Here's today's chapter :)

Thanks for reading!

-Plum

48 – A Good Time to Rest

Andy propped up his pillows and reclined on his bed as he studied the two broken halves of the arrow. He’d had the idea a while ago—using Axiomancy to fix broken things or even broken people. It had first begun to germinate in the back of his mind when he’d met Delilah and Trevor and seen her missing arm. There were a few hurdles to overcome in his theorizing, though.

The first major problem, as he could see it, was that when he used his axioms, the effects were always temporary. He was imposing his will on the nature of the universe, and when he stopped doing it, things returned to normal—more or less. When it came to the Axiom of Separation, he’d used it to remove limbs from enemies. When they died and their corpse lay far from that separated limb, it didn’t magically revert to its whole state, though. That told him that there was a way to make his changes permanent, even if it wasn’t elegant.

“But what if there were an elegant way?” Andy muttered, reaching into his storage ring and pulling out a notebook and pencil. He knew three Axiomatic glyphs, and considering what he’d learned from Axiomatic Conjugation, he knew that he could combine those three glyphs in four different ways. He’d only done so once, creating the Axiom of Time Severance, but he didn’t think that was the direction he wanted to go—not yet. What he needed was a bigger vocabulary. He needed to know more glyphs.

Starting with what he knew, Andy drew the glyphs for passage, separation, and time, and he studied them for a while. He’d learned a lot about glyphs when he’d tried to level his Glyphwright class, so he wasn’t surprised when he began to recognize patterns in the complex symbols. He saw that each glyph had a central “trunk” and that its branches could form complex or simple patterns.

At the moment, he was most interested in the Axiom of Separation, so he scrutinized that one and, with his pencil, began trying to sketch what he thought would be the opposite shape. Of course, he had no idea if that would work. In English, you could look at two opposite words—in and out—for instance, and they certainly weren’t opposing shapes. Still, glyphs weren’t letters or words. They were magical designs.

The glyph had four branches, only two of which were very complicated. One was shaped like a down-turned arm, so Andy drew it as an up-turned arm on his opposing glyph. The other simple one was a clockwise spiral, and he drew it as counter-clockwise. The other two arms were more complex, and it took him a dozen tries to come up with shapes that he thought were suitably “opposing.”

When he was done, and he looked at the two glyphs side by side, he felt like he’d done a good job. “Here we go,” he said, lifting his left hand and sending a trickle of mana into his Axiomatic Artistry ability. As the air sparked with magenta mana, he sketched his new design. The glyph flared to life under his glowing mana-ink, but when he finished it, he could tell something wasn’t right. It wouldn’t accept more mana, and it flickered and faded almost immediately.

Andy sighed and lifted his notebook, studying the runes again. He unfocused his eyes slightly and let himself absorb the shapes, seeing if maybe his enhanced Perception would guide him in the right direction; maybe he could feel how the new glyph was wrong. To his surprise, he saw it almost instantly. He was creating opposing shapes, but he wasn’t mirroring them from left to right on their branches. What if he needed to shift the shapes’ positions?

Hastily, Andy redrew his new glyph, now with the shapes fully mirrored in position. He smiled as it took form, sensing its rightness. With renewed excitement, he tried again, sketching the glyph in the air with mana. This time, when he finished, he felt the glyph hungrily pulling at his mana, and Andy happily fed it, focusing on the broken arrow in his lap.

To his glee, the arrow halves glowed with magenta mana and snapped together, the splintered ends sliding together without so much as a visible seam. The mana glow pulsed once, and then the arrow lay there on his lap, whole. Before he could pick it up to examine it, a System message filled his vision:

***Congratulations! You’ve discovered the Axiom of Joining. For your discovery, you’ve been awarded experience and gained a level in your Axiomatic Warden class. As a result, you’ve earned 20 maximum mana.

Axiom of Joining – Bound: You draw an axiom that declares that the target objects are part of a unified whole. For a short time, the separate components are treated as continuous, strengthening cohesion and joining them along natural boundaries such as seams, joints, or layered structures. If the parts were once whole, the joining will meet little resistance. Naturally opposing components or materials will be more difficult to join. Mana Cost: 75.***

***Congratulations! You’ve learned a new skill: Axiomatic Composition. For your discovery, you’ve been awarded enough experience to advance your Axiomatic Warden class to level 22, for which you’ve been granted 1 Improvement Point and 20 maximum mana.

Axiomatic Composition – Bound: You have begun to learn the language of Axiomancy, understanding the written expression of its glyphs and how they hone your mana into shapes that can bend the universe to your will.***

Smiling, Andy brushed the messages aside and looked at his arrow; it was in two pieces again. He’d expected as much, though maybe he’d hoped for it to remain whole a little while longer. Putting that aside for the moment, Andy looked inward, searching his mind for the new knowledge granted by his discovered skill.

He saw it immediately. Like thinking about a word and understanding the letters that went into it, he realized he now knew the equivalent of an alphabet for Axiomancy. It stood to reason, to his mind, that if he could make an axiom and force it into reality with a surge of mana, he ought to be able to sustain it with a steady feed of mana.

Of course, he didn’t think that would solve his problems—not permanently. Even if he could create a “joining” axiom that lasted as long as he fed it mana, then it would still fall apart after ten or twenty minutes, assuming it cost as much to maintain as it did to create. Nevertheless, Andy picked up his pencil and started sketching a new glyph using what he knew from his Axiomancy alphabet.

His goal wasn’t a new axiom, but rather a modifier for existing axioms. It would be a glyph that only worked with other glyphs, one that essentially meant “sustained.” It came together quickly. In all honesty, Andy thought it was too quick, but then he remembered that he had the Perception of a demigod. In the art of conjugation and wordsmithing, his Perception worked almost like intuition; he could feel when a shape or design looked right. More than that, hadn’t he just morphed his class to Axiomatic Warden, and hadn’t the System told him that certain kinds of axioms would come to mind easily?

Andy stopped worrying about the ease of the process, trying to accept the fact that he’d already put in a lot of work; he was only finally doing something that many people would have worked on much earlier in their “career” as an Axiomancer. When he had a glyph that his knowledge from Axiomatic Composition said had all the right pieces, and also that felt right to him, Andy sketched it in the air with Axiomatic Artistry. It held.

Grinning stupidly, Andy drew the glyph for Axiom of Joining beside the new glyph, and then he poured mana into the two of them. To his wonder, as he powered the spell, the two glyphs drew near each other and began to rotate—a three-dimensional, glowing glyph that spun in the air before him. When it was powered, Andy focused on the arrow and willed it to join.

Once again, the two arrow halves began to glow, and then they sprang together, flaring with bright magenta mana briefly. Andy looked at the glyph—it was still there, rotating slowly in the air not two feet from his head. He was just about to open his status sheet to try to gauge how much mana it was consuming, but then the System hit him with another message:

***Congratulations, Andy! You’ve learned the Axiomatic Glyph of Maintenance. This discovery has increased your understanding of Axiomancy and, as a result, you’ve gained 1 rank in Axiomatic Conjugation and 1 rank in Axiomatic Composition. Moreover, you have earned experience toward your next Axiomatic Warden level. Now that you’ve learned the Axiomatic Glyph of Maintenance, you can cast persistent axioms.

Persistent axioms will use your mana to maintain their effect until you cancel the flow of mana or until the axioms deplete your mana pool. Maintaining an axiom is not as costly as initially imposing it. When a persistent axiom restores something toward a former natural state, prolonged maintenance may allow the universe to accept the restored pattern as permanent. The smaller the deviation from the original state, the more readily this will occur.***

Grinning stupidly, Andy opened his status sheet to watch his mana pool. He had to count to three before it ticked down by five points. It was costing him almost nothing to maintain the arrow’s repair. He had to consider that the arrow had once been whole and that it was small and simple wood. It wasn’t a difficult thing to maintain. “What about my leg?”

Andy frowned, thinking about the difference in complexity between a living human limb and a wooden stick. Technically, he supposed, the stick used to be a kind of limb. It had tiny cells and whatnot that were connected via the magic. Of course, it wasn’t alive with blood flowing through it…

He shook the worries off; one thing he was fairly sure of was that he couldn’t make his leg worse. If the spell took too much mana, he’d just cancel it and put his leg back into storage, and maybe Bea would be able to help him before too long.

Andy cancelled the flow of mana to the floating glyphs and watched as they broke apart into magenta steam. He heard an almost gentle splintering sound, and when he looked down, the arrow was cracked and bowed—but still partially together.

“Hmm,” he said, arching an eyebrow. Had the repair already begun to stick? Heartened by the idea, he reached into his storage space and drew out his severed foot and ankle. It felt very, very strange to hold his own foot in his hands. It was even worse when he reached into the boot to pull the too-cool limb out. The inside of the boot was coated in blood that was still slick—a function of the preservative properties of his magical ring—and though the flesh was a bit stiff, he felt warmth when he gripped and pulled.

His foot came out with a squelch, blood-soaked sock and all. Andy felt queasy, and it occurred to him that he hadn’t really let it sink in that he’d lost his limb. He’d refused, in fact, to acknowledge that it might be permanent. He still didn’t want to.

Andy pulled the sock off and dropped it and the boot beside his bed, and then he set the foot on his blanket, down near his stump. He pulled up his pant leg so that he could easily align the two…parts of himself. “Okay,” he breathed, steeling himself. “Doing this.”

He checked his mana pool, ensuring it was full, and then he reached up with his left hand and sketched the glyph of maintenance. When it took shape, he composed the next glyph, forming the Axiom of Joining. As the two glyphs combined and began to spin, Andy focused on his stump and the pale severed limb, and poured mana into the axiom.

He felt the mana flow out; he felt the universe resist the force of his will, but not strongly. It wasn’t like he was trying to do anything unnatural. Those two pieces had once been a whole, after all. He saw his pale foot and ankle begin to glow with magenta mana, and then his stump, too. He pushed a little harder, solidifying the idea that those two were meant to be joined.

With an audible sizzle and pop, mana flared in the gap between his living and cold flesh, and then it flared brightly before fading—his foot was once again attached to his body. Sudden pain lanced through his newly whole limb, and Andy gasped, reaching down to squeeze and massage the flesh.

The lancing pain faded to sharp tingles as his foot began to warm and regain its color—as his blood flowed into it. Andy wriggled his toes, trying to encourage the process and speed it along. He suddenly imagined his foot’s empty vessels and wondered if he should be worried about air bubbles or clots. Hastily, he reached into his ring and drew out one of Bea’s regenerative waters, drinking half of the potion just in case he had a heart attack or something.

Maybe it wasn’t necessary, but the magical water did help with the tingling soreness of his foot, and it rapidly began to feel normal again. Andy glanced at the magenta glyph spinning in the air near his head. How long would he need to maintain it? How long could he? Glancing at his status sheet, he watched his mana pool.

Every few seconds, it dropped by nearly twenty, but then it jumped up again; his recently improved regeneration was compensating. Smiling, Andy lay back on his pillow, wriggling his toes. As long as he didn’t change his class, he could keep the thing attached. He hoped it wouldn’t take long to become permanent. He felt his face drain of color as he thought about testing it.

“Damn,” he muttered, reaching down to rub the spot where the Lentiss Thresher had snipped through his flesh. It felt whole. Convinced that he’d want to leave the Axiom in place for a good amount of time, Andy reached into his storage ring again and pulled out his Abyssal Orange.

It seemed to him that it was a good opportunity to eat it. His experimentation had gone much more quickly than he’d expected, and Lucy—along with everyone else—was expecting him to rest, anyway. He took the little card out of the sack and set it on the bed beside him as he leaned back. If Lucy came around and found him sleeping, she’d at least know why.

Already salivating at the orange’s strange, alluring scent, he began to peel it. “I’m hungry, anyway.”