Chapter Sixty-Five - Storytime

Physical Manakinesis
Rank F - 00%
The ability to push mana out of your body using motion as a focal point.

“Huh?” I said.

“What?” Amaryllis asked.

My confusion must have been showing, or maybe she just noticed that my hug and thank-yous had stopped for a moment as I tried to figure out the skill I had just unlocked.

“Um, I got a new skill,” I said. “It’s a General Skill called... Physical Manakinesis.”

“Manakinesis?” Amaryllis asked. She frowned as she seemed to think about that for a moment, then gave up with a shrug. “Never heard of that one. I expected you to unlock Fireball, or perhaps Mana Manipulation or Mana Shaping. The latter are valuable skills for anyone who wants to practice magic.”

“Yeah, I can imagine. The skill description is kind of strange too. It says something about using my body as a focal point for pushing out mana?” That didn’t quite parse for me. Or maybe I just didn’t know enough about magic to make sense of it.

“Let’s go ask the fossils. I’m loath to admit it, but they are both rather experienced, even if they seem somewhat uneducated. Abraham especially,” Amaryllis said.

I didn’t comment on how rude it was to say that kind of thing, Amaryllis was who she was, and maybe one day she’d learn to look past that, but it wasn’t my right to try and change her, really. Instead I hopped to my feet and skipped across the deck to the back.

Abraham was squinting at a grease-and-oil covered book, a tiny set of spectacles perched on the end of his nose. His brows rose and his look of deep concentration faded as soon as he saw us coming closer. “Ah-hah! Figured out your little spell, did you? I bet you can’t wait to launch that monster into some unsuspecting beast’s maw and see what happens!”

“Not yet,” I said. “I unlocked a skill, and I don’t know what it does.”

“Oh, what sort of skill is it?” Raynald said. He locked the ship’s wheel in place with a metallic device and came to stand on the edge of the castle so that he could look down on us. “I might know a zing or two.”

“Ah, it’s called Physical Manakinesis,” I said. “Do you know anything about it?”

Abraham frowned and started tugging at his mustache, but Raynald didn’t have any such problems. “Ah, I know zat skill, yes. I don’t have it myself, but we’ve fought people who did. Abraham, do you remember zose fish-people in ze Hoofbreaker Woods?”

“The scaly little bastards with the weird dancing magic?” Abraham asked.

“Story time?” I wondered. I didn’t clap my hands like a five year old, because I wasn’t five.

Abraham laughed and nodded. “Haha! There’s always time for a good tale or two. Raynald, let’s fix something to eat that isn’t some poor dead insect, and we can tell the girls all about our adventures in the far East.”

I think we were all getting a little hungry, because no one disagreed. Soon enough Amaryllis and I were trying to help as the boys pulled some meat out of a rune-covered cooler and, after wiping the top of the engine clean, started cooking the meat right on the metal top-plate.

It was a little weird, but I couldn’t argue with the mouth-watering scents that I caught every so often. There wasn’t any room for a table on the deck, but Raynald pulled a plank from somewhere and set it on some of the strange equipment and we found some stools tucked away in one of the little cabins at the back.

In no time at all we were having a barbeque a league over a grassy plain, the bright blue skies all around and the distant call of the flying whales serving as a counterpoint to the Shady Lady’s thump-thumping engine.

“So,” Abraham said after taking a bite of steak and swallowing it whole. “There we were. Out beyond Trenten lands because we ran into a bit of a kerfuffle with some of their royal guards and had to make a bit of a run for it. Unfortunately, they were on the persistent side and wouldn’t just let us go off to mind our own business.”

“This is a few years after the Cry statuette heist,” Raynald said.

“It’s not a heist if you’re stealing something back,” Abraham said. “Now, we were off in the deepest end of the forest known as the Hoofbreaker Woods. Nasty terrain there. Lots of very small cliffs and ridges, and the soil is rocky and hard to travel over.”

“Hence the name,” I guessed.

“That’s right,” Abraham said.

“What does any of this have to do with Broccoli’s new skill?” Amaryllis wondered.

“Ah, but see, we encountered people with that skill deep in the woods. We reached the end of the forest after losing our cervid pursuers, and being just a mite lost, we decided to follow the coast South until we encountered the Grey Wall.”

“The Grey Wall?” I wondered. I knew I was just adding more and more delays until we got the important part of the story, but the little tangents were just too much fun not to dive into.

“A huge wall made of grey stone, built to cut off the advance of those pesky deerfolk,” Abraham explained. “So, here we were, walking along a long shore, mostly well fed because the monsters in those woods were only in their twenties and they made for good eating. And then we encounter a group of strange savages!”

“I’d hardly call them savages,” Raynald said. “Zey had zeir own culture and were fairly well educated in magical matters. Zey were merely behind in other zings.”

“They walked around as naked as they were born, haha!” Abraham said. “Little fish-like folk, no taller than my waist, and they didn’t carry a weapon on them. Nice enough folk, all things said.”

“And the skill?” Amaryllis asked.

“Ah, yes. See, they didn’t have weapons, they fought with arms and legs and kicks and, most of all, magic. Instead of casting proper spells though, they would shape their magic and strike out with that. It was a little crude, but some of them were exceptionally talented.”

Raynald shook his head. “It’s not like more traditional casting, where a spell is built and zen activated to unleash an effect. Not zat zey didn’t have zat as well. Zey just coated zemselves in mana and used it to supplement zeir fighting prowess. Like zis,” he said as he brought his hand up. Mana gathered around his closed fist in a blink, and then his entire hand started to drip with wet-looking mana. Raynald punched the air off to the side and a burst of mana shot out, then he brought his hand back and the mana returned.

As the grenoil man waved his arm about in the air, the watery mana flowed after it, dancing through the sky like one of those tassels gymnasts sometimes used.

“That’s pretty,” Amaryllis said. “And it shows decent control, but it doesn’t look... weaponizable.”

“Hrmph,” Raynald said. He brought his arm up, then slashed it down along his side. The watery mana shifted into a narrow band and sliced through the last few inches of our makeshift table. The wood clunked to the floor. “Ze issue is range, but some of zose fish people could imbue zeir mana into ze world around zem and use it all as a weapon. A kick to ze ground would unleash somezing similar to ze earth pillar spell, a punch would launch a weak fireball and so on.”

“It reminds me a bit of fighting a terramancer, only with water,” Abraham said. “Tough fight those.”

“Wow,” I said. So, if I understood things correctly, I had just unlocked the ability to become the avatar, and I was totally okay with that. Though I did hope that it came without tattoos.

Amaryllis gave me a strange look. “You’re thinking stupid thoughts again,” she said. “It’s sad that I already recognize that look on your face.

“N-no,” I said. “It’s just that the way Mister Raynald describes the skill reminds me of something, and I think it sounds really awesome. I should practice until I hit apprentice rank with it!”

“That’s the spirit!” Abraham said. “We’ve got another day and a bit before we crash over Greenshade, that’s plenty of time to hone your skills.”

“Crash over Greenshade?” Amaryllis asked.

Abraham laughed. “It’s a figure of speech!”

Amaryllis glared at him for a while, then sighed. “So, Broccoli, do you have any skills that aren’t topped off?”

“You mean that I can still improve? Um, yeah, a few. Most even,” I said as I poked Mister Menu.

“Um. In my general skills I have Insight, Makeshift Weapon Proficiency, Archeology, Friendmaking and Physical Manakinesis that all need more experience to rank up. And in my class skills I have Cleaning and Gardening that could use more training. Um. I have three class skill points, but I thought I should save them to get Cleaning up to Expert rank.”

Amaryllis slapped a hand over her face.

“What?” I asked.

“How are you so far behind?”

“I’m behind?” I asked.

Abraham seemed to think that this was hilarious because he guffawed and slapped the table a few times. Only Raynald’s intervention saved the plank from flopping to the ground.

“Most people, sane, intelligent people, work on any new skill until it’s as good as it can be. Accumulating so many skills without actually working on them is just so irresponsible,” she said. “Come on, get up. We can practice magic when you have the time to waste on that. We need to get your other skills up to par.”

“Ah, okay?” I asked. “I’m not sure how we’ll grind any of them, though,” I said.

Amaryllis had a dangerous and frankly kind of scary look in her eyes. “Why, Broccoli, we’ll just need to figure out how to practice as many skills at once as possible. I’m sure that weapon proficiency of yours can be trained anywhere on this ship while you’re cleaning and inspecting it from top to bottom.”

“Um,” I said.

“We can even practice that new skill of yours. I’m pretty sure pushing mana up against a mana-heavy attack will negate... some of the damage, at least.” She raised her talons and an electric buzz filled the air.

“Um,” I said with more feeling this time. The feeling was terror.

“Haha! That’s the spirit,” Abraham said. “Why, you remind me of that time I trained with an ancient monk atop the Jade peak. I nearly died three times on that first morning alone.”

“But we’re on an airship,” I pointed out. “Isn’t this a terrible place to fight.”

“No worries, Miss Bunch, the Shady Lady is one tough old ship. She can endure a bit of a scuffle with your feathery friend.”

Amaryllis jumped to her feet, and I did the same just in case. “Wait, wait, Amaryllis why are you doing this?” I asked as she started to advance towards me.

“To make you even stronger, of course. That way if we’re ever in trouble again we’ll be able to handle it better.”

That... was actually a pretty good reason to train a little bit. And sharpening my skills didn’t sound like a bad idea. I just wasn't keen on getting hurt.

“Don’t worry! If you lose any limbs I’m great at sewing,” Abraham said. “And Raynald here knows a healing spell or two!”

“I... I’m more of a lover than a fighter!” I said.

“Then you’ll love sparring!” Amaryllis said.

That day, I learned that dodging someone who could fly on an open deck was rather difficult.

***