Alice thought she’d learned lots of important lessons in the past day. First was the fact her mana projectiles seemed to corrupt her targets own mana, and second was her discovery about the light she’d made. The more mana she added to it the brighter it got, somehow without changing size or density, and the denser it was the more efficient it got.

The first one was good to know but difficult to test, especially without needless cruelty, while the second was far more interesting to Alice. Especially since she’d tried making things denser many times, and a necessary part of that was adding mana. The only reason she could think of for why she hadn’t noticed it before was that her mana constructs weren’t doing anything other than just sitting there. In that case it was probably something to do with the fact a light radiated something into the world constantly.

To test this she made another ball out of her mana and aspected it to stone as normal, being careful to keep track of her mana usage as normal noting it took 30% of her mana for the full ball this time, which felt like it was lower than before. Since she didn’t write anything down the last time she wasn’t sure whether it felt like less because she expanded her pool, got better at it or just used less mana. Overall she was left with 76% of her pool.

From there she began adding more mana and trying to see if she noticed anything. It looked like nothing was happening other than the ball becoming denser and heavier as she did so. She tried stopping to see if it was using her mana for anything but it behaved just as expected. She did have to limit herself for this part though as she needed to save enough for the next ball. Though she wondered if she could just re-absorb it.

She tried and found it quite difficult. It was as though the mana fought to keep its identity. If aspecting the mana was like stamping a design onto paper then un-aspecting it was like trying to erase the ink without damaging the paper. Something that was probably possible, but not for Alice as it currently stood.

Other than just letting it dissipate she could try to absorb it directly by just getting it inside her, something she refused to do because she had seen it turn out badly twice now. Seeing no alternative she decided to let it dissipate, basically wasting the 35-ish mana she’d used.

Reminding herself that it was for a good reason, she did the same thing again but with a fire aspecting. Everything was exactly the same until she started pouring the mana in. This time, while it’s density did still increase it wasn’t nearly as much as it should have been. And as expected the ball got brighter and warmer instead.

Realising an opportunity, Alice made it as dense as it could be before adding in mana with a focus on heat. Even if she struggled to imagine a fire hot enough to burn her, she could try getting it as warm as possible before covering the difference with mana. She quickly found that this was harder than normal, probably because a fire wasn’t just hot, and trying to force it through anyway made it harder to control.

With that series of tests done Alice found herself wanting to go back to training her earth magic. Her conjuration had proved useful yet limited, and with how difficult it was to actually see any of its effects in a practice situation she would rather have something more physical to work with. But before she could try anything she needed to meditate and regain her mana.

The process was just as simple as every other time, though Alice had a hard time figuring out how exactly it worked. In concept it made logical sense, though it required her to simply accept some things as fact. It was easy to acknowledge that she could only sense and manipulate her own mana, so in order to get the mana outside of her inside, she had to make it her own. This was as simple as having her own mana spread whatever property put it under her control, but even if it was under her control she had to make it as close as she could to her internal mana. Once again, having her mana do it, despite her herself not being able to change the aspect of mana that easily.

Not only did Alice find it strange that she could get her mana to do things she herself couldn’t do or didn’t know how to do, there was also a difference between mana belonging to her and aspected to her, meaning there was a possibility that her own mana could be out of her control.

It also presented the idea that even if she herself found it impossible to turn something like compressed dirt into stone she could just ask really nicely and it would happen anyway. That was definitely something she would have to test, though with her new insights on mana it may be irrelevant since there were other things she could try. After regenerating her mana of course.

She expanded her own mana outwards in a fine net, realising that since she only had a few percent left she couldn’t expand it nearly as far as she wanted to. But as she continued she naturally increased that range and now she tried seeing what her mana did to the ambient mana.

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It seemed like the her mana just touched the ambient mana a couple of times before it just… shifted into what she wanted. This went the other way as well since she noticed her mana was being similarly affected but her active control managed to stop it. She also noticed that the new mana was already aspected.

Underneath her it seemed to be a mishmash of different aspects coming together to create earth, whereas in the air it seemed less chaotic but still so to form an air aspecting. This aspecting was then stripped by a second layer of mana near her skin that turned it into her mana. If she had to describe it the only way she could was that it was hers. Above all the different pieces too small to make out it was just hers. It was oddly calming in a way.

Interesting as that was she of finished filling her mana and started two of the other things she’d thought of. The first was to make a packed dirt spear, then change the aspect of its mana, hopefully getting something better for a projectile. The other was to make a packed dirt spear, then ask her mana to turn it to stone.

Somehow she doubted the second one despite it being probably a better approach than just trying the same thing for days on end.

She started on the first test, noting a single spear took 15%, before willing that mana to stone. What happened next was disappointingly anticlimactic. The spear looked exactly the same but was kinda heavier, it also felt remarkably stone like, despite looking exactly as it did before: like tightly packed dirt.

Not wanting to waste time Alice decided to just throw it, keeping it in range so she could always tell what was happening. The semi-stone spear did much better than any of her other attempts, but was still lacking. As it hit the tree she was aiming for it held together remarkably well. Instead of crumbling the moment force was applied to it, the spear chipped and broke at the slope leading to its point, leaving barely a mark on the tree as the rest of it careened off in a spin.

Looking at the results, she felt conflicted. On one hand, that was undeniable progress toward reliably weaponising her magic, but on the other hand, it was either the same or worse than a sharpened stick, let alone stone. Of course that wasn’t entirely fair since most animals were softer than a tree, but she wasn’t exactly practicing how to rain extremely lethal spears of earth at demand for most animals. It was still progress though, and something that could probably be improved.

Having already found a solution to her earth magic she was less excited for the next test but she was still going to do it just in case it worked better than the other one. It was a simple premise; ask nicely.

And so, she made another spear of packed dirt before trying to will her mana to turn it into stone. However, no matter how hard she pushed it seemed like it just wouldn’t work. Not couldn’t, but wouldn’t. Like it just didn’t have enough something to do what she asked.

Surprisingly this was a familiar feeling for Alice, though more extreme than ever before. Back when Alice was first getting a feel for mana, this happened incredibly often. She would try something and it would refuse to work, though normally all it took was more pushing. Even the most difficult thing she’d done before; her flamethrower, could be pushed through by pure force of will, though at the cost of a semi-major headache.

This was were the often neglected chants came into play. Understandably, focusing on something so hard it hurts isn’t something mages liked doing in many cases, so they ended up with the concept of a chant. Something to help guide focus and apparently even make spellcasting easier to do. Though Alice could never tell if it was getting easier because there was something to guide her will, or chanting just made things easier given the scale of her previous magic. Hence why she ignored them as useless.

Thankfully this was the perfect situation to test that! Though she did have to think of a chant first. That was also part of the reason she didn’t like chanting. She liked coming up with the small poems she used, but finding rhyming words for them was really hard.

They didn’t have to rhyme of course, but if they didn’t she felt more silly than usual when she said them out loud. But after spending some time on the words she was ready.

“From living earth to lifeless stone, may my will be yours alone,

a resting ground the earth may be, let it end their life for me,

a spear of stone is what I need, a pillar of dirt is what there be.”

Then just in case she added,

”Please”

As she said the last word she could feel her mana being pouring out of her and into the dirt, while leaving it unchanged evern to her mana sight. Then, from one moment to the next the amount of mana being used over doubled, and as Alice started to worry about how close to empty she felt it only increased further.

Scared of eating into her core again she tried to halt the spell and hold onto the mana, only to get run over by its momentum as instead of taking the dwindling supply of mana she was giving it, it began voraciously tearing at her mana. Alice was starting to feel more and more afraid of what would happen. She tried to stop once more but instead of trying to stop the flow and still the mana, she pulled with as much force as she could.

it was similar to trying to push a spell through brute force, but in reverse. As she pulled she found herself matching the pull of her spell. But that wasn’t enough, she pulled harder until she was now taking mana from it— not too much though, she would rather do this slowly than slip up and lose her progress.

Eventually though, the rogue spell relented and Alice collapsed onto the ground exhausted. She looked over to the unfinished weapon to see how well it would have gone if she’d let it finish, seeing a patchwork of hardened dirt and solid stone in pieces on the ground. She could now say for certain this approach would have worked. But she would not be chanting any spell ever again unless her life depended on it. No, never again.