Content: Chapter 2

Steve had his eyes locked on to a girl amid older women circling the well. Alexios had to walk faster just to catch up with the suddenly energetic redhead.

A closer look at the girl was surprising, she was new. Even he, the shut-in outcast, knew just about everyone in the immediate vicinity by the amount of gossip that happened between the wives that visited.

She had black flowing hair reaching almost to her waist, her face was oddly smooth and her eyes were a gentle hazel. He almost couldn't keep his gaze from becoming indecent, the eagle eyes of the old women would dissect him if he started measuring her mammaries.

"Steve." He said, his throat suddenly dry. "She is out of your league brother."

The man didn't hear him, and he walked right towards the beautiful girl, a conversation sparking naturally.

"Or maybe he hit a jackpot." He whispered beneath his breath. He shook his head from looking at the girl and resolutely kept his head low and waited for his turn in the line.

Occasionally gossip reached his ears, he blocked it out and acted deaf, he did not want to know who fought with who and which man slept with another man's wife, that path lies madness.

The line shortened and the first rays of light came from the horizon, until only the two lovebirds were left, their unending chattering grating on him. He endured it with the attitude of someone condemned to an eternity in hell.

"Alex!" The aforementioned suddenly sprung up from his stupor, shakely looking around for any threat. He found Steve and the girl both looking at him.

"Yeah?" He replied, taking a peek at their buckets and seeing them filled. He dragged his own set and began to fill them up.

"I haven't introduced this lovely wonderful lady right here." The honey from his words made him grimace, thankfully he had his back towards them so they wouldn't have seen it. "Bismarck! This is Alexios, local homebound reject."

Alexios frowned, that was an okay insult to throw when together but in front of a girl? Not acceptable. Turning around to express his displeasure, he was struck cold by the hazel eyes of Bismarck staring right into his soul, a small smirk on her face.

"A pleasure to meet you." She purred. She purred! And she had extended her hand, which Alex took with glee.

"Where are you from? Never seen you around here." He smiled at her, her soft hand still in his. The temptation to hold for longer was strong, the little bit of embarrassment he had was stronger.

Her brows lowered minutely and her smile turned rigid for a second, before it returned to what it was before.

"She is actually from farther in." Steve jabbed in, eager to get a word in. "Apparently the housing prices are getting unsustainable."

"Ah, cool. Well, I'll be on my way, see ya." He hefted up the stick, exhaling from the exertion. His body protested, yet his mind powered through the fleeting weakness.

A few steps away, he ventured a peek back and saw Steve chattering away to the girl. Bismarck was nodding, her dainty hand was covering her laugh, but her eyes…they were looking straight at him.

Odd.

Was she attracted to him? Did she have a crush? His heart swelled at the thought, then he stared down at himself and snorted.

Yeah, sure, in his dreams. Maybe he looked like someone she knows, or a myriad of other reasons that he can't fathom.

Satisfied with resolving the mystery, he stomped through the streets back to his home. By the time he reached it, the sun was rising and the birds were chirping, and his body was screaming.

The moment he set down the buckets in the kitchen, he collapsed back on the chair. Big heaving breaths and a sweat soaked shirt made him feel like The Swarm played him like a toy.

"Here, drink up." A mug of water was forced into his hands and he instantly poured it down his throat. A bowl of soup and bread was next to go down to his stomach, and before he knew it he was having breakfast with his mom.

A frugal breakfast, one with an abundance of meat. There was his favourite food, meat buns, stacked on a plate. He dung into them with more gusto than ever before. A cup of tea made the food go down easier.

"Are you going to university today?" His mom broke the silence over the table. Alex had to stop himself from snarling.

"No." He forced out the words.

"You have to try Alex. I don't want you to live like this, to live like I did all your life." She wrapped her hands around his. "You deserve better, you only have to work hard for three years and you will never have to lift a finger again to get food or water."

"They signed me up to fill up their pity quota. I have the barest oita of talent, high enough to be considered magical, low enough to not learn anything useful." He gritted his teeth and talked through his teeth. "I should have never done that inspection, now everybody expects me to be a wizard when I clearly can't."

His outburst made his mom hang her head, he was about to do the usual, run away into his room and lock himself in there with a vial of The Dreamer.

"I am sorry." He said. "I shouldn't have said that."

"It's ok, I understand." She brushed his cheek. "Whatever you do, I will be happy. You are all I have left, your father would have known what to do, he always did."

He smiled, taking her hands into his.

"Yeah, he would." Brushing away his dark curls, he got up from his chair and looked around the house. "Is there anything that needs to be done? The old man taught me some skills before the plague took him away."

"Why so energetic today? What is with all this enthusiasm?" She asked those questions with an upturned smile, her eyes roving over the house, looking for places that needed a bit of handiwork.

"I don't know, I just feel more…" Alexios blinked, the dream from yesterday coming to the fore. Willpower, doubled. "I had a strange dream, not a nightmare, but strange nonetheless."

He ruminated over the dream, he weighed the chances of it being real and ultimately concluded that it may be his mind subconsciously mimicking what doubling his willpower would feel like. Faking it until it was real, that or there were the after effects of whatever was jammed into the experimental vial.

That reminded him, he needed to contact the Essence of The Dreamer seller over the vial, he would get his coins back. Maybe he would get a replacement vial, food for thought.

"There is a leak in the bathroom, I think the runic plate is misaligned or something." Alexios grimaced, that was a persistent problem that only he could fix with any sort of accuracy. He also wasn't good enough to make it go away permanently. "And we need several boards replaced, they either rotted or broke, the next time it rains everything will be soaked, again."

"Alright, I will be working on that, don't forget to wake up Uncle Ronald." He open the door to the extremely cramped closet that house all the tools required to repair his home. He sighed in relief when he spotted some pristine wooden boards, he really didn't want to go out right now, the sun usually disagreed with his pale skin.

Over the course of the whole morning, he went around his house replacing broken floor boards, ceiling planks, and the occasional shattered roof tile. While he was up there, he went down on his knees and began scrubbing all the grime and bird shit. With grim determination, he had every tile looking brand new and in exchange he sacrificed his knees.

A worthy exchange.

The last challenge was before him, the toilet room. His uncle had headed to work, but not before making the room stink. Steeling his nerves and lighting a stick of incense, he bravely dived in.

Cleaning the bowl? Disgusting, puke inducing, outright revolting, and easy.

Dismantling the bowl and extracting the magical components that banished away shit and piss to the Void? Moderately difficult on account of him doing it a total of two times.

Realigning the runic plate with the other magical foci? That was what he dreaded.

The runic plate itself was extremely simplistic, a single rune of banishment was prominently in the centre. No one needed a magical education to know the most common rune in existence.

The elegance of its lines and curves defied its rather undesirable use. He pitied the perpetual apprentices who slaved every day to produce this single rune.

He would not wish such dreadfully dull work on his worst enemy.

The material itself was cheap, a sort of ceramic, and the magical foci were shards of obsidian that altered the nature of the banishing runes into banishing the materials atop into the Void.

Clever and outright pedantic, if not for the incredible fragility of obsidian. Whenever someone had a rough time on the bowl, justled around or kicked it with the back of their feet, there was a chance of the tips of the obsidians being broken off. That was bad, the positions and volumes of the obsidians were incredibly sensitive to overall effect.

It was frankly volatile. The usual response was to buy new obsidian foci, his own household did the same before they discovered he had magical talent was to do the same.

Yet being magically talented had its benefits, one of them being mana sight. The moment he had looked into the runic plate and the faulty obsidian foci, he could instantly tell where the flow was wrong, and more importantly, how to fix it.

Problem was…

"This is gonna hurt." He breathed in and readied himself, he sat down so that he wouldn't fall on his ass or seriously hurt himself from the vertigo.

'Empty your mind, achieve serenity and open your mind's eye.' Words of the inspectors drifted to him, and he focused on them.

Calm. Breath in, and out. Exhale, Inhale.

Everything went silent, and amidst the serene sea of his mind, he opened the dam to the outside.

Instantly, he felt the shock of a million colours, tastes, noises, smells. They were all vying to, screaming to him in their colossal intensity. He could hear the colour blue, see the smell of bacon, and hear the shape of a Swarmling.

'Major synesthesia, blood running down the nose, brain haemorrhage? Mild, not permanent. Sensory overload most likely.' The cold brusque voice of the inspector resounded in his mind, the memory still painfully fresh. 'Threshold talent, barely there, more harm than good.'

"Fuck you." He said through gritted teeth, snarling at the fading memory.

He clamped down on his mind's eyes, numbing it with a steely resolve, wading through the insanity of magic like a man with a Swarmling on his tracks.

The whirlwind of magic seemed almost manageable, he took that fortunate sign and went with it, picking up the runic plate and inspecting it.

The four obsidian crystals that were slotted into the ceramic were void, there was no sensation from them, like endless holes of nothingness. The strands of mana from the banishing rune were interacting with three obsidian foci quite naturally, but the fourth strand of mana was being severed by a new facet that was exposed by the chipping of the obsidian.

He hummed, forcing the sensation of the mana back so he could think. He turned the obsidian shard in its slot, seeing how the strand interacted with the new facets exposed to it. Alexios smiled as he saw the strand establish a connection to a new facet.

Swiftly, he slammed shut his mind's eye and immediately went sprawling over the floor. It was disgusting and filthy to be touching the floor of a bathroom, he frankly didn't care.

His head was throbbing and he could feel a bit of blood running down his nose. Though underneath all that pain, there was a smidge of something pleasant.

Alexios realised, he was satisfied, fulfilled.

Happy.