Explanations

When morning finally came I set to mending my clothes. Previously I knew that I was going to be working on building my shelter and anticipated that they might become even more damaged, so I didn't bother, but now that the hard work was done it was time to take care of the problem. Much of the staring that I received yesterday was likely not just because I was a stranger, but because I looked like a vagabond.

Patching my clothes took me all the way to mid-morning. By then I felt that it was too late to hunt for lunch if I also wanted to go shopping in the village, so I cooked and ate one of the rabbits I was planning to sell. I was keeping them cold by siphoning off their heat into my fire by using what was commonly referred to in the books as the third mode of magic.

The first mode was the potential mode. In this mode the magical power could become anything, do anything, but wasn't yet doing anything. One had to have Ethereal Vision to even be able to detect, let alone access, the power within oneself. That power was in potential mode, and would remain in this mode until one manipulated it.

The second mode was when the magical power was converted into a specific form of energy, like heat, movement, lightning, and the like. The initial burst could be directed, but it was difficult to control once it left the user's body and it dissipated quickly. This was the easiest and most common use, which nearly everyone was capable of, if only to a minimal degree. Also, different types of energy had different levels of intuitiveness. Most people could learn to use heat energy just from watching others doing so, and some could even learn to use movement energy in the same way. However, unless one was a rare genius, lighting energy or other more exotic forms would require study or even the guidance of a teacher.

The third mode was really an intermediate form between the first and second, but it was usually counted as the third as most writers ordered the modes by the difficulty of learning them. It allowed one to draw the energy from an object or the environment by turning the magical power into a kind of anti-energy that would attract the desired energy. For example, anti-heat would draw in heat, thus cooling the object. That was how the simple ice boxes were maintained, and how I was keeping my rabbits fresh for selling later in the village.

If the same amount of magical power was being used, then the result would be the same amount of energy being manipulated, regardless of whether one used the second or third mode. Also, like in the second mode, one would have to dispose of the energy by sending it out somewhere. When cooling food, the heat would usually be directed towards creating a fire, for example. Most people who could use the second mode could also use the third mode.

The fourth mode allowed one to turn the energy into a kind of permanent strand, like a thread, that could then be manipulated and woven with other threads to create complex structures. These structures are what is known as spells. The higher one's Ethereal Vision was, the more delicate the strands he could produce, allowing smaller and smaller objects to be manipulated with magic. It could also be used to draw magical power out of someone and to store power for later use. My control collar was one example of a spell, and used all of these techniques.

The pain-giving part of my collar had a strand that went into my brain, touching and directly stimulating the specific area responsible for the feeling of pain, and powered itself by drawing on the magical power of the wearer. There were even more expensive collars that could also stimulate the pleasure center of the brain, but those weren't in common use, both because of the higher price, and because many masters felt that using pleasure as a reward damaged their property in a way that was similar to administering intoxicating drugs.

Those who could weave spells by combining multiple strands of multiple types of energy were called mages. Mages, or those rich enough to afford their services, used enchanted ice boxes that permanently kept their contents cool, but those cost hundreds of gold. The rest of the people made do with manually producing ice and replacing the ice in their ice boxes on a regular basis. That was what I was going to do, once I purchased a suitable box. I couldn't just live off of daily hunting since in the winter animals didn't come out as much and were leaner. I needed to hunt now and store my kills for later.

Those simpler ice-boxes still required a high level of craftsmanship. They had to be completely sealed and insulated, to prevent heat from entering, and usually cost a few gold. Building one myself was beyond my capabilities, so I would have to work hard to save enough money to buy one from a local craftsman. That would mean expanding my business beyond just hunting and selling rabbits. Perhaps fishing or gathering mushrooms might provide a better income.

Compared to rabbits, which were too similar to farm animals and were even raised by some farmers, fish and mushrooms were somewhat harder to come by. Farmers generally didn't bother trying to raise fish, and fishing would often require them to travel outside of their farm and spend long periods of time for little gain at the expense of work. Mushrooms were usually collected in the forest, and the best way to find them was with the help of either beast-kin or trained animals. This village didn't have beast-kin, and most humans didn't bother with training animals for such a niche purpose.

For now, however, all I had to trade with were rabbits. I still expected to get a decent income out of them, one that would be enough to cover my more immediate needs for clothes and a bed.