Pax sucked in a surprised breath, only his long-time experience with Mana Sight keeping his efforts stable. He’d expected something similar to the gray, colorless mana that he found within the warriors and crafters. But this was something completely different.
Instead of being able to get a general sense of the various components of the inner physical structure, he could hardly see anything. It felt like being stuck inside a stormy bank of fog where he couldn’t see his hand until he held it right up to his nose.
But that wasn’t even an accurate example. Because fog was all one substance, one color and one consistency. The thick chaos inside the street boy was a mix of so many things that Pax had a hard time separating out any of the individual components.
He imagined it was like throwing handfuls of dirt, grass clippings, bread crumbs and maybe even a bit of metal dust into a howling storm while everyone around you grabbed handfuls of even more substances and did the same.
Pax almost reached into the maelstrom with a thread of his mana, but remembered Incedis’ list at the last moment and hesitated. The point of the experiment was to report back after each step, for safety as well as to adjust each future step. With careful deliberation, Pax pulled his Sight out of the confusing storm inside the boy.
“Well?” Incedis asked immediately when he saw Pax’s eyes open.
Pax frowned and pointed to his mouth. The sudden tension in the boy’s body next to them made it very clear he was listening.
“Oh. Oops. You’re right.” Incedis stood and waved for Pax to come with him to the other side of the office. Once there, he reached for a ring on his hand. Pax felt the shift in the air around him as a small sound barrier activated.
Happy to speak freely, Pax quickly filled Incedis in on what he found.
“Well, it’s good to hear you verify seeing the same thing as I did.”
Pax’s eyes widened in surprise, which prompted a laugh from Incedis.
“What? You didn’t think I had Mana Sight? I’m older than dirt, boy. Imagine how many tricks I’ve picked up over the years. I didn’t bring it up because I wanted to know if you would see something different with that fancy light mana you’ve got.” He suddenly frowned. “You just looked, right? You didn’t push any mana into him yet?”
Pax shook his head. “No. Just Mana Sight. And the mess was way too thick to see through at all. I don’t think I could even make a heal work on him. Maybe from the outside, if I could see the injury, but definitely nothing on the inside.”
“No mana in the mess?”
“Not that I could tell.” Pax thought back to make sure. He shook his head. “No. It all felt like various substances, but nothing had collected enough to be considered mana.”
Incedis thought it through, glancing down at the list he held in his hand. “Then let’s move on to the next step. Use some light mana and see if it clears things up or allows you to manipulate the fog of substances. Then we’ll work our way through the four primary elements, one by one.”
“You want me to stop and talk to you between each step?” Pax wasn’t looking forward to the drudgery of taking single small steps and then delaying to talk about it between each one. The thought made him shake his head with a wry grin.
“What?” Incedis narrowed his gaze.
“I’m just beginning to understand how impatient Amil feels when I drag my feet to make sure we stay safe without racing into unknown experiments too quickly.” Pax laughed. “You’re much worse than me.”
Incedis waved a finger at Pax. “You better get as cautious as me if you ever want to get as old as I am.”
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“I guess that’s true,” Pax said. “Does that also mean your cautious experiments to break the tamper proofing on our messages haven’t worked out either?”
Now Incedis looked frustrated. “No. We now think it’s something put on by an artifact, because it’s not something our people can figure out. Our best bet might be to go a much simpler route.”
“Simpler?”
“Just steal the messages, as many as we can get our hands on.”
Pax let out a surprised laugh. “Won’t that bring them down on us in a heartbeat?”
Incedis shrugged. “Not if we wait until the next riot, or maybe right before we all abandon the capital. Even better, we could have some of our agents rob messengers for other vanguards, so they’ll think you were just victims. If we can get you all out past the reach of the altars before they think to check, they may decide someone had you killed. Even if the blame falls on you, it can’t be any worse than the death sentence being a rebel will get you.”
Pax scoffed and shook his head at the ideas. “That seems more like a street rat plan than an esteemed mage instructor plan.”
“Sometimes street rats have the best plans, right?” Incedis gave him a wry smile. “Now, should we get back to our slow and cautious experimenting?”
Pax nodded with a grin as Incedis dismissed the suppression field and they stepped back over to the seated boy. Despite the shackles of Incedis’ limitations, Pax felt a thrill of excitement. They were actually trying to Awaken a boy without one of the ancient artifacts with their long-standing traditions. If they succeeded, it could change everything.
The next few hours passed in a blur of experimenting, discussing and adjusting. When they stopped for a break, Pax stepped into Incedis’ small side room so both he and the boy could eat without seeing each other.
As he made progress working through the objectives, Pax's light mana helped calm and organize things. Right from the start, he found he could clear an area inside the boy by pushing out with his light mana. Wherever it touched, it seemed the various non-magical substances would separate out and then settle in small piles of similar substances, still and unmoving.
Pax still couldn’t tell what the various substances were except that they weren’t mana. Their current working theory was that they contained some kind of potential that would become activated by the Awakening process and start the changes needed to become the various classes.
Of course, mages were the rarest classes, so it was also completely possible that the lack of any elemental mana was simply because the boy didn’t have mage potential. In that case, the various substances might combine or be powered somehow during the Awakening process and form the gray, colorless mana that the other classes used to power their skills and abilities.
Using his four individual elements one at a time had almost no effect. As soon as Pax had removed his light mana from the mix, the disorienting storm surged back in and made it impossible to see anything.
Incedis had him combine two and even three of the various combinations and found not much difference. Pax thought he’d changed the movement of the stormy substances more when he used multiple mana types, but not by much. It was nothing he could specifically measure or reproduce, despite Incedis insisting he repeat the trial enough times to make Pax’s head hurt.
Finally, it was time to try using all four elements together with his light mana. Pax couldn’t decide if he was excited or frustrated. He’d have been at this point at least an hour ago if he’d been experimenting on his own.
“Just stop as soon as you see a noticeable effect,” Incedis told him again.
Pax aimed an impatient look at him.
“Sorry.” Incedis blew out a breath. “What we’re doing is just so incredible. I want to document every step and also make sure we don’t blow it. It is this boy’s life we’re playing with, after all.”
Pax glanced over at the boy with chagrin. If they managed this, it would be his life that changed the most. Pax turned back to Incedis and nodded. “I’ll be careful.”
Together, they moved back over to the boy.
“Are you about done?” He let out a sigh and shifted in the chair. “It’s almost time for dinner, and I only agreed to do this until then.”
“Don’t worry, this is the last part for today,” Incedis said. “And we’ll pack up a nice dinner for you to take with you.”
The promise of more food made the boy smile and for a moment, Pax felt jealous. His time on the street had been hard, but straightforward. Evade the guard. Find Food. Survive and help the other Vipers do the same. No rebellions, powerful enemies, new magics or skills. It had really been a simpler time.
Pax shook his head and focused on the task at hand. He was finally going to combine all of his elements with light mana and see what it did to the chaos inside the boy. He dropped into his Meditation, taking his time to carefully gather the same amounts of all four mana types.
The threads were tiny and as he used light to twist them together, he was pretty sure they didn’t have enough power to do much of anything. His Awakening had taken the power from four high-leveled mages and an ancient device to succeed. But he’d promised Incedis he’d start slow, despite how impatient he was.
Going slow was horrible. With an impatient sigh, Pax got back to work.