Devouring the Neverglades:(Beta Version) Chapter 6

Eventually the break came but not because I was out of things to infuse.

No, we were just running low on mana liquid, and I was told to do something else.

Which meant after morning chores I was running out of the compound full speed to meet up with the boys.

I found them already out on the stream banks hunting around and ran up and then right past them. I needed to run!

Freedom!

I leapt over rocks, and around sawgrass that grew everywhere. The bundles of sharp grass would cut right through you if you weren’t careful, but I wasn’t hunting, just moving. Just enjoying the freedom to not be stuck sitting in a room…

Which used to be my favorite activity. Huh.

Regardless I moved, enjoying my own form of zoomies, until I heard it.

Rustling.

I stopped, catching my breath, chest heaving a bit as I looked towards what I had heard.

“Vicky!”

“Shh!” I hissed at the boys who had run to catch up to me. I knelt down and started heading towards where the faint tremor was coming from. 

Inside the Saw grass head. Dangit.

I did a few seconds of miming what I needed from the boys and they nodded, going to grab some branches and sticks so we could handle the sawgrass. A few moments later, my razor sharp knife in hand, we were ready.

I cut a few strands of grass at a time and the boys pushed them away with their sticks. Slowly we dug into the head of razor sharp grass. Clearing an opening to the inside and there we found our treasure.

Nesting birds.

With eggs.

I could feel the boys around me all smiling at the sight.

A quick struggle with the bird that was some variant of a low ground nester. And we had a dead bird, and a handful of eggs.

“Nice!” Sam yelled out in happiness, arms above his head. “Vicky, you finally out?”

“Yeah! The liquid mana is low so they wanted me to stop using it all up for now.” I told him as I continued to gather up the eggs and then flashed a happy smile. “Who’s hungry?”

All three boys laughed as we hurried back to our camp. We all settled in to cook up our catch.

“Jeez Vicky, does your mama not feed you?” Erik teased as he started plucking the bird while I cracked eggs into a pan.

“Blegh!” I stuck out my tongue in return.

“Well I’m glad she’s back!” Sammy said as he came over with some sticks to get the fire started. “Did you finish magicing all the harpoons?”

“All the harpoons, but not all of the other stuff.” I answered. Chains had been a massive pain in the butt. Each link needed to be mana filled so that took a while. And used up a lot of mana, but having a much stronger chain had been too tempting for the men.

“So you can make magic stuff now?”

“Sorta.” I muttered, as I grabbed my seasoning box and grabbed some salt and pepper for the eggs. “It just makes the metal stronger… And well they don’t get dull anyway, because the metal is so strong.”

“Cool!” 

I just giggled at the boy's fascination with magic stuff. I mean I totally get it. I pulled out my knife and offered it to Sammy. His eyes practically popped out as he reached over and carefully took my knife.

“It doesn’t really look different.” He muttered, and I had to nod. But I could feel it. The magical energy bouncing through the metal filling every empty gap that existed.

But whenever it touched against Sammy it just went around him. Like he had a negative charge,

Sammy wasn’t a mage after all. The way the magic just sort of bounced around him… I could kind of see why normal people are called flats.

The wave of magic just couldn’t vibrate with him. Couldn’t make a sound.

I shook off the magical vision and focused on my task.

Gonna get me an omelet.

—--

Day after day, week after week. Things just kept going. I did everything I could to learn more about magic, trying to get something to work, but after my mana infusion trick, I couldn’t get anything else to work.

I still practiced, but one can only keep slamming their head against a wall for so long.

For my eighth birthday Papa had bought me a fishing rod. Sure there had been a few rods passed around to the kids at the same time, but it was still my birthday gift, and I loved it.

Fish were tasty after all!

I was camped out on the side of the stream just down from the compound attaching a few bits of crawdads I had captured for bait on the hook and just enjoying a relaxing day.

Also it was hot. Cause the sun wanted to murder me.

Tossing the line into the stream I settled back to wait. It had been a busy year for me since we discovered the mana infusion trick. At first it had just been all the tools of the trade that needed to be strengthened. Then it had been all sorts of stuff at the compound. Tools, and even clothes which had been really hard to figure out. 

Cloth did not like accepting mana like metal did. In the end, I hadn’t gotten anywhere with that experiment.

But all sorts of things had been infused. 

And when I finally infused everything…

We had started making extras, and selling them to other compounds in the area.

Unfortunately that meant instead of being free of the job I had been stuck doing it even more. Luckily mana liquid was still the limiter, and even other compounds didn’t have a lot of it to spare so I was given plenty of free time. 

Like today when I took my rod out on the stream. The boys were all busy with something or another, so I wasn’t going to head out into the wilds too far. So fishing it was.

Besides, I was craving some grilled fish.

I hadn’t gotten a bite yet, but that was fine. Sitting with my feet lightly in the water to cool off, and just getting some quiet time was worth it.

An hour later I hadn’t caught anything.

The sun was now directly overhead, and I was really confused.

“Where are all the fish?” I had even gone so far as to toss quite a bit of my bait into the water just to get something interested, but I hadn’t seen anything actually come and eat it.

I shucked up my sun dress and set my rod down and then took a few steps into the water. Water felt normal enough?

What was going on? I closed my eyes and felt for mana, but I wasn’t feeling any massive waves or anything. I mean, I couldn’t sense anything, that wasn’t up close anyways, but sometimes I could feel a big wave of mana that was stretched out over a large area.

Usually that meant a big monster, but I didn’t feel that either.

I shrugged. Maybe I was just super unlucky. I had just turned around to leave when I felt it.

Mana sliding through the water at my feet. Just a tiny miniscule wavelength. Like someone dropping a pebble into the water at my feet and feeling the wave hit my legs. Not something I would have noticed, if it was just water. But it was mana, and I felt it.

Instantly I was running practically leaping out of the water to escape.

I felt it.

Something reacted to my movement and there was a surge of tiny mana waves.

My feet left the water only a moment before it would have gone really bad, and I stopped to take a breath, heart pounding in terror at what I had just avoided.

Sliver fish.

They were like piranha but worse. They could basically go invisible in the water, and if you were caught in the water when they found you?

Their main method of gathering food was to slam the spike on their face into their prey, only the spike was about three inches long, and they attacked in swarms. Tiny fish. Nasty to deal with.

“I gotta let everyone know.” I made it one step when I felt it.

The surge of mana behind me, and the sound of water splitting.

I slammed face first into the mud a moment later.

“EEEEEEEEeeee! Fuck!” I yowled as I reached behind me and found it.

A wiggling fish sticking itself out of my ass.

I yanked it out yowling again as I jumped to my feet as best I could but that hurt! I stumbled a bit as my body tried to move. I fought against the pain realizing I was fighting back tears. I did my best to calm down despite the pain shooting up my butt.

I brought the stupid fish up to my face and glared as it wiggled trying to escape from my grip but I wasn’t about to let it go.

Its sharp nose was coated in my blood.

“Oh you are going in my belly.” I informed it as I started hobbling towards the compound. I would collect my fishing rod later. I needed help.

The short walk to the compound was usually done at full sprint and only took me a minute or so at most, but this time it took quite a bit longer as I hobbled home. 

Pushing myself into the compound door I forced it open, and made it all the way into the courtyard.

Aunty Sibil was dealing with the laundry in the courtyard. “Aunty! I need help!” I called out and my tone got her hurrying nearly dropping her laundry as she hurried over, and then even faster when she must have noticed the blood staining me a bit.

“What- Vicky girl!? What happened? Are you-”

“Sliver Fish.” I told her through teary eyes, holding out the still struggling monster fish to her eyes. 

As soon as she saw it, she nodded. “Mabel! Alert!” She called out and aunty Mabel's head popped out of the kitchen area and she nodded, running back inside. There was a bell that we would ring to let everyone know something was going on.

Then Aunty Sibil urged me on, I wasn’t fat, in fact I was pretty skinny, but I was doing the thing where I grew like a weed. I was already almost as tall as Aunty Sibil so she couldn’t exactly carry me up. She got me seated on one of the communal benches and was fussing over me, trying to find my injury. 

I had of course not sat straight on the bench, that she helped me to, and as I rolled the rest of the way Aunty Sibil saw where I got hit.

She instantly burst into laughter.

“Oh my! It certainly got you didn’t it!” She joked, to my dismay.

“It hurts! And it’s certainly not funny!” I snapped at her, but like all adults she didn’t accept my very reasonable argument about not laughing at me, and just laughed harder.

I heard the bell ring out above us, telling everyone there had been some monster trouble and to head home. 

“Well you’ll certainly live. Let me go alert Carla.”

“Don’t bother, I passed Mabil on the way.” The old woman called out as she came hurrying, a big first aid kit in her arms as she hurried over only to slow down, and I saw the way her own lips started twitching into a laugh when she noticed.

“This is so not fair.” I moaned into my arms as I went face first onto the bench just so I wouldn’t have to look at everyones face. 

Old Carla was gentle with her work, but her giggles and snorts of amusement never went away throughout. Thankfully no one else was hurt, and we stayed out of the water for a few more days to make sure the school of Sliver Fish passed on their migration.

I did eat that fucker though. Cooked and fileted him myself.

Tasted like victory.

—--

“Whoa.” I couldn’t help but be shocked at the size of the mega croc that was being pulled into the compound.

“What a beast.” Mama agreed, looking worried. The croc was probably thirty or fourty feet long.

“That’s a monster for sure.” Old Carla added as we watched the men struggle to get the croc off the boat and into our space for harvesting.

That was the biggest croc I had ever seen the men pull in. Usually they aimed for smaller ones, non-monster ones. But this was a monster for sure.

“Well c’mon girls time to get to work.” Carla informed us and the adults all nodded, which I joined in. Everyone quickly gathered up their clothes adjusting it so it wouldn’t get in the way as the men finally got the beast onto the ground. 

Which is when we went to work. All of the women ran around it like a buzzsaw, cutting and sawing, and taking it apart piece by piece.

I helped, most of us had mana infused knives now, but most of the kids didn’t so I was an extra knife cutting through tough tendons to get it sectioned out. 

I jerked back as I was working near the belly and felt it.

“Hey this thing still has a magical core!” That call out quickly got some attention, as Carla hurried over, wiping the blood off on her apron. 

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.” I assured her, as I was feeling the steady buzz of mana. “They must have gotten the kill before it burned through all of its mana.”

“Well that’s a great benefit to us then. Go ahead and start digging then girl. Let’s see about getting that treasure.” I nodded, as I started digging in, knife peeling through flesh and muscle. If it wasn't for my infused knife, no way I would have been able to cut through the beast, it was just too tough.

Then slowly I managed to get through, into its innards, and the blue light of mana caught my eye. With a good bit more effort, I grabbed the magical core, and managed to cut it free pulling the chunk of mana and meat out until I was holding a basketball sized monstrous chunk of crocodile.

And surrounding the heart, in a band of blue light, there was a magical core. A chunk of crystal that practically burned my fingers with how much mana was in it.

It didn’t zap me, like the mana stone we once had. I guess I had better control now, instead I could just feel it pulsing across my fingers. 

“Well that’s a sight for sore eyes!” Papa called out, and I jerked my eyes away from the light to see him standing slightly away from the women at work.

“Papa!” I called rushing to my feet, and despite being covered in croc blood he happily took my charging hug and picked me up to spin me around.

“Papa look!”

“I see! I guess with that all that effort to capture this thing was worth it.”

“It’s big!”

“Yeah.” He patted me on the head.

“It’s too big. You aren’t hurt?”

“Heh. No Monster, everyone is okay. We got a chance to kill that beast and we took it. The bastard was slightly stuck when we found him, he took a nap in a mud pit only for it to suck him right down. We killed him as fast as we could. Looks like we did a good job.” He mentioned eyeing the chunk I was still holding.

“Yeah.”

“Alright girl stop splattering your poor papa with croc blood. Gimme.” Old Carla demanded and I handed over the magical core. She took it away heading to a table to start clearing it of the croc meat.

“So that magical core is pretty big.” I mentioned looking to Papa. “Does that mean you’ll be able to sell it for a lot?”

“You tell me little mage, did it have a lot of mana?” He said, sending me a happy smile that I just huffed at in reply.

Yeah. It had been packed full of mana. So I guess it would be a big sale. Something that was super lucky for our compound. We hadn’t pulled anything nearly at the level of the mana stone since then.

“Yeah it’s pretty powerful.”

“Then it was worth all the effort of dragging that thing back home.” 

—--

I was sitting at my new desk getting a feel for it.

Apparently since I was a mage I needed a workstation, and so James had made a little wooden desk and chair for inside my room. I even had a little light I could use for it.

It was something a normal child wouldn’t have been given normally. But with how much use everyone was getting out of my mana infusions, and how much it was saving us in liquid mana I guess it was decided I needed a place to work on my magic.

Not that I was really getting anywhere.

The booklet had been read so many times I could basically recite it from rote, and it was put up on a shelf, because even the magic circle wasn’t as useful, I had actually made a copy of it on a piece of wood with James help, so I wouldn’t damage the book while messing with it.

But ever since mana infusion I hadn’t discovered anything else.

“You’ve been staring at that desk for the last ten minutes. You okay Vicky?” Mama asked, suddenly startling me as I looked up to see her at the door to my bedroom. 

“I’m fine! Anything you need help with?” I asked and actually felt sad that Mama shook her head. 

“No, this is your time. Still feeling stuck?”

“I just don’t know what else to do. I know I need to be able to use my wavelength to control mana. Then a magic circle to incite a spell, and then done. But… I only have this circle, and everything I’ve tried hasn’t worked.”

I had done a few practice circles trying to make something, anything happen. But it didn't work. I wasn’t sure of the rules for magic circles, so I had no way of knowing how to make one.

“You figured out the mana infusion.” Mama tried to assure me but I just shook my head, blonde hair fluttering. 

“I stumbled upon something that was already well known. I just worked on a way to do it cheaper.”

“Okay. So… If you can’t cast any big spells like some city mage yet, then try to figure out something useful, or try to make something you can already do cheaper.”

I hummed, at the words. Not sure if it was really applicable, but I did appreciate the attempt. What I needed was… Well what did I need? What did mages need?

Mana?

A mage was supposed to be able to cast spells with mana they gathered with their wavelength, but all of the tricks I had found had been to use a mana stone, or liquid mana to do something.

How did I gather mana from the air to cast a spell?

There was supposed to be a lot of mana in the air out here. On the frontier next to the Neverglade. That’s why it was a black zone. Because humanity didn’t control the mana in the area at all, and instead it was gathered by monsters…

But how did I as a mage make use of it?

“Well, it looks like you got something on your mind.” Mama coaxed me and I nodded. 

“Mages can use mana in the air, but I can’t.” I explained and mama’s eyebrows grew together. 

“Hmm. I know mages sometimes use mana stones, and Magical cores as batteries… But they can cast without it too I think?” Mama offered, kind of wondering herself.

“Okay so how do mages gather mana for spells… And can I gather mana and push it into liquid mana?” I asked, the idea coming to me. 

I had no real spells. The only trick I had at the moment was the mana infusion, but that was limited with how much liquid mana we had at the time.

What if I could gather more? Would we be able to keep our lights on all the time? Run our boats longer? Maybe sell extra to other compounds to help out?

“That would be impressive if you can.” Mama saidm bending down and placing a kiss on the top of my head. “Do what you can. Good luck.” She offered to me, but could offer no further advice. 

Right. So humans could gather mana and use it for spells. They pulled it right out of the air… That meant there was mana all around all the time, but I couldn’t feel it.

I waved my hand around above my head in the air trying to feel something, but it wasn’t like that realization was going to suddenly change such a common action into something new. 

I couldn’t feel any mana. 

But if it was very dispersed that wasn’t anything new. Mana fuel. When the mana evaporated, I couldn’t feel the mana that used to be in the water in the air either…

I grabbed my personal notebook. One that had been given to me by Old William as a reward for all my work to hold my ‘mage secrets’ in. 

I had written a bit about Mana Infusion into metals… Done some math to figure out how many drops of mana fuel to fill certain sized metal objects for example.

But now… Mana liked to merge with whatever it was connected to. 

It merged into water. It merged into metal.

Why wouldn’t it be able to merge into air, and if it did. It would disperse itself so lightly of course I couldn’t feel it.

What I needed was a mana trap. Something that could force mana to come in, without going out. If I could for example make any air passing through a cup transfer the mana into the water. I could just leave out a cup of water and have Mana fuel in… However long it took.

But I couldn't. I didn't have magic circles or anything that did it…

What did I have? Book with Magical circle of marking.

Mana fuel.

Infused metal.

….

Me. I had me.

I breathed in. And then out.

Wouldn’t that work? Could I bring in air, and then… Extract the mana from the air with my mana wavelength?

Ugh. I groaned and just kicked my feet as I considered it. I really didn’t want to do something stupid and like explode or something. What happened to mana inside a human body?

I blinked.

That… That was a question I could actually answer.

I hopped off my chair and hurried out of my room. The compound was quiet right now. The men were already out and so it was just prep work for everyone still inside, or going outside to do something.

But I knew an old man that would still be hanging around. Probably doing something with his hands, but Old William would be able to hear me out.

My steps crunched on the gravel of the middle yard as I looked around before spotting him. Old William didn’t go out anymore, but he was still very important to the compound. He was currently in the warehouse, holding a clipboard going over numbers for what we’ve gathered so far this month. 

Figuring out what we would sell, what we needed to store, and what had to be used.

“Old William?”

“Hmm? Ah girl, I know you’re not here to help with this mess.” He said, jokingly waving at the actually very orderly store room. “What do you need?”

“Information and maybe access to Mana fuel… Has anyone drank it before?” I asked bluntly and the old man blinked and then looked slowly to me.

“Drink it?”

“Yep.”

“As in?”

“I know flats, and mages are different with how we react to mana, but… I might be able to do something with mana once it’s inside my body. I just wanted to know if it was like… Poison or something?”

“No. No, I don’t think anyone has tried drinking it before.” He offered looking a little stressed at the question as he rubbed a hand through his thinning grey hair. 

“Okay. That’s something I’m gonna have to try then.” I confirmed what he was probably worrying about.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea Vicky.”

“I know, but I’ve reached a point where I need to figure out how to pull mana from the air, and I can’t do that without… An example? Or at least more information. I think this is a way for me to test it. If I could pull mana from the air… Then I could make more Mana Fuel.”

That seemed to shake him out of his little spiral.

“I’ll consider it. Not now. Not without discussing it amongst the men. And probably not even then. You know we are a little low on fuel after all the enhancement you did.”

“Yeah that’s right.” Sure, enhancing one item with my method saved a lot of mana fuel, I had still basically enhanced dozens of harpoons and other pieces of equipment, which had still cost our tank a hefty sum. I was biting at my thumb as I considered what else I could do when Old William kneeled down without much trouble despite his age.

“Alright girl, listen. You’ve done well! You did something great already. I know how you are. Ravenous little thing. Go. Play with your friends. Go hunting. Play around. You are too young to be this worried about everything. Give us some time and we’ll get you more Mana Fuel to play with, until then. Just enjoy your life. And maybe bring back some crawdads for Old William eh?” He asked with a wink, and I burst into giggles.

“I’ll see what I can do.” I said smiling, the pressure sliding off my shoulders as his hands rested on them squeezing and then sending me off.

“Now get!”