Chapter 9: Useful Things
Chapter 9: Useful Things
Winter loosened its grip on Frostwood slowly, as though reluctant to surrender territory it had claimed months earlier.
Snow still covered much of the ground, but the white blanket no longer appeared unbroken. Dark patches of earth emerged beneath trees. Water dripped steadily from rooftops during warmer afternoons. The frozen stream south of the village remained locked beneath ice, yet cracks had begun spreading across its surface. Everywhere Cassian looked, he found signs that one season was ending and another was preparing to take its place.
The village changed with it.
People spent more time outdoors. Repair work resumed on sheds and fences damaged during winter storms. Hunters ventured farther from Frostwood’s boundaries, while farmers began discussing the coming planting season with the same seriousness soldiers might discuss a campaign.
Life moved forward. It always did. Cassian had spent nearly five years in this world now.
The realization arrived unexpectedly one morning while he carried a bundle of firewood toward the house. There had been no celebration, no announcement, and no carefully recorded date marking the occasion. Frostwood’s families paid little attention to exact birthdays. Years mattered less than seasons, harvests, and surviving difficult winters.
Even so, Cassian understood the passage of time. Five years. Five years since Adam’s life ended. Five years since awakening in a body far smaller than the one he remembered.
The thought no longer carried the sharp discomfort it once had. Adam remained part of him, but the distance between his two lives continued growing. His memories still mattered. His experiences still shaped the way he viewed the world. Yet Frostwood felt increasingly real in a way his first months here never had.
Gareth was not a temporary guardian. Lena was not a stranger. Darren and Elara were not replacements for people he had lost.
They were family.
That understanding settled quietly into his thoughts as he stacked the wood beside the house and brushed dirt from his hands.
A familiar voice interrupted him moments later. “Cassian!”
He turned.
Elara approached at a speed that suggested she had either discovered something exciting or caused a problem she wanted help solving. Experience suggested both possibilities carried equal probability.
“What happened?”
“I need Darren.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
That answer rarely led anywhere good.
Together they found Darren behind the storage shed examining several wooden boxes. His interest in trade had only grown during the past few months. Whenever he wasn’t helping Gareth, he could usually be found studying inventory, comparing prices, discussing routes, or questioning anyone who had traveled farther than Frostwood.
Elara grabbed his sleeve. “You need to settle an argument.”
Darren sighed. “I haven’t even heard the argument.”
“Lily says Owen cheated. Owen says he didn’t.”
“Did he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how am I supposed to settle it?”
Elara looked genuinely confused by the question.
Cassian smiled.
Some things never changed. The argument itself proved surprisingly important.
Several minutes later, they found Owen, Lily, and Finn gathered around a rough wooden board resting atop a tree stump. Small carved pieces occupied various positions across the surface. The game looked primitive compared to anything from Adam’s world, yet seeing it there filled Cassian with quiet satisfaction.
The board had started as a conversation. Nothing more.
Months earlier, while discussing trade goods with Darren, Cassian had described fragments of several strategy games he remembered from Earth. Not complete rules. Not exact designs. Only concepts.
Territory, positioning, objectives and choices.
Darren had become interested almost immediately. The first version had been terrible. The second version wasn’t much better. The third version finally showed promise.
Now children throughout Frostwood played some variation of it whenever they found free time.
Elara deserved much of the credit. Darren built the boards. Cassian provided ideas.
Elara spread the game through the village with remarkable efficiency.
Lily learned it first. Then Owen. Then Finn.
Soon half the younger children argued about strategies, invented house rules, and challenged one another whenever opportunities appeared.
Adults gradually became involved as well. Aldric surprised everyone by becoming particularly fond of the game. The elderly scholar claimed it encouraged strategic thinking. Owen claimed Aldric simply hated losing. Neither explanation excluded the other.
After examining the board, Darren quickly determined that Lily’s complaint lacked merit. “You lost because Finn blocked your pieces.”
“He distracted me.”
“That isn’t cheating.”
“It should be.”
“Then you’re arguing with the rules, not Owen.”
Lily crossed her arms. The gesture suggested complete disagreement. Darren remained unmoved.
Cassian watched the exchange while considering how naturally the game had integrated itself into village life. No one treated it as an invention. No one viewed it as revolutionary. It was simply something people enjoyed.
That outcome suited him perfectly. The same approach guided another project.
Later that week, Darren found him reading outside Aldric’s office and placed two candles on the bench between them.
At first glance they appeared identical. “Which one burns longer?”
Cassian picked up the first candle. “No idea.”
“Good.” Darren sounded pleased. “It means I finally made them look the same.”
Cassian examined both more carefully. The difference existed inside. The wick.
Months earlier he had casually mentioned that wick construction might influence how a candle burned. The observation came from half-forgotten knowledge carried over from Adam’s life. He hadn’t expected much to come from it. Darren meanwhile had other ideas.
“What happened?”
“I tried three different fiber patterns.”
“Only three?”
“I tried seven.”
Cassian laughed. That sounded more accurate.
Darren continued. “Four were worse than normal. Two worked slightly better. One lasted noticeably longer.”
“How much longer?”
“I’m still measuring.”
This text was taken from NovelFire. Help the author by reading the original version there.
That answer alone revealed how seriously Darren approached the project. He wasn’t chasing inventions. He was chasing improvements. Useful improvements. The sort merchants might actually buy. That distinction mattered.
“What are you planning to do with them?”
“Wait for Tomas.”
The answer came immediately.
Cassian nodded.
The traveling merchant had become a distant goal around which many of Darren’s ambitions quietly revolved. Frostwood saw traders occasionally, but Tomas remained the first person who had shown genuine interest in Darren’s questions.
If he returned this year, Darren intended to be ready. The conversation ended when Aldric emerged from his office carrying a stack of books.
The elder paused after noticing the candles. “More experiments?”
“Better candles,” Darren corrected.
“Every inventor says that.”
“I’m not an inventor.”
Aldric raised an eyebrow. “No?”
Darren pointed toward Cassian. “He has ideas.” Then toward himself. “I make them useful.”
For reasons Cassian couldn’t entirely explain, the response pleased him. The distinction felt correct. Very correct.
Aldric seemed to think so as well. “That,” the old man said, “is a remarkably merchant-like answer.”
Darren looked proud for the rest of the afternoon. The moment stayed with Cassian as he entered the library later that day.
Outside, village life continued. Inside, another set of questions waited for him. And lately, those questions all seemed connected to mana.
Cassian began the investigation with objects. That seemed safest.
Aldric’s office provided enough examples to occupy several days. Wooden shelves, iron hinges, paper, ink, stone walls, glass bottles, clay cups, and old leather bindings all sat within easy reach. At first he expected every object to possess at least some internal mana. After all, ambient mana filled the world like atmosphere, and everything existed within that atmosphere.
Observation contradicted him almost immediately. The room contained mana. The objects did not.
A wooden chair sat within the faint mist-like presence, yet the wood itself held no internal structure that resembled the mana Cassian sensed inside people. Iron remained similarly empty. Stone behaved the same way. Water reflected surrounding mana strangely, but it did not seem to contain a living internal presence of its own.
The distinction fascinated him. Objects existed inside mana. Living intelligence contained mana. Those were not the same thing.
He tested the observation repeatedly over the following weeks. Gareth, Lena, Darren, Elara, Aldric, Mara, Bran, Owen, Lily, Finn, and every villager he encountered possessed that same subtle internal presence. The strength varied slightly, though he could not yet determine whether the difference came from age, health, personality, or something else entirely.
Animals proved more complicated. Chickens felt almost empty. Goats carried faint impressions that vanished if he lost concentration. Hunting dogs possessed slightly stronger traces, especially when alert. The difference was still minor compared to humans, but it existed clearly enough that Cassian could not ignore it.
When he asked Aldric for books on animals, the elder brought him bestiaries. When he asked for books on magical beasts, Aldric brought him older bestiaries.
When he asked for books on monsters, Aldric stood on a stool, searched the upper shelves, and returned with three volumes so worn that their bindings looked older than half the village.
“Read carefully,” Aldric said as he placed them on the table. “Monster writers have a habit of mixing observation with terror.”
Cassian opened the first volume. “How do I tell the difference?”
“Usually by checking whether the author survived the encounter.”
That answer proved more useful than it first sounded.
The books varied wildly in quality. Some entries described creatures in measured detail, listing size, behavior, habitat, and observed abilities. Others sounded like tavern stories dressed in ink. Cassian read them anyway, marking contradictions and comparing accounts whenever multiple sources mentioned the same species.
A pattern emerged slowly. Ordinary animals possessed little or no internal mana. Some animals accumulated enough mana to change physically. Those changed creatures were classified as magical beasts.
Magical beasts possessed mana cores. Monsters possessed stronger cores.
This information should have satisfied him. Instead, it created a sharper question.
If humans contained mana, why did humans have no cores?
The books mentioned human mana repeatedly. They discussed apprentices sensing it, healers observing disruptions, and mages training to circulate it. Yet none of the texts described a human core. The absence seemed too consistent to be accidental.
One evening Cassian brought the problem to Aldric. The elder listened while sorting old correspondence.
“Humans don’t have cores,” Cassian said.
“No.”
“Magical beasts do.”
“Correct.”
“Monsters do.”
“Also correct.”
“Humans contain mana.”
Aldric paused, already sensing where the questions were heading. “Yes.”
“Then why don’t humans have mana cores?”
The elder set down the correspondence and considered him for several moments. “I don’t know.”
Cassian nodded slowly. That was not disappointing. It was useful.
Aldric continued, “I doubt most people ask the question. A farmer doesn’t wonder why he lacks antlers. He simply accepts that deer have them and he does not.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“No,” Aldric admitted. “But it is how most people think.”
Cassian returned to his notes that night with renewed focus.
The obvious explanation was that humans simply differed from magical beasts and monsters. That explanation required no additional theory, which made it tempting. It was also unsatisfying. Humans contained mana. Monsters contained mana. One possessed a core, and the other did not. Differences mattered, but so did mechanisms.
Adam’s memories supplied a useful comparison.
In Earth biology, primitive solutions often disappeared when more efficient systems evolved. A structure useful in one stage of development could become unnecessary later. Sometimes it remained as a remnant. Sometimes it integrated into other systems. Sometimes it vanished because the body no longer needed it.
Cassian began writing possibilities. Perhaps a mana core was not a sign of advancement. Perhaps it was a temporary solution.
An animal accumulating mana might need a place to contain it safely. A core would act as a reservoir, stabilizer, or crude storage organ. As mana concentration increased, the creature could grow stronger, tougher, stranger, and more dangerous. At a certain point, however, the core might become a limitation rather than an advantage.
What happened if a creature evolved beyond that limitation? The thought stayed with him for days.
He imagined mana spreading through the entire body instead of remaining stored in one place. Muscles, organs, nerves, blood, bone, and eventually every living cell would participate in the system. Mana would stop being something contained inside a core and become something integrated throughout the body.
That possibility explained humans. It might explain every intelligent race.
It might even explain why the oldest monster reports occasionally described creatures that behaved with unsettling intelligence before disappearing from known records.
The theory remained unproven.
Cassian wrote that at the top of the page in large letters because he did not trust himself to remember humility when a pattern felt elegant.
A theory was not truth. A theory was a tool for asking better questions. The Ironclaw became the next question.
Reports continued arriving as spring approached. Tracks appeared near thawing creeks. A trapper found claw marks on a fallen pine. Two goats vanished from a homestead near the southern edge of Frostwood, and Bran insisted the signs did not belong to wolves.
The creature remained unseen. Its presence did not.
One afternoon, Gareth and Rowan brought a strip of torn hide to Aldric’s office. They had found it snagged on a broken branch near old tracks. Aldric recorded the location while the hunters described the surrounding signs. Cassian sat nearby with a book open before him, listening without pretending otherwise.
When Gareth placed the hide on the table, Cassian entered perception. The surrounding mana shifted. Not strongly. Not enough for certainty.
Yet a faint disturbance clung to the torn hide like smoke lingering in cloth after a fire. It felt unlike humans, unlike goats, unlike hunting dogs, and unlike the weak impressions of ordinary animals.
It felt denser, coarser and more unstable. Cassian kept his face still.
The adults continued discussing physical evidence. Track depth. Claw spacing. Direction of travel. Distance from the village. All of it mattered. Yet none of them mentioned the strange pressure surrounding the hide.
They could not sense it. That realization disturbed him more than he expected.
Later, he searched the mana primer for references to sensing residual traces. The section he found described such perception as an intermediate exercise usually taught after several years of foundation training. Most apprentices, according to the author, required months to perceive mana reliably and much longer before they could interpret disturbances left behind by creatures.
Cassian reread the passage carefully. He was five. He had no teacher. He had already begun doing things the text considered years away. For several minutes, he simply sat with that knowledge. Pride would have been easy. Fear felt more appropriate.
Unusual ability attracted attention, and attention created danger. Adam had learned that people rarely responded simply to what someone could do. They responded to what that ability meant for themselves. Admiration, envy, suspicion, and exploitation often arrived from the same discovery.
Cassian closed the book and decided that nobody needed to know.
Not yet.The next day, he returned to Aldric’s office and found Darren and Elara already there.
Darren had brought the newest game board. Elara had brought Lily, Owen, and Finn, which meant the office had temporarily surrendered all hope of quiet. The children argued over whether a captured piece should be removed immediately or held until the end of a turn. Darren wanted consistency. Elara wanted excitement. Finn wanted whichever rule helped him win.
Aldric watched from behind his desk with the expression of a man studying a minor political collapse.
Cassian joined them reluctantly. Within half an hour, the rules improved.
By evening, they had a version that played faster, produced fewer arguments, and made Lily declare that she only hated it when she was losing. Darren immediately began discussing whether a better board could be carved before Tomas returned. Elara suggested painting the pieces in brighter colors so people noticed them more quickly.
Cassian let them argue. That was the best part of the project. He had given them sparks. They were building the fire.
The candle project followed a similar pattern. Darren continued testing wick patterns, and Elara suggested wrapping finished candles in tied paper with a small mark carved into the wax so people could identify the better version. Lena, after hearing the idea, reminded them that anything claiming to burn longer should actually burn longer, which forced Darren to begin measuring burn times more carefully.
That evening, as Cassian watched his siblings argue over wax, wicks, and whether Tomas would buy games before candles, he realized something important.
Knowledge became useful only when it entered the world. Mana theories mattered. Monster classifications mattered. Business ideas mattered.
Yet none of them changed anything while trapped in a notebook. The Ironclaw moved closer. Spring approached. Tomas would eventually return.
And somewhere between books, siblings, games, candles, mana traces, and monster reports, Cassian began to understand that application did not always look like power. Sometimes it looked like a better question, a cleaner candle, a board that made children argue for hours, or the faint trace of a monster on torn hide.
By the end of the week, his notes contained three separate headings. The first concerned mana cores. The second concerned the Ironclaw. The third concerned products worth showing Tomas.
They seemed unrelated at first glance.
Cassian no longer believed that.
End of Chapter 9