Chapter 47: 47. Mana and Quicksilver

Excerpt from Master Marvyil’s ‘Hyperconcentrating Mana For Personal And Commercial Use—The Marvyil Method.’

“... hypercondensation occurs at roughly a density of 14 to 35 eC when subjected to repeated pseudo-compressions, which may be achieved by hand or through the use of APC-integrated presses. The resulting mass (the ‘curd’ or ‘orb’) must undergo gravitic torsion via simple kinetic magics or mechanical equivalents to completely liquify into usable mana of a concentration of at least …”

—

After a quick bite of toast to quell Yenna’s hungry stomach—not to mention calm her nerves—the mage cleared the table in front of her as the others leaned in to watch. Having an audience might have dissuaded her back when she was a student of magic, still learning how to take hold of the ever-changing material of magic, but years of teaching students gave her a kind of confidence in this regard. Performing feats of spellcraft in front of others was something she did—had done, Yenna reminded herself—nearly every day. This was no different, even if it was an experiment with an unknown result performed at a noblewoman’s breakfast table.

Crystallising magic was paradoxically simple and frustratingly difficult at the same time. There have always been a plethora of methods available to even students of Arcane magic, some variants being tailor-made for specific circumstances and purposes. The true problem was the fact that magic does not want to be still, and it does not want to be predictable. The concept of solid magic was a kind of oxymoron—instead of aiming for perfect stillness, the average mage had to seek a compromise.

“First,” Yenna explained, feeling the need to play teacher as much for her own sake as everyone else’s, “I need to convert ambient magic into mana.”

“I think I’ve heard of that. It’s–” Mayi began to speak, only for Tirk to bounce up and interrupt.

“It’s magic water! You can see it, and it’s glowy, and it looks super tasty but you can’t drink it or it’ll make you really sick.”

Tirk made a face that gave Yenna the impression that this advice came from experience, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know when the boy had even had the opportunity.

“Erm, yes. It will only be mana for a time– uh, yes, I’ll need a vessel. This glass should be fine…?” Yenna looked over at Eone and took a tall glass cup from nearby. The captain merely shrugged.

“S’not my house! Go wild, Yenna!”

“A-Alright, then. I need six crystals, one of each of the six colours of magic. Lumale insisted that the examples should be pure, so I shall be using the Marvyil method to hyperconcentrate via– ahem. I shall demonstrate.”

Yenna held her hands over the top of the glass, palms up as though cupping water. The tips of her fingers twitched along to an unheard rhythm, the mage muttering under her breath as the space between her hands began to glow. Fuzzy wisps of magic began to form in the air, collecting into an indistinct orb in the cup of Yenna’s hands. Once her hand filled with the glowing magic, Yenna clapped her hands shut.

Her audience gasped as a burst of fog poured out across the table, leaving everything it touched glowing for a moment. Eone looked down at a glowing strip of bacon, sprinkled it with acid green jivi flakes, and put it into her mouth without a second thought.

When Yenna opened her hands, there was a tiny pearlescent bead floating where the orb had been. The mage ran her hands around it as though feeling the outline of some invisible barrier around it, poking and prodding here and there. Once satisfied, Yenna called more of the vague wisps, repeating her trick to reveal that the pearl of magic had doubled in size.

“What I have is a lump of condensed magic—if I stop concentrating on it, it will simply dissipate into the air.” As if to accentuate Yenna’s point, the hovering bead wobbled dangerously as she spoke. “The hard part is holding it while you work, like trying to convince a young student to listen to a long lecture.”

Several eyes fell on Tirk, who was picking his nose. Hirihiri plucked the offending digit out, leaving Jiin and Eone to laugh loudly. Yenna smirked, then gasped as the bead of magic started to wobble intensely. With a bit of concentration, she had it back to normal.

“Now, hyperconcentration occurs when the density of magic reaches a certain threshold, defined by the…” Yenna closed her eyes and nodded once. Repeating the process of condensing magic and clapping her hands shut, the mage continued making the little pearl bigger. “Yes, that’s a few years of magical theory I don’t have time to explain. Now, manafication.”

With a sphere of glowing magic the size of an eyeball floating between her hands, Yenna brought the tips of her fingers in like claws and twisted in opposite directions. The orb of magic resembled a towel being wrung out, an unusual, milky fluid dripping from it into the cup. As Yenna held her hands there, the white glow unravelled into liquid and flowed down.

“Looks like a shot of liqueur,” Eone remarked. “Think I had somethin’ like that in a fancy pub once! Ah, I’ll have to take you! Amazing drinks, and the women there are–”

“I-I’m going to continue the process now.” Yenna blushed. “The mana won’t last long in this state, but it’s stable enough for me to infuse with an element– no, a colour. I’ll start with what I know best—Joy.”

The leaf-green Colour was the easiest of the six for her to work with. Whipping wind whirled about Yenna’s hands, buffeting her long braid as it blew napkins off the table. With some precise hand movements and a few cleanly intoned words, Yenna constricted the green energy into a miniature tornado contained within the glass. It stirred up the mana, so much so that Yenna had to place a hand over the top to stop it from sloshing out. When the wind died down, the formerly milk-white mana had become a vivid green. Yenna lifted the cup and poured it onto the recess in her bracelet, the liquid solidifying into a spiralling gem the colour of emerald.

“Only got to do that five more times, eh?” Hirihiri chuckled. “Well, this breakfast might become lunch at that rate.”

“Ah.” Yenna nodded. “I was taking the process slowly—demonstration and all that. Here, I shall go faster.”

The chattering at the table hushed down. Hirihiri raised an eyebrow. “I was joking, mage. I didn’t think you could do it faster.”

“It’s quite simple, really. Except for the elemental infusion—my own addition, by necessity—the Marvyil method is rather efficient at what it does. The process is quite impressive to behold in a crystallisation workshop, though thoroughly necessary for the level of enchantment needed to sustain the wonders in the inner cities.” Yenna gave a smile, remembering the simplicity and convenience that magic afforded her in her time as a student. Quietly, she wondered if foreign cities had the luxuries of Aulpre’s capital—guess I’ll find out!

True to her word, Yenna picked up the pace. Her hands clapped shut over and over, keeping a steady rhythm until it was time to wring out the ball of magic—a process that Yenna found was rather annoying when she couldn’t turn one of her wrists. While the last batch of mana had taken Yenna several minutes, this one was done within the span of a single minute. Once again, the mage infused the milk-white fluid with a Colour.

Pride was a Colour that had snuck up on her. Yenna still remembered the feeling of losing control, the fear that overtook her and converted her feelings of pride into darker fears. The dark-tinge was an aspect of witchcraft she had been content to avoid actively engaging in, but part of her knew she would have to face it eventually. The pride Yenna felt, for her students, for herself—making it this far was something the Yenna of a month ago wouldn’t have even dreamt of—coalesced into a singular arc of lightning. It filled the air with a harsh buzzing noise and the scent of ozone as the white mana turned a deep purple.

Once again, Yenna poured the liquid into a recess in her bracelet—opposite the green Joy crystal, reflecting its place on the Colour wheel. As the crystal formed, it took on a jagged, spiky appearance, a light deep inside flickering and sparking. At everyone’s insistence the mage stopped to let everyone take a look before returning for the next Colour.

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Certainty, the yellow Colour of earth, had come in a moment of crisis. Forced into battle, her own anxieties introducing her allies to danger, she recalled Eone’s words of encouragement, her insistence on believing in herself—there was a part of Eone wrapped up in Yenna’s understanding of the Colour, as though she had borrowed some of that certainty from the woman herself.

Unsurprisingly the Colour of Earth was rather amenable to being crystallised. Conjuring a fine yellow sand into the fluid changed its colour to a golden yellow, the resultant crystal a strong, angular topaz set next to its green cousin.

Letting memories play on, Yenna thought back to her introduction to Wroth. Anger had never been a particularly strong part of Yenna’s life, but the beast-march and its water elemental conductor had brought out a kind of righteous indignation in her. At first she had considered the fire a tool, a heat to burn away the water elemental’s defenses—but when the stakes had been raised and Yenna had thought Eone had died in front of her, the fire consumed her in turn—another dark-tinged element, urging her to hate. That all-consuming passion had nearly taken an innocent life, and Yenna let that knowledge slip into her conjured flame. It felt just to include the errors one could make in anger—that was what Wroth was, good and bad. Her flames licked at the glass, scorched and blackened its insides—Yenna was distantly aware of Mayi putting out a burning piece of tablecloth with a glassful of water.

The crystal went between the yellow topaz and the purple amethyst, a smoky ruby that Yenna could have sworn danced like crackling flames when she wasn’t quite looking. Almost there, she sighed quietly.

“Yenna, are you alright?” Mayi had reached out a hand to grab one of Yenna's hands—the mage belatedly realised she had been shaking.

“I– Yes. Yes, I’m just…” Yenna wasn’t exactly sure how to explain what she was doing, the emotions involved in this act of witchcraft. It was a kind of personal catharsis the mage wasn’t ready to explain over the breakfast table—in fact, it was starting to feel deeply embarrassing to do this right here at the table. Not that I can admit that now. “Two more to go. Then we’re all done.”

“You can stop, if you want.” Mayi hadn’t let go of her hand. “It’s quite alright if this is too hard to do here.”

Too hard? Yenna felt a little annoyed—I’m an established mage! This is simple to do. It’s just the emotions are– oh. After a beat she realised she had misunderstood—Mayi didn’t mean she couldn’t physically perform the magic. The doctor had been worried for Yenna’s emotional state. Where’s that little voice gone, then? It would have told me that one in no time. I’ve not heard it at all this morning.

Shaking her head, Yenna gently pressed Mayi’s hand back. “It’s quite alright. I’d rather just finish this off. Next is… Flow.”

The water elemental sprung to mind again, for obvious reasons—Flow was the deep blue Colour of water, after all. In the aftermath of the elemental’s attack, Yenna had rather embarrassed herself playing in the stream as she struggled to comprehend the Colour. Before that, she had borne witness to the strangeness of the inside of the elemental’s mind—how its thoughts literally flowed together, alien perspectives overlaying themselves onto Yenna’s mortal expectations. Flow was an element that felt right to Yenna, though she struggled to keep up with its depth sometimes—perhaps growing as a witch would allow her to really go with the flow?

Giggling to herself, Yenna conjured deep blue water into a cupped hand, letting it pour like a waterfall into the mana. Then, back into the appropriate recess in her bracelet—a vivid turquoise that seemed to bubble and flow internally. The gentle gleam helped lift her spirits, but Yenna felt herself stiffen at the sight of the final empty socket. The final Colour, and the final crystal before her introduction to witchcraft was truly complete.

With a gulp, Yenna poured into her glass another shot of mana. The light blue Colour of Stasis scared her, more than the dark-tinge of Pride, more than the loss of control in the midst of Wroth. Fear and hate were things that could change, but in the darkness of Stasis lay finality—Yenna instinctively knew that a step in the wrong direction from Stasis would quite literally mean death. 

The mage wondered quietly if that was what she had done to the beast-man that had chased her through the realm of stillness—killing him, in a way unlike the natural death of a living thing. A true, irrevocable death, completely outside of time. Or was there a way out of it, perhaps? Yenna wasn’t sure if she would be pleased or terrified, were that the case. Putting the thoughts aside, Yenna focused on her memories of that still realm. It was Stasis given form, magic that moved to prevent motion—antithesis of the self, a paradox allowed only by the strangeness of magic itself.

It felt almost comedic then, when her expression of stillness manifested in the form of a cube of ice. It clinked its way down the sides of the vessel and made a quiet splash in the mana before melting into the pool of liquid magic, frosting the glass.

“I can see why Tirk wants to drink the stuff.” Eone’s warm voice was a refreshing blanket for the chill Yenna felt over her heart. “Tuck a little chunk of ice in there, and you’ve a refreshing summer’s drink!”

Yenna looked up to see everyone chuckling—except for Jiin. No, not Jiin. Demvya’s here now. The spirit was watching eagerly, looking at the glass of mana as though it were a pitcher of ice-cold water, and she was a traveller lost in a desert.

“Is something the matter, Demvya?” Yenna was happy for the distraction—worries about what would happen when she poured the final crystal plagued her heart, the dark thoughts and fears the mage had been suppressing threatening to claw their way out.

“NAY. COMPLETE THY RITUAL. I SHALL ADDRESS THE MATTER ONCE ALL IS CONCLUDED.” The spirit shook her head and blinked—a slight slumping of the shoulders, and Jiin was back. “Sheesh, Dem! Just shovin’ the reins back like that.”

“...Dem?” Mayi frowned at Jiin, though the stonecarver sheepishly put up hands in mock defense.

“C’n we let Yenna do ‘er thing first…? S’nothin’.”

“Yes.” Mayi was suddenly as icy as the glass in Yenna’s hand. “We’ll talk about it later.”

The mood at the table soured, an awkward silence filling the air. Yenna couldn’t stand it.

“S-So! Um, here we go! The final piece, everyone!” Brandishing the glass, Yenna carefully poured the mana into the final recess. It produced a fragile-looking diamond, pale blue like deep ice. Yenna admired it, waiting for some obvious change to come over the bracelet. A few unpleasant seconds passed, enough for the mage to wonder if she hadn’t done something wrong.

“I’m sure it will do something in a mo– GAH!” Yenna was cut off by a harsh chiming noise—a booming gong struck directly over her head. Judging solely by expression, Yenna assumed no one else could hear the fading ring—but they could all see the same sight. The silver of the bracelet began to twist and melt, slithering off of Yenna’s injured wrist like a snake. It coiled up Yenna’s arm and slithered into her sleeve, a deep fear striking into the mage’s heart.

In a panic Yenna tried grabbing the silvery mass, attempting to block its passage up her sleeve. Undaunted it flowed past her grip, quicksilver pouring out of her grasp as it wormed its way up towards her chest. The mage briefly debated tearing off the top part of her robe, her shirt and undershirt, everything just to get at it, but embarrassment at doing so in this place caught her. Instead, she hopped to her hooves and turned away—facing a wall, Yenna rather crudely unbuttoned the top of her shirt under her robe to see what the thing was doing.

The quicksilver snake coiled over the mage’s sternum, and Yenna recoiled in discomfort as she felt part of it press through her flesh. She attempted to grab at it, her hands passing right through the liquid form of the metal. It had only taken a fraction of a second, but the terror of it made it feel so much longer—only a tail-end of the bracelet stuck out against her skin, the metal changing shape to form a kind of handle. Instinct took over—Yenna’s mind screamed at her to remove it. She could feel that cold metal against her heart and lungs, though part of her knew it had penetrated something more intangible than her flesh and bone—all the same, her hands found purchase on the metal grip and pulled.

With a grunt of effort, the metal began to slide out. Shudders of discomfort ran across Yenna’s entire body as a blade revealed itself—a sharp stiletto of metal infused with six intertwined bands of coloured crystal, as long as her hand from heel to fingertip. When it was all out, there wasn’t so much as a scratch. The only reminder of the entire endeavour was the dagger in her hand.

The wicked point of the blade gave Yenna pause. What manner of witchcraft required such a keen blade? The mage wasn’t sure she was going to like the answer.

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