"So, food." Ariwyn prodded Taramo as he sat on the vestiges of the bed.

  "Does any of it really matter?"

  "Yes it does. And if you do not believe it then you'll still need food to be sure." He could easily imagine Taramo standing with her hands on her hips.

  He didn't get up.

  Something touched his foot.

  "Now you stand up." Ariwyn muttered as Taramo scrambled eyes wide and saw the hand he'd broken off sailing into the cauldron. He'd kicked it in his scramble.

  Taramo had many words full of scorn on his lips, but he looked at the bed and thought better of it. He could only move forwards now and mourn later.

  "Is there anything left of my things? I won't be running around naked."

  "Maybe something in the closet? I don't have hands to check and fabric looks all the same in a pile like that"

  Most of Taramo's clothes were far beyond repair. Mage strengthened clothing was an extravagance since most mage-clothier guilds were both unwilling to share their secrets and more interested in making extravagant fabrics that changed colours, grew flowers, or anything besides sturdiness and self-repair. No sense having them put themselves out of a repair job. But there was one thing that lasted.

  He'd befriended a soldier who'd somehow discovered the ability to sense and manipulate mana, using it to keep his boots clean, dry, and together. After it had been discovered the man had retired to take up magecraft but Taramo had been shown his methods. A single woolen cloak had managed to get the spell in a sufficiently stable pattern to survive far longer than it had any right to.

  Taramo brushed off the bits of wood from the cloak and peered into the spell. It was certainly wearing away. There were some varieties of moth that laid there eggs on cloth and the spells to ward them away were definitely gone. If anything had been able to get in the vault there would be nothing left of it. It would have to do.

  He fumbled with the string at his throat to tie it on, the self tying function was hopelessly broken, as likely to strangle him as anything else.

  "You look like a perfect barbarian, but you need a loincloth and a club."

  "And you have a solution to that, Ariwyn?"

  "Under the bed."

  Right. He'd had a chest under the bed to hold some wands and other tools. The chest was collapsed and as he picked the pieces off the probably wrecked tools he felt Ariwyn poke in the cauldron. She'd made the disembodied hand poke him to get him up, but her attention was more pronounced. She poured some of his mana into the cauldron like a miser honeying his enemy's tea.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  "Wasting Mana?" Taramo inquired.

  "I'll need a body. Where you go I will need to be."

  "The vitality potion is rancid. Anything from it will be doomed to die

  "It doesn't need to be long lasting. And if you die I have no purpose, so I'll risk it."

  "Right, I'll have to fix myself up," Some pain radiated from his body but he'd been masking the nerves subconsciously. Not a good long term strategy. Then he picked something new from the ruins of the chest.

  An obsidian coloured wand. He'd never had something like that in his collection, much less something he'd secreted away. Pulling his mana through it like a thread through the eye of a needle it felt familiar. He turned it in his hand and saw 'Taramo' roughly engraved on the side. He knew time wore strangely on magic, spells turning to curses, but he couldn't bear to throw this away. He also knew how to test it.

  The threads of his various clothes were not entirely ruined. Some individual threads could be used but the salvaging of them would take the time and mana for him to die of thirst before he had gathered enough. Magical tools were near infinitely more mana and time efficient but they would act only to do what was expressly ordered. Fail to specify the range of your sorting spell and it would sort left and right socks across the continent until your body withered.

  His first wand had some beginner's fail safe's. If the casting would draw enough mana to cause cell damage it would quickly shut itself down.

  "(This pile of clothes, sort the fibers by wear and mana saturation. High saturation and low wear into one group. Others discard)"

  He pointed the wand a little off from the center of the pile after speaking the spell. His name engraved in the wand was done after it was calibrated so it always was a little bit off in aim.

  A thousand tiniest mana hands, invisible to the naked eye, blew forth from the tip of the wand and gently tugged at the fabrics. Quickly they ripped into them, destroying the worn fabrics and casting them aside. After some time he was left with enough fabric for three pairs of socks.

  "(Weave into cloth, wider than my waist by one twentieth, incorporate a button and button hole so it can be clasped on the body.)"

  The other mana hands immediately stopped and withered, the excess mana available for them to act wasted. The wand would need some level of sentience to be able to recycle the wasted mana, but Ariwyn would be wasted in something so simple. The material constrained the mind, which was why he'd not had some construct to anchor his mana to, it would have made his thinking too rigid.

  The other spell pulled the differently coloured threads together heedless of any design so his small skirt covered himself.

  "It's ... unique" Ariwyn remarked. "Take me out of the cauldron and let's go."

  He walked to the cauldron and saw the hand floating on the surface, it's wound sealed and fingers paddling towards him.

  "Really?"

  "I see no reason to waste it. It will only be temporary anyhow" The hand seemed to grin as it grabbed Taramo's own and clambered to his shoulder. The presence of Ariwyn descended and settled into her new body.

  Taramo walked to the vault door and placed his hand above the center of the door. The door reacted to his mana and slowly rolled out of the way. The wards on the door snapped as it rolled and it stopped half open. Taramo could easily fit but the door would not be moving any more.

  The cave beyond had probably changed a bit, given the limestone had melted over the vault door and cracked as it opened. Ariwyn raised the pointer finger and projected light into the cave, brightening above the dim light of the cauldron.

  "Well, let's go." Taramo set off into a new world. Aged longer than all timekeeping that he knew of. Would he be an ant or a lion? He would have to find his place in this world of fifty thousand tomorrows.