On Bated Breath We Wait

Chapter 9 (part 2)

Curiosity got the better of me and I found myself staring at the chalk on the door. Almost on cue Sir Damian chimed in, “Leave it be, I will protect you while I regain my strength.”

“Regain your strength? What did you do after you freed yourself?” I asked him.

I could barely feel the connection to him, “Sleep, talk later….”

I was finally alone and I could start my studies. The next section of the book after the eye training was hearing training. Again it came with a warning, “WARNING hearing will be temporarily damaged, will result in loss of balance and dizziness“. The instructions were just as strange as the eye training, place both hands on these two pages and when you hear the sound of the bell lift up the hand on the same side in which you hear it. Training will end when you ear the sound of the bell twice in the row. It was very straight forward; left, left, right, left, right, right… It continued for several minutes before I heard the bell twice, and either I had forgotten about the warning or I didn’t think I was dizzy but within seconds the room began to spin and I was on the floor. I rolled onto my back and watched the ceiling spin for a bit before closing my eyes. Through the smallest connection I had ever felt from Sir Damian I could feel his joy at my suffering.

I woke up from what I think was several hours later. As I opened my eyes I couldn’t see anything it was not the dead of night. Scrambling to find and light a candle I heard whispers, “Don’t trust your family Nikos, they are planning against you.” I tried to ask the voices why I shouldn’t trust grandfather Nathan but for now I would listen to their advice.

Following Meryl’s advice, I started prepping to make some soup in the cauldron. Using some of the dried meat, water, a few potatoes and a carrot I was able to put together a somewhat tasty soup but it was clearly missing something.

After I ate and cleaned up, I started my next lesson. Smell, and again it came with a warning. But rather than forgetting about the warning I checked it first, “WARNING sense of smell might be altered for several hours after completing this training. Eat before doing this lesson.” I smiled, it seemed like I prepped for this lesson without knowing it. As I read the instructions I could only feel embarrassed, it instructed me to pick up the book and place my nose into the center fold of the book. From there I was to inhale with my nose and exhale with my mouth. Once in that position, I would occasional smell something, I was to vocally say what I smelled. For I moment I questioned why I had to speak out loud, but then I realized the book knew when I removed the correct hand from the book last time. Why couldn’t the book hear me as I did this training. I stuck my nose into the book and was astonished on the vividness of the smells it produced. From the smell of freshly cooked bacon to crushed garlic each smell was amazing but as the training continued I could tell why the warning was there. Soon each smell caused a small amount of nausea and my the time I finished I wanted nothing to do with food.

I decided to continue my training, maybe it could distract me from the nausea. I turned to the next section. Taste. Instantly, I turned to the next section. I knew that tasting things right now was the last thing I wanted to do. The final section of the trainings was on touch, this section had a warning that took up a whole page. I was a bit worried but as I read the warning my worrying faded, “WARNING this section is on touch. During this section you may touch things that make you feel uncomfortable or uneasy. What you are feeling is one hundred percent created with magic and does not actually exist where you are training. If you find yourself touching something that makes you uncomfortable continue on as quickly as you can.” The warning itself made me wonder what types of things it would make me feel but imagining something you could begin to describe is actually rather hard. So rather than worry I continued on and read the instructions. Similar to the section on hearing, it has me place both hands on each page of the section and as I felt something on one of my hands I would raise that hand and say what I thought it was. At first I thought it wasn’t going to be hard, but little did I know that this section wanted the correct answer and not just a guess. The first few things a felt were simple, materials like stone, wood. But then it made me fell something unexpected. It felt moist and warm. I guessed it was raw meat and then I heard a booming voice inside my head, “Incorrect. That was the internal organs of a cow.”

I wanted to shout, “How in the world was I suppose to know that!” But I couldn’t answer myself, I would have been arguing with a book.

As it suggested I continued on. Next it was egg shells, then honey. But then it again made me felt something I didn’t know what it was. I guessed that it was the skin of a lizard. Again, the voice boomed inside my head, “Incorrect, that was the skin of the Mariana Snake.”

“The what? I don’t even know what that is!” I grumbled.

Next, was the fur of a cat and then the bark of a tree. Then again it gave me something I didn’t know. It was then I realized the pattern, it was two things I knew what they were followed by something I didn’t. So I finally answered, “I don’t know.” It told me what it was and continued onto the next thing. This went on for what felt like hours. By the end I was falling sleep and I noticed that the sun was starting to rise. As I finished I closed the book and fell asleep.

By the time I woke up it was mid day and I was starving. As I started to get a portion of the soup ready to eat I felt the need to use the bathroom. Navigating down to the bathroom was troubling itself both the darkness and the cold to get there was annoying, but it was better than having to leave my room every time I would need to use the bathroom. As I finished and went back up stairs to eat I heard the voices again, “Learn quickly Nikos. They are preparing to come get you.”

I found myself asking, “Who is coming to get me?” Again, no response. Now I was worried, should I attempt to contact Meryl? But as I thought about Meryl I also began to worry about her safety. If they were the same people who kidn*pped me the first time, I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to Meryl.

As if on cue I felt the connection to Sir Damian strengthen, “You rang?” He asked. I could feel the sense of pride coming off him.

To Sir Damian I proposed the idea, “I think the Shadows are warning me, twice now they have spoken to me telling me nothing I shouldn’t know.”

“Oh, are they now. What have they said?” Sir Damian replied with a strange curiosity. I informed him about what they had said about grandfather Nathan and the warning they had just given me. Only for him to respond, “That is rather odd and unlike them. In my experience Shadows don’t have a voice, let alone the willingness to share it. For now we shall trust them, after the fun events of a few days ago are you really surprised to hear someone is coming after you?” He spoke the truth but was what the Shadows said about Nathan also true, only time would tell. I tried to ask Sir Damian for any guidance, only for him to direct me back to my magic studies.

Begrudgingly, I returned to the section that I had skipped. Taste, and I can stay now that it was the strangest training I had done yet. Like each of the sections it instructed me to place my tongue to the page and as I tasted something I would name what I had tasted. Each time I placed my tongue to the book I worried that my saliva would damage the pages but each time I pulled away from the book, no saliva was there. Thankful that I had finished training my senses I flipped through the pages hopeful that I would actually learn some magic. But to my dismay the section was titled, “Mana Capacity”. It described the body like a river and it’s mana the water. The speed of one’s river, or rather how fast a person’s body would refill one’s own mana was not finite. By constantly using the same amount that your body is capable of producing your body would slowly improve the rate in which it would replenish it’s mana. While that description was vivid, it didn’t really give me any direction on how to use my mana to start increasing how much mana I had.

As I attempted to turn the page, it shimmered almost as if it was responding to my frustration. In it’s shimmered I noticed that all of the text on the page had now been crossed out by what looked like red ink. Between the lines there was new text and the section was renamed, it read…

*Mana Capacity: Revised*

*A body’s mana capacity can be increased at a greater rate with the use of magical objects, such as Crux Crystals or with the help of someone with a greater mana recovery rate than one’s own. By using either method to refill one’s body on mana faster that it could naturally, it is akin to a flash flood forcing the river to have more water than ever before. This method will increase one’s body to both have a greater mana capacity but also a mana recovery rate most would deem impossible.*

As I read over the new section Sir Damian commented, “Interesting, very interesting that the book knows what’s around your neck. I didn’t know about this method, but it sounds promising. If you were to do this method with a black Crux Crystal like the one you have, your mana and ability to cover it would almost make you a monster. But no one would be able to challenge you in magic, once you learn how to use it.”

It seemed too good to be true, how could there be such a simple way to gain power. But I didn’t think I had a choice, I couldn’t always rely on the strength of others, like how Sir Damian saved me. Or how Meryl and Roxie went out of their way to make sure I was safe. As I turned the page I saw the training for increase my mana. It stated that when both hands were placed on the book, it would siphon mana out of me at the rate my body could replenish it. Not knowing how or what I had to do to also use my necklace to do the revised method, I settled on the normal method. As I placed my hands upon the book I felt the flow of mana leaving my body. It was as if water were running down my arms and out my palms. The feeling was draining, each second felt like an eternity. The world began to spin, and I noticed a light coming from beneath my shirt. The source was my necklace, a black glow came off it. Its light was soothing and as I gazed upon it the world stopped spinning. Soon I felt as if I had eaten too much, the feeling of sickness washed over me. The feeling from my mana leaving my palms soon felt like a burning pain, with every moment it intensified. I tried to pull my hands away from the book, but it was as if my hands were one with the page. I felt Sir Damian connection for a brief moment only to here him cackling in amusement. I tried to reach out to him for help but something kept pulling my focus back to the book. Suddenly the pain from my palms crept up my arms and into my chest. I could feel my heart beat, which each beat the pain increased. I could here Sir Damian yelling at me to stop. The world went dark.