Nate stepped up beside one of the workshop tables sculpted from the earth of the cavern. Aisling flanked him as Kiri set Deverell down on the cold stone, disturbing a small amount of dust in the process.
“...is he dead?” a small voice asked.
Nate glanced back at Callum, the young boy having slipped up silently to look at Deverell’s pale form. Nate had noted the movement through his sphere of awareness before ignoring it. Shielding the child from the sight would have been his first thought months ago, but after everything he’d seen, he knew the boy had likely seen worse sights within the Slums.
“He’s alive,” Nate said, reassuring the boy before turning back to Deverell as he used Farsight of the Runic Artist to delve inside of his sister's mentor.
“Loss of blood?” asked Aisling, her voice rough as Nate sensed her looking between himself and Deverell.
“Loss of blood and something else. Trauma from the limb loss also but that’s not what I am feeling…” he replied carefully as he felt a subtle hum in his mind from Conceptual Insight.
The loss of limbs was obvious and the paleness of Deverell’s skin could partially be chalked up to a severe dearth of blood. But those factors alone shouldn’t be enough to keep Deverell down. The man had always been efficient and well supplied. That meant he carried healing elixirs, even a few expensive variants. Nate used his Conceptual Spatial Manipulation coupled with Conceptual Spatial Authority to dig into the Edgedancer’s spatial storage and found exactly what he expected to see. A small pile of empty vials that emitted the Concepts of Life and a few other lesser variants. Normally he would have dug into those variants, trying to extract information from them to add to his growing understanding of how Concepts interacted. Such curiosity had a time and place though, and now was definitely not the time. It did prove that Deverell shouldn’t be in such a bad state — unless something was keeping him that way.
He leaned down and sniffed at the open wound that was the remnants of Deverell’s arm. The cut itself looked clean and had taken the Dagger Dancer just above the shoulder. It was clearly a few days old, at least as far as Nate could estimate such things. However, even after roughly three days, the wound still wept, slowly dripping blood onto the stone upon which the man lay.
Nate strained his eyes, trying to see the leaking wound in the way he had once viewed the flows of mana. He could feel the Skill resisting and his eyes kept seeing shades of red for a moment before the Skill snapped back, not yet ready to transition in the direction he desired. The momentary flashes, though, made him wonder and he realised something he had been missing.
Nate had seen blood before, many times. Both his own and that of others. Yet, when he saw such wounds, he never sensed a hum of the Concept of Blood. Concepts had to be empowered for him to sense them. The feeling was faint, but he definitely sensed a flicker of the Concept of Blood from the arm wound and, after a second of checking, he found the same was true from the leg wound.
He was finally confident enough to answer and looked up to find six sets of eyes staring at him.
“He has the Concept of Blood in his wounds. I am fairly certain it’s preventing the wounds from healing and closing. Deverell burned through his healing elixirs which has kept him going this long but he’s still slowly bleeding out. We’ll need to cleanse the Concept of Blood from him before we can start healing him properly,” he explained.
“Kartier Jamison,” growled out Aisling, her eyes furious and everyone except Nate and Kiri took a step back as the air began to hum with static.
“You can do it, right?” pressed Kiri, ignoring Aisling’s outburst as her eyes bore into Nates with a fiery intensity.
“I can,” Nate replied with more confidence than he felt. “I’ll need a little while to prepare. Aisling, can you use your Growth-aspected healing spell on Deverell to keep him stable?”
Aisling’s nod was firm and Nate sensed the release of mana from the Platinum, following it in his senses as it circulated into a spell structure before settling over Deverell. He felt as the flow of blood increased within Deverell’s body and the Dagger Dancer’s stumps began to drip blood at an increased rate.
Nate pulled out a piece of paper and began sketching out the first of two runes as he spun up a Mana Exclusion runic array that floated next to him on the desk. The area of effect covered the zone around his drawing and forced him to remove his hands from his barrier. It was a necessary limitation for what he was about to do, but he still didn’t enjoy having any part of his body unprotected. A whisper from Jacque reached his ears as his pencil began to scratch at the page.
“Be silent and watch closely. Remember what you can…”
Nate ignored Jacque and the three apprentices as they quietly watched him work, though the act was a challenge seeing the wide-eyed interest of all four of them as he quickly sketched.
His problems were twofold. He’d never been forced to expunge a Concept before and he wasn’t sure how it was still present within Deverell even after three days. His only idea was to take control of the Concept and then force it to release itself from Deverell’s body. As far as he knew there was no Sigil for the idea of Concepts. It would be like a Sigil that represented reality itself if there was such a thing. However, what he did have were his Intents. He should be able to design a rune that could take control of the Concept of Blood present in the wounds and then guide it out of the man. That would stabilise him, but it wouldn’t heal him.
If Evindal was with them then the Elven Lord would likely have been able to regenerate the limbs through one of his Life-based Spells or Skills. The time reversion options probably weren’t on the table after three days, but who knew. But, Evindal was yet to be seen and Aisling’s Growth Mage class couldn’t regrow limbs, a topic he intended to discuss with her shortly. That left fixing the Edgedancer’s loss of limbs to Nate, which meant using runes. Of his two problems, it was by far the more complex but not because he thought it was terribly difficult for him to design something that could regrow limbs. If he didn’t care about the mana cost, he could probably manage a rune to accomplish it with just a Life Sigil, Soul Sigil and his Intent. But if he was a betting man, such an operation would not only be incredibly expensive in terms of mana, it would also likely be incredibly painful and traumatic for the recipient.
Deverell was relatively stable with Aisling hovering over the man and Kiri nearby in case he needed to use a Life Drain rune to further assist his stabilisation. That gave Nate the time to invest in creating a proper rune that would do the job without burning through days worth of mana and leaving the Dagger Dancer screaming. Nate smiled slightly, acknowledging that even under such duress, Deverell might be as silent as the grave. The thought wiped the smile off his face as he realised such phrasing was in poor taste given what Deverell had gone through.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
As he worked, he could hear the whispers from his apprentices and Jacque’s answers.
“...why is he using four layers?”
“Look at the geometric density. Remember your mana distribution fields. He wants the inner part of the rune to receive more mana than the outer parts.”
“But sir, it’s all uneven.”
“Same reason. He’s working on a precise mana distribution field.”
“Sir…why isn’t he writing down the maths for it…like you showed us?”
“Umm…I think he just does it in his head…”
Small gasps.
“What Sigil is that?”
“Let me check.” The sound of ruffling paper.
“I think it's the Sigil for Gentle. Novice Tier.”
“Why would you use Gentle and Clean next to each other like that?”
“I think he’s making it try to clean itself…” replied Jacque, voice filled with uncertainty.
Nate decided he had heard enough and if they were going to learn from him, he could teach them as he worked. His mind could handle four tasks now anyway.
“The rune you’re watching me draw is meant to regenerate limbs. The design is complex because I intend to reuse it in a runecrafted item. These inner Sigils will require the most mana, as the core function is the regeneration.”
“They look complex,” commented Kio.
“They are. The Life Sigil is Grandmaster-tier and the Soul Sigil is Master-tier. Who can tell me how the quality of the Sigils will impact the rune?”
“They’ll make it more efficient! It’ll use less mana for the same result!” said Jacque quickly, eyes bright. A second later he was blushing, ears and cheeks red as he realised he had answered the question instead of leaving it to the children.
“That is correct, Professor,” Nate replied with an amused smile as he continued to draw. “Why am I including Soul?”
The three children looked on, all unsure, or at least not confident enough to venture a guess.
“The answer,” Nate explained, “is the body itself. Living creatures are highly complex. We could study them for decades and still not fully comprehend how it all works and interacts. I tell you this, knowing that I likely know far more about the topic than any of you, and yet can still confidently say I know very little about it. But the soul energy within you knows. It knows the shape of you. It knows how everything is supposed to interact and what should be where. So we use the soul energy within our patient to guide the life energy to recreate the things that are missing.”
Nate tried not to smile at the children’s wide eyes and Jacque’s thoughtful upward gaze as the ex-Professor likely considered other implications.
“When would using the soul energy not work?” Nate asked.
When none of the kids answered Jacque spoke up, “When the wound is old. The soul is capable of forgetting.”
Nate nodded, “How would you get around such a limitation?”
Jacque just shook his head and two of the kids looked confused.
It was Laure that answered, his voice a whisper, “Could you use their memory?”
Nate smiled and raised an eyebrow at Jacque.
“That is how I would do it, Laure. Use another rune to evoke the specific memories of the limb, coupled with a rune to imprint the memory onto the soul energy. Perhaps there are other ways, but that is how I would do it.”
“Why the Gentle and Clean Sigils, though?” asked Kio.
“It’s to clean the wound as it regenerates. It will likely be exposed to the air and keeping wounds clean is important to avoid complications. Finally, this last section of the rune. Any guesses?” Nate asked.
“That’s a Sleep Sigil, right?” asked Jacque.
Nate nodded and Laure, the middle of the three apprentices, answered, “You’re going to keep him asleep while you regenerate his limbs?”
“Yes. It’s likely to be painful and with an application of Intent and interaction with this Gentle Sigil which is meant to touch upon both the Clean and Sleep Sigils, I should be able to let him sleep painlessly while the limbs regrow,” Nate explained, putting the final touches on his second rune.
“Any last questions before I begin?” asked Nate, letting his green eyes roam over his three, or he supposed four if you included Jacque, apprentices.
“Can I copy the rune?” queried Jacque, pointing at the regeneration rune.
“Yes, but don’t let them make use of the higher-tier Sigils until they can create their own Mana Exclusion runes.”
Nate was pleased when none of his apprentices asked why. Working with Master and Grandmaster Tier Sigils could impact their surroundings even in just ambient mana. Without a rune to control the expression, the mana feeding the Concept could warp or change their surroundings. It likely wouldn’t be enough to harm them. At least, not with the ambient mana levels found in Etrua, and so far, most of Galle outside of the Dungeons. But it could definitely mess up their work, or damage their creations, creating flaws that might prevent them from working or, at worst, cause other unintended consequences.
With his impromptu lesson over, he took the two rune designs and returned to the stone bench holding Deverell’s unconscious form.
Sitting down next to the side of Deverell with the missing limbs, he formed the Blood Control rune he had just designed using Conceptual Runic Mastery. The ambient mana filled in the runic structure freeing Nate from that particular cost and he focused his Intents at the Concept of Blood itself. While part of his mind maintained the rune, feeding it from the mana within his Runic Gallery, another part slowly took control of the Concept lingering within Deverell’s wounds. Bit by bit, he extracted the foreign Concept, dragging it out. Each time he pulled a piece of Concept out, the drops of blood that had accumulated on the table gravitated towards it, flowing like water instead of the viscous liquid it was.
The task was laborious, but he could sense Deverell improving as more and more blood remained within his body. Looking up at Aisling he could see the worry and concern still writ upon her face. His mentor was maintaining her growth-healing Spell and he decided it might be best to distract her from her thoughts. It helped that he was curious about a few things.
“You took your Growth Mage Class for the synergies, right?” he asked.
“I did,” Aisling replied, her chocolate brown eyes moving from Deverell’s still form to Nate.
“Did your Growth Mage Skills already have synergies with your other Skills, or did you have to combine them over time?” Nate asked.
“The Skills offered by my Growth Mage Class were in line with the idea of Growth. Mostly around Plants actually. But getting them to synergise with my Storm-related Skills was a lot easier. I’m told that’s normally the case.”
“Why is that?” Nate pressed.
“I don’t know, actually,” admitted Aisling, looking thoughtful. “Maybe they knew at the Royal University but it’s not something anyone has ever explained to me. It’s just something everyone knows.”
Nate nodded, going over his ideas. He noted that Aisling’s tanned face seemed more relaxed as she lost herself in her own thoughts. He had a hypothesis about how synergies for a Tertiary Class worked, anyway. After all, Classes decreased in rarity from one’s Primary class down to their Tertiary. If the same was true for the Sigils used on the Class Core, would it not also make the Concepts themselves subservient? A Master-tier Sigil would overpower a Journeyman-tier Sigil, given the same amount of mana. With that idea, it made sense that both the Secondary and Tertiary Classes were subservient to the Primary Class, meaning the synergies should be more inclined to favour the Concept or Concepts behind the Primary Class. He hoped he was correct, because if he was, it meant his plans for his Tertiary Class might work out even better than he hoped.
With a quiet smile, he settled in for a long night of thinking and planning as he worked to restore Kiri’s mentor. Even this small act, in his own mind, made him a Life Artist. Because, while he was not adding his own interpretations, he was helping to repaint the missing parts of the picture that was Deverell. Tonight, that was enough.
Discord Channel
Patreon with up to 20 chapters ahead of RoyalRoad.
