Knife To Meet You!

"You aren"t wrong about that.", Jach agreed. "He is usually very busy."

"But he"ll see you for sure.", Krys said confidently. "That is not a thing of concern. What concerns me instead is that we"ll need a spell to return you back. A spell based on a summoning spell only ever sucessfully used once. A spell with runes previously not known to the community. I don"t know how long devising will take." He looked at Jach for more input on this.

But before Jach could say anything, Kyvas spoke up. "You said something about the dagger having a lot of mana before. Can"t something like that act as a mana source?" He asked.

Krys immediately shook his head. Jach smiled bitterly.

"No." Krys said. "You"re already extremely damaged. Well, your dagger is. The mana draw for the summoning spell was already great enough to overwhelm your Self-repair. You"re still only barely repairing yourself. And we won"t be able to use a similar tool either. It"ll need to have a mana channeling enchantment to let the user control the mana of the tool."

"Is that not possible to do?"

"It is. But we already had to use so many powerful enchantments to stabilize you for even half an hour. Mana channeling won"t be able to stabilize such a large amount of mana alone. You"ll also need an exceedingly powerful mage to pull in and use all of that mana. I doubt even Jach can do that, and he"s already one of the best there is at mana control." Krys told him. "h.e.l.l, even putting both of our efforts together won"t stabilize the tool for long enough to pull that off. And we know that from experience."

Jach shuddered when he heard that. It seemed the end result was not what one could call desirable at all.

Kyvas nodded internally. He didn"t have much hope of returning at all. They spent a week here researching that spell. It was only used within the time period of a single week Yet he had felt the effects in his world for three months. Who knew how much time would pa.s.s until they got anything working?

But it was worth at least a shot anyway.

"I hope you can secure a meeting with him soon then." Kyvas said, apparently a lot more calmly than Jach expected, for he soon commented on it.

"I did not expect you to be so calm about this now. Especially after... well, earlier." He looked at Kyvas curiously.

Kyvas thought a moment about how to answer that. He was calmer than he had expected as well.

"I didn"t think I"d be this calm either." He admitted "Maybe it"s just shock."

He looked around the room. Ever since he saw the magic, he had started feeling his body with a small measure of clarity. He could feel the cracks and chips all over it. It didn"t hurt, just felt empty. He was also recovering slowly, just like Kys had confirmed for him. The recovery also seemedd to be improving his senses slowly.

He could now see everything more clearly. In fact, even though all he could see were outlines, he still felt he could discern more detail from his sight than when he was human. He saw an atlas, one of the many Krys had opened, lying flat on the table near the opposite wall. It was still too far to make out the maps, but he could still make out the words on the spine of the book. The spine that he realized was lying flat on the table. Curious how he could still see it.

"A Comprehensive Atlas Of Karia", was written on it in clear English.

"Can I see that atlas?", He asked curiously. "My world was called Earth, not Karia, but the same writing script was common there too."

"Huh." Krys exclaimed. "That"s weird. Maybe we live in different parts of the same world? You just call it something different? There"s still some uncharted territory to the east here." He wondered, grasping Jach"s hand and pulling him towards the other end of the room.

"I doubt it. Ours was more or less fully charted." Kyvas said, and then soon added, "We didn"t have magic in ours either."

That gave Krys and Jach a pause. Krys furrowed his brow while Jach opened his eyes wide.

"No need for a reaction like that. We just didn"t have magic. Now can we see the atlas?" Kyvas urged them on.

Jach moved to rub the bridge of his nose. "I can"t even begin to imagine a life without magic." He nudged a still frozen Krys with his foot. "Don"t just stop now." He muttered.

Krys rolled his eyes and started moving again. "It"s impossible. Nothing can die without mana in it"s body. Even if you can"t use magic, there will be other animals that do."

"None that we knew of." Kyvas muttered.

"..." Krys looked at the knife skeptically.

They soon reached the atlas. Krys tapped at the currently displayed world map. "Where did you live?" He asked as if Kyvas was sure to find the location on the map.

Kyvas looked over at it. It was an entirely different world alright. There map was divided into two vertically. These parts were named, unimaginatively, as the Eastern and the Westen half. The Western half comprised mostly of two large landma.s.ses with only a narrow body of water seperating them. Of course, it was narrow on the scale of the map only. The one in the north western portion of the half was named Sidvein while the other, located nearer to the center was called Miratea. Both were home to dozens of kingdoms. Dihovas, it seemed, was the capital of a large country at the northern coast of Miratea called Dihovar.

To the north and east of these continents lay small cl.u.s.ters of islands, all unnamed apart from one, called Ocaltis, named after the only nation established upon them.

The Eastern half really was mostly uncharted, just as Krys had said. There was in fact a note on the edge of the atlas, telling him that some of the landma.s.ses and names are speculative. Mostly based on stories from sailors claiming to have found them, but with some based on the folklore of some of the indeginous people of other, already discovered islands. The note also stated that those had been noted down with a different colour of ink.

This perplexed Kyvas, as he could not see colour. But it didn"t take him long to realize that some of the outlines felt different from the others. He did not know why they felt different, but decided to a.s.sume those outlines as the areas noted in a different ink.

The eastern half did not have many large landma.s.ses. Most of the land was part of island cl.u.s.ters or archipelagoes. The largest landma.s.s he could see was still not something he could call a continent. Just a large island. And more importantly it had a different outline, meaning it was not confirmed to exist anyway.

The most curious thing about the map was that the eastern and westernmost edges had a jagged dotted line along them. On the other side of the lines, the following was written in bold letters.

"Void. Point of no return."

"Like I said. Nowhere here." Kyvas declared. "This isn"t my world. Our map is very different."

"Maybe your people live in the uncharted lands." Krys refused to give up.

Kyvas frowned at that. He wondered then how he could show what he remembered of the map to them.

"...Hey. I"m not talking, right? This is something like telepathy, right? He asked, somehow directing his thoughts towards Jach alone.

Jach nodded in affirmation.

"Is it possible to send images through it? If so, how?" He asked.

"Yes, it"s possible. It isn"t much harder than sending thoughts. Or much different even. You just have to think about sending it." Jack informed him.

They both heard Krys clear his throat and focused on his figure. He had his eyebrows lowered in suspicion, mostly at Jach.

"What is he talking to you about?" Krys demanded. "I can"t hear him anymore."

Jach did not know wether to laugh or-- Well, that"s not true.

Jach laughed at Krys"s expression.

Krys grumbled. "d.a.m.n knife seems to have learned selective telepathy already. Now he"ll be turning my husband against me."

That just prompted Jach to laugh harder. And sometimes it"s hard not to at least smile when hearing someone else laugh.

Krys had a chuckle.

Kyvas found himself with a small smile.

And the entire room was not entirely gloomy for the first time since the morning.