202 202 Unusual Find
“What was it that you wanted to talk to me about?” Wolfe asked as he admired the craftsmanship that went into the hidden door to the Den.
“Working with the rest of the Witches to build their potential. If we had this many trained witches who were all at the level of a senior military officer, we could fight off anything that came this way, even the Monster Tide and the Mundane Army.” Nia explained.
Twenty of them could already do that, at least when they were prepared in advance, so eight times as many was a pretty tempting proposition in Wolfe’s mind.
“We should make sure that they all want to stay here first. It’s no good to build them up if they’re going to leave since we don’t know how the Covens are going to take the news once they realize that a lot of us aren’t planning to go back.
It’s not like we’re enemies or even on bad terms, but I am more than a bit worried about how they’re going to take losing so many promising officers at once. The Coven Leaders have been known to overreact once or twice in the past.” Wolfe explained.
He could sense Nia’s nervousness at the news, but the other witches in the construction group were much less worried about it.
“Most of us wouldn’t have amounted to much anyhow, especially after the gas attacks. I think it’s safe to assume that the Covens have more or less written us off already, and as long as they don’t know how fast we are recovering, they would view it as an act of charity on our parts to remain out here and not be a burden on society.
If you can’t use any magic inside the village that I’m from in Myrrh Coven Territory, you’re basically the retail sales or fast food worker for life. And not even on the grill since you can’t operate it. There are very few humans that far west, so nearly everyone can use at least a little bit of magic, though the Curse has been getting worse, leading to more duds in every generation.
They think that is the state we’re in thanks to the nerve gas, so they’re not going to miss us, and they will wish us well when we inform them that we are going to stay out here in the Wastes as an advanced observation post.” A muscular witch with platinum blonde hair laughed ruefully.
The other witches nodded in agreement, and Wolfe realized that for a fully magical city or state like Sylvan City or Myrrh Coven, being unable to use magic was seen as a huge liability and not the default, like it was in Morgana Coven, where most of the humans were inside the city while the majority of the witches had quietly moved to the villages.
Wolfe got to work making the furniture more comfortable, and the basics of the entry building were finished. It was cozy and felt a lot like home, though it had nothing in common with anywhere that Wolfe had ever lived before.
He didn’t even have siblings, so the bunk beds were something that he had never had in his house either, and they were the most normal part of the whole building.
Or, they were before he enchanted them for comfort. The appearances of the items in the house had been left alone, though, so that they would fit the expectations of their guests and provide a humble welcome to the Den.
“If you’re all planning to stay, I can help you with your Mana pathways right now. It only takes a minute or so each for a quick session, so it’s not a big deal to help you all before you return downstairs.” He suggested.
Nia was the first in line and leaned forward so Wolfe could put a hand on her head, making all of the other witches giggle at what appeared to be her desire for praise.
Wolfe spent a minute expanding her already clear mana veins and then turned to the others. “See, it’s quite simple, it just takes a bit of time, and you’ll be better than new.”
The clearance process was becoming quite simple for Wolfe now, and one minute was enough to almost completely clear the lingering effects of the Bloodline Curse from the witches that he worked with.
He was nearly finished when their perpetual scout from outside came in with an ecstatic look on her face.
“Look, look, Mister Wolfe. I can use Mana.” She declared, and then scrunched up her face and caused a small gust of wind to blow through the room.
According to her, her mother had been a witch, and she had long since proven she had enough witch bloodline to speak in front of everyone, but it seemed much too early for her to start building up an aura. Perhaps because of her size, or the fluffy ears, it was hard to tell just how old she was.
“Come over here, and I will see what I can do for you.” Wolfe chuckled as the little scout did a happy dance around the front room.
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It might also be the way that all of the other mutants gathered mana in their body, but he hadn’t taken the time to actually examine one before now.
That was what she was using to cast the Wind Magic.
After thinking it through, it seemed almost certain that this was how the rest of the mutants did it as well, holding a bit of mana in their body without a mana focus to contain it, so they were very limited in capacity, but they could dump everything that they had gathered in a short time since their body naturally wanted to expel it.
Wolfe thought about that for a moment and then recalled that mana gathered in a witch’s body that way naturally flowed to the aura when the effect was ended.
So, logically if he cleared the blockages, she would be an immature witch who couldn’t gather mana to her aura on her own, but the nature of the Wastes would leave lingering mana in her body, which should flow there on its own.
With that in mind, he carefully got to work so that he didn’t damage the developing pathways and the gland that marked a witch from a human and kept going for nearly fifteen minutes until the process was complete.
As soon as he was finished, Wolfe could sense the mana moving from her body into the veins, with some accumulating before the blockage that was the immature gland and the rest flowing through her body to begin releasing a very faint sense of power around her.
It seemed that it wasn’t enough to form an aura, but for now, it would be enough to guarantee that she would be a powerful witch when she came of age, and the blockage in the gland cleared itself up naturally.
“And there we go. It looks like you are all ready. You just need to wait until you’re all grown up so you can gather mana more quickly on your own.” Wolfe explained, then frowned in confusion as he felt more and more blockages accumulating in her system where he had just cleared them out.
“One second, something isn’t quite right. Perhaps it’s a lingering effect of the Frozen Wastes,” he informed her, then got back to work clearing the veins again and finding the source of the corruption.
It was the mana-gathering gland that was poisoning her system. It was completely full of toxins of some sort, and once they were expelled from the gland, they stuck to the walls of the mana veins until the witch was prevented from using mana.
Wolfe decided that a new approach might be in order. Instead of clearing the veins, he flowed the mana backward through the gland and forced the corruption out the other side, leaving a black oily spot on the back of her neck that he constantly wiped away with a cloth from the supplies beside the bed.
After nearly an hour, it was clear. Nothing else was coming out, and mana was flowing freely through the gland. At a trickle, but freely.