- Chapter 044 -

  RTFM

  The journey home was a quiet, controlled glide. A successful day by any comparison. Mark wheeled himself up the final incline to Silver-Vein Terrace, the small crystal-steam engine humming softly as he reflected on the day’s accomplishments.

  He had been paid for the audit, one now smelling less of incompetence and more of fraud. He had a stack of books that represented the first real tools he’d been given to navigate this world. A second pouch of coins that was far larger than his initial Oracle supplied funds, raising the question of the value of his mundane abilities. A quiet, humorless laugh escaped his lips. Back home, he managed multi-million-pound infrastructure projects. Here, he had temporarily become a freelance fraud investigator for a guild, and he was being paid in cash. The results were not something to complain about.

  Back in the quiet, welcoming space of the house, he dropped the day's acquisitions onto his command center at the dining table. The books were a formidable pile, their titles a project plan in themselves: Rituals, Laws, and a history of failures for light reading. The impending visit from Tori was a scheduled consultation he wasn’t looking forward to, a necessary but unwelcome line item for the day. His misery was his to manage, as Sam had so cheerfully pointed out, and hopefully this would help move it forwards.

  He pushed the thought aside. Right now, a more immediate task, a piece of advice that had been nagging at him since the Master Healer’s visit. He remembered Ricardo’s parting words, reinforced by Sam’s blunt command, it was time to start the regeneration ritual.

  The idea settled in his gut with the uncomfortable weight of a deeply irrational decision. Ritual magic. He need to draw circles on his hands with chalk and hope for the best. In his old life, this was the territory of fringe science and late-night documentaries about people who believed they could talk to plants. It felt less like a medical procedure and more like a foolish act even after what he had witnessed since he arrived.

  He wheeled himself into his cavernous bedroom, the smooth stone floor silent beneath the chair. He retrieved a set of colored chalk sticks from the table as he entered, one white, one red and one yellow.

  The instructions Ricardo had given him were a vague memory at best, filtered through a haze of pain and medication. Something about circles, runes, and placing his hands on the affected area. It seemed simple enough. An amateur’s attempt was better than no attempt at all.

  He picked up the stick of white chalk. The process was awkward and clumsy, of balancing the stick in one hand while trying to draw a steady circle on the palm of the other. The result was a wobbly, uneven shape that looked more like a misshapen egg than a perfect circle. He drew a few simple, geometric shapes inside it, a crude approximation of the simple runes he’d been shown by Ricardo. He repeated the process on his other hand, then dusted off the excess chalk. He felt like a child who had just been let loose with stolen school supplies.

  With a deep, weary sigh filled with skepticism, he began the final, most ridiculous step. He leaned forward in his chair, a position that sent a dull, protesting ache through his newly-mended spine. He placed his chalk-dusted hands on his lower back.

  And he waited.

  He closed his eyes, concentrating, trying to feel… anything. A tingle. A warmth. A weird magical hum. Something that would indicate this wasn't a complete and utter waste of time.

  There was nothing.

  The only sensations were the persistent, dull ache in his bones from the strain of holding the position. He held the position for a full minute, then another. The silence in the room was absolute, broken only by the sound of his own breathing.

  He felt like a complete and utter fool.

  He pulled his hands away, a short, sharp laugh of frustration escaping his lips. He looked at the smudged, pathetic-looking circles on his palms. Of course it hadn't worked. Why would it? He was a project manager from Manchester, a man who believed in spreadsheets and observable data, not in drawing chalk circles to fix a broken spine.

  He was about to wiped the chalk off on his trousers, and with a wandering thought reminded him of the book, maybe he was doing something wrong, and maybe it had some relevant answers.

  He wheeled himself back to the dining table. The book Jenny had given him, Ritual Magic: A Guide for the Unawakened, sat on top of the pile. He opened it, finding the contents and started to skim. Sections highlighted on how to grow grass to the fine attunements of drawing on ambient whispers, the introduction stating that only the gifted would be able to actively monitor the flow of energy without Heart attunments.

  He found it, right in the middle of the book, in a chapter titled "Regeneration for self practitioners." He turned to the indicated page.

  The diagram that greeted him was simple and elegant. It wasn’t a single, simple circle. It was two concentric circles, an inner and an outer, connected by a few intersecting lines. And the runes… they weren’t the simple shapes he had scrawled. They were intricate sigils apparently to represent ‘mending’, three runes that resembled something he had seen within Norse mythology, but different enough.

  "Right," he muttered to himself. "RTFM. Read The Fine Manual." It was the first rule of his trade, and like most in the trade he had ignored it.

  He wheeled himself back to the bedroom, the open book balanced on his lap. He wiped his hands clean and started again, this time with the quiet, painstaking focus of a man copying a complex schematic. He drew the concentric circles, his lines still a little wobbly but far more precise than before. He copied the sigils’, his brow furrowed in concentration.

  When he was done, the designs on his palms were a near-perfect replica of the diagram in the book. They looked less like a child's scribbles and more like something with purpose.

  Stolen story; please report.

  He leaned forward once more, placing his hands on his lower back. He closed his eyes. The book had spoken of ‘focused intent’, of channeling one’s will into the circle. He tried to do just that. He thought of the glowing, three-dimensional skeleton Ricardo had conjured. He pictured the shattered ruin of his own spine, the web of red fracture lines. And then, he pictured them whole. He visualized the new bone knitting together, the tissues mending, the entire structure becoming solid, stable, and strong.

  He held the image in his mind, a single, unwavering point of focus in the quiet darkness.

  And once again, absolutely nothing happened.

  He stared at the chalk smudges on his hands, then at the closed book on his lap. He felt a familiar, bitter frustration bubble in his chest.

  He wheeled himself over to the bathroom and scrubbed his hands raw under the hot tap, watching the chalky residue swirl down the drain. He had wasted the better part of an hour playing at being a wizard, and he had nothing to show for it but a dull ache in his back and an increasing sense of his own foolishness.

  He needed to focus on a different, more immediate. Tori was coming around. And some basic cooking was a great way for him to focus on something he understood.

  The kitchen, with its practical layout and logical processes, was a sanctuary within the house. He began his own ritual process of preparing a meal. He pulled the last of the mince from the cooler, along with a few of the lumpy, potato-like vegetables and an onion. It wasn't gourmet, but it was food.

  He wheeled himself from cooler to counter to cutting board with efficient movements. He did the chopping while seated, the rhythmic thud of the knife a steady, grounding sound. But for the parts that required reach or leverage, he stood.

  He timed it, a mental stopwatch ticking away. He pushed himself up, his arms and core tight, his legs trembling slightly with the effort. He leaned heavily against the counter, grabbing the heavy iron pan from a high hook and placing it on the hob. He turned, retrieved the bowl of chopped vegetables, and scraped them into the hot, sizzling oil. The sound and the savory aroma that filled the air were a satisfying victory. He could feel the familiar burn starting in his thighs, the deep protest from his spine. Just as the ache was about to become a sharp, undeniable pain, he slumped back into the chair, his forehead beaded with sweat.

  It was a pathetic budget of physical endurance, one that was slowly increasing. He would manage it, one agonizing second at a time. He was stirring the simmering meat and vegetables from his seated position when the knock came.

  It was a sharp, percussive sound against the damaged wood, a jolt that went straight up his already aching spine. His hand froze, the spoon hovering over the pan. The pleasant, domestic sounds of the kitchen faded into a high-pitched whine in his ears.

  The memory was instant and visceral. The splintering of wood. The blinding pain. The terrifying, weightless moment of being thrown like a piece of rubbish across the street.

  He took a slow, shuddering breath, forcing the image down. He gripped the rims of his chair, the cool, solid metal a grounding presence, and wheeled himself toward the door. Each turn of the wheels was a conscious act of will, a deliberate step forward against a tide of remembered terror.

  He reached the door, his hand hovering over the bent, twisted latch. He took one last, steadying breath.

  He pulled the groaning, splintered door inward.

  Valerie stood on his doorstep, in her usual pristine white robes, with a small, practical-looking leather bag in one hand, professional concern accompanying her slight frown. Beside her, was Tori, looking tired from a day at the library then infirmary.

  "We just finished up at the infirmary," Valerie said, her calm voice breaking the stunned silence. She offered him a small, apologetic smile. "I hope we're not intruding. Tori mentioned she had an appointment with you, and I thought it might be best if I came along. Sam asked me to check on your recovery."

  He looked from Valerie's steady, reassuring face to Tori's deeply uncomfortable one. The unspoken message was clear. This wasn't just a check-up. This was a carefully managed, professionally chaperoned consultation.

  Mark wheeled back, pulling the door open as wide as its damaged frame would allow. "Not at all," he said, his voice a little rougher than he intended. "Come in."

  "I was just making some food," he explained, already wheeling himself toward the kitchen. "Give me a second to turn this off."

  He reached the hob and, with a flick of his wrist, extinguished the glowing runes beneath the pan. The sizzle died down to a low hiss, dinner would not be burnt. He turned back to his guests. They were standing awkwardly in the middle of the living room, a pair of healers in a space that had, for the last week, been a makeshift accounting office.

  "Please, have a seat," he said, gesturing with his head toward the dining table, still a landscape of neatly stacked ledgers and inventory sheets. "Sorry for the mess. I've been... working."

  Valerie pulled up a chair, placing her medical bag on the floor beside her with a soft thud. Tori followed suit, her movements stiff as she carefully navigated the piles of paperwork to find a clear seat. They sat in a triangle of quiet, professional tension around the evidence of Esto's questionable incompetence.

  It was Valerie who broke the silence. "Sam's report was... concise," she began, her calm, clinical gaze assessing him. "He said you were overdoing it. How are you feeling? Any sharp pains? Dizziness?"

  "Just the usual symphony of aches and soreness," Mark replied with a weary shrug. "Nothing new. I followed his advice, cut the routine back." He paused, a flicker of his earlier frustration returning. "And I tried the regeneration ritual Ricardo prescribed."

  He looked from Valerie's curious expression to Tori's carefully neutral one. "I followed his instructions, even checked in this book. Drew the circles, copied the runes, focused my 'intent'," he said, the final word laced with a cynical, self-deprecating humor. "And nothing. I didn't feel a thing. Not a spark, not a tingle. Nothing."

  He expected a look of concern, maybe another lecture on proper technique. Instead, he got a quiet, almost dismissive wave of a hand.

  Tori, who had been studying her own fingernails, finally looked up. "You wouldn't," she stated simply, her voice a flat, matter-of-fact correction.

  As she spoke, she raised her own hand, palm open. The delicate, a soft, diagnostic light, blooming in his direction. Her expression one of pure, clinical concentration.

  "You don't have a Heart," she explained, her tone that of a master mechanic explaining a basic engine function to a clueless owner. "No real connection to the flow of ambient magic. You're... magically deaf. Anyone can perform the ritual, they draw their power from the environment, but you won’t feel it working. Not unless you're one of the gifted few who are born with that sense." She gave him a look that was a perfect, condescending summary of his status. "And you're not special."

  She lowered her hand, the light fading. "But it worked," she confirmed with a brisk, professional nod. "The process has started. The ambient Whispers are being drawn to those areas. The healing has been accelerated, just as Master Vargas intended."

  The pronouncement was so final, so utterly dismissive of his own subjective experience, that Mark couldn't help but feel a flicker of his old, defiant humor. He had followed the instructions, performed the ridiculous ritual, and it had worked, even if the feedback had been a complete and total void. It was an absurd victory that he couldn't see.

  He offered her a thin, tired smile.

  "I like to think I'm special, thank you very much," he said, the words a quiet, deadpan rebuttal. "Even if I'm not 'gifted'."