Chapter 31: How is Mana?
Celeste returned from the shelves like a tornado in slow motion, arms full of books, scrolls, and, curiously, two small wooden figures no taller than a child’s toy soldier.
She plopped everything onto a nearby table with a loud thunk, sending a puff of dust into the air and nearly knocking over an old lamp.
“Right!”
She declared, planting her hands on her hips triumphantly.
Lucien blinked at the action figure-sized dolls now standing in front of him and Sir Richardson.
They looked hand-carved, delicately jointed at the limbs, and painted in faded blues and greens.
One had a jaunty little hat.
The other had a tiny monocle.
“Are… we about to duel with dolls?”
Lucien asked, trying to keep a straight face.
Celeste, in typical fashion, didn’t immediately answer.
She busied herself clearing the cluttered tabletop, muttering to herself and organizing the books like she was constructing a shrine.
Only once everything was just so did she finally clear her throat with excessive drama.
“Ahem.”
She held up the two figures.
“These, gentlemen, are miniature automatons. Very basic, very safe, unless one of them bites you. Which has only happened twice.”
Lucien and Richardson exchanged a glance.
She pointed to the first figure, the one with the jaunty hat.
“This little fellow has a set of movements inscribed into its inner workings. It doesn’t think, it doesn’t interpret. It just executes. All it needs is mana to wake it up.”
She twirled her wand, an elegant silver rod with a blue crystal set into its tip, and gave it a quick flick.
A burst of blue light struck the automaton, and it immediately came to life.
With mechanical precision, it began to do what could only be described as a wooden tap-dance, complete with exaggerated arm flailing.
Lucien stared.
“It’s dancing.”
“Yes,” Celeste nodded solemnly.
“He is performing what I like to call the Enchanted Jig of Predefined Variables.”
“It looks like it’s being attacked by bees,” Richardson commented.
Celeste sniffed, clearly offended.
“He is expressing himself.”
She then turned to the second figure, the one with the monocle, and raised her wand again.
The tip glowed with that same blue light, but this time, the glow didn’t burst out.
Instead, it shimmered softly as she directed it at the automaton.
“This one,” she said, “has no predefined instructions. A blank slate. It can perform any movement, dance, jump, juggle, as long as I supply both a steady flow of mana and real-time instructions.”
As she spoke, the automaton raised one arm and gave Lucien a little wave.
Lucien instinctively waved back.
Then paused.
“Wait. Why is it waving at me?”
“It’s polite,” she replied matter-of-factly.
Lucien blinked.
“Is this… is this leading somewhere?”
“Isn’t everything?”
Celeste said with a grin.
Richardson, who had been quietly observing this whole demonstration with arms crossed and a slight smirk, finally chimed in.
“She’s getting to her point. Just… be patient.”
Lucien glanced sideways at him.
“This is the point, though, right? Dancing toys?”
Celeste huffed.
“No. I am getting to it, thank you very much.”
She spun on her heel dramatically, her long coat flaring out behind her.
“What I’m showing you, dear Lucien, is that your spoon situation is very much like the second automaton. Your mana is actively holding the spoon in place. But the kicker...”
She tapped her wand against her temple.
“....is that you’re not even doing it consciously.”
Lucien’s eyes widened.
“So I’m… maintaining the spell without trying?”
Celeste tapped her chin thoughtfully with the tip of her wand, her eyes narrowing as she studied Lucien’s hand like it was an exhibit in a magical oddities museum.
“Well,” she began, drawing out the word as she took a deliberate step closer, “what you’ve got here is weirdly… a very peculiar case.”
Lucien raised a brow.
“Peculiar?”
“Yes. Peculiar. Not weird.”
She coughed lightly.
“Strange, maybe.”
Another cough.
“Unusual.”
Another, more awkward cough.
“Let’s go with… unique. To avoid sounding rude.”
Richardson gave her a sideways glance.
“You said weird first.”
“Slip of the tongue,” she said with a practiced, diplomatic smile.
“Anyway.”
She turned back to Lucien, placing both hands on the table between them.
“Tell me- did you, by any chance, fail a few times before the spoon actually got stuck to your hand?”
Lucien blinked. His eyes widened.
“Yeah. I... I tried it once, didn’t work. The book said to visualize the bond like stitching, and I thought I did but nothing happened. Second time, it just… clicked.”
Celeste’s smirk bloomed like a flower in spring.
“Aha. Exactly as I suspected.”
Richardson crossed his arms.
“You suspected… that he stitched a spoon to himself.”
“No, no,” Celeste said, wagging a finger.
“I suspected that his mana nature is the culprit here. You see, some people have mana that’s easily influenced, quick to respond- like water. Others, like young Lucien here, have mana that’s… shall we say, more interpretive in its relationship with instruction.”
Lucien tilted his head.
“Interpretive?”
She waved her hand vaguely.
“You know, it likes to think things over. Mull. Brew. Digest. It doesn’t respond immediately. But once it understands what you want, it really commits to it.”
She pointed at the first wooden automaton, now motionless.
“Like our dancing friend here, it receives instructions, and then, bam! It follows them on its own. Except unlike the automaton, your mana isn’t supposed to be autonomous. It’s not a spell being cast, it’s mana with initiative.”
Richardson leaned in slightly.
“Is that even possible?”
Celeste shrugged, hands lifted in dramatic flair.
“Not common, no. Some magical scholars would call it a rare condition. Others might say it’s a quirk of talent. And a few-”
She lowered her voice conspiratorially, “-might even consider it a mana sickness. But it’s not impossible. Just... inconvenient.”
She leaned forward, her face inches from Lucien’s.
“Your mana detached itself to carry out your stitching order. Which means-”
“Wait,” Lucien interrupted, eyes darting between her and his spoonified palm.
“If it’s not me holding the spell anymore… then is the spoon, uh… stuck to me forever?”
Celeste blinked.
Then laughed.
Loudly.
“Oh heavens, no!”
She said, wiping a tear.
“Don’t be silly. Look.”
She gestured to the first automaton, which had slumped over lifelessly.
“What do you notice?”
“It’s… not dancing anymore?”
“Exactly. It ran out of fuel. No mana, no motion.”
She pointed the wand at Lucien’s hand.
“Same thing here. The mana you unknowingly cast detached and is now just finishing its task until it fizzles out. You’re not feeding it anymore. That small knot of magic will burn out eventually- and when it does, plop, spoon falls off.”
Richardson arched a brow.
“So… you’re saying a portion of his mana broke off, became semi-autonomous, and is now performing a basic enchantment like it’s on autopilot?”
“Correct!”
Lucien stared at his hand like it had personally betrayed him.
“So… I just… wait?”
“In my professional opinion?”
Celeste said with a flourish.
“Yes. Give it a day or two. Maybe don’t try gluing any other utensils to yourself in the meantime.”
Lucien sighed in relief, mixed, of course, with existential confusion.
“Right. No more stitching.”
Celeste grinned.
“At least not until you learn how to unstitch, hmm?”
***
The carriage rocked gently as it made its way down the cobbled road from town, the soft clatter of hooves a comforting rhythm beneath their feet.
Lucien sat with a small stack of books beside him, tied together with rough twine.
The top one read “On Mana Quirks and Curious Affinities” in faded gold letters.
Another, thicker volume had a handwritten note tucked into the cover in Celeste's scrawled cursive: “Try not to stick anything else to yourself until you finish Chapter 3.”
He let out a soft sigh, shifting the books to one side.
“She really gave me homework,” Lucien muttered, staring down at his hand, still sore and slightly red from the whole spoon incident.
“Actual magical homework.”
Richardson gave a quiet chuckle from the opposite seat, arms folded across his chest.
“Better books than curses, my lord.”
Lucien gave him a dry look.
“Is that the new bar we’re setting? Not cursed is the standard now?”
“Well,” Richardson replied with mock thoughtfulness, “it is an improvement over nearly being kidnapped, stabbed, and forcibly spoon-bonded.”
Lucien cracked a smile despite himself.
“You’ve got a point.”
The carriage bumped slightly, and they both swayed with the motion.
Richardson’s expression softened as he looked at the boy.
“You know, Celeste’s diagnosis isn’t something to be afraid of. Mana quirks are just that, quirks. They’re part of who you are. And now that you know what you’re dealing with, you can train around it. Or even use it to your advantage.”
Lucien stared out the window for a moment, watching the fields blur past.
“Yeah, I guess... it’s just- what if it does change things? What if it affects how I learn magic? Or how people treat me?”
He glanced down at his hand again.
“What if I’m always... weird?”
Richardson leaned forward slightly.
“Then you’ll be uniquely weird. And still you.”
Lucien didn’t answer at first. The words hung in the space between them, gently rocked by the hum of the carriage.
Richardson continued, voice gentler now.
“You’re not alone in this, Lucien. No matter how strange things get. For better or worse, I’m here. You can rely on me.”
Lucien looked up at him, something quietly vulnerable in his eyes.
“Thank you, Sir Richardson.”
The butler gave a slight, solemn bow of his head.
“Always.”
And then.
Clink.
The spoon fell off Lucien’s palm with a tiny, almost unimpressive plink, landing on the carriage floor between them.
They both stared at it for a beat.
Lucien blinked.
“...Huh.”
Richardson chuckled.
“Well. I suppose Lady Celeste’s theory held.”
Lucien leaned down, picked up the spoon, and turned it over in his fingers like it was a relic from a long-forgotten era.
“Kind of anticlimactic, really.”
Richardson smiled.
“Would you prefer it exploded?”
Lucien thought about it.
“Honestly? Maybe a little.”
The two laughed, the tension of the past days finally breaking in the warm carriage air as the road home stretched quietly ahead.
***
Far beyond the reach of mortal comprehension, beyond the veils of time and the scaffolding of reality, something stirred.
It was not a place, not truly. It was motion within stillness, geometry folding in on itself like a forgotten dream collapsing.
Black ichor wept sideways from a sky that did not exist. Stars blinked in reverse.
Thoughts birthed fire.
And at the heart of this non-place, the entity watched.
Its form shifted with no pattern, tendrils of impossible light spiraling through a lattice of teeth, symbols, and soundless mirth.
A hundred thousand eyes blinked out of sync, but all were turned toward one tiny glimmer in the weave of the world.
“Lucien.”
“The spoon had fallen.”
“The boy had learned.”
Finally, the entity pulsed with delight, laughter ringing like shattered glass played backward through a wind chime made of bone and starlight.
“A curious little thing, isn't he? So small. So soft. So... peculiar.”
Its voice, if it could be called that, echoed not in the air but within the bones of reality itself.
The space around it rippled in agreement, or fear.
“He writhes in discomfort when the world fails to make sense. He stumbles through pain, through fire, through stitched flesh and phantom weight- and still, he reads. Still, he learns.”
The form twisted again.
Joints folded the wrong way as laughter, dry, wheezing, infinite, spilled forth.
“A Crowley always awakens strangely. It is tradition, after all. Chaos is not something one inherits, it is answered.”
The entity pulsed again, its amusement slowly turning into something colder.
Sharper.
“He wonders if he is strange. If this power will haunt him. If it will change who he is.”
The air around it trembled.
Galaxies died in its shadow.
“Oh, child. It will. And yet, it is nothing to fear. Change is not destruction. Madness is not ruin. These are the tools. The instruments. You must only learn to play them.”
It leaned closer to the fracture in the world, a hundred mouths grinning with no lips.
“Grow, little Crowley. Grow into the wound the world has made for you.”
“You have so much potential. And I, am watching.”
A beat passed.
“You are doing wonderfully.”
And then, silence followed.
***
