It took some time but Zerrious quickly recovered from blood loss. I taught him a few more spells, each getting a notification as he successfully cast them. Enchantment was simple enough for Zerrious, it followed similar ideas as enchanting items, although the item you were enchanting was far less stable. Zerrious was able to help me learn more as well, giving me a minor foundation in enchanting items that let me grow more in my enchanting Name.

It was curious that people with different Names never seemed to compare the similarities in the skills. I was a master at enchantment spells, but a minor conversation with an enchanting master grew my skill noticeably.

"Focus on building up Mana again as we turn in for the night, we'll be able to do more practice tomorrow," I said as I yawned.

"The sun's not even down yet," responded Zerrious.

"Not all of us can be college aged, Zerrious! So what if I grew soft in my time in the city, I was designed for soft!" Zerrious just chuckled and shook his head, closing his eyes and actively pulling the ambient Mana into his center. Zerrious preferred a rigid lotus position for this sort of thing, but I found it easier to pull in Aether while I was comfortable, sending the reality stuff back to my cane.

I let my mind drift down inside myself, feeling the roiling storm of Aether in my center. I was told to let it be a storm, that that was the best way, but it looked like it was fighting itself. What leaked out of my skin also remained violently uncontrolled, forcibly lashing out at the world to take control. It couldn't be right, but I didn't know what to do other than feed more Aether in.

But people always found a better way to do things. Just letting it sit until it was used seemed so strange, especially since it wanted to move. I watched, crinkling my brow. My soul was a book, wasn't it? That's what my racial trait said, and I just had the ability to manifest it. This was probably different, but shouldn't the magical wuju stuff in my center be at least similar to my soul? Feeling their center should be the closest most people ever come to seeing their soul, so maybe it just hadn't been tried correctly. It made sense that it had to be the right shape, each person absorbed Mana at a different rate and stored it in varying amounts. The properties of Mana seemed to change per person too, acting like a liquid for some and others a sort of plasma or gas.

This conjecture was getting me nowhere, so I jumped into the storm of Aether, trying to force the energy into the shape of a book. The Aether fought back, roiling and bucking in my mental palms.

After making no progress I gave up, letting the storm fight itself a little longer. How did I move it? That wasn't how I always cast, was it? I slapped myself in the forehead, bringing myself out of my reverie. "Of course! Why would I force it when I never did in the past?" I said out loud.

"Sigurd? What's wrong, you looked like you were trying to fight something. Was it a nightmare?" Zerrious asked, staring at me with concern.

"Only my own idiocy! I'll show you if it works, but it might be hard to explain." I threw myself back, dropping back down into my center with the roiling storm.

With a light touch I guided the energetic Aether to make the leather bound cover of a great book, stretching from one side of my center all the way to the other. The Aether soon lost control, fighting to move again, so I guided it to flow in circles and angles to make shifting patterns across the front. The roiling Aether hovering over this great calm cover seemed almost. . . interested? It didn't have a will, it couldn't. It was like lightning, or fire. There was no will, only properties, that's the only thing that makes sense. Right?

I put it out of my mind, there was work to do. I guided more Aether into a single page, setting it into the cover and combining them. The page wasn't content to sit, so I instructed it to turn. The page turned and melted into the cover on the other side, reappearing again in it's original position and flipping again, repeating over and over.

The remaining Aether was moving violently now, so I held the pattern of the turning page in my mind, and each page started forming from the Aether and flying into the book, each page making itself faster than the last. Soon my center was a book, pages turning eternally. More Aether funneled into my center, making the book brighter and brighter as I watched until enough Aether was gathered to make another page on it's own, an infinite loop.

I felt a warmth and opened my eyes, a huge grin on my face, only to see a white light fading from view. Then there was the burning, and I looked on my arm to see a new Name forming, Mirashda. Sculptor of Mana, seer of souls, and master of center efficiency. I felt a boon settle on my shoulders from the gods, something to make my spells cheaper. This was amazing because it changed my quill sword from an investment to a minor upkeep cost that's almost unnoticeable.

Then I felt a new spell settle into my mind. I wasn't sure what school of magic it was, but I had to guess it was divination based on it's effects. I could see into someone else's center. It required consent, we had to be touching, and we both went blind and def to our surroundings, but it was massive for teaching.

I guessed that if I used this spell in conjunction with my knew profession Name and enough familiarity with a person, I might be able to see what form their soul takes. I needed to get Zerrious in on this action.

I looked up only to be confused. It seemed like late morning, as if the sun had finished rising not an hour prior. "Sigurd! Are you okay?"

"What do you mean? I'm the best I've probably ever been!" I laughed out, stumbling clumsily to my feet. I could still feel the pages turning, and I felt good. Complete.

"You lay down and didn't move except for furrowed brows for almost fifteen hours."

That was a long time. Now that he mentioned it, I was tired and hungry, but I was too exited to sleep or eat or even continue walking. My mind was racing.

"Don't worry about that," I said after a short time. I hadn't noticed that we were both standing but I pushed Zerrious down into a sitting position. He didn't resist, but he did look concerned. "Sit sit. We can't move on, not yet. I figured something out!" This caught his attention, always trying to find more knowledge.

I pulled a page out of my center and tore it up into a single strand that I infused with the reality stuff in my staff before spinning it into the spell form and pushing it through my fingers and into Zerrious, my mind automatically following the Mana into Zerrious' center.

Zerrious' Mana looked less like a storm and more. . . it was hard to describe, motes of Mana zipped around and collided with each other with bright flashes of Mana that coalesced back into new motes of Mana to replace the old ones. There was a spinning orb at the center that seemed to drip the Mana motes in all directions rather than fling them like it seemed it should. His Mana was dark too, a faint red swirling like blood in his center, obsessive and sanguine as it searched for purpose, for guidance.

"This is odd," I said aloud, surprised to hear my voice ring throughout Zerrious' center.

"What's odd?" he asked. I felt his presence with me, it was required for the spell to work, but I also heard him in this odd liminal space. He couldn't be seen, the only visible portion the Mana flying around inside him. While mine was more like clouds and a raging tempest his seemed more like a river with nowhere to go.

"Your Mana just behaves differently than mine." I wasn't sure if that was because I now had Aether, but I distinctly remembered my Mana acting the same as the Aether did, even if the Aether didn't like to leave my body as much as the Mana did. More research would be required to get a definitive answer, so I left it at that.

I peered around, trying to find any indication of Zerrious' soul like I was expecting to find, but much like my own center, I found nothing. I couldn't effect Zerrious' Mana for him, but I asked him to guide that ball to open up and let me inside. He did, and a hole surrounded by swirling Mana opened for just long enough for me to slip inside the hollow orb.

Nothing but more swirling Mana. "Where the hell is his soul?" I asked aloud. Then I thought about it. Finding someone else's soul is probably a super tabboo magic. The damage that could be caused should someone find it. . .

"Why are you looking for my soul?" Zerrious asked, opening the hole again and letting me out. "No one's taken control of you have they?"

"No! I'm trying to guide you to make your center better. Do you know what your soul looks like?"

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"No, should I?"

"I think so. Most wont, but I think it's important for scholars like us," I said, mentally patting him on the back.

I know my own soul, but that was just a racial trait. I pulled up Zerrious' stats, hoping his racial traits would help me. It took some navigating because I still wasn't used to these system messages, but I found both of his racial traits.

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Racial Traits:

System Message

Openness of Mind

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Well that wasn't much help. It looked like Openness of Mind made him better at learning skills? As a racial trait is was no wonder I was able to teach all those kids so fast, they were designed to learn fast. Unfortunately, that didn't give my any indication of what his soul looked like.

Well, what made my soul look the way it did? I was designed to tell a story, to record my life, to write. What was Zerrious made for, what made him different from anyone else, the thing that defined his existence? I reached for his Mana, knowing I couldn't manipulate it but maybe the way it felt in my head would tell me something. Or maybe it would kill me, there was no knowing for sure, this was untraveled territory.

The motes of Mana were energetic, the idea that learning of electrons in high school had inspired in my teenage mind. I jumped out in front of one, my perspective shifting just in time to collide with the ball of floating blood.

What washed over me wasn't just an obsessive search for purpose, it was an obsessive push to grow, to evolve, to become more than anyone thought was possible. There was almost a rage driving the push for evolution, to become better than anyone, to advance for the sake of advancing. He learns to advance, he advances to learn, forever circling himself in a drive for improvement.

Then the moment passed and I was floating in Zerrious' center, dumbfounded by the things I had felt in the bare moment of raging Mana.

"I didn't like that, what did you do?" Zerrious grunted, a pained sound that conveyed that he felt slightly violated. I thought I had glimpsed his soul, if just how it felt.

A person must corrupt the Mana itself, or in my case the Aether, to be compatible, or perhaps to force the natural resource into submission? That had to be why Mana was different for every person, the process of collecting it fundamentally changed the energy to be compatible with the person collecting it. That had interesting implications, perhaps ways to force someone else's Mana into another center to. . . Well I had no idea what it would do and I wasn't incredibly jazzed to find out.

This spell was similar, although the restrictions on it made it safe, or perhaps even possible without violent repercussions. It's entirely possible that without permission Zerrious' Mana would attack me and render me brain dead as my consciousness was on a single string of Aether right now, completely at the mercy of whatever defenses Zerrious normally had up against this kind of attack.

"I'm sorry, it's just, I think I felt your soul. I don't know what it looks like though. This. . . This might hurt, but I have an idea, just. . . please try not to kill me," I said before jumping headfirst into the whirling ball of liquid Mana at Zerrious' center before he could say anything to stop me. Shaping the Mana in your center had unlimited implications, things I couldn't fathom and something inside me needed Zerrious to be apart of this newfound knowledge.

I was almost overwhelmed immediately, but I pushed on, through the obsession, through the need for greatness and pushing to find every intricacy of his personality. Zerrious started pulling the Mana away from me, hollowing out the sphere for me again. "No! Just hold on a little longer!" I mentally yelled through the overpowering emotion and personality traits. I could feel the pain this was causing, but it would be worth it, I could feel it deep down. Zerrious' Mana wanted me to do this, it sensed the purpose of the pain I put the host through and it determined it a valiant cause. I was so deep into Zerrious' personality and emotional state that it was getting hard to tell where my mind ended and his began. I could feel I was close but the Mana was being peeled away from me.

"It hurts!" he yelled through gritted teeth.

"I know, just trust me," I muttered. I knew he could hear me, and I reached out to the Mana around me with my Aether strand and sent a jolt of my emotions back, desire and sorrow mixing to form a regretful drive to finish what I started.

Zerrious didn't say anything, the Mana just snapped closed around me and I was met with the full weight of Zerrious, everything that made the young man who he was. I trudged deeper through his center, my thin Aether strand being buffeted and nearly absorbed by the storm of blood red Mana around me. Although. . . more colors were snaking their way through the blood, different aspects of Zerrious that had been overpowered by the dark obsession and the red drive to succeed.

Then colors started fading, being driven out and becoming a pure white light that was blinding to behold, even without physical eyes. I pulled on my Aether, pulling more and more so I could just make out the shape of the soul before me, the pure brilliance every soul was truly made of behind the simple maters of the nearby layers.

Eventually, I could make out a shape. . . and it was changing, growing, becoming more every second and shifting to meet every need, growing an armor as I looked to protect from the pain of someone getting so close to the soul. This wasn't possible to make, I could feel it, but I knew where to start, I could feel where Zerrious' Mana wanted to be.

I started drawing back away from his soul, started to trek back to safety. Or at least I tried to. I tried to move back but I had drawn on my Aether and the thread that had connected me to the outside had grown so thin that it had been absorbed by the strength of Zerrious character this deep in. "Zerrious! Help, I'm stuck!" I tried to scream, but the words were torn from me by the whirling Mana and completely absorbed, I knew he couldn't help me.

I gathered all the Aether I had left, condensing it into a shell to protect against the Mana that threatened to consume me alive. This was a much deeper process than my soul had been, my body was probably very angry at me right now. I shaped the shell into a bullet shape and shot my will forward, trying to get far enough out of the whirling ball of Mana that Zerrious could help me. I pushed and pushed, the white giving way to the many other colors of Zerrious' personality, then eventually fading to the dark blood red I saw from the beginning. I pushed forward, too focused on staying whole to cry for help.

Eventually I made it out of the swirling ball of Mana and dodged the flying motes of energy, speeding back to my own body, to safety. I rushed out to my hand and immediately dissolved to open my physical eyes once again, the flows of Aether swirling in my vision. My stomach growled insistently, I was dehydrated, and I could barely see from exhaustion, but I was alive and no worse for wear, other than, obviously, the neglect that Nyah would have killed me for.

I looked to see if Zerrious was as hungry as I was, but I looked up to see him hunched over, his eyes still closed and a thin trail of blood running from his nose and pooling in his lap.

"Zerrious?" I asked, slightly panicked. "Zerrious!" I rammed my fingers into his neck and finding a strong pulse, then I felt under his nose and found airflow in the nostril that wasn't still freely flowing dark blood down his face. I calmed down, laying him flat and sticking some spare cloth up his nose to stop the blood flow and picked up my cane, channeling a spell to clean the blood from his clothes. I sat down next to him, digging further into our supplies and drinking some of our clean water and eating some food, just enough to keep me alive while I waited for Zerrious to wake up and do the same.

I noted how dark the sky had gotten, how we'd wasted entire days just sitting here in this spot with our eyes closed. Although, it did look different than it had when I started working on my center. . . I also noticed that everything was in a different place than it had been but I'd been to exited to share my findings with Zerrious to notice. The kid must have picked me up and moved me, and all my things, while I was focused on my center. I would have done the same, but I didn't have the same strength or endurance he did.

Nothing to do but wait. The sun was close to rising by the time he finally stirred from his slumber, pulling the cloth from his nose and groaning as he slowly sat up. "What happened?" he asked.

"I have no idea," I said, getting to my feet and offering him some food and water. "But, I did learn what to do with your center."

"What do you mean? It's common knowledge that you don't do anything with your center, it just does it's thing until you need something from it." I hadn't explained myself to Zerrious yet, of course!

"Damn it, I didn't tell you what I figured out! Zerrious, you need your center to look like your soul to make it more efficient and do a bunch of other things. I don't even know all the possibilities this has, but I know for a fact it's good." I wished I could show him my center, but we only had his to work with. "Yours might be a bit more complicated than mine. . ." I trailed off.

"I believe you, but. . . We wont have to do that again, will we?" he asked hesitantly. I could see in his eyes that he would continue either way, but there was a pain even in the memory.

"No, we wont. I have everything I need, though I will need to be there to guide you, so if you don't mind," I said as I sat down next to Zerrious and grabbed his hand, searching with my Aether. He closed his eyes and my mind flew down the strand of Aether and into his center.

I gazed upon the swirling motes of blood zipping around the nucleus of his center, still magnificent even after diving so deep into the boys soul that he had almost consumed me. I reached out with my mind, hoping that I could help guide the Mana myself but it wouldn't budge.

"Alrighty then. Zerrious, I need you to gather all of these motes and make two strings, very thin, as thin as you can," I directed. Zerrious did, clearly straining to keep the Mana where he wanted it. "Let it move a little bit, there you go. Now connect them as many times as you can, like a ladder."

Zerrious guided the Mana to connect, already looking like a ladder, the Mana even providing new colors for each of the rungs of this ladder, combining in different ways to create a rainbow of colors along the blood red strings. "Now twist it like this," I guided as he finished making the motes into the ladder and formed myself into the double helix he needed to emulate as a guide.

"Okay, now just. . ." I trailed off as I saw Zerrious syphoning off from the swirling sphere in his center to make the spinning strand of DNA longer, and longer, and eventually it condensed enough that there was a simple sphere in his center, all of his Mana gone into making this one nucleus full of moving chromosomes made up of even smaller spinning double helix formations. This was the automatic part now, his center would evolve more the more Mana he had, and it made me a little jealous that his center was a living thing while mine was just a book.

The pattern had been set, the Mana knew what to do from here, so I withdrew and opened my eyes to see that yet more time had passed. I didn't have long to process that as several notifications slammed themselves into my view.