All three Beasts immediately bowed down at Mana’s words. Not sure if it would work, Vic tried to speak “What did I say about the bowing? Get up please.” The voice that left his, rather, their mouth was definitely his, but it had the same chorus effect as Mana’s did. Fuck, that’s going to cause so many problems for sure. The Beasts rose at his command, Mel and Barus rose first with the urgency of children being called on to answer for something they broke, while Nirren rose and looked at Vic with suspicion “This isn’t some kind of ploy is it?” she moved to inspect him closer. “No, it's not a ploy or anything like that. Victor here decided I should make myself known, and I happen to agree. Personally, I like the plan to use us as a liaison between the Beast tribes and that fringe group of humans, but Lazy-ass here doesn’t want to learn magic or train to fight and help.” Vic rolled his eyes again. Don’t make me out to be some kind of flub you parasite! Fine, I’ll do it! “Don’t listen to Mana, I will help.” Vic could see that Nirren wasn’t buying it, but Mel did. Barus was looking at him like he was divine, and Vic didn’t like that.
Nirren lowered her massive head to look at and through his neck “Mel, do you approve of my plan?” Mel shook her head to try and catch up to the moment “Plan? Oh to take him to the weirdos? Sure, as long as you appoint a new Lead Guard. It will take around a month to travel to the South Tribe, so I’ll start some people on prepping a convoy once you’ve found your replacement.” Nirren shakes her head “We will be going without the convoys. Less chance of being targeted by any large Scavenger groups that way and we’ll be able to focus more on training.”
Vic looked surprised “What? You’ll train me? Wait a minute, I thought you said you didn’t like me? Why are you offering to take me to the south and train me? That doesn’t make sense.” Nirren moves past him towards the stairway they came in from “You think I’m going to let my distaste of humans cloud my judgement? Sure I don’t like you, but I do like the Light and the Land, which are for better or worse a part of you now.” she turns back to regard the group “And I see a path forward where, if you prove not to be a ‘lazy-ass’, we can finally make headway on properly fighting back the humans. Or at least trying to even out the power disparity.” She disappears down the stairs out of sight. Mana sends an amused feeling through their bond, then remembers they’re still able to talk “I think you two will be best buddies by the end of the trip!” Mel laughs and adds “Just try not to get on her bad side. She is serious about this, as are we.” gesturing to herself and Barus “she is correct in that you’re a part of the Light and the Land now and despite her flippancy, she is a serious practitioner of our beliefs. Actually show you mean it and she won’t try to kill you in your sleep.”
That’s not terrifying at all. Barus walks over and bows his head “Bless the Enlightened Mana, what is your Will?” Vic facepalms. Can you please not encourage this behavior? “We do not have any decree or anything like that, just keep on the path to harmony.” Vic sighs internally. Thanks. Trust me we don’t need religious zealotry following in our footsteps. “Thank you Enlightened Mana!” With that, Barus bolts out of the Feast Hall and heads back up the stairs. The static washes over his jaw and neck again, and he starts to feel a headache building as they return to normal. Ignoring it, he turns to Mel. ”How long do you think it’ll take her to find a new lead guard?” Mel considers it for a second before answering “Knowing her, she already will have had a person lined up in case something were to happen to her, so probably by tomorrow and you’ll be on your way either then or the day after depending on how long it takes to get your gear together.”
“Do you have any books or maps? Anything I can put eyes on so I can know more about the region while I wait?” He also wants to know if the Beastfolk are literate and if so, does whatever ability he has that helps translate speech work for words as well? That would be dope. Mel’s face darkens slightly “Are you asking if we have books to see if we’re illiterate animals?” The way she said “animals” made him immediately think it was a slur.
Dumbass.
Nervously he answers “Uhh…no.” Vic watches as Mel’s face morphs into a smile and she laughs as she walks toward the door. It sounded like a hyena’s laugh. “Well you should have, barely any of us Beasts know how! I’ll bring by some maps later and see what I can find from the “library”. I’d recommend not leaving these floors of the pyramid; even with Mana there, you would probably get eaten out there.” With that, he was alone with Mana in the Hall. Well, I guess we just head back to the room then.
We could go up to the Vein.
Do you want to? A wordless affirmative passed through their Bond. “Alright, yeah let’s go.” he grabs another honey apple and wanders up the upper levels of the pyramid. The more he sees of it the more he’s sure that the Beast folk either don’t know how or care to do upkeep on it, or they weren't the ones to build it. If they didn’t build this then who did? It's too old for whoever built it to have done so for the Vein. He notices it isn’t built like the pyramids back on Earth either, both bigger and with many rooms inside and It had a layered design like the ones in Central America. They reach the top of the pyramid a couple of minutes later and see the Vein as it was when he passed out. It's exactly the same as he remembers it, but he can feel a sort of charge in the air around him as he looks at it.
Go to it. I want to check something out.
Something wrong? He walks up to the Vein and notices that the ritual circles it's a part of aren’t centered on the top of the pyramid, they’re off towards one of the corners. He wonders at the chances of the Vein growing out the top of a pyramid. When he gets to the Vein he reaches out with his Bonded arm and palms the Vein. As he does, his body pulses with static again and the world around him turns to a milky white, he can barely see past the inner circle. What’s going on now? Instead of Mana replying, it was the original multitudinous voice that offered him the Bond previously, the Core, Mana had called it.
Retrieving Vessel knowledge. Capacity improvement recommended. Initiating
Mana? You here? What does it mean by “capacity”? Vic looks around him seeing nothing but the ground and the milky barrier to the rest of the world. He considers trying to remove his arm, but he’s worried about a repeat of the burning from last time. Best not to disrupt the process, plus there's not any pain so surely whatever is happening can’t be bad, right? The Core sets up whatever process it's going to perform, so he just looks into the Vein and watches the light dance between the crystalline structure lines and paths through what he had originally thought was a tree. He reaches up with his other hand and traces the light’s paths trying to feel if the Vein is the same material as his new right arm.
Capacity improvement requires Bond input. Vessel Released.
Mana? You good? Vic doesn’t get a reply. I hope it didn’t change Mana. He feels another wave of static from the Vein wash through the Bond and feels a slight burn again, as if he got a super sunburn on his insides. The sudden pain was a lot to take all at once and Vic bends over clutching his gut thinking he’ll vacate his lunch from the pain, when a voice speaks in his mind. It vaguely sounds like Mana’s but with even less of a chorus now, as if it got more condensed, more singular. I’m sorry Vic, I recommended a forced increase in capacity for mana to the Core and it Agreed. I was not aware it would cause pain. Try and focus on the mana, feel it sitting inside your body. Vic is still locked in place with his hand still on the Vein, this time he tries at moving it away and feels it stuck as if he’s part of it. He tries to follow the directions and tries to feel out his body from inside his mind. It takes him a few minutes before he’s able to separate the feeling of static from the pain in and he mentally grabs a hold of it. Good, now try and- Vic realized what was happening and could not have been more mentally prepared for what came next and smiled through grit teeth. He was always reading those fantasy pulp stories, consuming them whenever he had the chance. If magic was real here then of course he was going to attempt to use it. All that slop reading might pay off after all.
He takes a hold of all the mana inside him and wills it to circulate throughout his body, pushing and pulling it along as if to work it into his very being. He could feel his body absorbing the extra mana pass by pass, slowly eating up the excess. The burning slowly fades as he goes on and when he gets to the last of the last of the mana, he tries to do something different. He takes the little bit that's left and instead of circulating it, he tries to compress it. He exerts his will and pushes the ball of mana to his left hand and begins to crush both physically and mentally. Vic, what are you doing? Vic ignored Mana, continuing to press in as hard as he was able. The mana inside his hand began to no longer feel like a liquid or a gas but a solid and he kept crushing as hard as his will could muster. Just as he was about to give up, he feels the mana collapse in on itself and a piercing light radiates out from his hand and engulfs him and the Vein. A deep and resonant bell sound rings from the Vein as the light passes through it that causes Vic to keel over trying to cover his ears with only one hand. Nothing meets his ear. He looks at his hand and sees only a stump of burned and cracked skin at his wrist, a light eating away into the cracks. Vic! What did you do! He can barely hear Mana yell in his mind over the sound and the intense pain as he saw the smoldering stump.
Capacity improvement completed.
Node creation detected.
Node of Light identified.
Bond erosion detected.
Node Order absorbed.
Node conversion completed
Bond erosion voided
Bond released
Vic fell to the ground, feeling the residual rumblings of a finished earthquake that he hadn’t realized happened. He was holding his arm to his chest not wanting to see the stump in fear that he would feel the pain if he saw it again. He should probably be more worried that he currently wasn’t feeling any pain. He looks down at his arm only to find that his hand is there again. He feels something in his palm and unfurls his fingers to find what looks like the clearest diamond he’s ever seen embedded where he crushed the mana into his hand. “What the fuck is that?” he groaned out. Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?! “I have a sneaking suspicion you’re about to tell me”. He could feel the incredulous anger coming from Mana, but the Core didn’t make it seem like it was too crazy an event other than the erosion part. You created a Node! The Core is the Only thing capable of doing that, or at least it was! You said you didn’t know how to use mana! Were you just lying before?
Before he could answer, Barus raced over the top of the stairs with Mel in tow. They stopped when they saw Vic on the ground at the foot of the Vein, Barus yelling out “What happened?! There was a large Tremor that ran through the entire pyramid! Where are your clothes?! What did you do?!” They cautiously walked closer as Vic stood up, noticing that the ground he was standing on had scorch marks radiating out from where he created the Node. Luckily the ritual circles seemed to be intact but the stone around it looked like it was pressure washed with a laser, it was so clean now. He turned his attention to Barus and Mel, about to speak up, when he felt the static wash over his face again as Mana took over. “This moron decided to try something even I was not aware was possible to do. Did we cause any damage?” Vic was doing his best to cover himself as he looked up at them to hear if he’d done any damage. “No, no damage other than a panicking town below us. Nirren was already gathering everyone away from the pyramid in case something drastic happened.”
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He could tell by Mel’s annoyed tone that they were definitely going to lock him in his room after this. He pushed through Mana’s control “look, I only did a small experiment, I wasn’t expecting anything as crazy as that to happen.” We need to talk about this, I think I have an Idea what the humans are doing to the Nodes. As he speaks to Mana, his face reverts back to normal and he explains what happened to the Beasts “I touched the Vein as asked to by Mana, it made some kind of improvement to me that I had to help with, I held onto a little bit of magic from the process and tried to do something I thought of on the spot.” He nodded to his current un-clothed condition “You felt and now see the rest. Would it be possible to get a new set of clothes?” Mel waved him back to the stairs “I’m gonna tell Nirren to boost your training on the road for this.” Barus was already fussing over the scorch marks and inspecting the Vein for any damage, muttering to himself loud enough for Vic to hear “The Enlightened One has brought the Call of the Light! He held the Light. I must tell the others!” Vic just shook his head, rolling his eyes and hustled after Mel.
Vic and Mana were back in the room he woke up in earlier, having been left to a mostly self induced isolation so he didn’t cause the Beasts more trouble before leaving. Mel had left them with a couple of maps, blank papers, some new clothes and a book. He asked if these were copies and she said if there was anything he wanted to remember, to just write it down. Do they not have scribes? He was currently looking at the maps laid out on the bed in front of him. One was some kind of map of the areas surrounding Sarun. It looked to be pretty detailed, about as much information you would expect out of a small town. He was worried at first that he wouldn’t be able to read their language, but just like when he was attacked by Barus, he picked up the writing pretty quickly. It was like when he would read back home, his eyes would be following the sentence but he would have to reread it again because his brain didn’t actually take in what the words said. Here it was almost the same, except he was somehow actively translating as he read. If there’s a position open for an interpreter somewhere, I’d be a god. That also made him wonder how the Beasts were understanding him? Did he speak their language to them?
The second map reminded him of one of the old exploration maps that explorers would draw up, but not have the accurate details for. Not that this one was inaccurate, it just reminded him of one He couldn’t figure out the distance scaling either but the month timeframe for the trip put some things in perspective. He forgot to ask how far the Beastfolk had been outside Elles Basin. There looked to be two major tribes to the north and south of the basin, with the Southern Beast Tribe to the south. There was another section to the basin, the east, that was broken up into a myriad of territories that the map labeled as the Singular Beast Clans. The basin was basically walled in by mountains except for a few spots on the map. The biggest opening was the river valley to the south and beyond that was what he was taking as a human city named Orem. Between the city and the Southern Tribe were a few forts and camps labeled along what he assumed was the frontline in the conflict. Alright, Mel said that the humans we’re going to are at one of the human backline forts on a direct path towards Orem, meaning we are going to run into humans for sure in at least two areas before we get there; the front itself and this encampment here. He pointed to a spot on the map for Mana. You don’t expect to see them on the way, in Beast territory? Vic traced his way up into the Southern Tribe’s territory. I do expect some company around here, I need to at least be able to fight well enough by this point to be on my own, I’m expecting Nirren to part ways here and the trip will already be what, almost a month long? If I don’t have at least a basic skill level, then I’ll be useless in a fight that I’m already expecting to be bad at.
Training should be easier as I’ve said before. You’ll recover faster, so you can train longer and harder. We still need to talk about what happened at the Vein first, you mentioned the humans and Nodes. Vic looks up from studying the map and toward the door. He locked it before but he goes and double checks to make sure. He moves to the furthest corner from the door to avoid eavesdropping beasts. Not that they could when he was talking to Mana, but it made him feel more secure anyway. When I created the Node, you freaked out on me because only the Core is capable of creating a Node, right? He felt Mana give a nod through the Bond. I’d need to know what the human level of magic is to be sure, but I think they’ve found a way to take over the Nodes. Vic feels Mana grow frustrated. That’s not possible. Why would you think that that’s what they’re doing? Vic remembered holding the Node, how he could feel the connection it had to the Core. He felt like it should be possible to sever the connection. Could they be using enchantments? He just didn’t know how, or why they would still be alive after the Bond Erosion. What if there was a way to somehow sever the connection the Nodes have to the Core? In my mind, a separated Node is basically just a super-mana battery. If they have those, then they could have a metric shit ton of magic in the blink of an eye!
He let Mana mull it over for a while while he thought about what one would theoretically need to take control of a Node, but without further information he was stuck. He laid on the bed and held up his left hand and stared at the newest addition to his, hopefully finished, growing collection of rocks. He pokes at it with his crystal hand and nothing happens. What am I supposed to do with this? Mana didn’t respond. He thought back to the feeling of the mana inside him, feeling a bit of pride well up at having successfully controlled his mana. If he could guide the mana into his cells and create Nodes, then surely he could use magic by now right? Focusing, he searches his mind for the static that he now associates with mana again.
After a couple minutes in silent meditation, he feels it deep in his mind. He tries to command it to circulate but nothing happens. Stumped for a second, he tries to think of the books he’d read and remember if they had an alternate method, one that wasn’t the equivalent of “try trying”, but nothing comes to mind. The mana was just sitting there in his body, not doing anything like it was taunting him. He tries again to circulate it and again nothing happens. What are you doing now? You look constipated. Vic opens his eyes and lets out a sigh. I was trying to circulate mana. I can’t get it to work though and it’s kind of frustrating. Mana gave an inward chuckle Of course it won’t work, you’re full, dumbass. Vic facepalmed. Try pulling some mana into our Bond. When you do, the rest is more the work of visualization. That as well as knowing the limits of your Media. The Media is what determines what type of effects the mana is able to produce. Our Bond is of the Body Medium, so body-shaping like the sword from earlier and things like healing and regeneration.
Vic lay there staring at the ceiling dumbstruck. He had a million questions and a million things he wanted to try after hearing that. First, he asked Is it possible to make my arm the same qualities as the rest of my skin? Like not being transparent and all “crystal-like”? He figured that the Bond markings were going to continue being a glowy stand out no matter what he changed but if he could make it so he didn’t stand out as much, then he would prefer that. I don’t see why not. As Mana spoke, his arm changed hues and opacities until it looked like the rest of him. He poked it with his left hand and it turned back to the crystal. I will guide you but you need to learn to do this yourself. You also need to learn to call on mana a lot faster. I doubt any adversaries will give you time to do so. He concentrated on his arm and thought about his skin color, trying to will it to become the same. It started turning cloudy and slowly became a mirror of his left arm. The second he stopped focusing on it, it reverted back to the crystal again. So, what? I have to constantly be focused on the change? He tries again, but it's no different the second time.
No, there's a way to make sure the change stays, but I want to see if you can figure out how. Vic considered the issue for a few minutes before trying a third time. He tried to “tell” the mana to stay put after he changed the arm, but there was no noticeable change again. He lay like that for an hour trying to get the magic to stick when Mana finally got tired of waiting. What have you noticed so far about the behavior of mana? He thought it over for a few seconds. Everytime I try to change my arm, the mana just leaves when I'm not actively focusing on the change. So what does that tell you? After another minute of thought, he had an idea. What if there was a way to prevent the mana from returning? He asked Mana and got an internal nod as if to keep going. How would I even stop the returning mana? I would just run into the same problems again right? The answer would be to cast what, two “spells”?
You've all but said the answer. There are multiple ways to use mana, but the two that will be easiest to understand first would be what you’d call casting and channeling. You changing your arm and having it revert after losing focus would be channeling versus if you were able to keep the arm in an altered state without constant focus, it would be casting. There's more to it than that, but take what I’ve explained and try again. He felt like he was picking up what Mana was putting down, so he felt for his mana again. He wasn’t sure how “much” he had to work with but was pretty sure Mana would have pointed out if he was lacking. Now that he thought about it, wasn’t that why they visited the Vein? Something about a capacity upgrade? If capacity was an issue, then was the answer to his current problem that he needed to use more mana? Was he trying to jump a car with a watch battery?
He spent the next hour inwardly grabbing at his mana in increasingly larger portions, feeling the static thread become thicker and more dense each attempt, trying to make his arm normal again. He didn’t want to somehow blow his arm off by accident. After what felt like the eightieth try, he felt the static disperse into his arm instead of returning to what he decided to call his mana pool. No point in not using the names that I’m already familiar with from all the stories, right? He opened his eyes as he felt the control over the cast fall away, the sensation of a wave of static slowly pushed out from inside his arm and he watched as the same effect he’d been “channeling” was now staying without him focusing on it. Good job! How does it feel to cast magic for the first time? Good right? He was almost shocked with how easy it was once he knew where he was slipping up. How badly does the difficulty scale with complexity? I just imagined my arm mirroring my left and it went off without a hitch once I got the mana load right. I feel like that should have been harder somehow.
You’re right in that it should have been harder. We’ve been dancing around this issue for a minute now. How were you able to control your mana flow so quickly at the vein, where did you get the idea to compress mana, and how are you able to pick up on these ideas so easily? He did say he would talk about it later and it was definitely later. On Earth, my home, we had fictional worlds that we would write about, some were highly technical, some were mirrors of ours, some were imagined entirely. One of those genres was called fantasy and it was a decently wide range of “what ifs”. Fantasy commonly had magic written in as either the whole point of the story or as a vehicle to move it along as it told of a human experience. And sometimes not a human experience. That's also where the “classics” I mentioned before come in. We would write about dwarves, elves, goblins, centaurs, dragons, beasts and beastfolk types, or giants. There were so many, I wouldn’t be able to name them all. Anyway, those stories are where I’ve been pulling my thought processes from. Magic isn’t real on Earth, but we sure did try to make it feel real.
Vic could feel Mana was digesting his explanation. He got up and walked over to the door to open it. He wanted to see the night sky on a planet with rings. He stepped out onto the walkway and was instantly struck by the sight. He had seen a few photoshopped pictures of what it would look like on Earth if it had rings like Saturn did and they were right on the money with the general looks but there was no way it would match the insane scale and beauty that he was now seeing. The sun was set, but its light was reflecting off the furthest layers away on the ring and he could see the shadow of the planet blocking a different part so that it almost, to Vic, looked as if a large salvo of shooting stars were stuck in time after travelling halfway from the horizon. The rings were bright as well, brighter than a cloudless full moon back home. He looked out over the forest and the town and was able to see way further than he would have thought possible in such low light. It was a surreal moment, one that truly brought home the fact that he was so very far from home. It wasn’t the first time the thought had tried to surface today and he was way too in a panic when he arrived to really process it.
Now though, as he stared up at the rings through the purple night sky, he wasn’t able to keep the thoughts away. He didn’t feel like he was going to spiral into a panic attack yet, like he was waiting for another shoe to drop. Or another massively insane series of events to happen in the span of forty eight hours again. Why am I not panicking? I feel like I should be huddled into a corner, head to knees and mumbling. He was more thinking to himself, but Mana spoke up anyway. Maybe your heart is not as worried as your mind is? Yes, you have plenty to be worried about but you also seem happy here so far. The smile on your face when you took hold of your mana flow the first time at the Vein, the ease you were speaking to a race of beings that aren’t even real in your homeworld, the way you looked out into the night just now. I think that yes, you are sad inside about leaving your home, but you seem also filled with excitement over this world. That’s okay, you know? It’s fine to be that way, to feel like that. There will come a time to vent out the pressure but I think everything is still too new and exciting for that to happen now. Vic let his eyes wander over the town as Mana was speaking, just watching the surroundings in the night.
Does being magic incarnate also come with being a halfway decent voice of reason? He stretches and yawns, turning around to head back into the room. I think I’m not looking forward to a slow time, I hate being a whiny ass when I don’t mean to be one. What say you, we look over the book and nod off? I’m beat. He closed and locked the door behind him and sat at the edge of the bed, picking up the book. It was a different language from the maps, which either meant the Beastfolk were bilingual at a minimum or this is a probably dead human’s book. Too tired to think about that implication, he looked at the first couple pages trying to speed up the translation thingamabob in his brain. When he finally was able to understand it, he laughed. The book was titled “The Queen and her Knight” and when he jumped to a random page in the middle, he laughed again. What’s so funny? He threw the book at the end of the bed and lay back, wriggling into a more comfortable spot on the bed. It looks as if the humans from Earth and whatever planet this is aren’t that different at all. With that he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
