The carriage rushed along at a blazing pace, but after the initial shock of the speed, Severin adjusted. He waited, timid as a mouse for several minutes, but eventually his curiosity won out. He crawled out from his spot, and made his way around. There was soft ambient light coming from several muted sources, cracks in the wall and ceiling, but another source was the package that the leader had packed last before departing. Severin walked through the crates until he saw it, wrapped in dark woolen cloth, and glowing faintly.
Severin had heard the legends, and as he looked into the cloth, recognition clicked and he knew that this was obviously a dragon egg. It was a cerulean color with sandy streaks all over and through the egg. It pulsed as if to a very slow heartbeat. Severin’s eyes rested on it, and it seemed as if the world faded around him. He walked forward and knelt down. Tentatively, he reached out with his hands, the manacles preventing him from reaching with just one.
He touched it, and it was as if he could feel an ancient mind butting up against his own. There was an audible click, like that of an enormous mythical clock and Severin began feeling a bond to something outside himself. There was a massive tug on Severin’s spirit, and he felt the resistance of the manacles on his hands. They heated up, then the manacle on his right hand, which he had used to touch the egg, exploded off, leaving the manacles dangling from Severin’s left hand.
Mana, with strange aspects flooded into Severin’s manawell, which was a stunted little thing after having never grown since its inception. Severin fell back and screamed at the intense pain, which stacked onto the existing pain of his body. Not only the pain in his wrist, it felt as if it might be broken, but the pain in spirit. His mana well was being flooded with mana, and Severin felt it straining, and he knew deeply somehow that it would pop, and he would die. Severin grabbed the mana in his well, and he shoved it through every mana channel he owned. Every path groaned and stretched at the outflux of mana which poured through. The pain threatened to overwhelm him, as it was so massive, and Severin screamed. Unconsciousness was immediately available to him, but in some deep part of him, he knew that if he succumbed now to the dark, he would never return. His life hung in the balance. He was so focused on this life and death battle, he hardly noticed the electric storm occurring with him at the center. He was pouring out mana, from the hundred pathways he had created in his boredom.
That boredom turned to his salvation, as he constantly released the pressure threatening his very spirit. Arcs of lightning, ice and some other unrecognizable mana aspect flung outwards from him. The crates around him suffered, but it was nothing compared to the agony of the battle that Severin fought.
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Severin's mana well continued to expand, and with it the raw spiritual pain. While the physical location of his mana well didn’t seem to be expanding, he could feel the depth of it growing, and the name mana well seemed to click to him. Even with his hundreds of mana pathways, he could not disgorge the mana erupting out of his mana well fast enough. Additionally, he could feel the pathways stretching and widening like a raging flash flood widened a canyon. Those pathways traversed his whole body, and he found himself sparing a split second of regret for having been so thorough in the tracing of the paths, because everywhere they traveled, he felt the mana coursing in terrible pain.
It continued on, and the peace of unconscious surrender loomed over him like a welcoming innkeeper, becoming him. He refused with every inch of his being, although the refusal meant staying in the world of pain. Every second brought a new depth of realization to the agony, and he found himself threatening to slip at every moment, but he could not allow it. He did slip into a half awareness, where it was just him, his pain, and shoving the alien mana away from his well in order to preserve his soul.
One verifiable eternity later, Severin’s well had expanded sufficiently, and he had let enough out, that he no longer felt the burning threat of his mana well exploding, and he began to allow the devastatingly attractive force of unconsciousness to come to him. He let out a little sob of relief, but in the split moment before he fell asleep, he felt the carriage begin slowing.
Severin forced himself awake, and while it felt like his eyes had been closed for just a moment,, he realized the carriage was stopped. Tirren thought for a second the carriage door was open, but then he realized that the interior of the carriage was glowing like a sun. Everywhere he looked, crates and barrels were destroyed and their contents were strewn, many of them glowing like bonfires. The floor was covered with red liquid, that Severin would have called blood had he not smelt it and recognized it as a wine.
This had obviously been a shipment of magical treasure and fine foodstuff, but Severin’s episode had destroyed much of it. The doors began to open. Severin shuffled back to his spot, but the crate he had hid between had disintegrated. He sat down in the center of the carriage and awaited his fate. Once the door had opened sufficiently, a face peered in at Severin with concern. Her eyes flicked from the mostly destroyed interior of the carriage and back to Severin.
“Shavert is not going to like this.” It was a woman, and as Severin looked at her, he saw strange mana signs behind her eyes, and a matching one floating lightly distinguishable above her head. Severin had manasight.
“I surrender, please don’t kill me.” He said, then he passed out and slid to the floor.
