As I lay on the ground, my eyes closed, I reached out towards the fireplace, trying to feel anything there. The lack of anything had me worried, but as I concentrated I felt something. It was difficult to describe; unlike the wind, which seemed to have two states—one which was still, and then when it was turbulent, rushing in a direction while I was moving.

  The fire was different. It wasn’t hot like I expected; there was no temperature at all, but it felt like there were mini explosions, over and over again, as it burst against me while I was probing. More than that, it felt like emotions.

  As I felt the fire mana, there were curiosity and confusion before it seemed to shift to excitement and happiness. This was quickly followed by the feeling of some of the mana rushing towards me.

  I panicked as I quickly withdrew my senses, fearing I had done something wrong, but I visibly saw a stream of orange-red come from the fire to where I was. It didn’t hurt; it just lingered. Then I reached out again, this time feeling my whole being surrounded by the fire mana.

  And it conveyed happiness—this was Crisplet. Was this how he was communicating with Lily?

  I spent a couple more hours branching out to other areas where I thought mana should be, but I had no luck. Anytime I tried to detect earth mana, either in the hut that Milo built or in the ground itself, I came up empty.

  I tried to reach out to the barrels, which were still outside with the wagon, but either it was too far away or just was not strong enough for me to feel, because I couldn’t sense anything.

  Overall, I was happy with my successes. At least today had not been a complete waste.

  ***

  I woke up the next day, opened my eyes and realised I was still in the hut, so it was still early…

  Trying to move my head, at first I had no success, but after a minute of trying, I felt my finger twitch. Was I finally getting some movement back?

  In my excitement at thinking I was finally on the mend, I attempted to recall the buffs of the eel I ate…

  I was met with immediate pain.

  Letting out a groan, I caught Liane’s attention, which surprised me that she’d even be awake in the morning, but a moment after the pain sped through my body like rolling fire, Liane was sitting next to me.

  “Morning, you tried to use an ability, didn’t you?” she said with a smirk.

  I tried to nod, but nothing happened. I just blinked my eyes a couple of times.

  “Well, good news and bad news. You can use abilities, but that pain will linger for a while yet, and you’ll need to use those mana channels to get them accustomed to the new size. I’m sure Milo will talk your ear off about all the details.” She chuckled.

  I tried to move my finger again and felt it twitch. The movement did not escape Liane, whose eyes opened wide.

  “You’ll be moving again soon! That’s great; it’s been boring without you.” She leant in conspiratorially. “Micca has been trying to cook for us. She’s much better than Milo, but you’re better.”

  “Hey, I heard that!” Micca’s voice came from not too far away.

  I took the moment to close my eyes and reach out again to the mana. I tried to reach Crisplet again, and once again, the moment I touched on the mana I got brief confusion, before excitement, and again a stream of orange and red came over to me, startling Liane.

  “You’re getting mana from Crisplet?” She frowned.

  I blinked once, but the single ember from Crisplet answered it better.

  “He’s finally able to sense mana, and I believe he’s using his to reach out and communicate to Crisplet is my guess,” Milo’s voice came from somewhere I couldn’t see at the moment.

  What I saw was the burst of embers from the fire, Crisplet confirming Milo’s theory.

  “Well done for figuring that out by yourself. Usually people take a little while to get that down,” Milo said, now sitting on the opposite side to Liane.

  “Can you just sense Crisplet? Or have you felt other mana types as well?” he asked.

  I just stared at him—why was he asking me questions when I couldn’t answer?

  It seemed Crisplet felt my displeasure, because a moment later Milo had a piece of coal thrown at him, causing Liane to burst into giggles.

  Milo looked between me and Crisplet before it seemed to click.

  “I’m sorry, I forgot you can’t talk yet,” he said, rubbing the dark mark from his cheek.

  It wasn’t long before I was being carried out of the hut as I watched it fade to dust behind me. I also caught sight of George, who was riding on the back of Sable, and Darren, who was at the front of the wagon.

  My finger twitch had become nearly full movement in that finger, so I was making rapid progress in regaining my movement. I know Liane said I would need to use abilities again, but I hadn’t tried since—the pain I felt was incredible, like fire running through every vein and nerve.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Once I was inside the wagon, I tried to reach out with mana again. I knew where the barrels were, and I aimed for them. At first I felt nothing. I could sense the wind mana below me again—it felt still—but where the barrels were I felt nothing.

  Could the water mana just be weak?

  I kept at it for what felt like several hours. Twice I felt Crisplet reach out to me, and just express happiness and excitement, before the mana retreated.

  I was close to giving up, and honestly, the only reason I had not given up yet was the alternative was to try using abilities, and this seemed better than pain.

  But I felt something, slippery almost. Every time I brushed against it, it slipped away.

  This must be the water mana?

  I continued reaching out. I never got to properly feel the water mana; it always slipped away as soon as I felt close.

  During this whole time I had been trying to move my fingers, with some relative success. I could now move my finger up and down, and felt like I was making progress on the rest, so that left me with only one thing to work on…

  Use my abilities.

  There were only a couple I could do without movement or cooking, and that was to use the memory, or activate Arcane Foraging. If I were being honest, I didn’t realise the memory used mana channels at all until I tried to recall what buffs the eel gave.

  I knew the pain I’d experience trying to recall, so at least for experimental sake, I tried to activate Arcane Foraging.

  Pain.

  So much pain.

  I quickly turned it off, letting out a groan and feeling my eyes water. What I didn’t realise, though, was that my hand clenched into a fist.

  Milo caught it from where he was sitting with his book.

  “Ah, trying to use abilities. If it makes you feel better, it will get easier every time, but it will hurt like hell for a few days, and I suspect you’ll feel some pain for a week or two. In better news, looks like you have movement in that hand.” He pointed down.

  Next, I tried to work on moving that arm, while looking around and trying to turn my head. I would take breaks between trying abilities to recover from the pain, but my day proceeded through the cycle of trying to move, using my ability, recovering, and repeating.

  ***

  It was getting into the afternoon when I finally made significant progress on moving. I had just used an ability and swore loudly.

  “I can finally speak!” I said through the pain.

  “Excellent, well done,” Milo responded, and it didn’t take long before I saw Crisplet appear at the rear of the wagon with a burst of embers, before being scolded by Milo about fire safety.

  I didn’t want to say that if a fire started, we’d have multiple people who could put it out—including Crisplet, who could likely just make it so it never starts to begin with.

  But I was still in pain.

  Milo placed his book down and turned his attention to me fully. “Yeah, it’s going to take a while to get through that pain. I don’t know what you ate, Trev, but you’re lucky to have your mana channels at all. From my understanding, you should have fried them all to a crisp, so you’ve got very lucky.”

  I grunted, still struggling to speak well. “I just had the eel; it was uncommon to start with.”

  This was only partially true. I had the eel, along with the honey and the salt, but all the ingredients I used except for the eel I had used in the past at one point.

  Milo rubbed his chin. “And the other ingredients?”

  I told him everything I added, including down to the echoheart wood in the fire.

  As I was telling him all the ingredients, it clicked on what I might have done, and Milo picked up on that lack of confidence in my tone.

  “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you? Or have an idea what you’ve done.”

  I tried to nod, but again failed at that. “I don’t know… maybe. I was using mana ingredients to figure out what synergistic buffs I would get.”

  Milo laughed. “Right, so you didn’t use anything dangerous by itself; you just cooked an item so potent in restoring mana you nearly crippled yourself. Have you been able to recall the buffs?”

  “No, not yet. It’s been one of two things I’ve been trying and getting the pain,” I responded, still feeling it from the last attempt.

  I watched as Milo’s eyebrow raised at that. “Your memory ability is dependent on using your mana channels? How unusual. Well, when you can remember, I would be very interested in just how potent those buffs got.”

  “I know I used Manaflair Crust, and Second Simmer in it, as well as the wood,” I explained, realising how stupid I actually was. Of course, it would be incredibly potent.

  “I thought with Second Simmer you needed to cook an item a second time?” Milo questioned.

  I grimaced. “Ah, it was because the stock I used was the spider soup I made for Liane.”

  Milo just let out a deep sigh. “You know you’re an idiot sometimes, right Trev? Don’t tell Hari this—for your own sake—he might kill you himself.”

  Liane appeared next to Milo. “What did he do now?”

  Milo practically jumped out of his seat. “Gods, you are the worst, you know that.”

  Liane just grinned. “So, what did he do?” Turning to face me, “You didn’t try the dragon before me, did you?”

  I tried to shake my head. “No, not dragon. I stacked too many mana buffs on the same dish.”

  “Yep, you’re an idiot. I agree with Milo. Good to see you’re talking though, I better get back out there before Hari notices.” And with that, she was gone again.

  “So what happened? After I passed out, I mean?” I asked curiously.

  “Well… that’s an interesting tale. We thought you were killed or hurt because Lily’s aura literally blanketed the entire city, causing hundreds to collapse or be frozen in fear. Then, when we found you, she wouldn’t let us get close to you initially. In the end, it turns out she trusts Liane the most out of all of us—but don’t tell her that.”

  Milo smirked before continuing. “She made us all leave the room except for Liane. Once we came back in, Liane had worked out it was a mana issue, and Lily had calmed down slightly. After that, we rushed you to the medical unit on the second floor. The main issue we had was Lily refused to leave your side, which caused havoc in the hospital wing.”

  He sighed. “So it was decided we’d move you to your room, and then the doctors and medical staff from the city and guild came to your room. They administered a wide variety of potions, the main ones being to stop you from moving, to prevent further damage to your channels, the other was to keep your mana drained, and essentially kept you fed and watered while unconscious which is easier said than done.”

  I tried to look around, getting a little bit of movement now. “Where is Lily now?”

  Milo shrugged. “Well, we’re not sure, to be honest. Once you started waking up more and more, she vanished more. When we let her know we’d be leaving the city and where we were going, she literally rode on the roof of the wagon until we cleared the gates, which itself caused quite the scene.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at that, which I immediately regretted as it flared the pain in my body.

  “Once we were outside the city though, she vanished and I have not seen her since,” Milo concluded.

  “I hope she’s okay. I need to thank her for looking out for me,” I said, looking back up at the roof of the wagon.

  Milo chuckled. “And for terrorising the entire city. There were some interesting rumours about you, you know.”

  I groaned. “I heard.”