Keiran

Draw stones were easy to use, so easy in fact that they would passively steal mana right out of the cores of anyone nearby, albeit much more slowly than if someone touched one. It was no wonder it had taken so long for me to awaken if this was a nightly village ritual.

Fortunately for me, anyone with the least bit of knowledge could block the pull of a draw stone. It was a simple matter to keep my mana right where it was. The only question was whether the attendant would realize, but considering there wasn’t a single ignited mana core in this entire village, I was betting the answer was going to be no.

I pulled my hand back after a few seconds of pretending to let the draw stone do its business, and the attendant just ticked off a box next to my name. Mother picked me up and said, “There we go. Good job, Gravin! Maybe you should give Senica lessons on how to be brave.”

My sister stuck her tongue out at me from our father’s arms, and together we walked back to our one-room hut. At least I knew her name now. I was sure Mother and Father would suffice for our parents, and no one would look at me too hard if I forgot the names of anyone else I was supposed to know. No one was even really commenting on the fact that I hadn’t said a word yet since I’d awakened. Gravin had always been a quiet child.

Now that I had a better idea of the situation I’d found myself in, I could start forming a plan to get myself out of here. The first step was going to be creating a mana storage crystal. My own core couldn’t hold all the mana I needed to ignite it, and there was no ambient mana to draw in. I’d have to hoard it. That shouldn’t be too terribly difficult. I just needed a physical object, some mana, and a great deal of patience. The biggest hurdle was going to be how weak my body was. Even without letting myself be mana drained, I was feeling drowsy.

Toddlers slept a lot, and while I could use my own mana to energize myself, I needed it for other projects. A nap wouldn’t go amiss right now. Luckily enough, the sun was going down and it looked like everyone else was getting ready to sleep too. That led me to take my first good look around the inside of the hut, and I realized almost immediately that there were only two pallets. One was a small, Senica-sized rectangle with a pair of dolls laying on it, and the other was big enough for two adults.

Oh no. Was I still sleeping with my parents? This whole reincarnation was starting to feel like some sort of cosmic joke someone was playing on me. It was bad enough that I was sleeping on an unscented oblong bag of straw, but to have to share the pallet with two other people…

Getting my own place to sleep was right up near the top of my priorities list.

My new family went through their night time rituals before Senica crawled onto her own pallet and I was placed between my parents on the larger one. My mother handed me some sort of straw-stuffed doll shaped like what I assumed was a local animal. I didn’t recognize it, but that could have been because the quality was lacking or because it was just an animal I’d never seen before. Neither would have surprised me. Wherever I’d reincarnated at, it wasn’t a place I was familiar with.

Apparently, it was just expected that I’d want to hang onto “Farnsley,” as my mother called the toy. It wasn’t ideal for my purposes, but I only needed a storage crystal for a month or two. I could easily empty my mana into the toy every morning once I’d modified it, and no one would think twice about me constantly holding it. It was almost galling thinking about the transference loss, but then again, it wasn’t like I had anything better around to work with.

I’d get started on forming the storage crystal inside the toy where it couldn’t be seen tonight, and over the next few weeks, I’d slowly fill it. No one would suspect a thing. Perfect.

* * *

My eyes cracked open to see sunlight pouring in through the window. Both my parents were already up and preparing for the day, though my sister was still laying on her pallet. I groaned and sat up, then looked around for the toy. It had somehow made its way down past my feet while I slept.

I had not managed to finish forming the storage crystal last night, not even close. I hadn’t even managed to use all the mana in my core before I’d fallen asleep. I crawled across the bed, scooped the toy back up, and got back to work.

“Oh, you’re up early,” my mother said. Before I had time to think, she’d crossed the room and picked me up. “Come on, leave Farnsley here. Let’s get your morning business taken care of.”

With no say in the matter, I was whooshed out of the hut to the nearest communal outhouse. How humiliating.

* * *

It was far more difficult than I’d expected to work on the storage crystal. I wasn’t allowed to take the toy anywhere, and when I tried, I was told that I was getting too old for that now. Between that and my weak body’s inability to stay awake at night, it was hard to get time to even work on the crystal. That was frustrating, but if I was being honest, it wasn’t like I was generating mana fast enough that a ton of additional time would make a difference.

It took me a week to finish forming the storage crystal inside the toy. It felt like a rock the size of a grown woman’s thumb, and the only way to tell it was there was to squeeze the toy tightly. Its maximum storage capacity was pathetic, and if circumstances hadn’t been so dire, I’d be embarrassed to associate myself with its creation.

The storage crystal was horribly inefficient and I was forced to once again revise my estimations about how long it would take to fill it. At least half the mana I poured into it leaked out before it stabilized, and if the tests I’d done were in any way accurate, I was going to lose half of it again when I tried to pull it back out.

Two months, at least. That was the best-case scenario. So far, nothing had interfered, at least not in any meaningful way. Mother was intent on monopolizing most of my waking hours, and when she wasn’t, Father occasionally took over my evening. The only person who didn’t seem particularly interested in me was Senica. At least, that’s what I thought.

* * *

“How come you don’t talk anymore?” Senica asked me one afternoon.

I slowly turned my head to look at her and blinked once. It suited my purposes to say nothing, and no one had made any demands otherwise.

“Mom’s worried about how quiet you got. I heard her talking to Malra about it while we were gardening the other day,” my sister continued. She jabbed a finger in my direction. “So how come you stopped?”

I shrugged my little shoulders and told her, “Nothing to say.”

“You’d better start talking again soon. Malra said we should take you to the gover- the govenirer, no, the… to Lord Noctra’s house to see if you’re possessed.”

That was ridiculous. What kind of spirit would waste its time possessing a toddler? What would even be the point? Now, if they were worried about body snatchers or changelings, that would make sense. But a possession? That was just dumb.

Just the same, I didn’t need anyone taking a closer look at me before I had the ability to defend myself. Even if they couldn’t see the soul invocations I’d woven into myself, that might not stop some third-rate charlatan from pronouncing some suitably mystical sounding garbage to some frightened villagers that ended up with me in even more dire straits than I was now.

“Not possessed,” I said.

“Well, of course you’re not, dear,” my mother said, sweeping me up into her arms. Curse my toddler senses, I hadn’t even realized she’d been listening. “Senica is just being mean. Ignore her.”

I spent the next half an hour reciting the names of various fruits and vegetables from the garden back to my mother as she told them to me, much to her delight. It looked like I hadn’t done as good a job at acting like a normal toddler as I’d thought.

Two more months…

* * *

Everything would have gone so much faster if I’d had the ability to cast even the most basic of spells. Mana draining my parents in their sleep, for example, would have increased the amount of mana I could put in my storage crystal. It was too bad I couldn’t do it.

Days turned into weeks, and ever so slowly, the storage crystal kept filling. Every evening, I went to the town square with my family and pretended to give up my mana to the draw stone, an event they called the tithe. Every night, I poured it into my storage crystal instead. Soon enough, it technically had enough mana in it to ignite my own core, but with so much being wasted upon drawing it out, it wasn’t really close to enough. I needed to fill the crystal to the brim to ensure success.

The whole thing would have been easier if Mother was just a little bit less interested in me. Her constant demands on my time were bad enough, but the amount of energy I wasted appeasing her attempts to play with and educate me were the true problem. It was impossible to keep up with her demands without tapping into my mana. Gravin, and no doubt every other baby here, had probably been doing it unconsciously. It was a common enough form of invocation, which itself was by far the easiest kind of magic to cast without realizing it.

If I tried to get out of it, I got admonishments. If I persisted, it turned to concern about my health, which led to greater scrutiny. The last thing I needed was someone like that neighbor Malra snooping around or, worse, going to someone else who might actually be competent. Anyone with a lick of training would notice that storage crystal. I was running a calculated risk not shielding the mana, but it would take ten times as long to fill if I did.

Why couldn’t I have gotten an absentee mother, like in my previous life? That woman had been so disconnected from me that I couldn’t even remember her name anymore. Thinking about her only brought to mind the smell of burning yamma weed that she’d smoked from a long-stemmed pipe every day and the sound of flesh slapping on flesh, which was how she’d paid for it.

My new mother was nothing like that. It was ungrateful of me to resent her for being such a loving parent, but she was standing in the way of my progress. I played along and did my best to keep my mana expenditure to a minimum while silently fuming about even more delays. Weeks turned into months, and my goal of filling the storage crystal in just two months seemed laughable. Before I knew it, my third birthday had come and gone.

That led to even more expectations, and my mana generation hadn’t grown enough to keep up with them. It was now four months of this routine, and every day was an exercise in willpower as I resisted the temptation to tap into the storage crystal, drain it dry, and hope that I could squeeze enough mana out of it to ignite my core.

The day was coming, and soon too. Even with all the stumbling blocks, I was over three quarters of the way to filling the crystal. Just another two months should do it. This time, I was sure.

* * *

“Gravin,” my mother said. “I have a surprise for you, sweetie.”

I opened my eyes and looked at her. I’d been sitting in the garden while she worked, doing my best to meditate and increase the amount of mana I was generating. With my core in the state it was, there wasn’t really much I could do, and I would have normally considered it a waste of effort. In these circumstances, though, anything I could do to shave off a day or two was worth the work.

“This is Cherok,” my mother said, gesturing to a man standing next to her. “He’s going to be your school teacher for the next few months while you learn how to use your mana. Isn’t that exciting?”