The only sound for miles was the rhythmic clink of metal on stone from my work. I was just thankful I was hidden from the suns blazing heat by a few meters of earth. I had maintained a pretty steady pace with this pickaxe, but in spite of the relative smoothness of my work, my mood was still pretty bleak.
Occasionally I would accidentally catch a glimpse of myself in the water bucket next to me and really wish I hadn't. It was a reflection of a man's face that had been weathered by age, his hands wrinkled, and his back crooked. It was not the look of a man who had aged gracefully. My grey robes were in tatters and covered with dust and dirt. The lantern hanging from my waist completed the look; old, worn, and barely functioning well enough to illuminate a few meters in front of me.
My whole body was uncomfortably drenched with sweat, and my arms were burning with the strain of just keeping my pick moving. My blistered fingers were also making their complaints known. My breathing sounded so wheezy I was genuinely surprised this old body hadn't given out yet. I couldn't stop though, at this point my body wouldn't recover even if I did, it was too tired, too hungry and too thirsty. I was just too damn old, and I was dying one breath at a time. If I stopped to rest for even a second, I wouldn't be getting back up again. If I stopped I died. If I kept going I had a chance, so I swung my pick.
Then again.
Over and over, I ignored the sensations in my limbs, until finally with a loud noise, a small part of the dirt wall crumbled in front of me. I involuntarily gasped in disbelief before scrambling to peep through the small hole, lifting my lantern in a desperate attempt to view into the gloom on the other side. Inside I could barely make out the silhouette of a small structure in the center of the room. I recognized it though. I had seen it a thousand times in my research notes.
"Hu......hahah, ahahahahah", even in my exhausted state I couldn't help but laugh with ecstatic glee.
I picked up my pace as I brought the pick down again on the cracked wall, ignoring the renewed screaming of my tired limbs as I hacked away at the final barrier, seeking to widen it enough for me to comfortably fit through. It didn't take me long to make a hole big enough for me, but each swing of the pick had been a new agony. I still practically danced a little jig as I passed through the breach into the open cavern.
"Hahahahahah! I knew I could do it. A lifetime of work, doubt and monotonous searching but I fucking did it! Fuck you Glassmont academy of magic!" I bellowed as well as I could with my tired lungs.
After being wracked by a bout of coughs I regained my composure and quickly got to work. My fingers shook as I grasped the necklace that was concealed around my neck, calming myself with its familiar touch just before I lifted the chain over my head and observed the attached tiny statue of an angel, hands reaching out in supplication. I took a deep wheezy breath and disconnected the statuette from its chain and placed it into the cavity of the small structure in the center of the cavern. The base of the figure was a bit too small for a snug fit in the indent within the cavity and I briefly feared that it was incompatible.
My fears proved unfounded however, as instantly the gloomy air of the cavern lit up in technicolor as streams of light swirled through the air before diving into the stone skin of the statue, the steady streams of light condensing within the statue, dying it in multicolored splotches before finally mixing together into a clear white light that slowly covered it's surface until it glowed with a blinding radiance. It was almost anti-climactic how efficient it was, I couldn't even sense a shred of mana in the air, yet there it was, glowing in front of me.
"Such a small thing..." I chuckled, amazed at the sheer power condensed within the tiny enchanted statue; in just a few seconds it had managed to produce, refine and store more raw mana than the entire continents mageholds could produce in a year. Hell, I could still remember a time when mana storage was just a theory. The magical mastery of mages prior to the 'World Sundering' surely were on a whole different level to what could be produced now.
Now for the hardest part of this whole exercise, I took a deep breath as I prepared myself mentally for an ordeal that would take hours of focused concentration, where a single misstep would obliterate me utterly. With shaking hands I slowly moved forward and cautiously grasped the statuette.
The feeling was instantaneous as my entire body was filled with the statue's power, my magical circuits practically sparkling within my soul as they attempted to process so much raw mana. It was only a lifetime's worth of practice and preparation that stopped me from being immolated on the spot. Even with that my magical circuits were still beginning to fail under the strain, each one cultivated by years of practice and completely irreplaceable via conventional healing were beginning to short out one by one, taking a bit of my magical ability with them each time.
I couldn't rush though. I began my work slowly as I slowly started to redirect the mana's flow, a little bit at a time over the course of hours. If I could put it into mundane terms, it was akin to redirecting the flow of a roaring river with a large sheet of delicate glass. Still I persevered as I turned the flow of mana so that instead of it flowing into me and trying to dissipate through me into the air, I redirected it so that it entered my body, flowed through my mana circuits, and then moved invisibly through the air and back into the statuette, creating a circuit between me and the statuette.
Linking us permanently.
The relief as I finally created the circuit between us was also instantaneous, magical circuits that had died of mana overload moments or hours before restoring themselves just as quickly, thicker and stronger than before.
I supposed in some ways I had just made myself some kind of pseudo living lich, complete with a life sustaining mana phylactery. I was now a being of living magic as much as I was a man. A living magic core.
The feeling of the power flowing through me was intoxicating, all my previous tiredness had dissipated, and in fact my whole body was tingling with untapped energy. As I looked at my hands I saw that the wrinkles of a lifetime had completely disappeared, leaving behind only smooth pale skin that was far smoother and healthier than anything I had laid claim to even in my youth. Curious, with a wave of my hand, I conjured a mirror into the air in front of me; the obscene mana requirements of converting energy into matter requiring not even a incurring a shred of fatigue in me.
I looked into the mirror in shock. Still loosely wrapped in my tattered rags, the body before me was that of a golden haired youth, perhaps just on the cusp of adulthood. The figure was petite with slim delicate limbs and blemish-less snow white skin. It was a body that that could have been called both handsome and beautiful in equal measure. I supposed some comparison could have been made to a child of the Aelfir, on account of the delicate features, emotive blue eyes and very slight sharpening of the ears, but such a comparison would be like comparing a candle to a bonfire.
