“Wake up you lazy bum!” A voice echoed through me, causing me to jump in my bed with a small shout.

“God damn it Narrator!” I shouted, instinctively knowing it was him who decided to shout at me this morning.

“Nope, it is I, the glorious Elder Groutt.”

Okay, never mind. Not Narrator…

“It’s well past sunrise so I can’t let you rest anymore. I know you were injured until recently, but this is for your own good.”

“I like this guy.” Narrator said, “Maybe I should have a chat with him about the wake-up call.”

“How the hell would you talk to him…” I retorted mentally as to not confuse the Elder standing in my room. I pushed off the covers and realized that I was still in yesterday’s clothes. I then made the executive decision to do nothing about it before following Groutt out of the door to my hut. I could tell that my social standing with Narrator had dropped a few points, but I don’t think I really care…

“Did you get all of that?” Groutt asked me, jarring me out of my thoughts and back to reality.

“Absolutely not.” I responded, hardly missing a beat and giving a sickly-sweet smile in the process.

“Oh come on Damion, I thought you were better than that.” Groutt told me with only the barest sliver of a smile on his face. “In that case, I guess I’ll repeat myself this time. I was saying that today you will be learning to read and write with Stivv and then go with Pong for a little experi- training. Yes, some training in the afternoon. Though I might need to leave you with Stivv a little longer if your attention span is that pathetic. Now, let’s take the fast route this time to compensate for lost time.”

I wanted to respond to Groutt, but I didn’t exactly have any time as the Elder suddenly grabbed my wrist and we had been moved to a different location.

“Are… are you okay?” Narrator asked as he noticed the shade of pain I was in. I’m not sure if Groutt had forgotten about the whole blinding mana field issue, but I definitely had not.

You see, what had happened was that Groutt decided to not bother waiting for me to slowly traverse the field to the library while dodging the veritable mountain of mana fields out this early. Instead, he just dragged me there in a straight line while still managing to take a direct path through at least a dozen of those mana fields. That combined with the sheer speed that we were moving had me blinded in a literal second and I was currently rolling on the ground in pain from the scintillating light seared into my eyes.

“Who are you talking to?” Narrator asked after I had relieved myself of most of the pain.

“You, you dolt! Who else has access to my thoughts and feelings?” I mentally screamed at him, trying to vent some of the anger I had accumulated just now.

Thankfully, after only a few minutes my sight had fully returned and Groutt hadn’t asked me to do anything and left me to tend to my wounds. I stood up and faced Groutt with a blank expression, trying to gauge what he was thinking; though I couldn’t figure out anything useful from his expression and conceded the mental conflict to him.

“Well now that you know what kind of fun you’re in for today, I’ll leave you to work with Stivv. I’ve filled him in on most of the information you would have needed to tell him so skip the story time and have fun Damion!”

Groutt had slowly been walking away while he was talking but almost as if he hadn’t been there to begin with, he vanished. No other sounds or sights accompanied it. He was just gone…

“Well what are you waiting for out here lad, come on in!” I heard Stivv say from the now open door. Wait, when did we get to the library? Oh… right… Supersonic Elder.

Ignoring the string of puns that Narrator was trying to get me to laugh at, I headed into the building and made my way to the same table Stivv had been sitting at yesterday. I took a seat cautiously due to the large quantities of paper and books surrounding the table and piled on top of the extra chairs.

“So kid,” Stivv started, “What do you know about a Personal Mana Identity Field?”

“A what?” I stuttered, not exactly sure what the man had just asked me.

“Oh god, I have to start from the basics…” Stivv said while covering his face with his hands. I noticed that his hands were significantly more stained than the previous time I had seen them but chalked it up to his work. “Okay, so a Personal Mana Identity Field, P-M-I or field for short, is basically how we as mages influence the world. I’ve heard that you can see mana apparently, so I’ll show you a little bit of what I mean.”

I hadn’t realized it before, but there was a very thin film of yellow light covering the entirety of Stivv’s body. The film of light started to expand outward from the surface of his skin to a few inches above it in all directions with a slight grunt. The light was mostly see-though so it almost seemed like Stivv had clad himself in a veil of mana that took the shape of a suit of armor.

“This is what I am referring to, assuming you can actually see it and Groutt wasn’t feeding me lies.” Stivv continued. “As a mage trains in their art, the ambient mana they absorbs begins to reveal itself in a sort of armor that can do some interesting things. There’s really only two things you need to know about it for right now, Pong should fill you in more when you get to that level. First, as you become more advanced in your studies of magic, you can control the size and shape of your field.”

As Stivv continued through the explanation, his field began to alter itself. It was changing shape from the armor he had been sustaining earlier to a nearly solid sphere, then to a transparent cube and all other shapes, sizes, and intensities.

“Once you get to my level though, there your field starts to fundamentally change. This change is based off of your personality, lifestyle, interpersonal conversation… pretty much everything you do in day to day life. Take me as an example, I’ve been holed up in a library for the past… I dunno, few decades? So my field helps me and anybody inside of it absorb and retain information much better than normal. This is the main way you are going to be learning the stuff I am teaching you. We will be cramming several months or even years of information into significantly less time to catch you up to speed.”

Accentuating the end of his speech, Stivv had shaped his PMI into a solid sphere that extended from the center of his body all the way past the tables behind me. It was a little hard to see due to the radiance it was putting off, but the sphere must have extended a good dozen feet in all directions.

“Okay, cool lecture, but could you tone down the brightness a bit? It’s getting hard to see.”

Upon hearing my request, Stivv reluctantly obliged and the sphere began to dim ever so slightly.

“So Damion. Here’s how this is going to go. For the next however long I have you, you’ll be reading these.”

He dug around under the table for a second or two and retrieved a small stack of thin books with soft covers. I’d seen some similar books before in some of the merchant stalls I’d been to, but weren’t those for advanced topics? How did he expect me to work with this stuff?

“We should have about four hours until Pong whisks you away, so you might be able to finish by then.”

Realizing that Stivv had already returned to his studies, I hastily grabbed the top book from the stack and frantically looked through it to see if I could recognize anything in it.

“So?” Narrator asked, probing me if nothing else. I didn’t pay him any mind as I started despairing at the content of the books. There were complex diagrams made up of numerous shades of colors and barely any words to go off of. Each page barely had anything in common with the previous one and the despair started to creep into my mind as I reached for the second book in the pile and flipped it open.

This book wasn’t any different from the first in terms of complexity, though it managed to further advance the feelings of hopelessness I was trapped in. There were pictures of animals covering this book’s pages and while there were more words on the page, they didn’t help me pick anything else out of the book.

The rage from earlier began to bubble within me as I recalled everything that had happened to me before… From getting my body ripped apart and put back together, to the pain I had been dealing with from the aftermath of the surprise surgery, to Groutt toying with me not minutes earlier.

“How the hell am I supposed to do anything like this!” I shouted in complete defiance of the library’s previously quiet atmosphere. Thankfully, nobody aside from Stivv and I occupied the space, but I hardly cared in the rage that currently coursed through my veins.

“Are you okay Damion?” Stivv asked, concern tinting his voice, but I had already leaped up from my chair and stormed off towards the exit of the building. Stivv called out to me once again, but I’d slammed the door shut before his words could reach my ears.

After walking the route a few times yesterday, I had become a bit more familiar with the village layout, so I took the straight path back to my room while barely swerving out of the way of the numerous mana fields blocking my path.

“Are you okay Damion?” I heard Narrator echo in my head in a much more docile tone than normal.

“No Narrator.” I replied out loud as I literally slapped aside one of the bubbles of mana in my path. “I’m not okay.”

I didn’t bother listening to Narrators worried response as I completely blocked out all of his thoughts along with most of my awareness of the outside world. The only thing I could feel at the moment was blatant rage at the world for everything that had happened in the past few days. I reached my destination shortly as I failed to bother with detours and wildly opened the door and slammed it closed with force that would have shocked my former self if they could see.

I barely noticed the fact that my room had been cleaned in the few minutes I was out, but what did catch my eyes was the full-length mirror resting against the left wall. I whipped my head towards it and immediately punched through it, causing the glass to shatter slightly, breaking into countless smaller shards while still staying attached to the frame. I pulled back my arm a second time and released it once again without holding back anything and the mirror fully broke, shards of glass scattering on the floor all around my feet.

I could feel the anger being drained from my body as the sounds of the breaking glass filled my ears, and I took a small back and reached down to pick up one of the larger pieces of the formerly intact mirror. A sad smile crossed my face as I stared at myself through the small shard of glass as pleasure coursed through my mind in a flash before the world turned dark and I collapsed to the floor unconscious.

***

“You know you haven’t been honest with yourself.” A voice softly echoed out, seeming to permeate my mind.

I couldn’t see anything at this point, but after everything so far, it barely fazed me. It was as if I had been standing in a space devoid of anything and everything, existing as an incorporeal being alone in the world.

“Don’t try and dramatize it Damion,” The voice continued, gradually gaining clarity within the space as it started to coalesce into a singular point.

“Well what was I supposed to do Narrator?” I retorted, my voice cracking slightly. “It’s not like you’ve even experienced the world like I have! You’re just a thought in my mind that stays no matter how hard I try to forget.”

A few specks of light emerged into the space in front of me, seemingly familiar yet I couldn’t fathom where they originated. As more of these lights popped into existence, they formed a silhouette to the voice that I was hearing and had been for weeks now. Seemingly at the same time, I began to notice some of the lights forming around myself and starting to take form as well. A few moments later, I found myself looking down at a translucent display of my own body down to even the smallest detail.

Though my attention was immediately shifted to the other form before me in a slightly shocking display. The person was a little taller than myself, so I had to look up to get a clear view of his face. He had soft features reminiscent of somebody who had seen generations pass while staying the sole exception. His eyes belied a strange sense of clarity and he sported a long mane of lightly colored hair that reached down to his lower back. He wore simple clothes, a white shirt with buttons crossing its whole length and working pants that a farmer would’ve worn. The only reason I knew who stood before me was the voice; a clear replica of my own.

“Come on Damion,” Narrator urged me, “Remember what I told you? You can’t hide your secrets from me any longer.”

Tears started to well up in my eyes as I took in his words and reality struck. Hard. I dropped down to my knees and covered my face with my hands, though the slight transparency couldn’t hide the rivers that had formed on my cheeks. All of the emotions that had been plaguing me since starting my short journey overtook me as I cried harder than I imagined I could.

“Just let it all out of your system, I’ll be here for you the whole time.” Narrator said softly as he walked over to me, gently embracing my sobbing form.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that in his arms, but no matter what I tried, I couldn’t stop the emotions welling up in me.

“Don’t worry about speaking, I can hear it,” Narrator continued, “I know we’ve only been together a short while, but I think now would be a good time to finally clear the air.” He hesitated a little before continuing, almost as if unsure how to form the words on his mind. “I know I’ve been a jerk this whole time, but it’s not just me being me. You wouldn’t know this, but it’s not as if I’m immune to what’s happened so far. Every night has been a struggle, just as today has been for you. Several times I’ve been reduced to metaphorical tears and I couldn’t share them with anybody, not even you. Though I think that should change starting now.”

Narrator drew back a little to look directly at me now that I had gotten most of the tears out of my system. He had a pained expression like a father watching his child leave for greater things. I looked up at this point to see a couple of tears on his eyes as well.

“I don’t know what will happen from now on but know this Damion. You can rely on me as much as you need, even if I might ask the same of you some day.”