B2. Chapter 01

“My boy!”

My dad hobbled over to greet me as I stepped from the carriage. My mom and sister followed right behind him. They called to me in excitement.

“Tosin!”

“Here,” dad said, grabbing a few of my things. “Let me help you with all that.”

I took my flagstaff while he grabbed my bag. My flagstaff wasn’t too tall. It came just above my head. The pole had a few short handles that stuck out horizontally at the top. They alternated sticking out left and right. Each of the four handles had a hole wherein a runic eyelet had been clamped in. The eyelets themselves were metal and etched with isolation runes. The bottom of the flagstaff also had a rune, and when struck against the ground, it would cause everything attached to the flagstaff to activate simultaneously. I could also call specific items by name to isolate their activation.

“Cool!” my little sister said and pointed at the items decorating the top of the flagstaff. “What’s all this stuff?”

“Hey Winni. Miss me?”

She was happy to see me, but currently enamored with the flag and ribbon that hung from the flagstaff circlets by chain, and to the Fist of Wind rune etched near the top of the pole. She ran a hand over the gold veins that marbled the flagstaff from top to bottom. I pointed things out one by one to her. Her eyes grew wide with wonder.

“This gold vein is an enchantment,” I said. “It’s called Life-steal. Whenever i deal damage—”

“Tosin,” mom said, coming in for a hug. “It’s so good to see you.” Her eyes were misty and she gripped my shoulders and put me at arms length to get a good look at me. “You’re so much older than last I saw you.”

“Mom, it’s only been a couple of months that’s all.”

“Come on Tosin,” my dad said from the porch of our single level thatched home. “Come on inside. We’ve got a warm meal waiting for you.”

Home. Home was a special sight to me. When you’ve been traveling through a soul freezing winter storm for two days, home is a beacon of hope and light. When meters of snow buried the road, buried the trees, and buried the bridges and rivers, home was salvation. I remembered traveling through that brutal winter storm as though it were yesterday. Dad had fallen ill, and our little town had no simple medicine or healing.

“Tosin?”

There had been no choice but to trek in the thick of the blizzard for two days to Klayvale, and then to travel two days back to bring home life saving healing. I’d succeeded in saving my dad’s life. The cost was my right hand’s index finger. I’d suffered from frostbite, and we’d amputated it.

“Tosin?”

I finally heard my mom call my name as if I’d been on another planet. I didn’t realize that I’d stopped to stare at my right hand. Four fingers and a stump.

Mom’s arms came around me for a hug. She must have seen me drift into the past. I felt her tears fall to my crown. She shuffled a bit—I imagined to wipe at her eyes before whispering, “I’m glad you're safe and home now. Come on. Let’s eat together.”

“Mom,” Winni complained from the threshold. “Now that Tosin is here, can we finally eat? I’m starving. I’ll be dead in an hour if I don’t eat.”

With laughter bubbling up from the both of us, my mom led me up the walkway.

The meter thick thatch curved along the roof in beautifully gold and straw colors. The wood of the house was aged grey, and the trim was dark and freshly oiled. It was glossy. The cobbled steps took me up and onto the patio. My dad’s waiting gesture guided me inside and I realized that I’d forgotten to take my boots off. Behind me was a trail of dirt. I looked up, chagrined, at mom.

“Sorry I forgot to—”

“It’s alright, don’t worry about it,” she said.

Wow. They must really be happy that I was back home.

The rest of the day was spent listening to Winni talk of her days and of her schooling; listening to my dad share his passion for growing herbs, and hearing all about the pie mom made for dessert. I told my fair share of adventures while training at the Magic & Lance Beginner’s Guild of Verglade city, while making sure to leave out some of the gory stories so Winni could enjoy them.

“Fight any goblins and dragons, my boy?” Dad asked, half joking, and half curious.

“Hah, no, but I did fight a giant rat, a scarecrow, some ram people, a scarecrow, and a yeti.”

“We have a scarecrow,” Winni said, pointing out the window.

Amid the small field of homegrown corn was a raggedy scarecrow. Upon its frame were perched a taunting pair of crows.

“Did you use your flags to fight the scarecrow?” Winni asked. “Will you show-and-tell the rest tonight before bed time?”

“Absolutely Winni. I’d be happy to.”

Mom brought out a raspberry cream pie and set each of us up with a nice thick slice. The pie was tall with a wallop of vanilla whipped cream on top. The fragrance of raspberries rose from the pie with a promise of the sweetest fruit.

“You don’t want any, mom?” I said, noticing she’d omitted a serving for herself.

“No I—When you cook and bake, sometimes you’re just full by the end of it all. But let’s talk about you, Tosin.” She gave my arm a light pat as I coasted a fork through whipped cream, pie filling, and crust. “What are your plans while you’re here?”

I explained that I would travel to Klayvale to explore the trading post there. My trainer at the guild had suggested I take on a few quests, maybe do some dungeon crawling for more experience before returning to the beginner’s guild at the end of winter.

“Aren’t these breaks supposed to be a time off—kinda thing?” My dad said before plopping the last bit of his pie slice into his mouth.

“Maybe, but there’s a lot I want to do.”

“What do you want to do?” Winni said, squirming in her seat, the sure signs of restlessness surfacing. I couldn’t blame her. She was half my age, only 8 years old.

“I need to get more experienced at healing. I want to eventually—”

“Oh!” My mom brought a hand up, and her expression told me she’d just remembered something very important. “Tosin, let’s go see Erin, our neighbor’s grandmother. You remember her?”

Mom bolted up in a heartbeat and pulled me out of my seat by my wrist. I had no time to answer before I was whisked across the kitchen, out the front door, down the front steps, up a few thatched houses, and pulled to a stop at an oval-esque red stained door.

“Erin, is Samantha’s grandmother,” I said, to which my mom nodded and rapped on the door.

It opened and we were greeted by a weary little woman whose eyes had been worn red from crying. The bags beneath her eyes bruised at her cheeks and dragged the rest of her face in a droop.

“Miranda? Tosin? Oh! Tosin! Please come on in!”

Once we entered, Samantha sat us down and brought us some lukewarm tea. She asked how we were, but the question was an automatic one, not one of inherent interest, or even in the pursuit of small talk.

“Tosin,” my mom said, turning to me. “Sam’s grandmother is very sick right now. I thought maybe—well since you're a healer now—you could maybe see what you can do?”

This was serious. I nodded in earnest and Samantha filled me in on her grandmother’s health. She was only 60 years old and, until yesterday, she had been running 5 kilometers every morning. Yesterday she returned an hour late with a limp. From then on she’d been bedridden and in pain.

I excused myself to run back home to grab some of Pyrrhon’s potions. I had a level 2 bottle with me that I’d leveled up to increase its capacity by 5x. That’s the one I returned to Samantha’s with. Thank Pyrrhon for inventing the common healing potion. Where would the world be without such legendary adventurers such as him. There was so much I had yet to learn.

Erin was in a foul mood from the pain. Her bed had been dragged to the window that overlooked a sprawling garden. Vines, now bare of leaves, had pressed into the window panes until she opened them to let the plants crawl in.

Samantha told me she would come in to check on Erin, coil the vines, push them back outside, and close the window every morning. She would return to check on her grandmother an hour later, and the window would be open once more, letting in cold air and the same sprawling vines.

“Well, it’s all I’ve got right now,” Erin said, “and it makes me happy. You can leave it be and let me have my little happy mornings. It’s the way I like to wake up. It’s what I like to do. No one else is taking care of the garden, so it's come looking for me.” That last part she’d said with a smile, sharing her fairytale for me to enjoy with her. So I did. I smiled and chuckled with her.

After some time chit chatting with Erin, and getting her comfortable with a stranger in her room—well not a stranger per say—she shared with me that she’d taken a fall on one of her runs and tumbled into a rocky ditch. She wouldn’t let me see, understandably, but her ribs hurt and her hip was bruised.

“I wish the medic still lived here,” Samantha said.

I offered Erin as much of a draft of Pyrrhon’s potion as she wanted.

“Can I use Hank’s camping mug?” Erin asked.

“Hank was her husband,” Samantha explained to me and went to fetch the tin mug. I poured a generous amount of the deeply red healing potion and gently pressed the cup to Erin’s trembling hand.

“Don’t normally shake so much,” she said. “It’s the pain of my tumble.”

She lifted the mug to her lips and started sipping. A dribble of red cascaded down her cheek. Her eyes widened with relief and she paused to gulp down what she’d tried.

I decided to use my Healing Lens enchantment on my mana bar to observe her health bar. I spread my fingers and flowed mana from my core. Ethereal blue mana flowed with the gossamer texture of chiffon into a bottleless sphere before me. The mana sloshed around like clouds of blue ink underwater and I spread my hands wide. The ball of mana formed a donut that grew wider and wider until it formed a ring the size of a wagon’s wheel.

I hadn’t observed my mana bar in a few days, so it was nice to see it again. We were all cast in the wavering blue light from my mana. There was a space at the top center of the blue ring where mana did not touch. When I used my mana, it would deplete a specific amount of points clockwise from that point. When it refilled, it would do so counterclockwise until the mana bar, or mana ring, was just nearly complete. One had to count the number of points and keep that math in their head in order to know what their total mana pool was. There was no other way to determine how many points you had.

On the bottom left of the mana bar, right on the inside of it, was the result of my Healing Lens enchantment. I saw my health bar in a red fist sized ring that operated the same as the mana bar, as well as my mother’s, Samantha’s, and Erin’s.

“See this one,” I said, turning with the floating mana ring to show everyone Erin’s health bar. “See how it’s halfway filled compared to ours?” Everyone nodded in the reflecting blue light. “That’s your health Erin.”

“Oh please, call my Meemee.”

“That’s your health Meemee. Go ahead and drink some more if you can.”

She tipped the mug to her lips once more. As she drank, she watched her health bar with wide old eyes. We all watched her health bar slowly fill up counterclockwise until it was nearly complete.