Igniting a core was so easy that people did it accidentally in areas with high ambient mana. The only ingredient required is an overabundance of mana, more than a mana core can hold. The smaller and weaker a mana core is, the easier it was to ignite. If not for the fact that there was no ambient mana at all here, I would have done it years ago.

That wasn’t the circumstance I’d found myself in, however, so I was forced to use a workaround. My method needed actual skill at controlling mana, since I had to use what I’d saved up in my junky storage crystal to create an artificial cloud of ambient mana. Depending on how quickly I managed to cycle the mana through my core, it would react and reach a critical threshold. The entire core would start producing mana instead of just the one spot where it touched on the Astral Realm.

What I was about to do was in essence what being a mage was all about. Any idiot could channel some mana from their core into a basic invocation to help them hoe the dirt a little harder. Controlling mana that wasn’t already connected to them is a whole different skill set. Controlling seven or eight times the total amount of mana my core could even hold was not something the average mage had the ability to do.

But I needed my artificial ambient mana to stay near me where I could use it, so that was precisely what I was going to do. Left to its own devices, it would diffuse and spread until there was nothing left, drunk up by the parched earth of this desert. If there’d been someone I could trust to release the mana from the storage crystal at a steady rate, this would have been simplicity in itself to perform, but I was on my own. It all had to come out at once before I started the process.

I broke the seal on the storage crystal, and mana flooded out of it. Immediately, I started pulling it into my core, packing it in denser, spinning it around. The first coreful was easy; mana in its natural state sat loosely. The second coreful was when things started to get strained and I had to work to cycle the mana around. When people did this accidentally, it was normally by overexerting themselves casting various spells. That method required far more mana than I had available, and my version was significantly more uncomfortable.

I’d managed to pack in four times as much mana as normal and had it spinning inside my core like a raging vortex when I noticed I was losing more than I’d accounted for. At the same time, Senica had stopped playing and was looking around the hut, far too alert. She’d noticed something. It wasn’t hard to guess that some of the ambient mana had been close enough to her that she’d instinctively absorbed it into her own core.

That was great for her. That kind of natural talent was prized, and if she’d been born somewhere else, she probably would have been on the fast-track to full mage status. It was both of our misfortunes to have been born here in this village. Probably one or both of our parents had a similar talent, as such things did tend to get passed down from generation to generation. If I’d been forced to guess, I’d say our mother was the more likely candidate, just given the state of our family garden compared to the neighbor’s.

Regardless, it was a problem for me. I needed that mana, and my margins were already thin. If Senica took too much of it, the ignition would fail. I eyed up what was still left in the air, determined that I could still make things work, and stretched myself to take in the ambient mana closest to Senica first. I needed it far more than she did, especially considering anything she took would just end up in a draw stone in a few hours.

I kept pulling in more and more mana, adding it to the collection, keeping it from exploding outward through sheer force of will and the speed of the cycling drawing it tighter. It was like that ride that was popular at a mage carnival, where people would climb into a giant bowl and the operator would use his magic to make it spin so fast that they were pulled to the walls. But in my case, I was doing it with pure mana, and the more I layered in, the harder it was to keep it moving at speed.

I added another core’s worth on top of what was already there. That made for seven times as much as normal. One more should do it, but the ambient mana was thin now. Senica had stolen too much of my buffer, and now she was out of her chair and approaching me. “Gravvy?” she said. “Are you sleeping?”

I didn’t answer, both because I didn’t want her hanging around me soaking up more of my mana and because I didn’t have the spare mental capacity to hold a conversation while I spun around more than twice as much mana in my three-year-old core than the average full-grown adult could comfortably hold. Mana kept draining out of the air into Senica, despite my best efforts to snatch it back to myself.

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Was there enough left now, or had my sister doomed me to another eight months of slowly building up the reserves in my storage crystal so I could try again? I honestly couldn’t tell. An ignition wasn’t an exact science, nor was it baking where I just followed a recipe with clearly labeled portions. The only thing I could do was keep drawing in as much of the remaining mana as I could.

“Gravin?” Senica said, climbing onto the pallet next to me. I felt her lean over me, but I kept my eyes squeezed shut and did my best to keep my breathing even. I was asleep, damn it, go away.

“Do you feel it?” she whispered. “All the mana. You feel it too, right?”

The last of the ambient mana disappeared, the lion’s share going to me as I actively drew it in, but enough of it funneled into my sister’s core through her mere presence and her instinctive desire to claim it that the outcome was far from certain.

I spun my core as fast as I could, and held it for as long as possible. Still, no ignition. I could feel the mana start to escape back out now, too much for me to keep and not held long enough to catch a spark. I needed more, and the only source was Senica. I could take it from her. Right now, my core was so overflowing with mana that was about to go to waste, it would be a simple matter to cast a mana drain spell and take back what she’d stolen. Her own core was full enough that it would still be a net gain.

She’d know, of course. Maybe she wouldn’t understand exactly how it had happened, but she’d know I’d drained her mana. Everyone in the village was intimately familiar with the experience of having mana drained from them. There was no way she wouldn’t recognize that I was doing it.

Without that mana, I was going to fail. That was a simple fact, so there really wasn’t a choice. I gathered up the tattered strands of mana that had fallen out of the spin before they could get away, wove them into the spell, then rolled over and grabbed Senica’s hand.

She jerked back, startled, but I didn’t let go. My spell touched her core and, just like the draw stone she handled every day, began pulling it out. I took it, all of it, and added it to the maelstrom spinning in my core. And finally, finally, there was enough.

My core shifted and the mana began to absorb into it. No longer did the core simply hold and contain the mana, now the mana flowed into the walls. Where before my core had been spongy and soft, an air bladder filled with the building blocks of magic, now it was a ceramic orb, hard and unyielding as mana infused it. The more the mana soaked in, the faster everything that was left spun.

Senica cried out and pulled away from me, but I’d gotten what I needed and I ignored her. The ignition was almost complete, but I could still botch it if I didn’t keep the rest of the mana spinning until it was gone. It would only take a few more seconds, three… Two… One…

I let out a groan and collapsed down onto the pallet. It was done. My core was empty, but I could already feel it generating new mana. It would most likely be completely full in the next eight hours instead of six days. Finally, I had the spare mana to use magic again. Everything was about to get easier.

“What did you do to me!” Senica screeched.

Almost everything.

There was no playing dumb here. She already knew. I sat up and looked her in the eyes, then said softly, “I borrowed your mana.”

“Give it back!” she demanded instantly.

That was it. There was no question as to why I’d needed it or how I’d taken it. She just knew that it was her mana and I’d taken it without permission, like stealing one of her toys. Never mind the fact that at least half the mana I’d taken from her had been mine to begin with.

Little kids were simple that way. In a few hours, I’d have more than enough mana to give back everything I’d taken from her, but I didn’t think Senica was going to be that patient. Besides, giving mana to someone else directly required some knowledge and skill from them. Sure, I could forcefully push mana into her core, but that could damage her, perhaps permanently.

Then again, Senica had shown a surprising and annoying amount of talent at scooping up ambient mana. I could just expel some of mine into the air around her and let her absorb it into her core on her own. Whatever she managed to get would be what she got. It wasn’t like she had any way to keep track.

That did bring me back to the first problem though. I didn’t have any mana left, and it would be an hour or two until I had enough. It was time to see how patient a little girl could be. “I can’t,” I told her. “I used it.”

“You can’t do that! You’re supposed to save it for the tithe.”

“I know, but I didn’t. It’s gone.”

“I’m telling Mom,” she said.

Little tattletale.

“I’ll give you my mana once I make more, but I don’t have any right now.”

That seemed to appease her. She settled back onto the pallet and jabbed a finger at me. “You’d better. Don’t forget.”

“I promise,” I said.

I was a little bit surprised that she’d accepted the whole mana drain so easily, with almost no questions about what had happened or why. I would have been way more suspicious when I was a kid, but I suppose I’d had a different childhood than Senica did. It might have been nice to grow up as sheltered as she had.

“Did you feel the mana too?” she asked suddenly.

“No,” I lied. “I was sleeping until you woke me up.”

“No you weren’t. You had your eyes all scrunched up and you were groaning.”

Was I? I hadn’t realized.

“You did something with it,” Senica said. “Tell me.”

“No I didn’t,” I insisted.

“Tell me or I’ll tell Mom and Dad you were doing something and that you took my mana without asking first.”

Unbelievable. I was being blackmailed by my kid sister. I took back every single nice thought I’d ever had about her.