Mana-heart and mana routes

Even after such an exciting day for a toddler I was far from done with this day.

I had finally found out what the glow meant. It was about magic affinities, at least that was the guess I had. Jasmine had 4 colors in her glow but 5 affinities. Hilda had 8 Colors but only one affinity.

I looked down on myself and inspected the Golden, black and the ever changing glow around me.

The question that raced through my mind was how to identify my own affinities.

I had no fitting comparison available. Of course there were a few orphans with the magic glow, but I couldn't just stand up and interrogate the older children about their magic affinities.

It wasn't just the fact that I was still a toddler. It was also highly impolite. I also had no clue how I should explain myself?

I would need to ask everyone, including the ones without magic affinity to put up an act. Or how should I explain that I knew that this person had a magic affinity while I would ignore everyone magicless. What would I do if I found one with a special affinity that would tell me that he had no affinity? Tell him that I knew he had one because I could see it?

I was on my own, the only person I could trust was Hilda and no one else deserved my trust.

So I began to think, I worked my brain to the brink to come up with suitable explanations and theories. After all, the first person to wield magic had to do the same without prior knowledge as well.

My thoughts brought me back into school. In Physiques and interstellar education it was always stressed out that energy could not be created it can only be transformed. Which meant that I would need to have some kind of fuel. This fuel was mana.

But where does the Mana come from? The air is filled with mana, but you can't just use this mana for your spells you could try but they would be pathetically weak, you would need to pull massive amounts of natural mana to get enough mana for a spell.

Because natural Mana is composed of all elements and you only have control over a small part of the actual mana. So where to find the fuel for your Spells?

Every Mage has a Mana-heart. a place where the mana his body refines gathers.

As long as even the tiniest amount of mana is inside this mana-heart the crystal will be able to evaluate your affinity. Some people have organs that gather mana in addition to the Mana-heart so called focus points. These organs are functioning as storage for a specific kind of mana. This happens when you have affinities that can not coexist with each other. Like time, space or gravity. If you have two of these affinities you will have 2 focus points. One for the time mana and one for space mana. I do not know exactly why!

The position of the mana-heart is random for every person. Even twins might have their mana-heart in two different places. If you have a magic affinity you can find it by focussing on your breathing and locate a place of unnatural power within yourself. That is the mana-heart. Never tell anyone where your mana-heart is. It is your most vulnerable weakness. Injuries at the mana-heart are deadly and those that aren't are nearly unhealable.

Do not be disheartened If you do not find your mana-heart at the first time it can take weeks or months to find it even when it is fully developed, at 14 Years of age. Yes, the mana-heart takes around 14 years to develop fully and be able to function at full capacity. If you find it sooner you should try and feed it mana little by little it strengthens the mana-heart. The earlier you begin the stronger it will get, but you have to watch out. Do not put too much in it at once, it will just release the excess mana into your body. If that happens you should start to exercise your body immediately or the mana might clock up your mana routes. A clocked mana route is like a blocked blood vessel. It hurts like hell and is nothing that goes away easily.

You will need to strengthen your mana routes until they are strong enough to crush the blockade. That takes serious time and effort and hurts until you finish, depending on the blockade in your route and the initial strength of the route. It can take forever.

The next problem will be that you will have different strengths in different parts of your mana routes. You have to watch out that your routes grow steady and symmetrically. Your route is only as strong as the weakest part of it. But I am already way too far ahead.

I was searching for my mana-heart the first time Hilda went to the theater. I didn't find it though, it took me years to find it. But I was also just a toddler so that mana heart was just developing.

But I am straying away from my story. It is harder than I thought to keep everything In order.

—

While Hilda went out for the evening I stayed back. I was frantically trying to accomplish something that I deem impossible, with my current wisdom. After all, I was barely a year old and had no clue what I was searching to begin with. I am convinced that my mana heart had not even taken shape yet. It was the same kind of situation I had with the training exercises that the dream visions of Jeremy. My body was not at a point where I could train like that.

I tried everything I could think of to find the source of my magic. Without any success. I tried until I fell asleep.

The next few days were peaceful. Until Rafal returned from his trip.

I would prefer to write more about mana and magic instead of recounting these memories. I really do not want to think about them at all.

Rafal was, insert every insult you know. Doesn't matter they will all fit. But I do not want to write pages over pages of insults that wouldn't be fair to you. You would have to read them all.

It filled me with true happiness to see that this bastard lost an eye on his trip outside. His right eye was gone. There was only a gaping eye socket where his eye had been. It was so good that I nearly chuckled at the side but I barely managed to suppress it.

It would have been ugly if he had noticed that I was mocking him. I was sure that if I had done that I would have been his dinner. Together with the rest of the orphanage. At least that was what I thought because I was certain that Hilda wouldn't have the strength to serve me to the ugly motherfucker.

I looked at him with my magic eyes, what I saw wasn't a glow but a mist that was blood red with total blackness in the center. The blackness wasn't just a round dot. It had a shape. The shape of something sleeping.

What happened next was something I wouldn't have believed if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

Rafal initiated the usual ritual with Hilda. Everytime he took a bite of human Hilda offered the sleeping something twitched, and part of the blood red mist gathered inside of it. To be honest it scared the shit out of me. I had no Idea what it meant. Nowadays I know what it meant and it still sends shivers down my spine when I think about it.

It is also important to notice that with every bite he took his posture relaxed as if it was smoothing his pain, or feeding his addiction. After he had introduced today's victim, and consumed his heart another unusual thing happened.

He began to talk, he told hilda why he was gone for so long.

This was the day where I learned the truth about Rafal's service as a noble.

He was a noble of the True Knight Rank. He served the crown as a commanding officer of the mage hunter. He was gone for so long because in the North of the Kingdom there had been cases of civil unrest led by overly ambitious Nobles.

He and his squad were sent to solve this problem. They did.

I will never understand how he could talk about slaughtering whole families with a smile on his face. The fact that he ate another human while he talked made it even worse.

He happily talked about how they had punished the Count and his barons for the betrayal. How they had killed everyone and everything alive, before they burned the mansions to ashes. The provided details do not want to be repeated.

The worst part of the story was how he described what they did to the women, Hilda had been pale as he started and fainted as he came to that point.

"I had expected her to be stronger by now," was the last comment Rafal left behind.

After that he just left with his men and returned to his normal schedule.