Kael's eyes were locked on the desk. To anyone else, it was just a wooden surface with a few things on it. To him, it was a battlefield. He was currently the most anxious general the war on his mind had ever seen.
The inkwell is slanted three degrees to the left.
And I even knocked down the salt container thanks to that dress-wearing ghost showing me his nuts when he sat cross-legged.
Great. Just great.
Paper was expensive, and with the recent discovery of salt mines in the North, salt had become abundant, almost inconveniently so. As a result, drawing magical symbols on salt or sand had, for the past few years, become standard practice.
"I can't say that it has been helpful for my condition. "
His hands shook as he reached for the salt. For a short second, the numb feeling behind his eyes loosened its grip. Then it snapped back.
Hey. Hey! Look at the inkwell! It’s blue. Blue is the color of the sky. Why is the sky blue? If I fell into the sky, would I fall forever? Look at the grain of the wood. It looks like a river. A river of chocolate. I wonder what the ink tastes like. Is it salty….like salt? OMG, the salt is a line! A line is just a point that goes for a walk. I should walk. No, I should run. I should see if I can vibrate my molecules fast enough to pass through the wall.
"No," Kael hissed, his knuckles whitening as he gripped the edge of the desk. The heaviness in his mind was a riot waiting to happen.
I guess Dad did warn me that this was going to happen, though I never expected the burden to be so heavy.
His father had spoken of the "weight of the word", and the old books in the library noted something about the "mental toll" of hearing the Great Song for the first time.
But this? My head felt like a hive of bees being stirred by a lightning bolt. Do all people studying magic experience this?
He wondered as his fingers twitched against the wood.
“I haven’t even manifested magic yet, “ he said as he willed mana to his hand, yet nothing happened.
His magic teacher, a spindly man with eyes like clouded glass, had once said that the first step to power was the Silencing. Before a mage can command the elements, they must learn to command their inner thoughts.
He had warned Kael that, as his mana veins began to hum, the world would start to feel loud.
This, as his teacher would put it, was mana trying to converse with the world, asking permission to manifest itself into what people casually referred to as magic.
But what the teacher had described to me was similar to guiding a gentle stream of mana. Like a flowing river that I simply had to scoop from.
They should really include "NOTE: Side-effects include suddenly wondering if the practitioner could swallow his own tongue or why his bedpost shadow looked like a one-legged duck" in the manual...
Before he could even finish this thought, Kael’s attention drifted again before he could stop it, and the ghost in the corner immediately became a problem he did not ask to solve.
Dyem, the ghost is still there. Waadap ghosty. Oh look! His armor has 42 scratches. No, 43! One looks like a frowny face, hehe. Why is he frowning? Maybe he’s hungry. Do ghosts eat? If I gave him a grape, would it just fall through his neck? His neck is misty. Mist is just shy of water. I should go to the well. I bet there’s a frog in the well. I could name him Barnaby. Barnaby the Well-Frog. He would be a king frog.
"Shut up... Barnaby... is not... king material," Kael grunted, fighting the urge to jump onto the bed and see if he could hit the ceiling.
The Northern Ghost watched him, his spectral head tilting with a new kind of concern. The tapping had stopped, but Kael’s own leg was now bouncing with a rhythmic, frantic energy that threatened to shake the previously fixed inkwell out of its four-inch sanctuary.
"The boy is vibrating," the ghost remarked. "Is this a new Martial technique? Shaking until the demons get motion sickness?"
Kael couldn't answer. He was too busy trying to stop his hand from reaching out to smudge the salt line just to see what the texture felt like against his palm.
He ignored the ghost’s rhythmic tapping.
He focused on the salt.
With a finger that felt like it belonged to a beast, he began to push the grains.
If the grains were aligned in a perfect, horizontal line, the bees in his brain would lose their sting.
If the inkwell’s edge ran parallel to the desk’s grain, exactly four inches from the corner, the Northern Ghost might lose his voice.
Thus, he began to count.
One. Two. Three. Four.
But the salt line was jagged, so he wiped it away and started over.
One. Two. Three. Four.
The ghost leaned closer, the smell of old rain and rusted iron filling Kael’s nose. "The wind is turning, little mouse," the dead man rasped, his voice a vibration in the floorboards. "You can align the salt all you want, but the mountain is still falling."
Kael didn't answer. He couldn't. He was too busy trying to stop his hand from reaching out to smudge the salt line just to see if the texture felt like velvet.
I am Kael Valerius, he reminded himself, anchoring a mediocre amount of clarity he can muster against the hurricane he felt in his mind.
I am the only one... who knows... how many grains...
...Wait, did I count the grains properly? Do I have to start over?
The rhythmic counting filled the chamber like the ticking of a clock in an empty cathedral. With every digit, the "noise" in his head dimmed, the frantic static of his burgeoning magic forced into a temporary truce. The Northern Ghost pulled his spectral finger away from the stone, his tapping becoming a distant, muffled echo rather than a spike in Kael’s skull.
In a space no one could see, something appeared.
Completely unaware of the changes happening inside his body, Kael felt a tiny, childish spark of victory. For a moment, the heaviness in his head felt almost manageable.
Well... almost.