Chapter 2: Chapter 2: Mana

Several days after playing with the little balls of light, I noticed that there were faint splashes of color deep within some of them. Thinking this as another opportunity to ease my boredom, I start separating them by color. 

 

When I finish, I notice that a little less than half of them do not possess any color, and the remaining groups are somewhat equal in number. There were oranges, yellows, greens, blues, purples, and even blacks and whites. The orange balls of light seemed slightly warmer to the touch as compared to the other balls, and there even seemed to be small embers not unlike an extinguished campfire inside of it. The blue balls were, for a lack of a better term, wet. Not that they were moist or anything, they just felt wet, kinda like oobleck, liquid in texture, but somehow still retaining its solid shape. 

 

Ugh, I need to stop calling them balls, but I don’t really know the proper name for them. Well, the balls feel magical, so let’s just call them mana, even if I have no proof that they are magic. 

 

The green balls, sorry, mana, were really dense, significantly heavier than the other balls by far. It even kinda smelled like loam soil. Don’t ask me how I could even smell here, because I would have no answer for you. 

 

The yellow mana was a bit weird. There wasn’t anything quickly notable about it, but it was giving off a slight breeze, light as the passing wind. If more of them are near each other, the breeze starts getting stronger.

 

The purple mana gave off a tingle whenever I held it, and would crackle like thunder. It even had something like lightning going on in there. I tried grouping a bunch of it together like with the yellow mana, and electricity started arcing from ball to ball like a tesla coil. I am definitely not going to be handling that irresponsibly. 

 

The black mana was, well, dark. It was somehow darker than the void I was drifting in, greedily snatching up any light like a black hole. The white mana was the complete opposite, radiating nearly blinding white light, like a miniature sun. 

 

I held the two in my left and right hands and slowly brought them together. There was an increasing invisible pressure, as if they were the same poles of a magnet. Surprisingly, when they got close enough, they quickly flew towards each other and adhered. The color from both then started to fade, becoming empty shells, almost like glass spheres. 

 

That was…odd. Well then, I shouldn’t put those close to each other. I should ensure the longevity of my playthings. 

 

I turn towards the uncolored mana. I was sure they weren’t empty as I felt a weird energy within them comparable to the colored mana, kind of like how people can hear high frequency static, you hear it, but not really. 

 

I have absolutely no idea what to make of these colorless mana, but I’ve got an eternity and a half to find out. 

 

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I reach for one of the colorless orbs and immediately get assaulted by a feeling of apprehension, as if this little orb was permeating my body. Quickly letting go of it, I check my body, soul?, for any abnormalities. 

 

After ascertaining that I still had the same spectral butt-naked body, I hold that same orb. The feeling returned, but it did not feel malicious. Trusting that nothing bad would happen, I continue playing with it more before setting it down. 

 

The next one I grabbed seemed to be the same, as I was immediately hit by the same feeling. The next, however, seemed to be special, special in that it was even more barren. There was that energy, of that I was sure, but it was colorless and barely had any reactions. No light shows, no weight, no smell, nothing. I had no idea as to what it could be, so I opted to observe the other mana for now.

 

After a few seconds, I grabbed another unique one. It was colorless, but the area around it seemed to ripple, as if the ball was emitting gasoline. Like the green mana, it also seemed dense, but not because of weight. It seemed to pull its surroundings into it.

 

So it can distort weight and images? This might be the most interesting one so far.

 

As I grabbed another orb, I thought it was the same as the icky one that made me feel like little insects were crawling all over my body, but I noticed that this time around, the sensation was limited to my head. I grabbed one of the previous orbs to confirm my suspicion, and it was indeed different. This new orb was limited in scope to where the brain would be as opposed to the previous one that affected the whole body. 

 

Is it simply a variation of the previous mana, or something else entirely? 

 

As I sorted the colorless mana, I began to notice that they approached more or less the same amount as the other groups of colored mana. 

 

Does this mean that all of these mana types existed in equal amounts? If that’s true then… 

 

Once I finished dividing them all up, I was left with one last group of colorless mana. Carefully grasping one of the orbs, I try to discern any apparent properties. This one seemed as elusive as the barren one, and I’m not sure what I have to do to figure out what it does, so I’ll just let future me handle it.

 

All in all, there seemed to be around twelve different groups of mana, all roughly the same amount as each other. This is going to be a heck of a project trying to understand all of them. Well, it’s not like I lack time. Let’s get started then!