Chương 151: Chapter 146 - Projection

Margaret's apartment had become an atelier through the legal method first and the furniture method second. Legally, it existed. There were papers, signatures, a seal, and several phrases that made the whole arrangement sound more dignified than the lounge in her apartment. One corner held books she could not yet afford to replace if anything unfortunate happened to them.

Another held paper stacked beneath a cloth to protect it from dust, damp, and Battery's occasional habit of placing his elbow exactly where ink had just dried. The storage room contained the few materials she trusted enough to keep close and the many materials she did not trust enough to keep anywhere else. It's not much, but it feels like mine at least. She thought. Battery sat at the main table with hunched concentration studying two large sheets of paper, both with magic circles drawn.

One was his and the other was hers. His circle was not useless; it was clear he had understood the idea. Unfortunately, ideas were very good at dying in the linework.

"You connected this mark to the wrong mark," Margaret explained, tapping the page with the back of her fingernail.

"So this will send mana outwards rather than inwards." Battery leaned closer.

"So it would still draw mana?" he asked, his gaze moving between the line and Margaret.

"It would, but it won't do anything if it doesn't reach the centre." Margaret said with a small smile. He nodded looking down at it with a solemn expression. Magic circles were a new branch of magic but Battery was handling it. Margaret pretended not to notice, but Battery smiled more easily these days. He still looked tired, but not hollow. The drawn look around his eyes had not vanished, and he still carried himself like an old man sometimes, but he didn't hunch as much. That was the difference.

He listened like he wanted to understand. She pointed at the next error.

"Your line thickness changes here."

"I thought the stronger part should be thicker." Battery said with a frown. He looked up at Margaret for explanation.

"That is not wrong, it would be more annoying than if it were wrong." Margaret drew her corrected sheet closer.

"Thickness affects how easily mana settles into a line, but it is not quite the same. A thicker line can push more flow, but if the neighbouring line is too thin, you make a preferred path by accident." Battery looked from his sheet to hers.

"So it chooses badly?"

"Mana does not choose. It is lazier than that." She explain pointing between two parts on her corrected drawing. He nodded slowly.

"It takes the easiest path."

"Yes, Good," Margaret said, smiling. The praise came out too formal, because she had not yet found a natural way to encourage him without sounding like she was disappointed. Battery still looked pleased and beamed a smile at the paper, and that was good enough. A knock came at the door. Margaret looked up with a frown.

"Come in." Alric entered, he had a frown of his own. His gaze moved to Battery first. The frown vanished, that was interesting. Then to Margaret, then to the table. He blinked and seemed to have to pull his attention away from circles. It settled on Battery at which he smiled.

"How are you settling in?" Alric asked Battery with a grin. Battery straightened a little too quickly.

"Well, sir." Alric's expression softened.

"Don't call me that, eating properly?"

"Yes. Mistress Margaret makes sure." Battery said nodding quickly, his gaze flicked to Margaret.

"I do not make sure," Margaret said, rolling her eyes slightly.

"He's growing as a boy and a mage, he needs to eat more." She gestured to Battery as she spoke. Battery looked down, embarrassed, but not miserable.

"I eat well."

"And he is improving," Margaret added, because if she did not say it, Alric would likely leave with only half the correct impression.

"His handwriting still needs work, but his line discipline is better, and he asks the right questions. That is progress." Battery's ears reddened. Alric grinned as he noticed the ears, before nodding. Margaret noticed that as well, and it settled somewhere uncomfortable. He was not only checking whether Battery remained useful. The brewery ran on mana she knew, Battery had been convenient, and Alric was exactly practical enough to understand that convenience could become cruelty if no one watched it.

Yet the relief on his face was not the relief of a man preserving a tool. He was checking on the boy. That complicated Margaret's opinion of him, which was inconsiderate.

"What brings you here?" she asked, her head tilting at Alric. Alric turned back to her.

"I need to learn how to push mana into things properly." Margaret stared at him with a flat expression. He winced slightly.

"I can do it, obviously. Stones, wands, the storage spell, the brewery work and stuff. But I mostly do it by touching something and… pushing. I don't know if there is a proper way." he spoke too quickly. Margaret let out a slow breath, before she said, "There are a few schools of thought here, I take it you want a simpler explanation you can use quickly?"

"Yes, that sounds about right." Alric said with a nod. She gestured for him to stand beside the table where both he and Battery could see.

"Mana is gathered throughout the body. It must be directed, then shaped, and released according to need. Most beginners do not struggle because they have too much. They struggle because they cannot pull enough from the whole body into the point it is needed. They try to cast from the hand alone and wonder why the spell does little." Margaret explained as she spoke to gestured to different parts of the body starting with the stomach.

Alric nodded with the focus of a man who had asked for instruction and meant to use it, which was one of his more dangerous qualities. Margaret felt the hairs on her neck rise. She stood before lifting her right hand and drew mana through herself to release a narrow thread into the air above the table. It was not impressive, and deliberately so. A faint, steady line, barely more than a presence to mage-sense. Clean and controlled.

She let it hold long enough for Battery to feel the steadiness, then thinned it further. It had taken her years to learn this much control.

"This is not power," she said, watching Alric closely.

"It is control." This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. Alric frozen up trying to see it more carefully. He narrowed his eyes in the general direction.

"Yes, this has been the product of…" She said before she noted he wasn't listening. He was no longer watching her mana. His eyes were closed but she could see his eyes moving beneath his eye lids.

"Alric?" she began, tilting her head and leaning closer. Then mana flooded the room. Margaret moved before any further thought. She shuffled backwards hard enough that her hip struck the edge of the table, one hand rising on instinct. Battery's chair scraped as he jerked away from the circle sheets and Alric.

"Stop!" Margaret shouted, just before her shoulder bumped into the opposite wall, she didn't remember covering so much distance. The flood stopped. Her first response was not awe. It was alarm, mages did not vent that much mana indoors, rather no one vented that much mana ever. This much mana meant something massive was being shaped. A storm-call perhaps? Something large enough to make other practitioners turn their heads. She swallowed wondering if the palace had sensed it.

But the mana did not thrash or scatter through the room like a failed casting looking for something to ruin. It pressed outward, vast and just waited. Instead, she forced herself to breathe, she tried to force herself to be calm. Hollen's device could never measure this. The thought arrived whole and cold. She had suspected it since the day the bars slammed upward and the panel gave that polite little puff of smoke. Everyone had treated the result as extreme. Elder rank. Too much mana.

Dangerous, certainly, but still somewhere on the scale. This is not on the scale. Not on any scale. Hollen's device had found the end of itself and died there. Margaret wanted, for one unreasonable moment, to throw one of her irreplaceable books at his head. Not because it would help, but because no man should be allowed to sound surprised after turning her apartment into a magical incident.

"How much are you using?" she probed carefully wanting to understand the full extent. Alric looked at her.

"What?"

"Of your mana capacity," Margaret said, keeping her voice level with more effort than she wanted Battery to hear.

"How much of your mana is this? To you I mean." Alric frowned at the room as though the question had been addressed to the mana itself.

"I don't know, about a tenth? I think." Battery made a small sound beside her. There were numbers a person could understand, numbers a person could disbelieve, and numbers that required one to rearrange the world around them because the alternative was standing still and screaming. Less than a tenth belonged to the third category. Then it did something beyond Margaret's wildest dreams. It answered him. Alric concentrated. The mana began to draw back toward him.

Margaret felt awe creep in through the space alarm had left. Alric stared at his own hands.

"I can move it." He sounded shocked. The quantity was obscene, yes, but quantity could be crude. A flood could still be useless if the channels broke. This did not feel trained, not in any school sense she recognised. There was no elegant shaping or polished method. But the response was immediate. The mana gathered, turned, and flowed back around him because he had decided it should. He was not casting, using a tool or a focus. He simply moved mana aggressively. She felt herself swallow hard.

"What does that feel like?" she almost asked, then caught the question before it escaped. She did not need to sound like an apprentice in front of her own apprentices. Alric pulled the last of it closer.

"Did I do it wrong?"

"Wrong is not the right word." Margaret pressed her fingers lightly against the wall to steady herself.

"Most mages spend decades learning to control a third of the mana you are throwing around." Alric looked troubled by that. Just when her corrected magic circle began to glow. The outer ring lit first, a soft line creeping along the boundary before slipping into the inner channels. The smaller circles filled in uneven sequence, responding to the design she had drawn only as a teaching example. Her breath caught. It had charged, from across the room. The circle should have required touch, at minimum.

A directed feed point, a deliberate line through the boundary, something more than just presence of mana nearby. It was a just corrected example on paper, and yet it sat there glowing with Alric's mana as if the world had decided rules were suggestions for people with pitiful reserves. Alric stepped closer, drawing the rest of his mana back into himself. The room became easier to breathe in.

Margaret found herself briefly wondering what it felt like to pull that much power under one's skin and then stand there looking mildly apologetic.

"Only you," she said, sharper than intended, "could accidentally charge a circle without touching it."

"I didn't mean to." That makes it less comforting. Alric leaned over the glowing sheet. Margaret watched him instead of the circle. The strange focus had returned. His eyes moved over the marks in the smaller rings. He pointed at one.

"What is this part?"

"A dwarven rune," Margaret said.

"Or more precisely, a mark derived from what we know of dwarven runic practice. It changes the movement to the inner channels." Alric frowned.

"It says Slow?" He leaned closer.

"No, it says Mana Slow." Battery looked from Alric to Margaret and very wisely said nothing. Margaret found herself struck dumb for a long moment, "What do you mean, it says?" Alric gave her the expression of a man being asked to explain why a cup was a cup.

"It says Mana Slow." Margaret pointed to another mark on the charged circle.

"That one?" Alric studied it. The delay was shorter.

"Hold." She pointed to the next. He hesitated.

"Draw and pull onto self." A second impossibility settled beside the first. Humans did not read dwarven runes like that, mages learned them by position, pairing, and use. Even dwarven formula marks were not letters in the ordinary sense once embedded in a circle. Meaning changed with direction, pressure, adjacent commands, and the expected mana flow. A mark did not simply sit there saying itself to anyone with eyes. Alric was not reciting lessons. He was reading the charged meaning.

Margaret reached for Battery's rough copy and turned it slightly.

"What does this one say?" Alric looked. She watched the focus leave his face. He tilted his head, studied the mark, and after a moment shook his head.

"Nothing. It is just a symbol, looks like a snake?" What the hell is this man? Is he fae or something? Margaret looked down at the two sheets, Battery's copy lay silent and dead. Her corrected circle glowed softly with Alric's mana, carrying meaning to him and only him in a way she had no framework for.

Margaret nearly asked another question, then stopped herself because the answer would need to be written down, and the notes would need proper paper, controlled ink, storage, references, and several books she had priced with deep sadness and longing. The atelier needs money. The thought steadied her in a way panic had not. She straightened. There had been advice, once, from a cousin who had explained that men often liked to believe they were being reasonable when they were being guided.

Posture mattered, apparently. Angles and softness also mattered. Margaret had not believed all of it, but she was willing to test most things if the alternative was running out of ink. She drew her shoulders back, turned slightly sideways, lifted her chin by a small amount, and let her expression soften into what she hoped was persuasive dignity. Alric's face became blank. The specific blankness of a man who had noticed something and wanted nothing to do with it.

"The atelier needs a budget," Margaret said deflating slightly.

"One gold a month," Alric replied without hesitation. Her posture suffered further damage.

"One gold is not a budget," she said, her gaze dropped to the floor and shook her head, "Books cost money and we are new. Copying fees are high. Proper responsive ink costs more than… and reagents Alric please." Alric did not look moved. She found herself pouting before she could stop herself. Then Alric looked at Battery. The change was small, but Margaret saw it because she had been watching him too closely already.

The budget stopped being an expense and became attached to the tired boy sitting at her table, trying not to look like he hoped too much.

"Two gold a month, because of Battery though, he works hard." Alric said gesturing to Battery. Margaret brightened but also felt more awkward. Alric looked at her properly then.

"You tutor him properly though please. No more translation work." Margaret looked at Battery. His eyes were lowered, but colour had risen in his face, and his mouth held the careful shape of someone trying not to smile.

"I do tutor him properly, we also stopped the translation work, that was the magery, not me." Margaret said, her brows furrowed before she could stop them. Alric nodded.

"Good. Battery, you also are getting three days off." Battery looked up so quickly, Margaret felt something twist in her chest.

"I will charge the station after the off days," Alric continued, he gestured vaguely with his hand.

"I need to check on the guards anyway, so I can make the round and handle it. You need to rest though." Battery's hands tightened on his knees.

"Sir, I can still…"

"Rest Battery, also why call me sir?" Alric said with what was unmistakably a small pout. Battery closed his mouth. Margaret cleared her throat before the silence could become too revealing.

"I would like to measure his capacity if he is fully rested." Alric glanced at her.

"Not with Hollen's device," she added, lifting a hand as if waving the idea away.

"I'll find another." That earned the faintest twitch at the corner of Alric's mouth.

"Fine." Battery looked as though he did not know whether being measured after resting counted as work, kindness, or about to get him in more trouble. Alric left not long after that, carrying away none of the confusion he had caused and most of the air of a man who believed he had asked an incredibly practical question. Much later after that, Margaret was looking at her reflection in the polished brass she had, she was frowning.