Maril climbed out of the carriage at pillar 1,458. This one and one more to go. She was starting to get tired. Her mana had not completely refilled since she had worked on the other pillars a few days ago.
Bert jumped down out of the carriage behind her. It was a tiny bit annoying that he was still as energetic as he had been when they stopped at the first pillar. She, on the other hand, was starting to drag her feet. She pushed through the grain, careful to not stumble on the uneven ground. She was almost to the aqueduct when Bert, following right behind her, said, “Wait, don’t start yet.”
She paused with her mage permit ready to remove the barrier. “Why?” she asked, possibly growling a tad. But she moved over so he could step up into the space between the grain and the pillar beside her. He was holding a cloth drawstring bag that she had not seen earlier. It must have been in his satchel.
“Here,” he said, reaching into the bag. He pulled out an intricate wooden cube a little larger than her double fists. It was made of many small panels covered in geometric carvings. He messed with it, sliding a few panels around. She blinked on her mage sight and confirmed that some of the sliding sections had runes disguised into the carvings.
After a few seconds, he slid a final piece on the box and the top came off. She could see the edges of thin sheets of wood stacked inside. They were just the right size to fit in the box with one edge sticking out the top now that the lid was off.
He pulled one of the thin squares of wood out of the box. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “If you hold the rune in the corner you can pull the mana from the enchantments to you. It will refill some of your mana.”
Maril shifted the small sheet of wood in her hand to hold it by the edges and not touch any of the runes that she could feel buzzing on both sides.
“What?” she asked, her voice full of confusion.
Bert hurried to pull another square of wood out of the puzzle box. Then he closed the box and dropped it back into the drawstring bag hanging from his elbow.
He held the sheet of wood gingerly. It was just small enough that he could hold it around the edges with one hand. He started pointing at it with the other hand. Maril couldn’t tell if he was excited or nervous.
“See this rune,” he pointed at a rune in the upper corner. She recognized it as an input rune, some of the enchantments that she refilled had one input rune that she would fill with mana and it would automatically disperse the mana to a bunch of runes that were tied to the input rune. “It’s the ‘in’ rune and,”
Maril cut him off nodding, “Yes, I am familiar with input runes, I did have some training you know.”
“Ri-right, of course,” he said. His face had turned red. Maril felt a little bad at being so rude, but it was hard to care too much when what she really wanted was to curl up in the carriage and sleep for a week.
“And you are probably familiar with storage runes,” he continued pointing at the neat rows and columns of runes in the middle of the wood square. They were all storage runes, carefully carved in the wood, a dot in a circle in a circle.
She nodded, “Although I have never seen so many used together. Usually, you just need one to store some mana for the other runes so the enchantment will last longer before it has to be refreshed.”
“Right!” Bert said smiling, “But in this case, there are no other runes for the storage runes to send mana to, so it is just… stored,” he ended weakly.
Maril studied the wood sheet in her hand, “But they are tied to this rune in the opposite corner.” She frowned, “I don’t recognize that one. What is it?”
“It’s the ‘out’ rune!” Bert said, definitely excited now, “If you touch it you can pull the mana from the storage runes.”
Maril, who had never heard of such a thing, scowled at him, “An ‘out’ rune? Is this normal? Why have I never heard of this?” She twisted her hand to look at the back of the wood, it had all the same runes in mirror image so that the input and ‘out’ runes were in the same corners.
“Well,” he said, losing some of his excitement, “I call it an ‘out’ rune. I’m sure it has a more technical name but I don’t know what it is.”
Maril waited, feeling that some additional explanation was necessary.
She was right, Bert continued, “We have a ‘mana rod’ in the shop. It is a rounded cylinder. An off white color. About this big,” he started gesturing with his hands to show a cylinder a little thinner than her water pitcher.
She waved her free hand impatiently, “And what does it do?”
“Oh, it gives you mana. Well, if you have permission. Some of the most experienced mages in the workshop have a stamp on their permit that allows them to use the mana rod. They have to hold their permit against the rod while they use it and,”
Maril waved her hand again to try to hurry him to the point.
“Right, the mana rod has this ‘out’ rune,” he pointed to the rune on the wood square, “on one end and they touch it to refill their mana when they need to finish big projects.”
Maril frowned thinking maybe she had rushed him a little too much, “Where does the mana come from?”
“It is just stored in the mana rod. When it gets empty they take it back to the mage council and pay to exchange it for a full one. Apparently, it is very expensive. Ours lasts forever though since they don’t use it all that often and it must hold a ridiculous amount of mana.” He stared at her looking hopeful.
Maril looked at the small sheet of wood in her hand. “So if I believe you about this ‘mana rod’, which I am surprised I have never heard of. What does that have to do with this?” She waved the square of runes a little.
“I made it,” he said proudly, “I figured that if they could make something that would store mana, I could too!” he smiled at her. Her skepticism must have shown because he continued. “It doesn’t work as good as the ones from the mage council. It doesn’t hold anywhere close to as much mana as the ‘mana rod’. But it holds enough that I can dump extra mana into it a few times before the box gets full.”
Maril was incredulous. Bert explained in starts and stops with a red face that he had too much mana to work in the woodshop. He had trouble with too much coming out at once and the extra mana splashing around as loose magic instead of being absorbed by the enchantment he was working on. He compared it to a sloppy painter spilling his buckets of paint while trying to work on a locket portrait. And loose magic was no small matter. He had apparently set the workshop on fire a few times until his father had added fire protection runes to everything flammable in the shop. So now he used this wooden box and some others like it to dump extra mana into before trying to work on delicate enchantments.
“So,” he paused to take a couple of breaths, “you would be helping me a lot if you would take some of this mana. I need to empty out the boxes. They aren’t dissipating mana fast enough and all the boxes I have made are full right now.”
She looked at the wooden square still in her hand, “Ok, so I just…”
“Oh, one more thing,” he cut her off, “I’m pretty sure this is maybe a little illegal so don’t tell anyone about this,” he stopped, “I… uh… probably should have told you that first shouldn’t I have?”
She sighed, “You think it is illegal since we don’t have the stamp on our permits and we aren’t using the mana rod provided by the council?” He nodded, seeming re-energized that she understood. Continuing, she said, “That actually doesn’t surprise me that they would avoid teaching us about this. It would be very useful to be able to help each other. But they only teach us enough to be able to do what they want us to do.” She was still a tiny bit bitter that she had not been allowed to take any classes from the Intricate Item class list while she was studying for her permit. The Tellas Mage Council was just a little too controlling in her opinion.
She nodded to Bert, deciding that she was good with ‘maybe a little illegal’, “So how do I take the mana again?”
Bert grinned at her, “Just hold the corner of the square so you touch the ‘out’ runes on both sides of it. And pull the mana out of the enchantments. It feels like putting mana into an enchantment but backwards…” he trailed off and shrugged.
His description was not great, but she tried it anyway. Hold the corner of the wood and pull…
She fell back gasping. Tripped over something and crashed into the base of the aqueduct pillar.
Bert squawked and leaped over to where she sat on the ground, stuttering questions and apologies.
She waved him away breathing hard, “It’s ok, I’m ok.” Breath, “It was just so much mana. Uncontrolled. Like…” she paused thinking, “Like someone dumping a bucket of cold paint on me.”
He stared down at her. She frowned back. Then he started grinning and broke into laughter. So much so that he had to sit down.
They sat in the field, smashing some of the grain. Maril leaned against the pillar still trying to catch her breath. Bert laid in the dirt and laughed until he got the hiccups.