My aching muscles made walking down the path a lot harder compared to the previous days. However, I really wanted to press on. My next checkpoint should be right around the corner, after all the map indicated, that I should cross a river after around a day and it was already my fourth day traveling, even my slow pace should be enough to reach the river by now. While on the road I once again started preparing leaves, to be used as mana testers. My plan was to spread them around my body to get a better idea of the paths the mana followed.
The day crawled by and my speed was slow, my muscles ached and by midday I looked like a kid trying to make a dress out of leaves, playing fairy queen or something. However, all the leaves were ripped and had many holes in them. I didn’t know how it would look for an outsider, but surely not queen like. Thus, I covered myself with my coat, the shirt had been packed away at some point, it wasn’t practical anymore. For my project I used a bunch of different leaves blue ones, red ones and a few yellow ones. It could have looked really colorful, but with them having lost their color it just looked pitiful.
Sadly, all this work didn’t pay off. Even though, I was exhausted after walking this long and had to take regular breaks, I didn’t feel anything from the leaves. What is the difference to yesterday, I felt more exhausted back then sure, but I my ragged breathing and pounding hearth, are almost as bad as back then, it couldn’t be that I was getting worse or something, could it? Maybe I exhausted some kind of storage back then, I really couldn't tell.
I could only continue and hope, that the leaves would trigger sometime along the way, that I would once again feel magic. I walked and walked. During the last few days, I entertained myself somewhat, by drawing the lines of the leaves in the air, but with my growing leaf suit, I could no longer move my arms as freely. With out anything to do, my mind wandered to the town I would reach someday Aegis, how will it look like, are the town people more open than the villagers, would I be able to find some work, maybe sell my game somewhere. I painted pictures in my mind, of big stone houses, imposing walls and majestic castles, like in the fairy tales.
Fantasizing about what was to come made the travel a lot more bearable and this way the hours flew by. Until the evening nothing of note happened, my leaf suit expanded up until my elbow, it wasn’t like a shirt or something though, as there were a lot of holes and gaps between leaves. Expanding or closing it up further wasn’t possible, my thread was running out. By this point the sun had already started to set and curiously the forest grew denser every dozen or so steps.
It reached a point where, even on the path, it was difficult to evade thorns and vines. How the merchants managed to traverse this, with out cutting everything down was beyond me. Luckily, I was small and somehow managed to snake my way through the undergrowth without damaging my leaf work, my coat however had to take a few scratches. A last vine required a more violent approach with my knife, and I was free.
I stepped out of the undergrowth onto a wooden plank and a stunning few revealed itself. In front of me was a winding river wider than my old house back in Daren, its shore was overgrown, with roots piercing the water like thick spears and beautiful yet creepy flowers sprouting from thick vines. The plank, I stood on was old and moldy, but luckily still solid. It was part of a bridge made up of similar planks. It seemed secure for the most part, but I should still cross it carefully, to avoid falling into the river.
It was a perfect opportunity to take a short break and wash my self a bit, the river was a bit green, but a lot better than me after days of travel. I started by taking of my back and the leaves, it took a while, but after a few a minutes I stood there naked and ready to clean myself. The leaves had been placed to the side tied together with the thread and secured by my shirt. Then I realized I had forgotten any kind of brush to clean myself, begrudgingly I used my hands to scrub away as much dirt as possible. Afterwards I just sat on the bridge to dry. Normally I would never do something like this, but I didn’t have a that much spare cloth nor a lot of time and I haven’t seen someone since my departure, thus felt comfortable sitting around naked for a short while, not like someone would go out of their way to peek on me anyway.
After I had put my pants back on, I picked up my shirt, but one of my hands felt cold, while the other felt warm. How could this happen. Underneath, I didn’t uncover a regular pile of tattered leaves like what I left behind, it shone in all sorts of colors. This is my answer. They regained their color, somehow, they recovered mana while around this river, just from being on this bridge. What about me, could I try grasping mana here more easily? I took one of the red leaves in my hand, it was only slightly warm and by itself it wasn’t even that red, it was more like a translucent gem. Only the whole pile of leaves produced the spectacle of colors.
It seemed like I could place, all of them back on and still feel the difference, if there was mana present. Excited about my chances, I did just that, put all of them back on and tried breathing deeply. After a few breaths I felt a wave of impressions, accompanying a deep breath. It spread from the top of my lungs to, the edges of my torso. Somehow it was harder for the mana to spread to my arms. My Torso however was sometimes hot on other patches cold everything was rather faint, but the lack of power was overshadowed by my own excitement. I was elated, I felt like I could control mana somehow. Maybe I was just a small step away from using mana, no I already use mana, with the help of the leaves.
Under the setting sun, I stood on the bridge, waving my arms, breathing in different patterns and much more. I tried to get mana all the way up to my fingertips. I imagined that I could achieve some kind of effect, if I formed a string like the lines on the leaves in the air using mana. Thus, I had tried all sorts off movement and breathing rhythms I came up with. Out of everything I tried, tensing my muscles in a rhythmic outward moving motion worked the best, but it was very uncomfortable, it even hurt after a few tries. I’ll have to keep trying.
I finished my tests, when I heard a strange buzzing sound, like cicadas in the summer, but this time it wasn’t coming from cicadas. No, I instead witnessed a swarm of fireflies rising from the shores, to start a beautiful and enchanting dance. Even the last rays of the setting sun couldn’t diminish the bright orange light of these insects. The bright little fireballs swirled around and came quite close to me. When I stretched out a hand, one off them really landed on it.
I couldn't help but smile, the forest, apart from the magic, was rather harsh until now, but here on this bridge, I saw beautiful flowers and dancing fireflies, small harmless insects landing on my hand.
The firefly was hot, my hand burnt. Stop this you are not helpless, when I am relaxing an insect tries to kill me, nothing is saw, this is just like with the forest breaker. When I tried shacking it away, it sank sharp needle like legs into my hand and blinked a signal for its companions.
The cloud of glowing little beasts started to move, instead of dance they gathered and churned. I had a bad feeling about this and grabbed my back, it was time to move on. I ran over the bridge and used my knife generously on the thorny vines, blocking my advance on the other side. Thankfully, I managed to push through quite easily this time, not like I cared about my coat on this point. Behind me I could see an angry cloud of little suns moving slowly toward the shore. I couldn’t stop, I needed to keep going.
Luckily an moderate pace was enough to outrun the swarm as they slowed down with every step they distanced themselves from the river.
With some distance between me and the river, I was able to relax again. Another crazy and dangerous encounter, but I lived, now I can only rest for the night.
Using magic on the bridge showed me, that it was quite hard to move mana through my body especially while having no idea, where it was going. Well I knew it when the leaves triggered, but they were only on the surface and in the long run this seemes way to inaccurate. This was a big problem for how I hopped spells to work, just by drawing the lines from the leaves in the air. Even on the bridge this didn’t work, I could barely push some mana toward my arm. I will have to stick with the leaves for now, while I continue to improve my mana control.
The meat from yesterday was still edible, so my diner was secure. I used one of the red leaves from my detection shirt to help start the fire. This time however, I tried activating it first using my own mana. It took a few tries but eventually I managed to get some heat out off it, even while it was on my shoulder. I took deep quick breaths and tensed my muscles repeatedly. It was an awkward yet exhilarating process, taking in deep breath while knowing, that mana was following, felling my progress. I loved it.
Even though this was way better than on the other side of the river, it was still way worse, than my experience on the bridge. From what I felt through the leaves it was slower and weaker. However, the result from the activated leaf were still much better, than from from the tried up ones, almost reaching the level of the fresh leaves. The mana I output is still under the level of the trees around me. A bit disheartening, why are trees better magic as well. Calm down, I made good progress. As long as I get better at pushing the mana around, everything should sort itself out. I will just continue to practice it on the journey, while I try casting spells on my own.
With my Mana practice mapped out to me, I continued my travels. When taking the river as reference, I should arrive at the town in about ten days.
I was sitting by a campfire, I had started with a red leaf, that I had activated previously. It was the twelfth travel day now and I felt better than before, but also a lot worse in other aspects.
At first my muscles continued to ache during the long walk. In this forest I didn’t have a day or more to rest, as I feared to attract the attention of something I couldn't handle, if I stayed at one point for to long. This was of course bad for my sore muscles, but worse was the constant stress and fear. After a few days the excitement from my performing magic had gotten less encompassing and I slowly realized, that a lot of things could hurt or kill me in this forest.
As with each passing day the animals got harder to hunt and they started to sport more and more magical prowess. Of course this provided me with new examples of magic, but it still made the creatures more deadly. The most common feature were magical lines, or should I call them strings like the poem, that ran through muscles or covered claws. I think that these could make the muscles a bit stronger or the claws sharper, but had no concrete proof. I encountered a few examples of more classic magic like the rabbit or deer as well.
The most notable was a group of squirrel like creatures, I meet on the sixth day of travel, they had flops of fur between their legs, that enabled them to glide from tree to tree without the need for any magic. This wasn’t all though, they had bluish lines on their fur, with those they could produce small gusts of air, that carried them away from the arrows I fired toward them. It was only after I discovered, that they could only pull this off approximately once per day, that I managed to hit one with my arrows. Their patterns were really interesting as they seemed to distort the light, more than the hairs alone should be able to. It looked like the strings consisted of more than just the fur.
After a whole day and a lot of trial and error, I was even able to utilize the strings from one of the furs to produce a small gust of wind, weaker than the squirrels, but still noticeable. The problem with the fur was, that the mana couldn't just be inserted, it had to be fast enough, to produce the wind. At first my only option was to breath directly into it. I discovered this fact by accident, when I had to sneeze and held the fur in my hand. Before I could use the pelt in a more elegant and practical way I had to improve my mana control.
Luckily the amount of mana I was able to press through the leaves improved with every passing day. It had also gotten a lot easier to get the mana in my body and the leaves to begin with. Making the leaves trigger more often and longer. I also noticed, that, contrary to my expectations, the effects had gotten weaker. The leaves deteriorated and needed to be replaced. Luckily the leaves had started to get a bit more common by now. When I replaced the first leaf, I was shocked by the warmth it produced, as my mana had finally reached the level of those trees. The temperature had reached a point, were I had to balance the red leaves with the blue ones, too prevent excessive sweating or heat strokes .
This wasn’t the only development though, even my sore muscles improved on the ninth travel day. I don’t have a good idea why, but I just woke up and felt great. The walking became much easier at that, point probably faster as well, but I had no reference too know for sure.
Whit the improvements to my body I started to wonder, if I would be able to keep up with the others now. Probably not, but my improvements made me happy none the less, maybe I could catch up to the others some day.
The others, I didn’t miss them yet, I had grown to detached from all of them, too grave their company. However, I wanted company in itself. After the initial burst of excitement was over, I started to feel lonely. I hadn’t realized it back then, but having some people around wasn’t so bad. I was still glad to get away from the gossip and the watching eyes of the others though. Maybe I could met some fellow travelers in Egen, that would want to travel together.
Apart from this it my muscles offered a lot less resistance to the mana, after the aching stopped. The reason for it was beyond me, but I didn’t complain. Whit this I was finally able to push mana up to my fingers and activate leaves with them. To day I even managed to activate the wind pelt from using my palms. Producing gusts of Wind with a pelt was the first time, I felt like I was really casting magic. It just felt different from heating or cooling a leaf or shocking one self. I was affecting the outside world this way.
The squirrel meat, I was waiting for, just finished. I put away the pelt, I was using to produced small gusts of air. By now I barely needed to cramp my muscels to move these thiny amounts of air, another improvement I was really grateful for. It felt a lot more natural this way as well and I continued to improve with each try. The mana was moving, following my rhythm of breathing and pushing. Sadly I still needed the leaves to feel and coordinate this movement.
After finishing the meal, I continued my journey. Towards the evening the forest started to slowy open up. I was not sure, if I liked the prospect of a clearing, it would be nice to finaly see something else than trees. However, a clearing would make me visible for a lot of animals, which could be dangerous.
After a short while, the forest opened up and I wasn’t looking at a normal clearing, in front of me I saw a small valley, the river Egen flowing toward a town surrounded by a wooden palisade, I had reached my first destination Aegis.
