“Wait what? What do you mean like you did before? Is that why you wanted me to check my mana earlier? You can’t be serious. You really can’t be serious. What kind of lunatic are you?” Charise questioned aghast.

“Look lady. I’m doing the best I fucking can here. I have spent my night so far trying to figure out the way out of this fucking place. Seeing if the person that I had been hired to find is being held here as well, and then accidently letting out you and another person that are under the control of a multiplaner entity that has an agier bedamned grudge against me. Honestly, I figured I should take a chance and see if I could free you somehow from the damn parasite rather than either just killing you or leaving you to live the rest of your life as a flesh puppet for a… a… a… an invasive species.” Jack let out some of his frustrations. His head was pounding from the repeated mana overload and the harsh noise of the facility alarm. “As I said it isn’t like there are many fucking options here. And judging by how you are reacting to me overall it seems my pervious transference hasn’t changed your personality too much. I’m hoping that I can keep this mana transference to a minimum. But you know if you want to live your life as prisoner in both your own body and a hidden facility who knows where. Be my guest.”

As Jack finished his rant, he took his hand off of Charise’s head and began to make his way to the door. There was too much to do to just be wasting time arguing. At least he had some kind of lead on something he could show the people here in trade if he was captured on his way out.

“Hey! Hey! You can’t just leave me here like this! Untie me at least!” Charise’s voice called out from behind him as he headed for the door.

Jack shrugged uncomfortably. “Yeah, I can. I’m sorry, but I really can’t risk you attempting to kill me again right now. It’s the limit of my kindness that I don’t just knock you out and leave you unconscious and tied up. Sorry that things are so strange and upsetting but I don’t have time to make you feel better about everything. I have wasted too much time already seeing if I could help someone under the system’s thrall. Good news. I can. At least somewhat. However, I can’t promise you that you won’t end up its slave again though so I will just wish you the best of luck and be going.”

“Look do you have some way of proving that you are telling me the truth about this mind controlling system? If you can do that, I’ll let you do that mana test you wanted.” Charise called out to him in the hopes that he would stop and reconsider freeing her.

Jack paused in the doorway to respond. “I don’t know. I had been hoping that showing you a facsimile of its mana would either jog your memory or help you distinguish what has happened to you from an actual dream. Other then that I have no real idea on just how I can prove it to you. Closest thing that I can guess might work is that very same mana test that freaked you out so much. So, either you need to take some of what I am telling you on faith or just accept that you’ll be stuck here until some of the complex’s guards find you.”

Charise barked a harsh laugh. “That’s easy enough to say. The only problem is the test you want to do is literally insane. Not the watching my mana part but the fact that you expect me to absorb your mana. I still remember the news article about the massacre that happened out in Revopit after a person there started to absorb other people’s mana. I know that such an extreme response is rare but I have no desire to even chance such an outcome.”

Sighing Jack agreed. “I can understand that. Quite honestly, I have had to do numerous things these last few weeks that I would have preferred never even to attempt because of how dangerous they were. I have become somewhat inured to it by this point. Well plus my current emotional suppression spell is likely contributing to my acceptance. Any ingrained horror from what is taught is suppressed and I’m more or less just operating on what the I can figure the best options are. I know I’m not perfect and it feels like I’m flailing about somewhat but I’m doing the best I can.”

There was a moment of relative silence as both of them stopped and pondered. After a while Charise spoke up. “Fine. Fine. Do it. We can try it. Fuck this is insane. Just swear to me on whichever Agier that you follow that what you are telling me is the truth.”

Jack turned back toward her to face her properly. “Just checking. You’re sure right? I can otherwise just leave you here. I mean nothing should happen to you if I just go. Well. Nothing short term at least. As I said I can’t promise that you won’t end up being possessed, or controlled or whatever, again.”

Scowling Charise reaffirmed her choice. “Fuck it. I said to do it. So, let’s do it right now before I lose my nerve and think better of it.”

Jack nodded and started to walk back over to her. “Okay. Also, for the record. I do indeed swear that as far as I know I am telling you the truth about what is happening. Can’t really swear it on any of the Agier as I never followed any of them. I might be related to some of them but I certainly don’t have any positive relations with them.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Just as Jack got back over to where she was sitting the alarm went quiet. Looking around Jack wondered just what that meant. Did they turn it off because everyone was assembled? Did the older man who had disappeared earlier do something to turn it off? Or was it something else entirely. Jack felt a sense of foreboding as all the possibilities he could conceive of would likely only make things more dangerous.

“Let’s get this done. If you don’t mind, please take some time to purify your mana to what you normally have. Hopefully with a better example I can do even better then I did before in making a good substitute of it.” Jack hadn’t thought of it earlier when he wanted her to test channeling mana, but it occurred to him after she agreed that if he could get his mana even closer to her own it would hopefully reduce the risks.

Charise let out a nervous breath and spoke. “Sure. Give me just a minute.”

The minutes ticked by as Charise closed her eyes and concentrated. Every so often Jack paced over to the doorway and looked out down the hall. Worried that some of the security would be showing up at any moment. Finally, she opened her eyes let out a deep breath and looked at him. “Alright. I purified what I have as best I could. It was strange. While it should have felt normal and easy to purify it. Instead, it felt almost like slogging though mud. Like when I was younger and just starting out.”

Jack nodded and shrugged. “I’m not too surprised. While it might have seemed like a dream, you likely haven’t gone through the steps properly in some time. Both from your mana getting slowly converted into another type as well as that for however long you have been here you have been living in a near magicless environment. Anyways let’s get a look at your mana and I’ll do my best to match it here so we can test your channeling. I hope that this works and everything is alright.”

“You hope this all works? How do you think I feel?” Charise muttered.

Jack once more placed his hand on her and closed his eyes. Stretching the barest strand of mana into her body to take another look at her mana signature and see what all had changed. Deep inside her lay a delicate violet orb that looked like it was made out of intricate metal lace. For the first time in his life Jack wondered what exactly a mana signature said about the person. His experience in the transformation that his own signature had undergone when he reaffirmed his self truths made it so that the theory that he had dismissed as nonsense in the past was likely true and not just a tool to help people with their visualization for purification. Especially as he had never considered that not all people would interpret mana in the same manner that he did.

Shaking his head out of his reverie Jack stared deep into the center of the orb looking through each little bit as best as he could to see what little nuances were present. Jack was impressed with just how closely he had gotten earlier with his attempt at replicating her mana signature from such a tiny spark. This time he would make his imitation far better.

He withdrew his mana and began to work on a shell that would make the same beautiful violet that he interpreted her mana as. After a while the color felt nearly perfect but there was something bothering him. The shell didn’t give off the same feeling that her mana signature did. It was like a core aspect was missing. Much like the way that she had said that his mana before had tasted like it was made with some kind of knock off sugar.

He pondered for a short while before he decided to try something. That filagree that was the outer portion of her signature. Perhaps if he replicated that on the shell it would help with whatever it was that his replication attempt was lacking.

It turned out that copying an aspect that was not just the color was much more difficult. It required mana to be more concentrated in some places and less in others. In many ways it felt almost as if it were a natural spell array. Bit by bit Jack slowly wove a network on the outside of the shell. Making it as close as he could remember to what he had seen on the outer part of her core.

Once he finished making the shell as good as he could manage Jack opened his eyes. Charise was shifting back and forth in front of him. Clearly wishing that she could move and be free.

“Sorry for the delay. It should be as good as I can do for now. Tell me how this feels.” With that statement Jack channeled mana once more into her body.

Charise’s eyes opened in surprise. “That feels almost exactly like my own mana. There is a slight difference. It tastes like it was very slightly burnt but even that is not by much. How can you do such a thing? I thought such a thing was supposed to be impossible.”

“Well not really. It’s generally accepted for the standard population a near impossibility to find someone else with the same or nearly identical mana signature as yourself. Historically there have been a few cases of some sets of twins having nearly indistinguishable mana from each other. Plus, there is in fact the minuscule chance that there is someone else in all the worlds that has mana like your own. Rather like finding a non-magical doppelganger of yourself. But such a thing is so unlikely that it’s just taught that it’s impossible.” Jack explained as he recalled some of the information that he had found out way back when he had dropped out of school and had learned mostly from studying by himself at the library. While he hadn’t fully remembered that fact until just a bit ago that information was what had made him think that trying to purify the system’s mana back into a facsimile of hers would work.

“Sorry, that’s not important right now. Okay I am going to give you some of my mana here. Take it and utilize it in some way. Doesn’t matter how exactly you do. The big thing is I need to pay close attention to your mana signature as you do.” Jack shook his head and focused on what they needed to do.

Charise took a deep steadying breath and said. “Got it. Let’s just get this fucking done.”