Libriohexer ~ 4

Chapter Four

Sam blinked his eyes open, which felt all wrong since he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was asleep and passed out on his bedroll in the Wolfman outpost. With a grunt he gained his feet and took a long gander around. The yurt was gone, so was the dancing fire, as well as the wooden palisade walls that enclosed Narvik.

Instead, Sam found himself on a vast plain inside his own head. The space he’d come to think of as his Soul Chamber. He’d been here many times before, guided by Mage Akora during his time in the College, and countless times since while meditating under Bill’s watchful gaze. Directly in front of him was his core, although something was wrong here.

Something big.

Typically, his core resembled a perfectly round ball of power that looked like a snow globe filled with a real snowstorm. Now, however, the snowstorm had morphed into an apocalyptic blizzard and his core had swollen to a shocking size—now almost as large as a compact car; and it was straining against his will with ferocious rage. This was all wrong. His core was supposed to condense, to shrink, as he leveled up and grew more powerful.

“This is a major threshold,” came a voice, cutting through the quiet filling the cavity in Sam’s mind. Out of a corner of inky darkness, which refused to be illuminated by the flickering light of his core, stepped a figure. Tall and whip thin with lean muscle and a neatly trimmed beard clinging to his jaw. His outfit was outdated, his leggings bulbous around the thighs, his shirt red velvet and trimmed in gold, a frilled collar around his neck. A foppish oversized hat with an elegant feather poking up from the brim. Although Sam had never seen the man before, the emerald eyes and ridiculous hat gave him away in an instant.

Bill.

“Lot of people think crossing the threshold is easy,” Bill let one hand come to rest on his hip, “but believe you me, as a Mage it can tear you apart if you aren’t careful. Especially the intelligence barrier since it's directly tied to your Mana reserve.”

“Are you really here?” Sam momentarily ignored the swirling ball of power pulsing at his center. It wasn’t easy to do, but seeing Bill in the flesh—so to speak, at least—was a gut punch.

“Eh. Real enough,” Bill replied with a lopsided shrug. “I’ll probably never have a body again, but as you get spiritually and mentally stronger, I remember more about myself. The Arch-Mage, he stripped me down when he book-a-fied me. There’s a lot I don’t remember from those days—my mind is still fragmented. But that’s the thing about thresholds, they allow you to understand things you literally couldn’t before. Make connections that would be impossible to make without the additional neural pathways created by advancing. Enough about that for now. We’ve got work to do.”

He cracked his knuckles then popped his neck, first left, then right.

“What do we do?” Sam turned his attention back to his turbulent center.

“Don’t play dumb, Legs,” Bill replied with an exaggerated eye roll. “The Mage’s College is just about worthless, but if there’s anything they taught you, it's Mana Manipulation and Mana Coalescence.”

He paused and stole a sidelong look at Sam’s core. “Admittedly there are a few extra steps, but I’ll walk you through those once we get there. First things first, though.” He pointed a slender finger at Sam. “You gotta condense. Get this mess under control.”

Sam licked his lips and swiped his sweaty palms along his trousers. Bill was right, he did know the fundamentals of Mana Coalescence—that, at least, had been drilled into his head. Taking a deep calming breath, Sam imposed his will upon the swirling, tumultuous ball of energy, smoothing out the rough edges, rolling that teeming mass of energy between the palms of mental-hands, all the while compressing it, forcing it back in on itself like kneading dough. The ball responded, slowly at first, but more quickly with every second of focus. Before long, it was spinning furiously and shrinking down to a far more manageable size.

Into a more compact and efficient form.

It was hard to tell how long the process lasted—a minute? An hour? Ten?—but Sam was so absorbed with the process that he hardly noticed time passing. What’s more, his Mana Pool was far more pliable than it had ever been before. Usually when performing this exercise, the ball of energy hit a certain size then simply refused to compress any further. Not this time. This time, Sam kept working the energy, spinning it, pressing on it, shaping it. It compressed more and more and more, until it was only a little larger than a quarter. There seemed to be a barrier of sorts, a certain resistance he’d never experienced before, but it didn’t feel impassable.

“Good,” Bill’s voice drifted in from far away. “That’s the threshold you’re feeling. This is where things get a little tricky. There’s a lot of wrong ways to do this and really only one right way. First step is to crack the egg.”

“Crack the egg?” Sam managed to ask through gritted teeth.

“You heard me,” Bill replied with a bob of his head.

This seemed like a bad idea, but Bill hadn’t led him astray so far.

With a heave, Sam threw his will against the barrier, feeling the invisible force strain under the weight of his intent. A spike of pain radiated outward, but he pressed on, feeling the force surrounding his core begin to splinter. Then, in a heartbeat, something inside the tightly packed ball gave way with a sharp *pop*, and the gaseous ball lit up like a fireworks display. When the light show faded there was a single drop of mana, no larger than a penny, right at his center. The drop of mana was shifting quick-silver that looked for all the world like a dollop of mercury suspended midair.

Circling around the drop of silver was a gaseous cloud of white, gold, and opal. Some part of Sam expected the gas to drift away now that it was no longer contained in his core, but the tiny ball of mercury at his center seemed to have a certain gravity that held everything together.

“Hey, not bad. Not bad at all. A lot of people can’t push themselves to fracture the outer casing. Sometimes it takes years to do it. Takes guts, you know. Only one piece left of the puzzle and that part I can help with.” Bill strutted forward, reached a hand outward, and grabbed a fistful of the gently ebbing gas as though it were cotton candy. With a tug he began to walk away from the core, spooling the gas along behind him in a tether as he headed for one of the mana pathways, leading deeper into Sam’s mind. Those pathways were the key to utilizing mana, cycling it through the body.

“Well, don’t just stand there. Grab an end and get to work.” He turned on a heel and disappeared into one of the tunnels, hauling cloudy energy behind.

Sam grabbed a handful and followed suit, though heading into one of the other pathways. There was a whole interconnected network of pathways, but most were still closed off—he figured that would change as he leveled up both his stats and his Mana Manipulation ability. He stretched the cloudy energy thin and trudged onward. About halfway along, he saw Bill, who gave him a grin and a lighthearted salute before disappearing around the bend. Sam forged onward, each step a little more difficult than the last, until eventually he reemerged in the Soul Chamber containing his core.

Bill was already done and waiting for him. “Any day now, huh? We have more work to do yet.”

Sam nodded, feeling worn out to the bone, and pressed forward, reconnecting his line of energy to the swirling ring of gas. A terrible weight vanished in an instant and a message appeared.

Mental attributes upgraded successfully! Base modifier for Intelligence has reached ‘2’! Congrats—you are no longer the dullest knife in the drawer! It’s a step in the right direction, though make sure to get your wisdom up or you’ll find yourself making smart, but potentially unwise, decisions!

Calculating…

Skill increased: Coalescence (Apprentice II). You have reached the beginning stage of liquid mana! Your mana has gained an attribute, and as you increase in rank, this attribute will grow based upon your areas of focus. No longer will your mana be swept aside by another, blown by the wind like a morning mist. You have unlocked a character trait: Duel Core Processing.

Duel Core Processing: Because you have the presence of a secondary core connected to your own, you are able to regenerate mana far quicker than mages of a comparable level and will have an opportunity to unlock additional mana pathways at earlier levels! Mana regeneration speed increased by 50%!

Skill increased: Mana Manipulation (Beginner IX).

Sam started awake with a gasp, lurching upright in his sleeping roll then propping himself up on his hands. The first thing he noticed was the barest crest of light peeking up over the horizon, the dark purple sky giving way to streaks of light grey. The world seemed sharper - clearer than it had ever seemed before - and Sam instantly knew that it was a quarter past five given the position of the sun. Full daybreak was still an hour off, which is when the rest of the team would likely pull themselves from their beds. Well, everyone except Arrow. He was a habitually late sleeper.

The next thing Sam noticed was how bad he stank. Royally reeked.

There was a thin layer of slimy black coating his skin and it reminded him of the inside of a sweaty tennis shoe. He lifted an arm and took a quick sniff and promptly started gagging. Probably not the wisest thing to do, he grumped at himself. He stood with a groan, his body was achy and every inch of him hurt—or maybe it was just the fact that his mind was more acutely aware of everything happening around him. Either way, he needed to get clean. The camp was quiet and he didn’t want to disturb his crew, so he silently stole across through the high grass, angling toward their bathing area, which consisted of a large wooden tub with a copper bottom suspended above a bank of hot coals.

Peeking around to make sure there were no unwanted eyes, he stripped down to his birthday suit and crawled into the burbling, warm water.

It felt like heaven against his grimy skin and after scrubbing at his arms, chest, and legs with a thick cake of yellow soap, he felt mostly human again. “It didn’t work, Bill.”

<What are you talking about?> Bill replied, floating in book form outside of the tub. Bill wasn’t a big fan of water for obvious reasons. <I was there, remember? You crossed the threshold like a champ. Saw it with my own eyes. Abyss, you even managed to condense your core, which is a pretty impressive feat for a level ten.>

<Not that,> Sam replied, waving away the response with one hand. <I still don’t have any answers. I feel smarter, sure. I mean, suddenly I know the viscosities of various inks for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom. I’m also making connections that I never would’ve before, but I still don’t know what specialization to pick or what profession to choose. I thought crossing the threshold would do the heavy lifting for me, but I feel just as lost as I was before.>

Sam stared down into the waters as though there might be answers there. In a lot of ways this felt like a reflection of his entire life. He’d always been pressured by his family, pushed toward higher education. Toward a role in the family business. Going into college hadn’t been high on Sam’s priority list, but he’d reasoned that by the time he had a degree in hand he would finally know what he wanted to do with his life.

Except that hadn’t been the case at all. Now here he was, stuck in the exact same place: he knew so much… except what he should do next. He slapped a hand against the waters, disturbing the accusing reflection staring back at him.

Bill was silent for a long moment. <Look, I know it’s hard. Magic is cool, but magic can’t solve all of your problems. Not always. Sometimes the only magic solution is to trust yourself, make a choice, and throw the dice. Come on, we have work to do before the rest of these knuckleheads wake up.>

When that didn’t get a reply, Bill tried harder; knowing he was right, but that the fact wouldn’t make this any easier for his human. <We used up a ton of resources during that last encounter. All that paper ain’t gonna fold itself, you know? When you don’t know what to do, work through it.>

The book was right about that, too. Reluctantly, Sam pulled himself from the warm waters, shivering as the crisp morning air washed over his skin, raising goosebumps along his arms and legs. He quickly toweled off, pulled a fresh set of undergarments and his armor from his spatial flask, then headed over and plopped down on his bed roll. Being a Bibliomancer was awesome, but it was also a ton of work behind the scenes. Although in the heat of a battle it might seem like he had spells for days, it all depended on forethought, prior preparation, and tons of material resource management. He retrieved a fresh stack of blank pages, his various inks and specialty quills, and then set to work.

Every Shuriken had to be inscribed with the proper folding instructions.

Every Ice Orb and Fireball spell needed to be inked in exacting detail. Each sheet tagged by the Bookmark spell.

Then, all of those pages were added to the correct volume and carefully sewn into the interior.

It wasn’t hard work, exactly—he’d done it a thousand times or more and had each movement committed to muscle memory—but it was time consuming. He worked in silence, hands moving with a purpose all their own while his mind cast about for answers. What was he destined to do? What specialization was he meant for? When the sun fully rose and the rest of his crew stirred in earnest, he still felt firmly in the dark. But, he’d had one revelation. He might not know what he was supposed to do, but he thought he might just have an answer to a different problem.

Where the team was supposed to find a dungeon to call their own.