Another day went by.

“Amez!” Rum said, having just opened the bedroom door and walked into Amez’s work room. “I just discovered some terrible news about White Rose!”

“What?” Amez said, appropriately reflecting Rum’s worry.

“Yes, ze’s dying Amez! All the time, ze’s dying!”

“What?” Amez’ expression changed from less worry, and more to confusion.

“Yeah, like everyone, ze’s always dying.” Rum gestured with a sweeping arc of a hand-movement. “White Rose is expiring!”

“Like everyone else?” Amez just felt a little cheated for being worried, Rum was up to something weird. I just know it.

“Yeah, you know like we’re aging, right? Well, White Rose doesn’t age, but ze’s mana is running out! I didn’t understand a thing when ze was starting to sway back and forth in our counting practice, but apparently all the mental work has been draining ALL THE MANA, so I had to quickly replenish ze before ze died! If I hadn’t been here, ze would’ve actually died – death by arithmetic! Ze would literally have counted to zes death!”

Amez’ mouth and face went through various attempts at figuring out an appropriate reaction. In the end the mouth and face gave up, and he just asked. “Well. That is bad, yeah? But why are you telling me this, exactly?”

“Have you ever considered bone carving as a side-business?” Rum asked, seriousness on his face.

“Uhm, no big brother. I haven’t. May I ask the reason for that question?” He raised both eyebrows for double the questioning effect.

“Well, could you possibly start with it now? I have an idea on how to solve White Rose’s mana problem. I already made a new spell I call Replenish Skeleton, and I had the idea to make a tattoo enchantment out of it.” Rum started wildly gesturing with his hands while walking around. “I’ve been thinking, we could either put a modified version of it on me as a simple contact-based mana transfer. I could train White Rose to seek out my mana on zes own by holding my hand or otherwise touching me in a way that’ll activate the spell. BUT!” and he swirled around, starting to walk in the opposite direction: “I’ve also considered that I may – for whatever reason – end up far away and inaccessible to White Rose for a long enough time that ze will be in danger of another death by mana depletion. So, I think it would be best to have a reverse version of the spell, a form of mana collection, with which ze can replenish zeself by touching other people and take in their mana. However, White Rose doesn’t have any skin–”

“–and so you want me to make a tattoo on zes bones?” Amez interrupted, apparently having gotten it.

“Yeah” Rum sighed, obviously a little tired. Understandably too, as it was late in the day. Amez’ customer was already finished and gone, and Amez just been sitting and drawing, doing some preparatory sketches on a major commission for the next morning.

Amez’ nodded thinkingly without looking Rum in the eyes. In one way: he wanted to help his big brother; but in another way: it was a lot to ask at this moment. He looked down at the sketch in front of him. His customer was the son of one of the wealthiest and most well-connected merchants in Ermos. The son wanted a large tattoo covering most of his back and even reaching onto his shoulders and a little way down his arms. The tattoo would be one of the most powerful Amez was yet to make, capable of summoning not just one, but two guardian spirits of hardened light that would fight alongside its owner, taking advantage of the owner’s battle experience and levels for their own ability and power. This commission is an exciting, but frankly exhausting request. It’ll take me at least two weeks just to get the tattoo right and start the enchantment. And then it’ll take another week to finish the enchantment. This meant that if Amez gave the excuse today that he didn’t have time, he’d pretty much have to make the same excuse for the next three weeks – which may be too long to postpone Rum’s request. Because who knows what trouble that man will make for himself.

“Okay, go lock the front door, start telling me about the reverse spell, and bring White Rose in here. I’ll see what I can do.”

The two brothers labored for hours, all way into nightfall. Amez didn’t have any books on bone carving lying around, but they worked on the spell, which they ended up calling Mana Requisition, a spell that transferred – or “hijacked” as Amez called it – a portion of another person’s mana. A derivative version of this spell, made into a passive continuous touch effect, would be used for White Rose.

Honestly, Amez was a little amazed, even a little terrified, at the implications of such a spell, at least when Rum laid those consequences out bare, talking about the possibilities of people being made into mana cattle, or mana slaves. Luckily for the world perhaps, the spell’s utility in converting mana from one person into a freer and more universally moldable mana, the kind that White Rose required; this was bottlenecked process. There was a natural constraint in the complicated gradual untangling of the mana’s current connections to itself and to the host body. The bottleneck referred to being the fact that only one small area of mana, or a particular angle, could be worked at any point of time. In other words, it was not a parallell process, because a parallell process would create competing strategies of untanglement. Or at least that’s what Rum explained, roughly. Amez didn’t get it very well, but he understood enough. The mana was bottlenecked by fundamental properties of ethereal geometry, as Rum had called it. Rum had also speculated that an overcharged violent misuse – or creative use – of the spell, could literally rip the mana out of another person’s body, a process both painful and hazardous to the targets mana capacity, and likely also damaging to the target’s mind, which would be put under the shock of being separated from its mana in a kind of tear and shredding of their inner selves. The concept was terrifying indeed. Amez thought it good, or probably good, that the person to make such a spell was no other than his silly and rather harmless big brother.

In the end the two brothers agreed to meet up again the day after. This task was too difficult to be done in one, or even two days. But a creative mage, and a creative tattoo enchanter might be able to figure it out before long.

Rum forbid White Rose to engage in any arithmetic or counting in the meantime. Such thinking was dangerous for ze now. Rum was in fact seriously afraid that the large numbers he’d been starting to teach ze could become a rapid bad habit that would cause White Rose to obsessively count anything and everything ze came across, not stopping until ze’d start to reach numbers so large and complicated all zes mana would go into computing massive chains of numbers. He was just glad they hadn’t started multiplication and division yet, or, the gods forbid ze got to know about factorial, equations, and functions! Give ze any large number and ze’d probably start producing factorials with multiplication sequences in the thousands!

There was little mistaking it for Rum right now: math is dangerous.