The Mana Array

The top of the ridge was mostly bare of plants besides tall grasses, allowing for a relatively unhindered view of the surrounding landscapes as we neared the top. Once there, we could clearly see the smoke stacks from the other camps. As well, we could see out over most of the forestry back the way we came.

Being a few hundred feet off of the ground had its benefits. Visually, anyway, even if I needed to it was impossible to reach more than a thread of my consciousness over on hundred feet in any direction. With such a meager substance that could only reach about a hundred yards, I could vaguely feel the vibrations of sound waves.

Being able to simply channel energy into my eyes allowed me to pick up magic and even vague but large life signatures in the distance. There were actually a surprising number of magical living entities among the treetops in the outer valley between a neighboring foothill a few miles away. However, from their gatherings it was obvious that these birds that lived higher up in the mountains and only came down to hunt.

They had some values, being inherently magical birds, but their abundance meant they could be acquired at nearly any time in the right circumstances and were not worth going out of our way for.

Arrows fletched with their feathers supposedly conducted natural wind element to fly farther, harder, and straighter, but that was about it unless you were looking to breed familiars.

From the initial crest of the earthen valley wall, I could see the results of several tributary falls with which to plan for our destination. Luckily, there were no signs of anyone else on this side of the valley so I had my pick of the lot. There were, however, two more camps than originally counted on the opposite side.

Deciding that the more time we had at the same location the better, I chose the closest falls that only looked a few hours away. Sadly, my own distance estimated with magically enhanced vision was off by quite a bit and it was not until the end of the day that we got there. By then, the contents of my ruck were so rip I fears contaminating the hive with almost tangible ambient energy.

The plastic sack containing my experiment not only radiated a myriad of different energies and even a few colors, it also filled the air around me with the stench of fetid meat and compost. After lugging it through the hot sun in my rucksack, I found myself walking alone a few dozen feet ahead of the others. I did not mind this, though, because it gave less distraction.

Even if I could not stretch my senses out into the world in search of what I needed in living material, I could always direct all my my consciousness into the ground around me for other forms of concentrated magic. Some stones randomly become enriched during formation or through chance encounters in their existence, one stone could become more, or even the remains of magical creatures in the dirt could give off signatures.

There were a few odds and ends along the way, such as some petrified wood or what seemed like lightning glass from its elemental signature, but only things of import like those were worth the expenditure of energy to drag up.

Quite a few of them also existed lower in the sides of the ridge and were relatively inaccessible.

Even though the others wanted to make camp at the top of the ridge overlooking a two-tiered waterfalls, I needed everybody's help down at the bottom to get things ready. The runoff feeding the fall was a relatively small stream only fifteen or so feet across, but it was frigidly cold and had eroded the earth away into a large steppe below.

In the middle of the falls was a large outcropping of a different type of stone from its surroundings like two different kinds of granite. Most of the outcropping had been bore away by the water and one side angled away from decades of overflow. About twenty feet below was a large but shallow gravelly pool of pristine clear water.

From the size of the naked stone steppe that stretched for a few dozen yards in either direction from around the pool, this place suffered from occasional flash floods of surprising intensity. With all of this high pressure and traveling water, I would hopefully be able to collect the different stones I needed. I could really use any old rocks, but I wanted things that already had mana of their own.

After an hour spent getting to the bottom I had everybody but Gryn set about making camp near the far side of the steppe that angled away into the valley with the seepage from the pool. Gryn's job was to go around the pool looking for anything with a magical signature and gathering it up in one spot for me to come down to.

My job was to magically hop out to the middle tier of the fall and start getting things ready for tonight. My overall plan was to make a giant rune or array covering the area with the purpose of gathering and concentrating magical energy. In order to do that, I would mostly use a large-scale transmutation, but the centerpiece of this array was going to be here in the middle tier.

Twenty-percent of my magic was used up in but a few moments as I transmuted the rock wall behind the fall, producing a shelf of granite to redirect the flow of water away from my work area. Ten percent more was used to break away small bricks of granite and then heat them to the point of growing brightly in the dimming twilight. After placing them carefully with magic around the bottom of the cistern, the large cauldron of granite was soon boiled over and frothing from the intense heat.

Into this I unceremonious dropped the grass-plastic sack of offal and herbs, which quickly darkened with a variety of colors into a thickening brown. While I had tried to use enough curatives to counteract the acids and toxins of the compost, there was not much life in the pool below to worry about anyway.

There were not even of the small lotus-like manalily flowers floating about.

This was actually a slight rain on my parade, but I could make do with a visibly rich still-water pool.

Using up more of my magic to scale the fall by transmuting holds around my hands and feet, I look down and survey the small landscape we were working with. Using the cooking cauldron as the center, I could place a common icon in magic that represented the main elements in the form of a multi-pointed star. All we had to do right now was make the points of the star.

A few yards out from the far end of the pool, Gryn had gathered a small pile of naturally enriched minerals. If I was planning to actually use the elements in the array, I would need to use samples of them such as the lightning glass I had uncovered around noon. However, the goal was to simply concentrate and maybe even amplify magic within the area which did not require specified elements.

Because I could also make the stones for this part of the experiment, I spent almost fifty percent of my remaining energy transmuting small blocks of self-enriched rock. The first three blocks were placed directly upstream the same distance from the falls as Gryn's. The next six went out to either side between the far end and the falls before another set went to either side of the falls.

Climbing down taxed most of the energy I had left, forcing me to take a vial of my mother's homemade mana potion from my pack. The average mana potion is sold in a baby food sized jar and the entire thing was meant to be consumed. My mother's vials were the size of an adult's index finger and had both the usual recovery affect and prolonged replenishing.

With this, I was more than ready to set the final two points of the array before attempting the hardest part of all. Even though the other points were made from my own magic, the start of the array had to be made form natural or wild mana or else my magic would be targeted. If I started the experiment with one of the other points, I would be rendered unconscious immediately and probably be mana burnt.

Burning mana was like burning muscle, you lose strength and ability whenever you work out too much too hard.

In order to connect and start the array, I had to transmute the ground under and around Gryn's pile into its own substance of rock to isolate it from the areas within and without. From this point, I had to continue transmuting the same sediment compound to each of the ensuing point both below and above the falls. When this was done, the transmuted stone began to glow faintly to show that it was conducting mana.

The face that the blocks and this pile of rocks did not dim meant that they had only been used at the start, the array was now drawing in mana from outside. Because the array was basically just a mana sense, all of the excess magic drawn in was sucked into the middle until a vague haze or mist like fog could be seen around the falls after only a few minutes.

It was time to open the floodgates.

Even though the array itself had no magical distinction or direction, the vat of toxic alchemy and enchanting I had brewing in the middle of the fall covered most of the elemental spectrum with the different types of energies produced.

Inside such a concentrated mana field and forced to remain in the boundaries, the ambient magic would be tainted with the mass of rampant energy being fed into the pond. The cauldron itself was still steaming and faintly bubbling, but this soon ended once I connected the cauldron to all of the outer points in the array.

Once the reach of my transmutation was in place, I simply crumbled the shelf redirecting water to allow my cauldron to be overflowed with mountain magic water.

The dark reddish brown and chunky black brack that flowed out of the cauldron was hard for even me to look at, and after a few moments the entire pool was tinged with it. Even to the point that we could follow the vague trail of muck down the slope from the steppe. However, like the water that was being mixed with my magic mash, the condensed mana in the air rising from its collective water also soon became tainted in color.

"Okay, so… what did we just do?" Gryn asks uncertainly from where he and the others stood a few yards behind me and away from the start of the array. The firelight from their camp eerily did not shine on the mana in the array, taking away the earthly mist appearance of the mana and rendering it just a little more mysterious.

"Wisps are created when large amounts of ambient mana are gathered in one place, this region is known for spawning lots of wisps around the waterways," I explain briefly but lengthily. "This rune we made sucks in surrounding magic and concentrates it inside, this will hopefully spawn wisps for us to hunt as they come out.

"That nastiness that makes me not want to go in to fetch them is a concoction of light, dark, life, death, fire, lightning, water, earth, and air elements," I continue to explain while wondering if the mana would darken to the point of blocking our view inside. "This will hopefully cause elementally aligned wisps and variations to spawn. What I'm looking for, specifically, is a shade or dark wisp. Wisps are an unintelligent and weak species of magic creatures, but mages can mage use of entities of pure mana.

"Whether you wanna drain it dry, house it in your body to keep you healthy, raise it into a full-on spirit to bring to life with necromancy, or just collect 'em all, wisps are one of the easiest creatures to familiarize and have the most varied supportive uses. When house in your body, a regular wisp can raise your mental stats and elemental wisps can increase your affinities, but a shadow wisp will consume negative or offensive magics as well as boosting your physical stats."

"I can start a fire with magic, can I make a familiar?" Eman asks curiously, honestly being a fairly well accomplished non-mage as far as I could tell. It only took him a few seconds to get a good cooking sized fire going.

"Anyone can, as long as their mental or physical stats are greater than the target and they can establish a magical connection. You would probably need to use your body to channel energy into one," I advise at last, wondering what kind of wisp he would be partial to. "Although, while it is not impossible to have multiple familiars, you guys probably won't have enough power to contract more than one or two wisps.

"Make them count," I advise again, surprised by the way the others soon got excited and started discussing elements. Little did I know, having real magical abilities and skills were things these kids could not hope for until adulthood when they could acquire it through money because they lacked natural inclination or resources.

Having any familiar that could do anything at all was probably the be-all-end-all as far as they were concerned right now.

Not long after that, their plans were to immediately copy my own. Literally. Everybody wanted to have a shade just like me with only side thoughts about an elementally aligned second familiar if they could manage it.

This neither surprised me nor bothered me, and I honestly kind of enjoyed it. However, the spawning of wisps itself was still an unknown and if it worked there certainly would not be an assured amount of eggs in any basket. With a sudden contest for the goods I wanted, I had to take extreme measures.

I called dibs then and there.

The first dark wisp to be spawned was mine, the next was Gryn's, and then everybody else could decide their turns. In the same fashion, the first of any elemental wisp was mine by rights of having created this entire situation.

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