as she wrapped the small, quickly clotting cut with a strip of stolen, dark cloth. "We're going somewhere."
She stared at the merging energies, at the subtle dance of blood and arcane current, watching the interaction with rapt fascination.
So... it responds to blood. To life force. Curious. Very curious.
There was rhythm in the reaction, a pattern within the swirling energies. Like a complex dance—or a cryptic code being written before her very eyes.
"There's a pattern," she muttered, her eyes gleaming with discovery, already reaching for her precious, stolen notebook and a charred stick of charcoal. "There's *always* a pattern." Her hunger for knowledge, for understanding, had finally found its true feed for now but lunch still demanded attention.