Chapter Two

I must be a sorry sight, walking through the woods as I am. My breath has returned to normal, although my muscles are aching all over. Most importantly, however, I’ve been chewing on every normal-looking leaf I could find. Though there’s a chance I get very unlucky and poison myself, or arguably worse, find some addictive hallucinogenic, I desperately need the mana. Because what I’ve learned as I trudged along the non-existent path, is that I’m bleeding the stuff. Luckily for me, I haven’t been losing any blood but my current situation is not much better. Especially since this place, wherever it may be, lacks mana. Where I’m from, and quite literally in every place I was aware existed, there’s mana floating freely in the atmosphere. In such abundance that it creates beautiful spectacles in certain areas. Mana depletion the way I experienced just recently, is something of an urban myth.

Something students like me impress their peers with, heroic tales of soldiers reaching beyond their limits and throwing up, right on the battlefield. All based on some real story that wasn’t nearly as entertaining. Teachers were always quick to point out that mana depletion wasn’t depletion, since that implies there’s no mana at all. Which is of course a scientific impossibility. Matter itself depends on mana to even exist. But there now exists a horror version of the tale, something even the more depraved minds among my fellow students never came up with. What if you’re not just using up all your mana, what if you continuously bleed your mana into your surroundings, my current situation in a nutshell.

It’s no surprise that my invisibility spell failed me so soon, I must have been leaking all the while. Not that I noticed any of the symptoms even after that fiasco, the chase obscured any hint of it happening. I suppose I should just be happy that none of my pursuers managed to pick up on that trail, it would have led straight to me. Even now it wouldn’t be difficult to track me, because despite my best efforts I can’t seem to contain all of it. With conscious control, I managed to lower it to an amount I can sustain with leaves, but I’m terrified of losing focus. I’m not sure what will happen if I ever run out, but the nausea I experienced last time I got close promises nothing good. The worrisome part is that the sun is slowly making its way below the horizon. And with the adrenaline having drained some hours ago I’m not steady on my feet, I need to sleep and I need to do it soon.

But any hope leaves along with the sunlight and I am soon walking in the dark. The lack of visibility is doing me no favors as I struggle to make any progress. Every step has me stumbling along the bumpy ground, I don’t dare open my mouth for fear of biting my tongue. Judging what leaves might be safe to put in my mouth has likewise become impossible and I just pray none of these trees are sadistic like that. If they are, I won’t just be leaking mana, I’ll be leaking every fluid and even some things that shouldn’t be fluid.

But the situation doesn’t last; it wouldn’t have, to start with, as I’d eventually pass out on my feet. Luckily for me, however, I am blessed to see light again. No bright sunlight, the nights aren’t that short, but the unmistakable light of a fire, and that promises civilization, or perhaps the remains of one. Or a wildfire now that I think of it. But these little shining orbs are no natural disaster, and I hasten my steps as much as I can, which is nothing to be proud of after hours upon hours of trudging along. It takes all I have to keep moving, the wooden gate that comes closer and closer is closed, but I can vaguely see guards on the palisades. This isn’t some knightly order however, these are regular folks that are just on lookout. Even as I finally breach the leaves and become free of the forest, a root trips me and I eat dirt for the second time today, or the first, it might have been midnight already.

But with salvation or death so close at hand, an end to this suffering, either way, I crawl further. It is only when I reach the light and my body is illuminated by the soft glow of lanterns that my energy finally runs out. And it’s with the sound of concerned yells in my ears that I blissfully pass out.

When I finally return to consciousness, I am immediately assaulted with the knowledge that I am in very poor shape, and also an answer to what happens when the body runs out of mana. I can barely detect an iota of it in me, and it’s causing haywire throughout my system. Shivering and retching, I try to regain control of myself but there’s nothing I can do, there’s no leak to plug as there’s nothing left to bleed out. I am well and truly dry of mana. I’m surprised I’m alive. A wave of pain forces my eyes open and I am greeted with an awful sight. The jitters have cramped my arms into an upright state, which now means I get to see my fingers without needing to strain my neck or get up. I rather wish I couldn’t however because the sight leaves much to be desired. My hand looks like a dead man’s and my fingers are black and withered. I’m reminded of what happens when the body becomes too cold, but this is no better to look at.

Then a spoon enters my mouth and I am forced to swallow dryly, moisture has seemingly left my body along with any magical power. Now I get to regain both, however, as whatever was on that spoon reinvigorates me to my soul. The euphoria is short-lived, however, as the mana already starts to leak, one thing has changed though, now that I’m awake, if feeling like death frozen over, I get to dampen that leak. Perhaps not plug fully, but as long as I maintain concentration I can get it down to a drizzle, a world of difference, and when the second spoonful enters my mouth I can feel my reserves fill up. This is nothing like nibbling on leaves, that were barely enough to replace the aforementioned drizzle, this fills me right up and I can feel my body responding. Blood rushes through my veins and my blackened hand regains a little color.

And even as I finally relax a little, making sure to keep clamping down on any mana leakage, a voice reaches out to me. And through some miracle, I even know what it says. The sound is all wrong but I know exactly what is meant.

“Boy, you’re awake?” a voice as dry as my throat feels asks me.

“Barely, and only thanks to you,” I respond, voice strained from exhaustion.

Slowly blinking to get some moisture on my eyes, I try to see who my savior is. The first thing that comes into view is the ceiling, the cloth reveals that I am lying in a tent, and the second thing is that I am not the only patient in the ward, and that’s no proverb. I fully recognize the background noise as the groaning it is, and my savior seems to be in the right business. Unfortunately, that strains my eyes too much already and I’m forced to close them before seeing who they are.

“That’s good to hear, now I have other patients to attend to, but someone will come to you soon.” The voice says. “We do have some questions about who you are and what happened.”

No surprises there, although I have no idea how to explain my presence. It’s not like I understand what happened to me either. At least I can explain my condition, it’s a pretty clear case. Time passes quickly as I just focus on containing my energies, thanks to what I ate the tank is far from empty. Only the murmurs of other patients and the accompanying sounds of groans and labored breathing fill the otherwise silent tent. Peaceful enough, until I am interrupted as promised.

A young man snuck up on me as I lay there, engrossed in my thoughts. My eyes are now able to see without much trouble.

“Hello,” he ventures politely. “Are you awake?”

I try to answer but what comes is more of a grunt.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he smiles quietly, then pauses.

“I’m sure you have a general idea of what I’ll be asking,” another pause. “But considering your state, I’ll try to keep it short.”

“It’s mana depletion,” I cut in. “I was well and truly spent.”

He reacts surprised and then grimaces. “I might not be a full-fledged doctor like Madam Barrow, but even I know that mana depletion doesn’t result in withered limbs.”

We make eye contact and he gives me a stern look. I’m not sure what face to make.

“Then you tell me what I’m going through, because I only know I’m leaking mana and beyond it being unhealthy I have no clue what that even means,” frustration clear in my rough voice.

His expression turns troubled.

“How long has this been going on?” he asks carefully.

But before I can answer, another figure joins us. An old lady with hands almost as shriveled as mine walks over and the young man in front of me respectfully makes room for her.

“How is he,” she says, and I now recognize the dry voice as my savior from before.

“Ah, yes, he claims to suffer from mana depletion and says he is leaking mana. But the damage doesn’t really…” his sentence dies off as the old lady grabs my arm.

The warm and pleasant feeling of mana flooding into it is not enough to distract me from the sight of rejuvenation that happens in these few seconds. The feeling stops as she lets go, it takes a moment for me to even realize how out of breath she is. My hand has transformed from its withered state, and it now looks almost healthy. Even the color has mostly returned, from the charcoal black that it was, to a sickly pale. Far from healed but orders of magnitude better than before. The assistant’s jaw goes slack at the sight.

“It.. healed? But that hand was…” he’s missing the words to explain himself, though not for lack of trying. “You can’t heal the damage done by mana depletion like that.”

“He wasn’t lying, I’m afraid what we’re seeing is the fate of the other patients. Although I don’t know why his state has progressed so much further, nor do I claim to understand the healing he showed,” a tired look is thrown my way, however, I don’t move to enlighten her.

I’m still struggling to comprehend how I was somehow in a worse state than the others, I had been containing my mana loss for the majority of the time, aside from one short invisibility spell, and two failed attempts at the same, and also a minor illusion, I had been holding out very well, the leaves certainly helped the issue too. So how come I was running dry so much faster than them?

Too many questions and nowhere near enough information, they didn’t even mention the utter lack of mana in the area. That particular supposedly scientifically impossible state would surely be relevant to a case like this, but they didn’t say anything about it. At least the healing makes sense, although I can’t say the same about their reaction to it. I learned basic first aid, just like everyone at my university. Lesson one has always been to insert mana. As long as you stop the bleeding you can heal from most things. Those entire lessons boiled down to:

Prevent immediate death by closing holes as best as possible. Insert mana.

The body takes care of the rest. Yet they seem to regard this as some godly intervention. The oddities just keep piling up.

“But if this is happening to all of them…” the assistant tries.

“Yes, we don’t have nearly enough herbs to keep their mana levels up if they’re all like him.”

“As long as you put more mana in me I should be able to move shortly,” I interject.

I’m keeping the leakage to a minimum now, which is straining but I should be able to keep it up for quite a while. They both give me a look as if they practiced it, both of them regarding what I said as idiotic. Their condescension bled right through. It’d be hurtful if I had the energy to care. Keeping my mana at a healthy level was taking up most of that energy though, so I didn’t care that much.

“We already fed you with a box full of reagents, we don’t have all that much left after that,” she shakes her head dejectedly.

I guess it would take constant injections of mana to keep me alive whenever I wasn’t consciously holding it back. That’s a horrifying realization since I can’t keep this up forever, I still need to sleep for one. Even as my mind begins to spin with the possibilities, I notice something. There’s a source of mana nearby, although it’s not particularly big, then I notice another. It feels like I’m sensing my surroundings for the first time in a long time. Then the old lady stands up and the puzzle pieces click into place, I’m sensing her. Not just her of course, but also the young man assisting her, and I can vaguely feel the other patients in the tent. I can’t differentiate between them all that well, not at this distance, but it’s unmistakably them. Like little fires I feel them all around me, what would normally be obscured by all the background mana is now clearer than I have ever felt it.

The precision notably drops after just a few meters but the general sense remains. A vague idea implants itself in my mind. My body is healing even now, but I’m very consciously holding it back, as it would drain me dry once more if I let it. Healing is not a particularly efficient process and certainly not supposed to function with so little mana, but this barren wasteland does not provide what I need. Still, the barren part only applies in regards to the ambient mana, the wildlife has what I need. If I could find some leaves that contain more than the bare minimum of mana, I could replenish myself, enough to get going at least.

A simple attempt to move my legs does not inspire hope but does not extinguish it either. In a highly controlled manner, I let loose some of my mana into my legs, doing my best to contain it within. The effect is instantaneous as I regain feeling in my lower limbs, at the cost of most of my stored energy. While I’m creaking like the wooden floor of a seedy bar, I can move. Unfortunately, even as I finally get one leg out from under the covers, my saviors turned captors push me back into bed.

“Don’t even think about it,” the old lady glares at me, “You’re in no condition to move.”

Their good intentions will be the death of me, the longer I lay here the more exhausted I’ll be. The strain of holding back constantly is growing by the hour.

The doctor turns to her assistant.

“We’ll have to forage, these woods are rich in mana. The quality of herbs won’t be as high but it’s better than nothing.”

The words have me raise my eyebrows, this place is rich in mana? This magically barren wasteland? But my expression goes unnoticed as the young man responds with a voice full of worry.

“Madam, you can’t be serious, it isn’t safe! We don’t even know how any of this happened…”

“Most of the patients were not doing anything in particular, and they certainly weren’t all in the woods as it happened. We have no reason to believe the forest is related to this at all,” the doctor says, her mind made up.

“But the stories!” the assistant interjects anxiously.

“They're just stories, there’s ghost stories about every foggy forest on this continent, and these patients need real help. More real than some tall tale to scare children.”

The young man’s mind is very obviously not being set at ease by her words but he offers no response. The doctor gives him a tired smile, then she sets off and leaves the tent. Her assistant is left alone with the patients, training takes over as he gets to work to ease their symptoms. The best he can do right now. And I start preparing for the best that I can do right now. I have no real certainty that my idea is even viable, but continuing to lie here will only result in a later death. So when he’s busy with the bed furthest away from mine, I quietly put my feet to the ground, and with only a small grimace I take my first step. The pain is very present but I bite through it, the second step is barely easier. But after the fifth step, I notice improvements and by the time I leave the tent, unnoticed by the assistant, I’m only grimacing every other step.

My next challenge is finding my way out of this camp, luckily they seem to have quarantined us, as the tent is some distance away from the houses. From where I stand at the entrance I can see the gates I passed out at unless they have multiple entrances. Unlike when I passed out, however, they’re open now. And perhaps it’s lunchtime but I don’t see any lookouts on the palisades this time. With some silent groans and many a wince, I make my way over. When I finally stand outside the walls I close my eyes and cast my senses out as far as possible.

It takes a while to understand what they’re telling me, and longer still to find what I was looking for. After what must have been at least a full minute of standing there I get a hit, the faint feeling of mana like a delicious smell draws me in. One last glance at the gates behind me and I enter the forest again, hoping to find what I need to stay alive.