16. Fire Mana

16. Fire Mana

Morgana and her team had made a decent amount of copper from their first delve. But a 'decent amount of copper' wasn't truthfully all that much money, not for her purposes, both immediate and future. Even a job as simple as carving grooves into a slab of metal cost a fair portion of her cut, since the time of a reputable craftsman was an expensive thing, and all prices were inflated inside an adventuring town thanks to the freely flowing coin spawning from the dungeon.

At the same time, the delve had been fairly low risk, with Morgana easily turning their enemies into smoking husks. So there was always tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, to earn more.

Luckily, the blacksmith at the Order of the Black Anchor Guild—Ardent, his name was—had no other pressing jobs, so he had been willing to take care of Morgana's request right there on the spot, despite the late hour. She had resigned herself to waiting several days for the collection plate's engravings to be completed. But not every day involved waking up penniless in a foreign world; sometimes, things worked out in her favor.

After finishing carving the grooves, Ardent handed her a small pouch filled with the metal's shavings. She would be able to melt the metal down and reforge the entire plate, should she need to change its element type at some point in the future.

It was late when Morgana got back to the guild. She set up the collection plate and relevant paraphernalia by the fireplace, the fire burning idly beside it, then promptly collapsed in bed. Sleep claimed her as fast as it ever had, despite her racing mind and contemplations of the future. A day's worth of adventuring had taken a physical toll that couldn't be ignored; she was asleep within minutes.

The next morning, after breakfast, Vesper inquired behind the strange set-up.

"So," she asked curiously, leaning down with her hands on her knees, peering at the metal plate and the small vial beneath it. "You got it working, then?"

In the eight-hour interim, only a handful of bright orange droplets had condensed and fallen into the glass vial. Again, Morgana was working with the lowest-tier collection plate and a single medium-sized fireplace, which was far from an ideal set-up. So collection was agonizingly slow.

"It seems so," Morgana said, grabbing the thin vial to study. She swished the container side to side, watching fire mana swirl around. It sloshed around and popped like lava, an almost supernaturally bright orange.

"You can cast spells with that?" Vesper asked.

"As any mage could."

"And what's mage mean to you, anyway? Cause it's obviously not the same as how we know it."

Morgana paused, then turned to consider Vesper. She slotted the vial back underneath the collection plate.

"At least where I'm from," Morgana said carefully, "people use the word mage as a title for someone who's received proper training in magic. No different from any other profession, really. Just a very stringent education."

"Huh. And who can learn?"

"Anyone."

"It doesn't take some kind of special talent?"

"It's not genetic, if that's what you mean."

"Genetic?"

Morgana paused. Did she not know the word, or was she asking something else? She played it safe in her answer. "It's not passed down from parents to children. Not something inherent within you. Any person has the potential to wield the arcane."

"Ah." Vesper considered this for a second. "So, like, I could learn, if I wanted to?"

"With significant practice, yes," Morgana said. She hesitated. "But as I said, it's difficult. Very difficult. And a costly skill to train on top of that."

"Takes a solid slab of copper to even get started," Vesper said wryly, glancing at the collection plate. "So yeah, I bet. Still, that's crazy. That anyone can do it, where you're from."

Morgana felt she might be misrepresenting the situation, even if what she had said so far wasn't wrong in any objective sense. "I might be understating just how hard it is. This...System of yours hand-holds you through the whole process. Invocation happens practically by accident. The mana throws itself at you. In proper spellcasting, even with a brilliant tutor, it could take weeks before you're able to sense even the easiest forms of mana. Not to mention actually invoking a spell."

"Easiest? Some are harder?"

"Yes. Different mana types are more...amenable to the idea of being used, I guess you could say. Fire mana, for example, is much easier to use than lightning mana. Which in turn is magnitudes easier than gravitational. Or spatial. Or...you get the picture."

"Huh," Vesper said. She was quiet for a few moments as she considered these fantastical claims. "Could you teach me, do you think?"

"The Ether? What's that?"

Morgana paused. "It's the general term for the latent magic pervading the air. The Ether is everywhere, at all times, all around us."

"There's mana sitting in the air?"

Morgana scrunched her nose. This was what she had meant by not being a good teacher. She had never needed to explain certain concepts before, nor even had them explained to her. Especially topics as fundamental as the Ether. It was like having 'the air' explained to her.

"Not exactly. It's not mana, per se, the energy suffusing the Ether is more like...well, raw energy," she finished lamely.

"Didn't you already call mana 'raw energy'?"

Morgana winced. "Mana is real raw energy. Physical. Usable. That a mage can draw upon. But the mana, or energy, suffusing the Ether is just...there. Inaccessible. Almost conceptual?" She shook her head; that was a poor explanation.

"Ah," Vesper said with a sage nod. "I don't understand at all."

Morgana snorted. "That's mostly my fault. It's a strange concept. Just accept what I'm saying at face value—the Ether is all around us, all the time, filled with a latent sort of mana. In fact, the Ether is how we gather mana. When I said certain rituals produce certain mana types through a collection plate, what's actually happening is the ritual is converting the Ether into a specific type of usable mana. For example, the Ether will react to a raging fire—I suppose something conceptually close to chemically—and bits and pieces will start to morph into fire mana, suspended within the Ether. It'll convert back if left alone, but if you have collection devices set up, you can pull those mana droplets out before they're gone."

"That sounds," Vesper said, "like absolute nonsense. Not that I don't believe you." She tilted her head. "Where'd you learn about all this, anyway?"

"It's not uncommon knowledge where I'm from. So I just learned it as a matter of growing up." Though it was also not common knowledge, exactly. Definitely, a random person pulled off the street couldn't explain the process of spellcraft, or concepts like the Ether, in as much detail as Morgana, clumsy as her descriptions were.

To be fair, she couldn't explain how to turn ore into metal besides 'melt it down.' Most people didn't know much about any given trade besides their own, and magic was a trade like any other. Though also an art and a science.

"And where are you from, exactly?" Vesper asked suddenly. "Val'Narath?"

Morgana twitched in surprise, before remembering she had given Vesper that name when they'd first met.

"Yes. Val'Narath."

"Where is that?"

"In relation to here? I'm honestly not sure." Which wasn't a lie, if Morgana was admittedly hiding relevant details. "I've no clue where in the world I am. I've never even heard of 'the Kingdom of Liren'. So how could I explain where my home is?"

"Hm," Vesper said. "Fair."

Vesper seemed like she was going to keep questioning her about that, but Morgana continued speaking before she could. She didn't particularly want to explain the whole 'other-world' theory—which, considering the overwhelming evidence, might be more than a theory—even if she trusted Vesper. Morgana was still coming to terms with her fantastic circumstances herself.

"As I was saying, you need to learn to seize hold of mana, and also the spell formula, so that you can apply the mana to the formula, and thus begin invocation."

"Invocation. That means something specific?"

"It's where the formula manifests into the air. The stage that comes after funneling the proper amount and type of mana into the spell construction. I suppose the stages have specific names, but nobody beyond novices refers to them in such a stringent way. It's an organic process that we just do, by this point." The complicated discussions of magic requiring years of academics that Morgana had undergone at the Institute were in spell construction theory and other advanced subjects, not the relatively straightforward—if admittedly difficult—process of casting itself. She shrugged. "So, I might misuse a term here and there. I haven't discussed the basics of spellcasting in...a while."

"Formula, design, construction," Vesper said. "Those all mean the same thing, right?"

"Yes. More or less."

"Figured." Vesper rubbed her hands. "Kay, then how do I do it? How do I see mana to, uh, grab ahold of it?"

Morgana considered.

"First," she said, scooting closer to Vesper. "Put your hands in mine."