Wisp Spawning

If the ritual took place at ten in the evening, then the first wisp was born at around two in the morning. Most of the others stayed up anxiously waiting with me to see the results of the experiment, but after this recent hike and the excitement of the experience itself I was the only person awake at midnight. After having spent hours sitting beside a fire meditating to pass the time, I was more than grateful just for some results.

The birth of the wisp was a soundless ripple of air within the array, one second the visible haze of mixed mana was contracting inward and the next it seemed to swell out. Then, from inside, a vague light seemed to shine dimly as it moved about low to the water. The color of it was distinctly white like the average wisp but was tinged with a pale green.

The average wisp was a pure white entity, but the presence of green in this one's body was probably a sign of being aligned with some element. It could have been wind or something earthen, but I had no way of knowing until it came out of the haze and even then I had no cares. It was not the kind of wisp I wanted.

Despite the fact that wisps naturally floated about, it required expending actual magic energy in order for them to rise more than a few feet off of the ground and thus I had little to worry about for it flying away. Likewise, because all of the lines and all but one of the points in the array were made with my magic the wisp was too scared to approach anything but Gryn's pile of rocks.

Which, of course, led the wisp right to me.

Even within the mana field I could have simply reached out and snatched the creature, but this was my first time actually seeing and experiencing these creatures. I wanted to study them myself for a little while. This wisp in particular has some interesting factors.

Its alignment seemed somewhere crossed between life energy and earth energy, giving it the pale green glow that characterized it. Like other wisps, though, its 'body' was a haze similar to that filling the mana field that rolled and roiled like smoke billowing up in the air. The only difference between it and the common wisps I had read about were its color and the fact that lit blinked out like a firefly blinked on.

Once the wisp found its way out of the mana field, I trapped it within my will and walked right up to it where I reached out my hand and somewhat hesitantly poked it. Of course, my finger went right through its intangible body, but the air within its presence was more then ten degrees colder than the air around me. In fact, it carried an electric chill similar to a shudder running down one's spine.

Wondering if any of the others would want a wisp that was connected to life and healing magic, I decided not to farm this little guy and instead reached into its mana with my own. Wisps lacked intelligence and thus lacked a real consciousness, but as I reached in I could feel the flicker of impulses such as fleeing and hiding.

It almost felt like my own fight or flight reflexes were being triggered.

Exerting my will directly on the foreign magic after a few moments of studying its impulses, I replace its instinctive fear responses with a single line of meditative 'lack of thought'. This immediately calmed the wisp to the point where its impulses no longer triggered. From there, it was as simple as setting an alternating loop of trance-like lack of thought and the idea of exhaustion before the wisp simply settled on the ground.

If not for the fact that it was a living light that blinked off and then back on every once in a while, I might have thought I killed it. However, no matter what I did around it, the wisp simply remained little more than an inch or so off of the ground. This wisp was already as good as owned.

Another fluctuation in the mana field took place less than an hour later, this one giving birth to a much brighter but more common plain white light. After having satisfied my curiosity with the first variant wisp, I simply waited until the one left the circle before crushing it with raw mana. The light of its body went out and seemed to vaporize into a fine dust that trickled down to the ground like water.

This dust was immediately pulled from the air before it even neared the ground, finding its way into a small glass bottle in my hand. The stardust left behind by the wisp had a faint glow to it that would have been stronger if not for the fire and the mana field. In fact, with enough of it, one could probably make a nightlight of galling expense.

My bottle the size of a small jam jar was only filled a few centimeters from the single wisp, but that was fine. The fact that one was born at all meant this venture would be profitable. I even had different bottles prepared for different alignments.

The only thing I spent in creating the spawning ground was my own energy, so everything gained could be seen as profit.

Whether because the field and its concentration was too small or because my mash was not potent enough I could not tell, but it seemed like my experimental spawning ground was only strong enough to birth a single wisp every hour. If we aimed to spend a week here, we could probably make a small fortune in stardust.

The only problem was that I did not intend to spend a week of my life camping here when our dried meat supply was starting to run low. The mana field would need to be fed another mash tomorrow.

Most of the wisps that spawned that night and morning were the common white lights, but another variant with orange and brown coloring to it like bloody clay was born. Once it came within research reach, I was able to identify its elements as a combination of earth and fire elements. Since this was the only other variant and somebody might want its affinities for their own, I made this one sleep beside the first.

By the time the sun started to rise around the side of the mountain, my jar of stardust for base wisps was almost a third full of glowing stardust that only grew brighter as more was added. It seemed like the stardust, even though it came from multiple entities, conducted its energies altogether as if the dust all came from the same source. This led me to wonder if storing the stardust from different variants would cause conflict between opposing energies like fire and water.

As the sun rose, however, our area of the valley darkened from the shadow of the overbearing mountain blocking the sun. We were surrounded on nearly all sides by hills of varying degrees and sizes, so it would not be until at least noon when the sun reached its zenith that we would be illuminated.

This was something I had hoped for because, even though night was the time of darkness, shadows were the prime source of darkness element. My hope was that, after a night without the appearance of a shade wisp, the darkness of the day would heavily influence the alignment of the mana field.

Of course, if this did not help the way I wanted, I could seek out sources of darkness element on my own to increase the literal dark matter of my mash. Once the others started waking up, I would have to leave regardless in order to find more materials for the mash anyway.

Hopefully, Gryn's magic would be enough to capture and contain wisps until I returned as long as he did not overly exhaust himself.

Gryn, thankfully, was the first person to wake up an hour after I had let the fire burn out. Luckily for him, he sat up rubbing his eyes just in time to sense the fluctuation of my mana field spawning another wisp. Eyes wide in joy and surprise, Gryn bolted to his feet and rushed toward the edge of the field to look in at where a faintly crackling blue light was flitting about.

Unlike the other wisps so far, this variant seemed to be much faster and would leave an arc or two in its wake after passing through the water. It did not even have to leave the mana field for me to identify its electric affinity. Unlike the others, though, this wisp seemed content to remain in the mana field.

Reaching into the mana field with my magic, I soon drag the wisp out for fear that its alignment would affect the next spawns and hypnotized it into sleeping with the others. Once the lightning wisp was settled, I gave Gryn my current jar of stardust and said, "I need to find materials for the mash, the array isn't strong enough yet."

"It still works!" He retorted excitedly, hunkering down to study the 'sleeping' wisps I had off to the side of our camp. "Wait until mom hears about this, she's going to be screaming like a kettle after she learns you figured out how to spawn wisps. Just think of all the alchemy and enchantment ALL of us could do if you set up an array like this at home."

Shaking my head with a quick shrug, I argue, "The conditions at home are not good enough for these kinds of results. The water itself is rich in mana, as are the surroundings. Even if we put a pool in the yard and I added mash to it constantly, we would only see one or a few wisps every couple of days if not every week. This estimate includes the spirit fruit tree, by the way."

Nodding his head in acceptance of the lower quality lottery we would be setting up, Gryn asks, "How long do you think it will take to fill up this jar? What we have right now is already worth a few silver coins."

"My goal is one jar of plain stardust for every day we spend here," I reply after a quick calculation based on the current spawning rate. "However, once I get back from hunting, that's going to change. Dramatically."

Giving me a sidelong glance from around the jar of stardust, Gryn says, "You're not planning on going out alone, are you? If mom ever found out I let you go off and do anything alone, we'd never be allowed to come back out here."

Sighing in an exaggerated fashion, I say, "Honestly, Gryn, having any of you with me would just slow me down. You less than the others, but I'd still be slowed by having to worry about someone else. If I was alone, all of my energy could be spent on escape rather than dividing my attention between fighting and protecting. Besides, anything out there that could threaten me would consider the rest of you a snack."

I could tell from the look on his face that he hated the fact I was right, but facts were facts and he could not argue against this one.

Not only would it be easier on me to be alone, but anything of a dangerous level to me would probably require the entire group to bring down. Whether it be in stats or magic, I was undeniably the strongest member of our party and all of us were still just kids. He had no choice but to let me go- keeping me here would minimize everyone's profits.

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