Ichor Cell-Chapter 12: Why are you hitting yourself?

“I’ve changed my mind. This deal is not beneficial to me. We need to renegotiate the terms.” Elara threw her hands up into the air, furiously stomping around the abandoned hut they had requisitioned for nightly practice.
They had been meeting in this abandoned hut for the past several nights, passing the hours with Elara offering various techniques and tricks she had learned as Alex struggled to get a grip on his mana.
Most of the time she ended up groaning in exasperation as he failed to follow instructions, grew distracted, or started joking whenever the silence dragged too long. Progress had been slow, more frustration than result—until tonight.
For the first time, the knot of energy in his chest had shifted the way he intended, spilling outward according to his will.
The young woman paced back and forth, her arms crossed and an angry frown etched on her face. Every few steps she would glance over at where Alex casually leaned against the wall, looking far too smug for her liking.
“I just don’t understand how it’s possible.” She said, her tone filled with indignation. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to do that? Weeks! Weeks of focus, trial and error, frustration, and you just—what? Waved your hand and
bam
?”
Alex smirked, clearly enjoying himself. “It wasn’t
that
easy.” He said, though the amusement in his voice betrayed him. “I mean, I did put in at least a solid two days of effort.”
“Arrghhh!” Elara glared at the young man, her hands curling into claws at him. “Two! Days! You managed to move the magic flow in two days! I had to study scrolls, meditate,
pray
, and even
then,
I barely got a twitch! I’m going to kill you!”
“Aww, boo-hoo. The rich merchant’s daughter born with a golden spoon up her ass can’t handle being worse than someone.” He mocked. “You obviously just didn't try hard enough. It’s not
my
fault you’re such a slow learner.”
Elara looked like she was about to combust. "Slow learner?
Slow learner!?
My teacher said I’m one of the most talented mages he’s taught in over a decade! It usually takes a novice months to access their magic! You’re just an abnormal freak.”
“Hey! That’s not very nice!” He reprimanded, a mock frown adorned his face before it broke out into a smile. “Did your parents never tell you it’s rude to call people names?”
“Oh my
gods
just shut up!” She pointed a threatening finger at him. “One more word, and I swear to everything that is holy I will attack you! I can always find another bodyguard!”
Alex backed away with raised hands, still grinning from ear to ear. He mimed zipping his lips, locking them, and throwing away the key. Leaning back against the wall, arms crossed, he resumed watching her pace around.
Elara glared at him for a moment longer. "Good, I can finally hear myself think."
Alex simply nodded in agreement.
“Anyway, back to practice.” The mage turned away. “How far and how long can you extend your magic?” She asked as she shook her arms out of their sleeves.
Elara waited for a moment, but only the breeze whistling through the walls reached her. The rickety structure they found themselves in appeared less and less likely to survive a strong sneeze, much less a training session between two magical individuals.
“Alex?” She called over her shoulder. “You there?”
Elara frowned and spun around, readying her magic, only to immediately dismiss it. Alex was still there, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, with that infuriatingly smug grin on his face.
“Hello? You good in there?” Elara asked, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me this is because I told you to shut up.”
Alex tilted his head slightly, lips pressed together in an exaggerated show of compliance.
Elara sighed, rubbing her temple. “I need an answer, you moron. How far can you extend your magic?”
Alex blinked, his eyes glinting mischievously. He shrugged and mimed zipping his lips again, as if to remind her of her own threat.
“Oh, for the love of—okay, fine. I allow you to talk. Happy?”
Alex let out a dramatic gasp, finally making a sound. “Damn, I thought it was over for me and I’d have to get a writing tablet to communicate. Thank you, your grace, for allowing me to speak again.”
Elara rolled her eyes, clearly not amused. “Don’t get too comfortable with your newfound freedom.”
Alex stretched his arms dramatically, as if he’d just been freed from invisible chains. “Oh, I’m savouring every moment. I still remember when you threatened my very life merely for speaking out of turn. Oh, how dark those days were, when not a word could leave my lips from fear for my life.”
“That was thirty seconds ago, Alex. I need you to be serious for once or I’ll give you an
actual
reason to fear for your life.” Elara snapped her fingers right under his nose.
“Fine, ruin the fun why don’t you.” Alex sighed.
“Alex…” The woman’s voice taking on a warning edge.
“Alright, alright, calm down.” Alex said, stepping forward with a theatrical sigh. He raised his hand, fingers twitching slightly as he closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. The flow of magic, still unfamiliar, responded slowly, but he could feel it—the subtle pulsation as it responded ever so slightly to his attention.
“Now, as I was saying, you need to focus on understanding the part of yourself that controls magic. It is not a foreign object or an external force; it is a part of you, just as integral to your existence as your heart or your liver.” Elara calmly explained as he attempted to guide the magic. “Breathe in, breathe out. Try to guide the flow along with your breath; just like air can flow to fill any space, so can mana.”
“I still can’t believe that your so called ‘incredibly rare magic technique’ is just a bunch of stuff that I already came up with after around an hour of brainstorming the same night I discovered I had magic.” Alex complained, his hold on the magic slipping.
“Focus, Alex. You’re not doodling, you’re moving magic. Stop getting distracted.” Elara ignored him, pacing around.
“Easy for you to say,” Alex muttered, redoubling his focus. His breaths grew deeper and longer, dragging something deep within him along with every exhale. Slowly, the magic in his chest nudged forward, sluggishly crawling away from the center and towards his arm, radiating warmth with every inch.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be ed if seen on Amazon.
“You’re doing it,” Elara said, her tone a mix of surprise and irritation. “Of course you are. Keep going. Push it further.”
Sweat started to bead on Alex’s forehead as he focused on pushing the magic past his shoulder, down his arm. As it reached past his biceps, the sensation of power seemed to swell, and though it wasn’t visible, he felt his muscles tighten and fill with heat. Any further movement suddenly grew exponentially harder, his entire strength barely enough to push it another inch onwards.
“There... elbow,” Alex said, his voice strained. “That’s as far as I can get it.”
Elara watched him, arms crossed, relief evident in her voice. “Not bad for your second try, but nothing impressive either for someone who supposedly got a reaction on the first. You’re moving it, but you can’t even shift it to your hand, much less cast a spell. I guess mister prodigy isn’t so prodigious after all.”
“You could move it to your hand immediately?” He asked, disbelief colouring his voice.
’I guess she’s not a genius for nothing. I couldn’t even get it past my forearm.’
“Of course, I’m a genius after all.” The young woman flipped her hair. “But I don’t understand why you failed. Once you get the mana moving it should be easy to transfer it to any part of your body. Most people get from one to the other relatively quick.”
“Huh? Seriously?” Alex’s eyebrows raced into his hairline. “How do you just get past the increased difficulty after the elbow?”
Elara gave him a puzzled look. “…What difficulty?”
“What do you mean ‘what difficulty’?” Alex questioned back. “Once I got past the elbow it became ten times harder to move it any further. I barely got another inch before I had to give up. Are you telling me this isn’t normal?”
Elara looked genuinely confused. “There shouldn’t be any increased difficulty at all.” She said, her eyes narrowing as if trying to solve a puzzle. “Mana should flow freely through your mana circuits once you get it moving. If you're having trouble after the elbow, that’s... strange. Strange and concerning.”
“Strange?” Alex echoed, catching his breath. “Yeah, no kidding. It's like I hit a wall. Pushing it any further felt like I was dragging a boulder uphill through tar.”
Elara tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Well, I’ve only been practicing magic for a few months, so I don’t really know all possible problems or situations one might encounter, but I guess you should just keep trying.”
“Yeah I guess s-” Alex was suddenly interrupted by the impact of his own fist hitting him in the face. With a
crack
, blinding pain radiated out from both his cheekbone and hand as he crumpled to the floor with a cry.
“Oh my gods!” Elara jumped in shock, briefly hesitating before rushing to check up on him. “Are you okay? Why did you do that? What the hell happened?”
“Euuuunnnghgh” Alex moaned in agony, unable to even clutch the injury due to his broken hand.
“Holy shit!” Elara swore as she got a good look at his face, her complexion going pale. “Well… that’s not good at all. You appear to have shattered your cheek, and the flesh around it is completely pulped. This is gonna leave a nasty scar.”
Alex’s response was more moaning, his mouth unwilling to form words through the pain.
“Okay, hang on. I have something that might be able to heal you.” The mage concentrated for a second, and with a muffled
wump
a small vial of clear liquid appeared in her hand. “You’ll owe me one after this; potions do
not
come cheap.”
Seeing the imminent threat of a wasted potion, Alex summoned all his willpower and quickly raised his hand to stop her before she could tip the potion into his wound, the action drawing out another moan.
“What now?” She asked in exasperation, a note of urgency entering her voice. “You’ll bleed out soon or be permanently disfigured if you don’t treat this as soon as possible!”
Alex shook his head, the movement sending a fresh wave of agony through his skull and eliciting a whimper out of his mouth. He didn’t know how to tell her about his healing with his mouth disabled, so he settled for pushing the potion away, despite the pain he was in.
“Just take the damn- What the hell?” Elara’s eyes widened as she let out an involuntary gasp.
Elara stared in disbelief as the mangled, broken flesh on Alex’s cheek finally began to shift and twist. Like a living thing, it wriggled forward, the cuts sealing themselves and knitting back together.
"What in the actual...?" Elara muttered, leaning back, her eyes wide with shock.
The grotesque mess of Alex’s hand, bent at an impossible angle, also slowly realigned itself. With audible cracks and pops, his bones mended, the swelling receded, and the twisted flesh smoothed itself out.
Within minutes, Alex’s shattered cheek was almost entirely back to normal, the skin still a bit red, but otherwise healed. His hand followed suit, flexing back into place, though the pain on his face showed that he wasn’t completely healed yet.
“Urghh.” Alex groaned as he rolled over onto his back to stare at the ceiling. “That was fucking terrible.” He spit out a shard of bone.
Feeling the smooth skin once again covering his face, he unwittingly broke into a grin. "Well at least now I've confirmed that I can speed up my healing if I direct mana there. That'll come in handy."
“You feel like maybe explaining yourself?” Elara's voice cut through his thoughts.
“Oh right, you’re here. Just gimme a second. I need a little break.” He winced as a twinge of pain ran through his cheek. “I’m still not fully healed.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, how rude of me. Let me just sit here while you heal a life altering injury in a few minutes.” The young woman drifted into his vision from above, covering his view with her scowling face. “I don’t think so.”
“Well, what do you want me to say?” He complained, waving her out of the way. “I’m pretty good at healing myself, that’s all.”
Elara took a deep breath, pinching her brows in annoyance. “Alex, this isn’t simply being ‘good at healing’. I have seen priests from a healing order—people dedicating their lives to healing magic—struggle to heal damage you undid in minutes. How-”
“Well it’s not really magic, as far as I can tell.” He interrupted. “My body just kind of does it on its own.”
“Just kind of… haah.” The mage used both hands to rub her face. “Don’t kill him, he’s useful, just ignore it. That’s it! He was just dropped as a baby! It makes perfect sense!”
‘Damn, I guess she really won’t like it when she finds out I can regrow an entire limb overnight.’
Alex observed the woman as she lost her mind.
‘I’ll just tell her later.’
“I’m just going to move on to avoid driving myself crazy.” She sighed. “Why did you hit yourself like that?”
Alex started. Right, he had completely forgotten that the suffering he just experienced was self-inflicted.
“That’s a good question.” He nodded. “I have no idea. I meant to just scratch something but the next thing I know, I punched myself full in the face. I’m also still not fully healed, and it’s definitely going slower now than it was earlier. Maybe I’m better at healing tissue than bone?”
“What do those things have to do with each other?” Elara asked, perplexed.
“I mean, my magic is red, among other things.” Alex shrugged. “It would explain my injury as well as the difficulty in spreading my mana I discovered. If I have some sort of blood or body enhancement magic, then moving it through my body could massively enhance it. So, when I bent my arm, I simply used too much strength and hit myself; when I infused my face, I healed faster.”
“And the blockage comes from the fact that when you imbue a whole muscle, you are effectively casting a spell, so to go even further would require you to cast multiple spells at once!” Elara widened her eye, clapping her hands togethers. “That makes so much sense! No wonder you couldn’t get it any further. All the books I’ve read say that multi-casting is reserved for Disaster class mages, so you obviously can’t do it yet.”
She looked thoughtful for a second. "Does that mean you're some sort of natural body mage? I heard that some people are born predisposed to certain paths but I never realised it was this severe."
"Uh, maybe? I don't really know any more than you do." Alex shrugged. "For me this just means that I have to adapt to increased strength once again.”
Getting up, he once more filled his arm with mana, this time careful to not move it too much. With his previous experience, he started slowly and methodically exercising the limb, making sure to use as little strength as possible.
As he got more familiar with his boosted strength, Alex exerted more and more strength with every moment, until his fist was whistling through the air at terrifying speeds. Each strike sent gusts of wind rushing out and emitting a low roar.
“Wh-what the hell?” Elara widened her eyes, stumbling back.
Alex punched the air one last time before striking a pose, flexing with all his might. “Oh yeah, I can feel it. It seems the magic makes me just a
little
stronger.”
Elara simply stared at him, her mouth open in shock.
“Oh hey, the sun’s coming up!” Alex glanced out of the small, shattered window of the hut and saw the faint light of dawn creeping over the horizon. His expression suddenly changed. “Oh shit, the sun’s coming up!”
He whipped his head around. “I, uh, I gotta…”
“Yeah, yeah, go on.” She waved him away. “Actually, I’ll come with you. I’ve decided that since you’re going to run away after every training session to work for the old guy, I might as well just move closer. It’s not like I have a lot of things to carry, and it’s cheap.”
Alex paused at that. “So does that mean…”
“Yes.” She looked at him. “We're neighbours now, nice to meet you.”