An Arcane Engineer in Another World: Book I, Exile, Chapter 10

I am super late on this one, so as apology it goes free and the next two will be up tomorrow, hopefully.

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The only other unblocked door that Cannibal Girl shows me opens up onto a big room full of books, at least according to her.

I didn’t hear anything beyond it, but I start working on the wards. I didn’t have the right materials, so this is a quick and dirty ward I’ll have to renew ever so oft… But, you know, better than waking up with ice zombies and unclean spirits.

“Can’t they just come through the walls, like a ghost?” the girl asked.

“Nope, Cannibal Girl.”

“That’s not my name!”

I looked down at her. “You wanted to eat me. Thus, Cannibal Girl.”

She folded her arms and looked adorably angry. “At least I’m not a bad wizard.”

I don’t bother to roll my eyes. “But if you want to know magic, I’ll explain it to you. Buildings, circles, they form a… spiritual barrier. A wall is designed to keep things out. So a spirit can’t just waltz through it, unless the building has been abandoned for a long, long time.”

“Is that why ghosts are in old abandoned buildings?”

Ghosts? Whatever. “Yeah. The older a building, and the longer its gone without people, the less it’s seen as a building, at least spiritually, so a spirit can force itself through a well, but it takes a long time.”

“What if they use a sledgehammer?”

“We’ll hear them coming.” And be in a great deal of trouble. Hopefully, they wouldn’t think of it.

“Why don’t you make them vanish?” The girl said. “Mandy the Good Sorceress makes Nasties Vanish.”

“Um… pardon me?” I asked.

“Yeah, she has her own TV show and everything! She shows us how to make Nasties go away with her wand, like when you’re angry or lonely… on TV!”

“What’s TV?”

She looked like I’d just told her I didn’t know what clothes were. “You don’t have TV where you come from?”

“No and—“ The wind got a little louder. “Okay, um, let’s just head back after I move this cabinet.”

“I can help!”

“You are. Just… keep watch.” The cabinet is fucking heavy, but I managed to get it pushed up against the door. If they do think to try to use main force, that’ll provide another barrier. “Right. Let’s get back to everyone else.”

“You’re huffing and puffing. Are you tired?”

“Yes, Cannibal Girl, I’m tired.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Tell you what, make it a week without wanting to eat someone and I’ll think about it.”

She stomped her foot, but didn’t say anything else.

“What is in these rooms?” I asked.

“Some of them are like big closets for old books. One of them is…” She looks around. “The potty room.” Those words came out in a whisper.

“The potty—“ I closed my eyes. “Right…” Can’t go outside, and the water in the pipes is probably frozen and… oh hells, I’m gonna have to use it. Okay, reason two to figure out a way around this.

When we get back into the main room, the kids are all clustered around the older sister, who is covered in a blanket, her teeth chattering. She had black hair, done up in a bun, big glasses over green eyes and a face that was a little narrower than her sister’s but you could see the family resistance.

“T-told—told you not to let anyone else in…” She said. “Wha-what if…”

“He’s a wizard!” A girl said, pointing at the floating orb of light.”

“Wh-what?”

“Not important,” I told her. “Okay, everyone, you need to let…ah…”

“Denise!”

“Thank you, Cannibal Girl,” cue angry foot stomp, “for your help. Denise. She’s freezing. And I’m going to fix that.”

“Um… How?” Mindy asked.

“Magic,” I tell her.

The kids need warmth, hells Mindy and Denise need warmth and so do I. And this is a small room. I don’t have the right materials to make permanent runes, but that’s not a big deal. This is a temporary solution to a hopefully temporary emergency. I open up the tome and look through it to find the right runes.

Heating runes.

“But we can’t light a fire!” Mindy said.

“We’re not.” I told her. I stand in the center of the room, and close my eyes, measuring the four points. Right, I can do the walls. “We pull the ambient mana in.”

“But… that’s energy from nothing!”

“Nope, it’s energy from the mana fields, and the power to use it comes from me,” I told her. “If say, you just did this… you’d get nothing. Now everyone hush while I do this.”

This was going to take a little bit out of me, because the amount you got out of a rune depended on what you put in it, and since I was creating a lingering effect…

I held out the scriber and carved the first runes into the wall, the lines glowing a soft blue. I heard an Ahh of surprise from the kids.

“What-what is he do-doing!” Denise said, lips still blue. Mindy just shook her head.

I went to the other three points, repeating the gesture, feeling the strain growing. Slight, but it was there, another sign I wasn’t working in a workshop full of mana collectors. The strain wasn’t great, but it was there.

Then I finished the last of the runes, looking at each runic pattern, the soft, blue light letting me know they weren’t malformed. I double checked and then standing in the middle of them, closed my eyes and started sending my power into them.

Magery was tied to our life, and people had been trying to take that out of the equation, like some kind of water powered scriber for runes, for centuries, promising an era of utterly free magic.

I and people like me, still had a job. Well, I had, before my little oops.

Enough thinking. I ran through the words in my mind, saying them to be certain. Held out my hands and… pushed the shaped energies into the runes, and obedient to them the mana…

“It’s getting warmer!” a girl said.

Not much. I didn’t want to risk making the place too warm, just in case  the floor on top of us had three feet of ice waiting to melt. But in comparison to the temperature before, the temperature you got on a cool spring morning was positively tropical.

And even these quick and dirty runes could hold the initial casting for several hours. I turned to Denise and Mindy. “Are you okay?”

Her face was losing that freezing look. Nice thing about magic, unlike a stove, it heated all the air up in the area of effect up, not just the parts closest to the heat source. “Wh—who are you?” she asked.

“Now, that’s a story.” I said, as I walked to sit down in front of her. “So keep your mind open.”