Chapter 48 - Gren the Magician

After handing out the food and water, Gren returned to the carriage. He was tearing apart some dried beef jerky while continuing to read the book about magic. It wasn't entertaining but Gren needed to become useful to the people he cares about or, if that wasn't possible, he would at least like to not be a liability anymore.

His incompetence caused Jasmine to place herself in harm's way. She was able to deal with the rats without a problem but what would he do if the enemy could seriously injure the people defending him? Even now he's no more than a glorified porter to these knights while they deal with everything for him.

The types of magic he could practice in the carriage were extremely limited and he couldn't see the results in all but one of them: healing magic. Gren had finished most of the Beginner's Introduction to Magic and felt confident that he would understand enough to begin using simple magic. Gren decided to spend some of his points on a new dagger while waiting for the knights to finish their break.

The Church of Healing Light Volume 1 was meant to treat people with minor wounds. The beginning section seemed to be the same as what he had learned from the other book so he skipped it. The spell itself wasn't that complicated and Gren could soon see a faint green glow coming from his hand.

He could tell that the spell activated so there was only one thing left to do now. Gren pulled the dagger out of the sheath and pressed it against his left hand. The dagger was sharp but it just couldn't penetrate his skin. No matter how much he tried to convince himself that he needed to do it in his head, Gren just couldn't hurt himself.

"Come on. You can do it. You don't want to stay weak, do you? It's just a little slice. It won't hurt for long." Gren was talking to himself to try to get himself to slice his hand. "Nobody will treat you like a man if you don't act like a man. Just do it." Gren finally pulled the knife from the hand he had gripping the blade and immediately regretted it.

He didn't prepare a cloth so some blood got on his acolyte robe. There was an unused washcloth that he pulled out and wrapped around his hand. He tried to use the healing spell but it just wasn't working.

His thoughts were on the pain and he couldn't remember how the spell was casted. Gren opened up the spell book again, this time with one hand, and tried to get the spell to work. Still nothing.

He spent too much time on the basic healing spell so he decided to go back and read the introduction just in case there was something in there that he missed. He knew most of it but there was one major difference that he wished that he read earlier.

Learning magic spells requires your complete attention. Do not attempt to use any of the spells in this volume on yourself unless you have already mastered them. Always practice your spells on willing patients.

"I can't even do this right. What am I doing? Nothing I do is working." Gren couldn't help but laugh at himself. "What can someone like me even do to help?"

Gren decided to read the Beginner's Introduction to Magic again. This time reading it slowly so that he could absorb the information. He chose to cast away his optimistic approach to learning magic and decided that he would move only one step at a time. Even if he had no talent for magic he would still be able to learn something if he tried hard enough.

It had been dark for a while now but they were still moving forward. The forward-most riders carrying magic lights better than the one Gren had. "Hold!" Gren could hear Georgia yell out while the carriage came to a stop. "We're just running ourselves ragged. We need to rest so we can keep up our pace."

Gren's hand wasn't bleeding anymore but he didn't want anybody to notice his injury. He wrapped his hand up in a new washcloth and acted like nothing was wrong. With a hop, Gren was now off the carriage and ready to distribute the food and water.

"Here you go." Gren gave one of the knights their food and the knight started eating away without acknowledging Gren's presence. The same scene repeated itself several times before Gren gave up and quietly gave the knights their rations. The knights that were already having a conversation quieted down when Gren got close. Did he do something wrong? Not even one knight said a word to him.

Georgia wasn't there so he left her rations on the driver's seat before crawling back in the carriage. It turned out that Gren was a magician after all; he could turn himself invisible in the middle of a crowd. Instead of continuing to wonder why nobody wanted to talk to him, Gren decided to be productive and read the book on magic.

This was his third time reading it now and he made sure to take his time with it. The first time reading it allowed him to familiarize himself with the content. The second time reading it allowed him to understand that content. This third time was to reinforce his memory of the content so that he'd never forget it. Gren didn't finish his third reading of the book before it was time to give everyone their rations.

This time he knew better than to try talking to them. Leaving the carriage, Gren rushed to give everyone their food and water. After finishing his job, Gren started to go back to the carriage. A hand grabbed Gren's shoulder, startling him. "You don't look too good. Try not to stay up so late." Georgia noticed that he was acting strange and he had bags under his eyes so she figured it was just that he was lacking sleep.

Gren nodded and quickly returned to the carriage. He got used to being ignored in the day that he had been traveling with them. It felt weird having one of the knights talk to him. Gren opened up his book yet again and before he knew it he had fallen asleep.