9 Natural Mana

A few days of practice later, Vance was able to consistently transform mana from pure to metallic.

It was slow going, but when Elijah visited today Vance decided to try and put the whole process together for the first time. He was excited to show Elijah how far he'd come, though he knew he was behind schedule.

First, he pulled in ambient mana and held it above his hand, quickly shifting it's form into the familiar shape of the coin. He made it as detailed as possible, forming the mana to match the embossed emblem on the front of the coin as best he could.

The hardest part was maintaining the shape while then trying to convert the mana to another type. He bent all of his will to this task and ran his fingers over the coin in his right hand. He didn't really need the coin for reference anymore, but it was something of a habit he'd developed.

Over a few seconds, the mana began to shift. Vance felt a little headache settling in, but he persevered. After a few moments, the mana settled into it's new form and he relaxed a portion of his will. Semi-consciously he noted that straining his will felt a lot like holding his breath.

He waited a few moments, feeling out the new mana construct. He'd lost a little of the detail in the shape during the aspect shift, but he'd expected that.

He shaped the newly minted metallic mana back into shape and pushed it towards the coin.

"Yes!" He celebrated with a little too much vigour when the mana construct slid easily into place, he felt the coin gain a little weight as it settled into place, though not much.

"Excellent work." Elijah kept his reaction measured, but once again, he was at a loss. This should've taken much longer. He'd also artificially increased the difficulty of this particular task by asking him to maintain a shape while shifting aspects, that was a far more difficult method.

Vance had reigned himself in, doing his best not to celebrate further. He could feel the coin and the mana within it. It was similar to before, but felt more familiar than ever. He presumed it was because it was mana he'd shaped personally. Regardless, it wasn't as heavy as before, no doubt he'd used less mana than Elijah had the first time.

"Vance."

Elijah's voice snapped Vance out of his internal ramblings. "Yes, Master?"

"It's time for us to move on. This exercise, as you might be able to tell - does not produce a magical item with any real value. In order to do so, you will need to learn to shape mana into more intricate designs. I would like you to extend your mana sense to me, I will produce an example for you, so you can understand the scale of this particular problem."

Elijah did exactly as promised, he called forth a large chunk of ambient mana and shifted it's aspect to metal. Then, he began to shape.

Vance's jaw dropped through the floor as he sensed the complex pattern it was weaved into. He could identify dozens of individual shapes within the larger construct. It was a rotating ring of mana surrounding several small orbs, each of which was set in motion and rotating around a central mess of intersecting rods with, as far as he could tell, no discernible pattern.

"This construct is a fairly simple one that Is used primarily for creating a suction force. If you place this construct within an object, it would provide that object with a small, constant stream of ambient mana from the environment which it would use to create the aforementioned force. This construct is weak, and would be about potent enough to make something about the size of that coin stick to a surface. We call this an "Attractor" construct."

Elijah smiled when he saw Vance conjure a little ball of mana above his hand. He tried, and failed, to produce a copy of this construct. He managed to create the ring, though he couldn't get it to rotate. He found it was even difficult to split the mana up to produce more than a single shape. He let the mana fizzle and looked a little dejected, Elijah found that particularly amusing.

"Worry not, my boy. I don't expect you to construct anything like this for some time. You're only just getting started. The important part is that you know there's a long way to go, the road to becoming a real Arcanist is a long one."

Vance nodded, but it clearly irked him.

"You have not wasted your time however, I'd like you to try transference again, this time - pull on some of your internal mana and shape it around the mana you pull into your body. Think of it like a shield, or membrane. Before you begin, there's one thing you need to know."

Elijah paused for effect, then said in a stern voice.

"Never project mana from your initial reservoir outside of your body. Under no circumstance is this a good idea. It is very difficult to restore one's initial mana reservoir and it often has dire consequences. That mana is strictly for internal use, understood?"

That put Vance more than a little on edge. Nevertheless, he began as he was instructed. He moved some of his own internal mana through his body to his hand, where he gathered it in a rough hemi-sphere. He pulled on the mana within the coin and the shape floated effortlessly out of the coin and into his hand, straight into the waiting mana shell, which he promptly sealed around the metallic mana from the coin.

Then, without any of the terrible grating feeling from before, he pushed the newly sealed mana construct through his body. Once the mana reached his other hand, he retracted the mana shell and used it to push the metallic mana back out, into the sword, which immediately gained a little weight.

The whole process felt much easier this time.

"As you can see, all of the practice we've been doing up until this point had given you a much better transference method, this is going to be important very soon. You may have noticed, but I referred to your mana reservoir as "Initial". This is because as Arcanists, we create additional reservoirs within our own body. Transference is important because it's how you get mana from the outside world into and out of your own reservoirs."

Vance considered this. "That would suggest that you're keeping other kinds of mana in your body, right? Pure mana doesn't seem to harm the body, so a mana shell would be pointless."

"Spot on. The word "Reservoir" get's a little tiresome, so we tend to just call them mana cores. I myself have two, fire and cold. Remember the other week when I conjured that particularly large ball of cold mana? I pulled that from my cold core, it was much quicker than performing an aspect shift on ambient mana, practically instant."

As if to illustrate, he quickly conjured fire and ice in rapid succession, one in each hand. Each was of such a high concentration of mana that it had a physical effect on Vance, who found himself simultaneously freezing and boiling hot.

"To create one's own mana core is typically the mark of a real Arcanist, someone who has mastered at least one of the aspects of mana and could call upon it at any point in time. Many of the students who come here are able to create their first mana core at the start of their second year. I expect you to perform this task in the next month."

Vance suddenly felt a little nauseous. "No pressure, then." he thought.

"In theory, the process is simple. You take an external source of mana, natural is better and shaped mana is entirely out of the question. You bring it inside your body with transference, then move the mana shell to a location of your choosing. Once there, you call upon your will and force the core to take root. If the shell remains, you have succeeded, if it does not, it will crumble and the mana you have taken in will run rampant in your body until you can quell it again. It's important to strengthen your will before you try this, it's difficult in practice."

Vance knew exactly what it felt like for metallic mana to move unimpeded through his system, he shivered at that. Now that he thought back to it, it felt like what he imagined rubbing one's teeth against a cheese grater might feel like.

"...Natural mana? Of different types?" Vance caught up with the conversation and started mumbling.

"All things contain mana, just in differing quantities, some things, like that coin you carry around, or the sword at your hip, or even your clothes have such miniscule amounts of mana within them that it's barely worth mentioning. Things that are animate, like fire or living things create much more naturally occurring mana. If you take away that mana through transference, you take away some of what that thing is, for example."

Elijah produced a small device in one hand, it smelled like burnt wood, though Vance wasn't entirely sure what it was.

Then Elijah lit the table in the room on fire. At first, Vance was a little panicked, then Elijah's calm voice rang through. "Sense anything?"

Vance focused. "No, nothing. The ambient mana is reacting though, it - wait." he traced the movements of the ambient mana and could tell that it was pouring in towards the flames, like a whirlpool. He focused his attention on the centre of the vortex, where initially he felt nothing, but after a moment of intense concentration he started to feel warm. At the middle of the vortex, the mana was gathering and changing aspects. It was such a tiny amount that the ambient mana had initially totally concealed it from him, but it was there.

"Wait, I do sense something. The ambient mana is forming into fire mana within the flames, it's like there's... a focal point?"

"Put the fire out." Elijah commanded.

Vance's shoulders jumped up and for a moment he considered grabbing his blanket and throwing it over the table, but then he caught on to what Elijah meant.

Vance reached out with his will and pulled on the fire mana all at once, pulling the scalding mana into a shell inside his palm, locking it away from the outside world.

In an instant, the fire was gone.

Elijah was twirling a finger near his head in a spiral pattern, gathering the smoke from the flames above his hand and condensing it into a little vortex which he seemed to be maintaining for his own amusement.

"Now what?" Vance realised he was holding a tiny inferno in his hand and didn't really know what to do with it.

"Convert it back to pure mana, or as close as you can get, then release it. That's the most harmless way to do something like this. Of course you could just vent the fire mana into the air, but it's quite a cramped room, so perhaps not."

With a concerted effort of will, Vance tried to aspect shift the fire mana back to pure mana, he found that it was much easier than going from pure to another aspect, perhaps because he was literally surrounded by reference material.

The warm sensation faded from his hands and he released the mana back into the air around him, shapeless, it joined the immaterial ambient cloud.

"That's all for today, Vance. We'll begin working on your mana core in a few days, for now - rest, relax and relish in your progress, you've done exceptionally. Could you pass me my lantern, please?"

"Sure." Vance reached out, grabbed the metal handle of the lantern and hand-

He froze. He didn't know where the lantern was a moment ago. He hadn't listened for the sound of it hitting the desk or floor when his master had come in, that sound had faded into the background like so many others associated with his masters visit.

A smile grew across Elijah's face as he took the lantern and strolled out of the room wordlessly, closing the door behind him.

Vance just sat in his room in silence for a minute. He stretched out a hand and pointed at the table, precisely where his blade was laying. Then he sat for a minute longer, then tossed his coin out into the room. It clattered off of a wall and landed on his bed. He strolled over and picked it up straight away, without feeling around at all.

"All things have natural mana." he mused.

He ate his lunch and sat in his room. He spent the next few days finding the different sources of natural mana in the area, and began pushing his will towards his mana sense, trying to push it to a new level of sensitivity.