Authors: Christopher George
“It’s a term my grandfather uses for when you can first see mana,” Renee explained.
“It sounds a little cheesy.”
“What would you call it?”
“Dunno.”
“Then don’t pick on my terminology.”
“Awoken?” I suggested.
“Were you asleep before?” Renee pointed out acidly.
“No, I guess not,” I reflected. “Ascended?”
“Too arrogant,” she scoffed.
“There must be a word for it,” I argued.
“There is! It’s a phrase and it’s called ‘came into power’,” Renee replied dryly.
“I’m not going to argue the point,” I conceded. “Want to get something to eat?”
I gestured towards one of the cafés we were walking past.
“I’m not going to say no.” Renee shrugged. “But not there.”
She scowled slightly at the café. It didn’t look that bad, but Renee obviously didn’t like it. She grabbed me by the arm and led me into a lane way. We entered into a small series of little arcades of cafes and shops. I didn’t even know this place existed. Small alleyways and arches weaved their way through a series of main buildings and skipped across side streets.
It looked as if you could walk all the way down here to Flinders Street Station.
Renee smiled as she ushered me into a Chinese Tea House. A waitress who was wearing a dark coloured kimono greeted us at the door. She bowed graciously as we entered and shuffled forward and led us up some stairs to a table that overlooked the arcade below.
“Tea?” I asked quizzically when we were seated.
“They’ve got food too,” Renee assured me as she passed over a menu.
I glanced over the menu until the waitress returned.
“Oolong,” Renee ordered.
“Make that two,” I replied as the waitress turned towards me. Renee also ordered a plate of dumplings before the waitress shuffled off towards the kitchen.
“Not a tea drinker, huh?” Renee smiled from across the table.
“What gave me away?” I smiled.
Renee shrugged by way of an answer.
“How’s your girlfriend?” Renee asked unexpectedly.
“We broke up,” I replied sombrely.
“Yeah, I thought you might. You sounded like you’d already come to that decision when we last spoke,” Renee commented.
I nodded in silence.
“Better the dumper than the dumped though, right?” She grinned.
“Not particularly, no,” I grumbled sourly.
“That was a joke.”
Our waitress arrived with our order before I could respond. She deftly placed two empty cups, a pot of tea and the plate of dumplings in front of us. The tea was quite bitter, but I found I liked it.
“You like?” Renee asked.
“It’s quite strong, but good,” I replied. “My only other experience with tea was black tea and I wasn’t a fan.”
I took another sip.
“Yeah, Chinese tea is really much better.” Renee nodded.
We made small talk over the tea and finished off the dumplings, both avoiding any subject of substance. The dumplings were amazing. I’d have to remember this place. I desperately wanted to ask her out, but had no idea how to even approach the question let alone gather the courage to voice it. Renee had a way of turning me into a nervous moron unable to express myself properly. There was nothing for it – I’d have to just bite the bullet and do it.
“Have you been practicing with the invisibility field?” Renee asked before I managed to get my thoughts together.
“Not as much as I probably need to,” I replied sourly. I felt that I’d missed my chance to ask her out.
“Want to practice now?” asked Renee.
“I never know what to say when a woman says that to me.” I chuckled.
“I’m serious,” Renee laughed.
“What did you have in mind?”
“A game of tag,” Renee explained with a smirk on her face.
“Aren’t we a little old for Kiss-chasey?”
“Who says you get to kiss me if you catch me?” Renee replied with a raised eyebrow.
“Oh, I’m sorry – I just assumed you’d get to kiss me if you caught me!” I grinned with a mock air of hurt indignation.
“Well, seeing as how you didn’t catch me last time we played I think the point is moot.” Renee smiled.
“Last time?”
“At the casino.”
“Oh.”
“Hey! I did too catch you!”
“You threw yourself off a building and I had to rescue you,” Renee retorted with a snort.
“No-one said we had to play fair!” I grinned. “What did you have in mind anyway?”
“You know that statue of the guy on the horse at the top of Swanston Street?”
“Outside the State Library, yeah?” I nodded.
“First one to get there, wins,” Renee suggested.
“That doesn’t sound that challenging.”
“You’ve got to be invisible the whole way,” Renee reminded me.
“Oh. Well, that does give you the advantage.”
“Well, we’ll make it fair then,” Renee offered. “I’ll give you a head start.”
“How long?”
“Say a half hour?”
“Half an hour? I could walk that in half that time,” I exclaimed.
“Fifteen minutes then.”
I nodded.
“Okay, then. Go!” Renee ordered as she adjusted at her watch.
“Wait, what? Now?”
“Fourteen minutes, fifty-five seconds,” was Renee’s only reply.
I fumbled with my wallet and threw some money down on the table as I got to my feet.
“Don’t forget the mana field,” Renee called out as I cursed inwardly. I hadn’t considered getting down the stairs with the mana field surrounding me.
I took a deep breath, flexed my shoulder muscles and summoned the field. The familiar creep of mana flowing across my body made me shiver with pleasure as the field slowly enveloped my vision and my world turned into the blurry grey void of the haze. I tentatively made my way forward, dodging chairs and tables as I blundered towards the stairwell.
Each table had small lamps on it, which created a conflicting cacophony of shadows and lights that danced around the room when anyone moved. As there was no overhead lighting in the room this meant that most of the room was bathed in shadow. Renee must have chosen this place for precisely this reason.
“Fourteen minutes, thirty seconds,” Renee called out.
I had made it to the stairwell in what seemed like five minutes. This wasn’t going very well. At this rate I’d only get to the front door when my time was up. I now had to tackle the stairway down into the shopfront. Unfortunately the lighting in there wasn’t good. This made navigation all the more difficult. On the upside though that would probably also lessen my chance of being detected by anyone as I made my way down. I tentatively took my first step down the stairs, feeling a vague sense of relief as my foot found the step below it. If you’ve ever tried walking down stairs in the dark you’ll know that the steps can sometimes seem a lot further down than you think.
I was three or four steps down, when immediately, the waitress burst into my vision and then immediately disappeared. She was coming up the stairs!
Crap! Crap! Crap!
I immediately threw myself against the wall. Fortunately it was quite a wide stairwell so there was plenty of room for the waitress to pass. I must have held my breath as she walked past as by the time she had gotten past me I was quite out of breath.
I don’t think she noticed me, but she was kind of jittery as she walked up the stairs. She kept glancing in my direction with a concerned expression on her face. She didn’t appear to be scared at all but it was rather as if she was trying to work something out.
I breathed a sigh of relief once she had passed by. I immediately regretted this as it brought her head snapping around to stare in my direction. She had definitely heard something. Fortunately Renee came to my aid.
“Can we please have the bill?” she called out, attracting the waitresses’ attention.
The waitress turned and made her way over to the table and began clearing up the dishes. This gave me a few seconds window to make it down the remainder of the stairs. I almost threw myself down the final few steps as they floated into view and made my way across to the closed door. This was my next challenge. How could I open the door without people noticing? Renee certainly hadn’t made this easy.
The door opened inwards, so it would be very obvious. I’d have to wait until someone left and then follow on their coat tails. It was definitely risky. I wasn’t sure I could pull that off and the chance of discovery was too great.
In the end I decided to simply ignore good common sense and make a mad dash for the door. I almost threw myself at the door handle and pulled it open with a jerk. Almost every head in the room immediately snapped around to look at the door that opened by itself.
By then I was already in the alley outside.
I glanced back and watched as one of the waitresses walked over to the door and quizzically began to inspect the hinges. This distraction almost led me to disaster. There was a solid thump on my right side. Someone had walked into me.
I heard a gasp and a curse and had to throw myself to the ground to avoid the probing hand that shot in my direction. The person who’d walked into me groped around as he tried to figure out what they’d just walked into. I scooted myself against the wall of the alley hoping that the shadows against the wall would be enough to completely obscure my presence. I waited and watched warily. The person who had walked into me was an old man. He appeared to be scowling and looking around for someone to abuse.
He eventually hobbled off, cursing.
I’d learnt from my experience with the waitress in the restaurant not to give myself away with a sigh of relief. I got to my feet and continued up the alley. I realised about three steps in that this wasn’t going to be easy. The alley was crowded with people going to and from restaurants.
If I were visible it would have been easy to navigate my way to the end of the alley, as people would move out of my way. However, as I was now invisible they hopefully wouldn’t see me and thus I was the one who was forced to move.
While I was weaving through traffic I ended up knocking into a few people, fortunately as it was busy most people just assumed that someone had bumped into them and moved on. There were several people, however, that began to look around in a panic as they realised that there was no-one close enough to knock into them.
The whole process was infuriatingly slow. It must have taken me at least ten minutes to get here and I hadn’t even made it half way up the alley.
I must have been slower than I thought because a bright flash of mana caught my attention as Renee came leaping out from the upper balcony of the restaurant and into the alley. With a quick flick of her wrist she secured a mana thread onto one of the buildings and with a deft hand she pulled herself onto the building.
I couldn’t see her features due to the invisibility field but I could imagine her mocking grin as she turned and looked down at me. She gestured towards the rooftop just above me. Shit, why didn’t I think of that? That would have solved everything. I didn’t need to bother with the crowds if I’m on the rooftops. The only issue with this was that this would require me to keep a field and a thread active at once. I’d never tried that before. But I had handled multiple threads – that wouldn’t be much different would it? Well, no time like the present to find out.
This was my first attempt to do this and I mistakenly assumed it would be easy. I was able for short times at least to handle multiple mana threads without too much difficulty. This was much more difficult.
The mana thread I sent out was a feeble one and immediately dissipated as soon as it reached my desired target.
“Relax, let the mana field just continue doing its thing,” Renee’s voice suddenly whispered in my ear.
I glanced about nervously but she was still on top of the building. She’d somehow projected her voice down to me. It was kind of creepy as she had sounded like she was right behind me.
“You can do this,” Renee urged.
I tried again. This time I focused more on the mana thread and to my satisfaction the thread was a good one and held. Unfortunately, I noticed out of the corner of my eye someone’s head whip around and look in my direction.
I immediately dropped the thread and refocused on the field that was maintaining my invisibility. I hurriedly moved away from where I had been standing as two people wandered over into that space. I had luckily spotted them out of the corner of my eye through the blurry haze that the invisibility field was projecting around me. I couldn’t see them properly but I could hear them talking as I crouched near the wall.
“What is it?” a male voice called over to the girl.
“I thought I saw something,” she replied curiously.
“What?” The male voice grumbled, obviously disgruntled. “There’s no-one there, come on, we’re late enough as it is.”
“There was someone there!” the girl insisted, but she grudgingly followed the man who was stomping angrily away.
“Well that was close,” Renee’s disembodied voice whispered in my ear. “I can’t hear you by the way, just in case you’re replying.”
I nodded back even though I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to see such a subtle movement from her distance and tried again. There was only a knife’s edge of a margin of error. Any loss of focus would result in an instant degradation of power in either the mana thread or the mana field.
This delicate balance of focus that was more taxing that I thought it would be. I felt that I was sweating profusely already. With a flick of my fingers I sent a mana thread outwards from my palm, latching it onto the corner of a roof between two buildings. The world around me narrowed into two objects. The field surrounding me, and the thread that I’d latched onto the roof above me.
It was one of those moments where you’re in the middle of doing something difficult and that little voice at the back of your head whispers ‘Don’t choke’. It’s all you can think about and your concentration starts to waver and unless you’re very lucky you will end up choking.
I had a choice at this point. I could either drop the mana field surrounding me, which would make me visible to the people below, or I could release the thread and drop down into the alley. As I was hanging from the second story of a building I didn’t much care for either of my options.
“Just breathe,” Renee’s voice whispered into my ear.