In the darkness of the middle of the night, Grimvir's eyes began to flutter before opening. When his eyes fully opened and he had full awoken, he experienced extreme pain. Grabbing his head, he began to roll in his bedding and grit his teeth while moaning. After a few minutes he was unable to hold his head any longer as pain wracked his entire body. Luckly for Grimvir, the pain only lasted for less than an hour. Gasping for air, he struggled to crawl to a water jug before quickly drinking the entire jug before passing out again.
Grimvir slept till just after the sun had risen, he was awakened by the sound of animals around his shack. Chipping, grunting, snorting, and many other noises he had heard many times before, but today they seemed to be far clearer sounding. Looking around his shack, everything seemed brighter, and far more distinct. The moment he wondered why; the answer popped into his mind as though he had always known. It was mana, his body now contained a small amount of mana. Another gift from the orb he touched last night.
As he looked at the small silver ball resting on the ground, Grimvir felt fear. Last night it forced a massive amount of information into his mind, causing his extreme pain. But it wasn't the pain that made him fearful, it was the fact he wanted to vomit but couldn't, he wanted to scream but couldn't, he wanted to move but couldn't. He was paralyzed, trapped in his mind as he began to wish for death to save him from the pain. He also figured out why he was paralyzed, the orb contained a small sliver of his master's soul that was meant to pass on knowledge.
"Master?" The word was both foreign and intimately familiar to Grimvir.
"Giltvert Knut... no, master Knut."
As he said the name the image of a soft-spoken human male in his thirties appeared in his mind. He could hear his voice as he spoke about soulmancers and other magical beings. Grimvir looked at the chest of orbs and knew what they were, they were a combination of a testing stone and a grimoire for various magical paths. The yellow ball held and could hear a zapping noise was a grimoire for electromancers, or lightning mage in the modern way of speaking. His master spent some time speaking about the differences of the old ways and the modern ways.
The modern way of learning magic is a 'jack of all trades, master of none' style. This makes it easier for the master's to teach and the students to learn but does not produce as powerful mages than in the past. The old way of doing it was for someone like a pyromancer to look for a student with the ability to learn their specific branch of magic. Since the rate of magical talent is 1 in 5,000, and the rate that one would be a suitable candidate to pass on one's legacy, is far slimmer. It was a long and grueling process for master's to find students, sometimes taking weeks, months, years, decades, or even centuries to find a suitable heir. And some rarer legacies of magic ending when the master was unable to find a student before dying.
His master wasn't able to travel around and look for a student, so he cheated. He used fate magic to enchant a space ring to find the one destined to continue his legacy and then loaded it with grimoires and various books and scrolls of knowledge. This was something Grimvir was having trouble believing. It meant that he, the knights, and the bandits were always going to be where they were, and the ring was always going to end up in his possession.
"Shit... I don't know if my master is dead or alive."
Everything he learned last night was still jumbled and would take some time before everything was in order. But two things that he just learned was that his master was severely injured, and fate magic takes a toll on the caster equal to the effects of the spell. Sending a ring into the world to find one person without knowing how far or long the journey would be, would require a heavy toll. Right? At least he thought so, things were still too confusing to him to know the truth of the matter.
Grimvir's mind kept flickering between every bit of information that was appearing in his mind, but after trying to force himself to remember things, he felt dizzy and tried to just focus on the parts that were already more complete. Just as he was starting to feel normal again, he started to feel hungry and thirsty. Looking over to where the water jar was laying empty on the ground, He knew he would have to go get some more and would get something to eat at the same time.
Gingerly picking up the silver orb, Grimvir placed it back in its compartment inside the chest, the whole time fearing he would be rendered unconscious again. With the chest secured, Grimvir waved his hand twice and the chest and water jug disappeared into the ring. The normal five-minute walk to the stream took over ten minutes as Grimvir had to stop and rest while stretching his sore body. When he finally arrived at the stream, he heard a familiar splashing sound, it was a red trout trying to swim up the shallows in the stream.
Grabbing a four-pronged fishing spear that was leaning against a nearby tree, Grimvir crept up to the stream. A two-foot-long red trout was thrashing itself along the rocks and pebbles of the stream, it still had another twenty or so feet before the stream was deep enough for it to swim normally. If it was a few days ago Grimvir would look at this situation and would be sure of his chances of spearing the fish, but right now his body was stiff and feeling weakened. Not that it really mattered, the thought of eating a fresh roasted trout had already steeled his mind to attack.
Stepping out into the open, Grimvir launched his fishing spear at the unaware trout. The spear seemed a little more wobbly than normal as it flew through the air before striking the fish. Grimvir had to scramble into the stream and throw himself at his spear to finish impaling the trout before it could wriggle off the tines of the spear and escape downstream. It had been a while since Grimvir couldn't finish his prey with the first attack. The hunter that thought him to hunt that it was better to let an animal go then to cause it pain with a bad shot. While normally Grimvir would follow the old man's instructions, he currently felt a great need to eat fresh meat.
Getting out of the stream, Grimvir walked towards where he collected his spear. Nestled between two massive trees, was a fire pit, sticks and logs to burn, and a large stone for sitting on in front of the fire. The old man who taught him how to hunt brought him here to show him how to get fish and wash himself. The old man would take twenty minutes to start a fire with a spindle set, Grimvir on the other hand had a small waterskin with lamp oil and an iron striker and only needed a minute to start a fire.
Grimvir had made short work of cleaning the fish and skewered and a stick before the fire had become hot enough to cook with. But it didn't take long before the pleasant sound of the fish sizzing over the fire could be heard. Grimvir's eyes were watching his food get closer and closer to delicious perfection, but his mind was a focused on the great decision he had to make concerning his future path.