2 Chapter 2: A Terrible Day (2/2)

Getting into the rafters was actually quite easy for Nadran, who had been climbing cliffs to gather herbs ever since he was a young boy.In this way, he could easily avoid having to pay the fee for entering the lecture.After all, there wasn't anyone to collect the attendance fee at the rear window 30 feet in the air.

Nadran had secretly attended many of these lectures, and actually knew quite a bit about sigils.The only problem he had was his difficulty in remembering the complex figures needed to create them.Whenever he thought he knew how to do something, it would slip away again, and he would need to strain to remember the next step.

[Why do sigils have to be so hard to remember?] Nadran thought to himself for the twelfth time that day alone.[Why are they so random, why is there no logic behind their structure?Why…]

At this point, Nadran had a sudden revelation.[What if… they aren't actually random?What if I can find an underlying logic to them that ties them together?]The more he thought, the more excited he became, and he hastily used a sigil to open his storage space, pulling out a thick folder.This folder had hundreds, if not thousands, of different sigils drawn on different pages, with each of the sigils sorted by type.This folder was the fruits of years of effort of sneaking into lectures daily to record all of the different sigils he could.Out of those, he had chosen the ones that were most useful to helping his family and earning money through their stall, and had spent hundreds of painstaking hours learning them, even when he felt he would never remember it right.This cache of techniques was so comprehensive that even instructors would be impressed with its scope.Of course, this was all useless to Nadran if he couldn't use them, but he had them nonetheless.

His work now was paying off as he took out dozens of papers with defensive techniques and placed them side by side, balancing them carefully on a support beam.He scanned through all of the barrier techniques, and after looking for only a few seconds, he saw a repeated section in every single one of them.[It seemed that this shape, only a few lines long, was the core of the barrier.The rest probably creates the unique identity of the barrier, giving it different traits,] he thought.

Nadran couldn't help but get more and more excited.[If this is true, maybe I can actually remember how to make sigils, if I'm just able to break it up into pieces I recognize, then put them back together.Why did none of the lecturers ever describe sigils like this?It makes so much sense now!And how did I only just realize this now, after learning about them for so many years?] Nadran wondered, not knowing that before that day, such a revelation had been impossible for him.

Nadran suddenly came back to the present as he realized everyone was already leaving.It seemed that the lecture was over.Grinning, Nadran packed the papers back into his folder, returning them to his storage space.He jumped up to leave, then froze as the sensation of pain loudly announced that he was still injured.Nadran had totally forgotten about his wounds in his excitement.[I hope I didn't make anything worse with that,] he thought as he carefully got up and moved toward the window, quickly leaving the building and heading home.

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”I'm home,” Nadran declared as he stepped into his house, looking around to see his mother and sister working on making dinner, adding ingredients to a pot boiling over the fire.He tried to hide his injury, not wanting to worry his family, but as always, nothing got by his mother.With a quick glance, she noticed his posture and dropped her ingredients, rushing over.

”What happened?” she asked, looking him over for injuries.His face had visible bruising on it and was slightly swollen, and his posture was slightly bent in an attempt to relieve pressure from his injured side.”Did someone attack you again?” she guessed, looking at him in concern.

”I'm fine,” Nadran replied, trying to dodge the question.”I just need to rest a bit and I'll be good as new.”Nadran knew that, as someone who could create sigils, he had a larger pool of internal energy, which expediated the healing process, making an injury that would normally take weeks to heal instead heal in a day or two.Of course, he would have almost no internal energy to cast sigils with in the meantime, but at least he would be healthy soon.

”Let's get you into bed,” his mother said, guiding him over to his bed and laying him down.”Just try to sleep for a bit so you can heal faster.I'll let you know when dinner is ready.”

”Okay,” Nadran agreed, then paused and asked, ”Oh yeah, is dad still not here yet?”

”He is still out negotiating with the Floating Pill Garden, but he should be back any minute now,” his mother responded.”Now get some sleep.”

Nadran nodded and laid back fully, closing his eyes.Every day, his father would take some of the herbs they gathered and bring them to the big herb and alchemy shops of the city, then sell the herbs to them.This resulted in him being able to sell herbs in bulk, but generally at very low prices.It was still better than the herbs going to waste, though, and Nadran was almost never able to sell all of his own share at the roadside stall.It was a constant battle with the larger stores though, as the shopkeepers would always try to rip his father off, and he had very little leverage to work with, especially since he couldn't even use sigils to defend himself and he didn't have any powerful friends to defend him.Still though, Nadran's father was able to earn just as much as Nadran, if not more, despite how difficult it was to sell for good prices.This also lent a layer of security to their lives, as, while they earned very little, they were almost guaranteed to earn enough to survive, even if one of them had a bad day and earned nothing.

It was relatively quiet in the house, making it easier to relax.The only sounds he could hear were the faint clanking and bubbling from dinner being prepared, and the whistling of the wind through a crack in the wooden roof.Nadran lay on his bed for over an hour, letting his wounds slowly heal.

He was awoken from his half-asleep state by the sound of the front door opening.He rolled over, looking out the window to see that the sun was just beginning to set over the horizon, giving the sky a faint reddish tinge.He yawned, rubbing his eyes as he prepared to get up.At the sound of the concerned shouts of his family members, though, he quickly sat upright and rushed out of his room, ignoring his muscles that screamed in protest at the sudden movement.

Nadran dashed out of his room, running at full speed before he abruptly stopped in the doorway, his blood running cold.He saw Pinod, his father's longtime friend, holding Nadran's father in his arms.Nadran looked over in horror at his father, who was covered in blood and lying limply in Pinod's arms, one of his legs twisted at an unnatural angle.Nadran broke out of his trance and rushed over, and looking at his mother, he asked in an unsteady voice ”I-is he…”

His mother wiped the tears in her eyes before responding ”He's alive, but only just.What happened to him…?”

With trembling hands, Nadran traced a sigil in the air, taking three attempts before he finally succeeded due to his distress.The sigil drifted across his father's body, examining the extent of the damage.What he saw made him gasp.

With numerous broken bones, fractured ribs, torn muscles, extensive internal and external bleeding and damaged organs, it was a miracle that he was still alive.Furthermore, the damage did not seem to be healing at all, but rather was slowly getting worse as his vital organs slowly began to shut down due to the injuries.[At this rate, he can only last a few days at most before dying…] Nadran realized, the trembling in his hands intensifying.As Nadran looked at his father's bloody face, contorted in a grimace of pain despite his lack of consciousness, Nadran clenched his hands tightly into fists in an attempt to control his raging emotions, not even noticing the blood seeping from his palms.