Restart Again: Volume 3

by Adam Ladner Scott

  “Our...what?” she asked, running her hand across the various items on the table.

  “This is what we’ll be studying every morning,” I explained. “I’ve learned more about magic in the few months I’ve been in this world than all of my previous lives combined, but somehow I still have more questions than I started with. I always told myself they were questions for a later time, when we weren't in mortal danger." I paused and looked around the room for effect. "It seems as though now is finally that time."

  A smile spread across her face as her hand stopped on the final item on the table: the giant onyx blade that once belonged to the King’s Sword. She pulled the blade off of the table and laughed as she felt its full weight for the first time, then gave it a quick two-handed flourish before returning it to its resting place. “I understand why some of these are here, but why are your socks on the table?”

  “There’s a lot of different types of magic out there, Lia,” I chuckled, picking up the quill and ink from the small shelf on the signboard. Reaching up to the single sheet of paper at the top of the board, I wrote the word “magic” in large letters. “We typically interact with three different types on a daily basis: enhancement magic, elemental magic, and mana manipulation.” As I continued to explain my thoughts, I wrote each of the categories along the top of each column of paper. “There is also enchantment magic, like the latent abilities of that sword to shift form, or the self-cleaning properties of my underclothes.”

  I couldn’t see her face behind me, but I could hear the eyeroll in her inflection. “You made all of this up, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did. Somebody has to!” I laughed. “Apart from those, I have one more category that I’m calling ‘miscellaneous’ for now. It's all the random quirks of magic that I don’t understand and can’t fit into the other categories yet.” I stepped back from the board to stand beside Lia. “Every secret of magic is hiding somewhere within these five categories, and we’re going to find them and figure them out.”

  “Alright, I’m in,” Lia said confidently. “Where do we start?”

  “Our first step is to list every idea we can think of to investigate, no matter how crazy or impractical they sound.” I stepped up to the board and began to write underneath the elemental column. “Let’s start with something easy. There are eight Elemental Primevals in the Unity religion, right?”

  “Right. Fire, Ice, Earth, Water, Wind, Light, Dark, and Life,” she listed.

  “If I remember what you told me about the church’s teachings correctly, people pray to one of the eight major Primevals, and if they’re lucky enough to be ‘blessed,’ they would be granted the ability to use the magic that Primeval governs. That means, at some point, people have used things like air magic and ice magic.” I stifled a laugh as a memory played out in my head. “Just like the wizard in that story you told me back in the dungeons. How did it go again?”

  She crossed her arms in front of her chest as she blushed. “I told you, you’re never hearing that story again!”

  “Oh, I remember it now! It was something like, ‘PRIMEVAL OF ICE, I BESEECH THEE’—”

  “Alright, that’s enough of that!” she yelled, shoving me to the side and stealing the quill and ink out of my hands. “What else did you have in mind?”

  I took a few seconds to regain my composure, then sat back against the table and looked over the mostly bare signboard. “Well, Val prayed to the Light Primeval when she invoked her magic, and it let her disguise her armor and turn invisible. That would definitely be useful.” Turning to the objects behind me, I picked up the diamond orb I had taken from Solette during our mission in Attetsia. “Solette prayed to the Primeval of Darkness when she took away our voices. I don’t see how those things connect at all, but it’s worth investigating.”

  Lia nodded as she scratched down the notes. “The rest of these are pretty straightforward, I think. I’m a lot more interested in this one,” she said, tapping the first empty sheet in the “mana manipulation” column. “What else do we have to learn about this?”

  “Oh, there’s so many possibilities!” I said excitedly. “What sort of objects can you store mana in? Can it be any object? If so, does the material you’re storing the mana in affect how much it can hold or how fast the mana can flow through it? Is there even a limit to how much energy can be stored in a single object? What about—”

  “Hey, slow down! I can’t write that fast,” she yelled, laughing at my enthusiasm. “You were the one telling me we don’t need to rush anymore, right?”

  “Sorry, you’re right,” I said, looking away. “Some of this stuff has been bouncing around in my head since our time in the dungeon. I never really thought I’d have a chance to study all of it.”

  The room fell silent apart from the scratching of her quill as she caught up with my excited ramblings. “Okay. What next?” she asked.

  “I think our Detection could use some work,” I said, keeping my enthusiasm in check. “For starters, we can only see things that are touching the ground, and only when we’re touching the ground as well. The ability to hear what we’re seeing through Detection would be a huge boon, as well.” She nodded as our list of notes grew longer. “Communication in general is something we should look into. You could also add...no, actually, just add telepathy to the miscellaneous column.”

  She wrote the word, then turned to me with a confused look. “What’s telepathy?”

  “It’s the ability to communicate with just your mind.”

  A smirk curled her lips as she raised one eyebrow. You mean like this? I heard her voice clearly in my head, in spite of the fact that her mouth never moved.

  I, uhm...yes. Exactly like this. We both laughed as I gave my answer in turn. Although we had never discussed it or purposely practiced the ability, the connection we shared through our constant meditations had clearly developed into a much more powerful tool than I had realized. “However,” I continued out loud, “I don’t know if this would work for anybody apart from the two of us. I guess that’s something we’ll want to test with Marin once you start your magic training.”

  Lia’s eyebrows tightened. “Oh, about that. I was hoping that when the time comes, you could, erm, ‘turn on’ Marin’s mana,” she said quietly. “I don’t really know how that works, and I don’t want to...mess anything up. Or hurt her.”

  Her concern was clear in her wavering voice, and I stepped forward to give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder. “Of course I’ll help. When were you planning on introducing her to magic?”

  “Tonight,” she answered, more confidently. “I thought it would be a good idea to get her training started in every field as soon as possible. We’ll do stances and sword drills in the early afternoon, then set up a workout regimen before dinner, and finish the night with meditation practice. Seeing as she’ll probably fall asleep as soon as her mana is activated, I figure it should be the last thing we do,” she laughed.

  “You’ll probably have to carry her back to your parents’ house.”

  “That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” she said with a grin. “You know, I’m actually feeling excited about training Marin now. I think it’ll be fun.” Her eyes unfocused as she clearly began to run through her plans for the afternoon, but she shook her head after a few moments of daydreaming. “Sorry, we were doing something. What’s next?”

  “I’d say we have a pretty solid plan already,” I said, nodding towards our newly written lists. “When it comes to enhancements, I think it’d be best to always keep the thought in the back of our minds and add any new ideas to the list whenever they come up. As for enchanting...I don’t really know where to start.” I admitted. “It’ll probably take a combination of copious meditation and a stroke of luck to get a foothold there.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, crossing to lean against the table next to me and read over our notes. “Where do we start?”

  “I think today would be an excellent day to spend the morning meditating
. We’ve been out of our routine for so long, it’ll be nice to ease back into things. Maybe we could fit in a quick sparring session before you go to pick up Marin, just to get the blood pumping a bit.”

  “That sounds nice,” she nodded. “To be honest, I thought you’d want to dive right into our research.”

  “I envision this as an ongoing project. We can pick and choose the things we want to work on, and we’ll keep adding things as we think of them. Besides, we already made progress today!” I picked up the quill and added a small checkmark next to the “telepathy” entry. Returning the quill to the shelf at the bottom of the noteboard, I wrapped Lia tightly in my arms. “We have the rest of our lives to work through this board, but today...I just want to enjoy life a bit.” I closed my eyes and kissed the top of her head as the faint scent of mint from her hair entranced me. “With you.”

  “Well, you have me until noon,” she giggled, hugging me back. “After that, I’m ‘Lia the Teacher,’ and she doesn’t have time for cuddling.”

  “I guess I can make do with that.” I gave her one final squeeze around the waist. “Okay. Let’s go find out if we remember how this works.” We walked out onto the deck and sat down on the dew-coated wood. Once my legs were comfortably folded beneath me, I took a deep breath and pulled on the mana in my core, beginning our well-practiced routine. The response I felt within my body took me by surprise; while I could tell it was proportionally the same amount of energy as I always channeled, the rush of mana down my arm felt as if a sluice gate had burst within me. Have my reserves really grown this much?

  A soft gasp from my right told me Lia was experiencing the same sensation. I drew the mana up and down my limbs in time with my breath, marveling at the feeling of power it gave me. I suppose it has been a few weeks since we last took stock of ourselves. After keeping watch day and night, our fight at the Mountain Gate, and all of the work on the house, it shouldn’t be surprising. Even so… I grinned as the mana swirled more powerfully with every breath, tingling over the surface of my skin.

  After what felt like an eternity of channeling, Lia’s aura flashed and engulfed me as she reached out with Detection. I eagerly followed suit, bringing the house and surrounding landscape to life in neon detail within my mind. Lia and I sat perfectly still at the center of our world, brilliant beacons of gold and blue light watching over our ever-expanding dominion. Even though our scan reached out in all directions, we were able to cover the distance to the Corells’ house before Lia’s reach began to slow. My mind continued to soar as miles of forest lit up on my mental map, reaching all the way to the Mayaan edge of the forest before the strain set in.

  As my Detection range increased, the energy required to power my Combat Acceleration increased as well. Despite the cool air around us, I had beads of sweat lining my brow by the time Marten’s wagon appeared at the edge of my vision. I continued my meditation until the wagon entered Lia’s shorter reach, then pulled the energy back in an exhilarating rush. “Wow,” I managed to say, wiping my forehead with the back of my gloved hand. “We really were rusty.”

  Lia leaned back on her hands and laughed. “That was awesome! I can’t believe how different I feel now compared to the last time we did this.” She looked over to me with an amused grin. “Do you think we’ll just keep growing like this forever?”

  “As long as we keep exerting ourselves and pushing our boundaries...yeah, I think so. I don’t have any reason to believe otherwise,” I answered. “It’s all uncharted ground from here on out.”

  “I like that.” After hopping up and planting a kiss on my forehead, she turned towards the forest. “I guess I should go retrieve my pupil now. It would be a shame to set a poor example by being late to our first meeting,” she said in an affectatious voice.

  “Ah, Lia the Teacher has arrived,” I chuckled. “I’ll be here when you get back with Marin.”

  She froze in place and turned her head back towards me. “You aren’t going to just slack off all afternoon while we train, are you?”

  “I would never!” I exclaimed with faux indignation. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but our house is lacking in the furniture department. I’ve got a thousand projects in mind to occupy my time, thank you very much.”

  “Just checking!” she called out over her shoulder before she jumped down from the deck and jogged off into the woods.

  I stood up and stretched when she was gone, taking a moment to think over the tasks ahead of me. While furnishing our home was the most obvious and immediate goal to pursue, I had a series of larger projects I was more interested in. Since I wasn’t familiar with the climate in our area of Lybesa, I planned to make a greenhouse that could protect any delicate plants from particularly strong weather. My end goal was to create a system that would make our homestead entirely self-sustaining, which would require growing vegetables and grains as well as potentially raising livestock.

  Despite the importance of those plans, my focus landed on a passion project: building a forge. While it would certainly be beneficial to have metalworking capabilities, it was clearly less important than a sustainable food source, but I couldn’t help but grin as I began to envision where the forge would be built. A grouping of three trees near the back of the clearing caught my eye; with the trio removed, the vacant spot would leave enough space to build a workshop while leaving plenty of room between the burning forge and the surrounding forest. I knew the building process would take days, and it would require stone in excess of what we had on hand, but just the thought of clearing a space where it could someday be built excited me.

  Approaching the nearest tree, I placed my hand flat against its wide trunk and suffused mana into a large wedge at the bottom of the opposite side. When I invoked the Shatter rune, an explosion of wood chips sprayed out from the trunk, and the tree let out an echoing groan as it began to sway from side to side. A single, firm push was all it took to send it crashing to the ground. I repeated the process twice more and, after a minute of precise cuts, was rewarded with three massive logs perfectly suited to our future crafting needs. I took a few minutes to remove the stumps and level the dirt again, then hauled the logs back to bolster our dwindling supply.

  With a satisfied sigh, I ran my fingers across the deep brown bark as I considered what it would become. I was momentarily overwhelmed with options, ranging from side tables and bureaus to decorative window boxes, but I caught myself before the train of thought drove on too long. Start from zero. We don’t even have a place to sit down yet. My thoughts immediately turned to Marten’s comfortable new bar stools and beautifully crafted chairs.

  I reached out down our winding woodland path with a narrow beam of mana to find the templates I would use for our new seating. The energy revealed Marin and Lia making their way towards me at a casual jog, and I felt a warm, golden glow of acknowledgement from Lia as she noticed my presence. My mana found its mark a few seconds later, and I suffused a vacant bar stool to make a mental copy of its exact shape. I was surprised at how little of an impact the distance made; compared to my first attempt with the hammer, it only took an extra few seconds of focus to overlay the blueprint into the emberwood log.

  The top half of the log shuddered after three loud cracks, and my fingers pulled up on a lengthwise seam to reveal the stool sitting in a perfectly fitted indentation. I pulled the seat out and admired the beautiful pattern that the natural wood created on the surface, brushing fresh sawdust out of the various joints. Satisfied, I brought the finished product up to the deck, then moved to the next sections of wood and repeated the process twice over. As I removed the final stool from its shell, I paused and looked over the hollowed-out log. If Rastor and I had known this technique for making molds, we could have done so much more than simple swords and armor.

  Heartened by my successes, I made a set of the larger chairs from the model in Marten’s living room. Though they were missing the cloth covers and padding, I was easily able to recreate the intricate scrollwork along t
he legs and back. I lined them up along the edge of the deck alongside my stools as a display of my newfound crafting abilities, then took a few minutes to break down the hollow logs into as many usable planks for future projects as I could. When the boards were stacked and the scrap was cleared, I sat down in one of my new chairs and kicked my feet up on the railing, where I rested comfortably until Marin and Lia arrived.

  “Is that all you’ve finished?” Lia called out as they broke through the treeline. “It’s been almost an hour!”

  I waved her off with a laugh. “I’ve got all afternoon to work,” I answered, “unless you’d like me to stay here and critique your lessons.”

  She pursed her lips tightly. “Criticism withdrawn.”

  I stood up from my lazy perch and looked down at Marin. “Are you excited to start training?”

  “Yeah!” she answered, pulling the old training sword I had purchased in Tolamar from her hip. “I even brought my own sword and everything!” To her credit, she already had the outfit of an adventurer: shiny leather boots, comfortable pants with a sword belt around her waist, and a tight-fitting white tank top underneath a drab yellow jacket lined with puffy gray fur. It was clear that she had replenished her wardrobe since arriving in Mayaan, and she had spared no expense in doing so.

  “You certainly look ready!” I laughed. “I’ve got one piece of advice for you: do your best. What you get out of training is directly proportional to what you put in, so give it all you’ve got.” She nodded vigorously before turning on her heel and skipping back towards Lia. I picked up both of the high-backed chairs and carried them inside, placing them in front of our noteboard. While I was tempted to sneak glances at their training through the window, I knew that Lia would notice before long, so I reached out to her with a tendril of mana. I’d like to watch your process, if you don’t mind. I promise I won’t bother you.

  No, please do, her voice echoed back to me. I want your feedback at the end of the day. Just, no staring, please.