1 Chapter 1 // Questions

POV Manning

There was nothing but darkness. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, everything was blindingly bright before quickly fading back to darkness. I heard clashes of sound, thunderous and deafening, and then no sound at all.

Where was I? Who was I? Come to think of it, what am I?

I was in the dark. I was so, so, so small. I was terrified. I spent several hours struggling to move, straining to see where I was. I felt trapped and suffocated. I did not remember anything before waking up, but part of me instinctively knew that the situation I was in was wrong. I was a prisoner in the dark. Paralyzed.

As I lie there contemplating my new existence (of nothing), I felt something beginning to stir in the dark, straining against the prison. I was excited at first, to not be alone in this endless vast of nothingness. However, in a fit of sudden realization, I realized that if there wasn't even enough room for me to move, surely there couldn't be enough space for anyone else.

The flashes of light started up again, chaos outside of my hearing and sight. This was what awoke me from my sleep in the first place. Again and again, I felt something poking at the back of my mind. Something I could almost see but then I couldn't, as if it were just a fleeting feeling, gone as soon as it arrived. I was quickly distracted from the stirring, and redirected my attention towards this light that did not help me see, and the sound that I could hear but could not hear.

I tried my hardest and strained to see whatever this was, if only to catch a glimpse of anything. All of my senses felt muffled. Dull. I just needed to know that there was something outside of this prison, somewhere I could get to. Yet, just as suddenly as I had awoken, I found that I had no energy to stay awake, and I was asleep.

I awoke again to a push. I still did not know where I was, but I now knew what I was. I was being pushed, and I did not like it one bit.

So I shoved back as hard as I could and felt a resistance, somebody or something straining back against me. The stranger seemed to have awoken, and was fighting for its own space inside of this coffin that we were trapped in. After what felt like hours and hours of pushing, the battle of wills seemed to just fizzle out from both parties at the same time, much to my relief. I'd started to develop a pounding headache and it was only getting worse the longer we struggled. As I relaxed I felt something akin to a pop, and the static that I'd been hearing slowly became something audible.

"Have you finally stopped freaking out?" The voice sounded familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. It was feminine, sounded almost as exhausted as I felt, and very annoyed. "I should have guessed you were here with me."

She knew where we were? Knew who I was? "Who are you? Where are we? What's going on, and why can't I move or see anything?" Once I started down that line of thought, I had a hard time containing all the questions that came pouring out.

"My name is Cara-" she began, and then hesitantly, "Don't you remember what happened, M-Manning? How we got here?"

It was at this point that I realized that I wasn't hearing her per se, but her voice was inside of my head. While that was extremely disorienting, and warranted further questioning, there was something far more pressing that I'd just been enlightened to. Manning. It felt right, and I knew. I am a Manning. She is a Cara. Something must have happened to us, and the Cara knew more than I did. She shoved me. Again.

"Knock that off! If you know where we are you just tell me already, and we need to figure out how to get out of here, and what about my eyes and arms and legs. I can't feel them…" I trailed off.

"We, uh, we were attacked by a wizard, Manning. He trapped us inside something called a Soul Gem. We don't have any limbs anymore. Just concentrate and imagine opening your eyes, you should be able to see our surroundings. Or at least you would, if we had any surroundings that was."

So I tried just that.

Relaxing a bit, I opened my 'eyes', and yet I still saw nothing. No wait, it wasn't nothing. I could see in every direction, and in every direction was… oh wait. Yeah I guess it was nothing after all. Our prison seemed to be in some sort of crevice. That's my assumption at least, I could only see two walls and a lot of nothing above and below me. It was pitch black, except for a light (hah) glow coming from... coming from me!

I was some sort of black rock that was chained up. No, that's not right. I seemed to be the gem set into a necklace. And I'd been dropped somewhere. And I was glowing.

Right, more questions it is. As I prepped my next barrage of inquiries, Cara began speaking again.

"Look, I'm sorry I was pushing against you, but we need to get bigger or escape. There is almost no room in here for us and I am getting claustrophobic. Could you please just help out?"

"How?"

"Just focus on your Mana and try to make a bubble around yourself, us, whatever. Then push it outwards"

There were a few seconds of silence as I attempted to process that bit of information.

"Mana..?"

"Do you ever stop with the questions?" I could feel her frustration at this point, vibrant and violent. Once again there was this awkward silence in their little crack. "Sorry, I forgot you were just an uneducated forester." So that's how that was. She must be some sort of city learned- wait, what is a city? Doesn't matter. If she wanted to be combative, however-

"Oh don't be like that, I didn't mean it that way. I can feel your frustration and I'm sure you can feel mine too, and neither of our frustrations are going to get us out of this. Try this, focus on our surroundings and you should be able to feel an energy. It's the energy that makes up everything in the world, and it present in anything and everything. That energy is ambient Mana. Pull it into yourself and then push at the inside shell of our pendant with it."

What in the world is she talking about, there was no energy around them, I can 'see' that much. Was she maybe talking about our light on the wall? I cautioned against asking my particularly aggressive roommate another question however, and decided I would try to figure this one out on my own.

I closed my 'eyes' again and concentrated, trying desperately to feel some sort of energy. From the way she described it I thought it would probably feel like the heat from the sun, or the breeze on a winter day.

Nothing. I still felt absolutely nothing. Yet still, I was cautious of asking for more help from Cara. She seemed to have a lot of problems of her own to deal with right now, and I wanted to try and figure this out on my own anyways. I'd show her who was an uneducated forester.

I decided to try another approach. Instead of searching for this Mana, I tried to feel nothing. I closed my eyes and blocked out all thoughts of my current imprisonment, of the warm sun, and fresh breeze that I'd probably never feel again. I basked in this new void of thoughts that I'd created and just, listened.

Slowly I tuned into a buzzing just outside of my void; in the bits of soil and rock. I opened my 'eyes' and stared intently at the hard surface around myself, attempting to locate the source of the buzzing I could feel on a spiritual level. As I peered into the depths of the rock, the cracks that ran alongside the wall, the perfect smoothness and the imperfections, I came to an understanding. The mana wasn't in fact a heat or a breeze, but rather it felt like stability. It was unchanging, yet always changing. It has always been all around me, even if I had never sensed it before.

This must be the mana that Cara was talking about it.

Trying as hard as I could I pulled at this sensation, and it worked! The earth around me yielded a small trickle of its buzzing, which stringed toward and then through the casing of my prison, directly into my core. It tasted like a spring morning after the rain. Like a storm brewing on the horizon. Like a long day of tending a garden.

It tasted magnificent. I was still not happy about waking up trapped in this prison, but at least something good had happened. Apparently it was a day of revelations, because I came to another one.

It wasn't enough. I wasn't exactly sure what hungry was, but in that moment I knew that I was both a Manning and a Hungry. Moreover, I needed more of this delicious Mana that I'd been missing out on my entire existence. So I pulled, and pulled, and pulled.

I'm not proud to admit that I lost myself in the process, absorbing as much Mana as I could. I forgot where I was, what I was doing. I forgot that I was. All that existed was this feeling. I was a tree, standing in a forest for hundreds of years just basking in the sunlight.

"STOP!" a shrill scream brought me out of my stupor. Oh yeah, that must be the Cara, I should thank her for teaching me how to eat this delicious meal. "If you just keep pulling we are probably going to die. We don't have the capacity for this much, look at all the cracks in our gem that you caused just now. You can't just absorb the mana, you need to cycle it and purify it or use it."

As hesitant as I was to ask and risk incurring her question based wrath, this whole cracking and dying thing she had mentioned sounded a little more terrifying at that point in time. I also decided it wasn't a time to be prideful, and I should just ask her what she meant by that instead of doing something risky.

"Right. Umm, I figured out how to get the mana. Thanks for that by the way, it tastes really good. But what do you mean by cycle it?"

"Focus inward by 'closing your eyes'. Envision us, but not as a solid rock, as a bubble." She sounded more tired than she did annoyed this time, and with a mental sigh that I somehow heard, she continued her impromptu lesson, "Your mana is the air that fills that bubble, and you need to spin in around as fast as you can. As you mentally cause speed press it against the shell of the bubble and expand it."

Once again her answer left me with more questions than before, but since it worked out last time I figured I'd just give it a try and ask another question if it didn't work out. Eyes still closed, I did my best to envision our cage like she was talking about. I could see the pendant in my mind, a tiny oval black rock with a silver chain that dangled into the abyss, and tried to concentrate on pushing it. The longer I thought about it however, the more it just felt wrong. The bubble imagery wasn't working for me, and for some reason unknown to me I felt like it was because of the shape. Something was instinctually wrong with it.

In my mind I brought up the oval again and I molded it, treating it like it was clay rather than a bubble. I spent a long time pushing at the far ends and mentally rolling the stone until it was a sphere in my head space instead of an oval. I followed up by applying pressure until it started to look a little bit more like what I felt it should, like the rock that I could feel in my soul.

I squeezed and pushed at the outsides, while at the same time I pushed and shoved from the inside of the oval. Just as I finally felt it snap into the shape I felt in my heart, something changed.

The sudden shift in shape caused the clasp for the silver chain to snap, sending it tumbling down out of sight, and my new home almost doubled in size. Instead of an oval I was now a proper multi-faceted gemstone. I had one face on the top, another on the bottom, and two rings of 6 equal-sized facets between.

There was a loud snap, and suddenly Cara and I were not so alone anymore. There was a small creature in front me, glaring down at me over a clipboard. He was probably five or six times bigger than my newly sized gemstone, had two large wings folded behind him, and looked a little annoyed to be here.

"Good existence, young dungeon core. I am UI, one of the Universal Interpreters, and you do not have an appointment today." His accusatory tone was a little confusing to me, but I was stunned speechless at the fact that he had appeared from nowhere so I was unable to ask what I'd done wrong.

"Let's see here. Hmm, dual-affinities. Or, wait, are there two souls in that core?" He leaned closer and squinted into the gemstone like he could actually see us. "That is… genuinely interesting. Tell me, which of the gods decided they were going to create their own dungeon? I'd like to figure out how they managed to shove two sapient souls into a gem like that. Or how they managed to create a dungeon outside the usual means at all."

"Huh?" I didn't really understand what was going on at all.

"How do we escape this Soul Gem? How do I get back into my body?" It seemed Cara had a couple questions of her own. Questions that, grudgingly, I admit were a bit more refined than mine.

The weird creature, fairy my brain was telling me but I wasn't sure why, smiled back down at us as it heard our voices. Not a pleasant smile though, more of a predatory smile that sent chills down my facets. "I'm not really authorized to answer those questions, young dungeon core. Cores? Core, there is only one gemstone here, silly me. We UIs are not supposed to have interactive conversations, those are for your companions to have. I am here to collect your affinity, or affinities in this case, and get a name for your dungeon. What are your names?"

"Manning." It came out smugly, but that wasn't really my intention. I was just happy to share my newly re-discovered name with someone.

"Cara."

"Hmm, Manning and Cara. Cara and Manning. Canning? No that's just silly, who ever heard of a canning dungeon. Mara, Manra, Carnning, Caraing, ugh this is so hard. Usually I just name the dungeon after the first thing I think of, but you two already have names and I want to make it feel more personal."

"What about Mana? That kind of sounds like Cara and Manning." I had to agree with Cara there, it sounded similar enough, but also-

"It's delicious too!"

The fairy gave our core another long look before continuing "…delicious, right. Well, Mana is already taken. The Mana Dungeon is one of the oldest dungeons if I recall correctly. Hmm. Oh! I've got it. You're The Caring Dungeon now. It's close enough and you seem like you really care for each other."

"What gave you that idea? We barely know each other!"

The little fairy ignored Cara's protests and scribbled something on his clipboard. "Right, well my job here is done. I am going to send out the beacon for local non-bonded, dungeon-eligible companions. Remember your questions for them, and don't forget, help is on the way!" There was another loud snap and the fairy had vanished again.

"Well now what do we do, Cara? I forgot to ask what a companion even is." It had been a very exhausting day for both of us.

"There isn't much we can do besides wait. I guess for now we should keep trying to cycle mana and see if we can get our core any larger. Its way to cramped in here and I can practically feel you pressing against me."

And so that is what we did. I ate more of that delicious Mana, and tried to expand. It was significantly more difficult now, but I tried anyways. Mana, Cycle, Push.

I was back in my little trance before I realized.