Leo

Alea’s cabin, Germany

Leo sat with the stack of boxes filled with recording crystals. He sat down on the early morning grass, slightly moist with dew. Looking up at the sky, he noticed that it was clear, without a cloud in sight, an early sign that the day would be sunny and calm.

He stared at the clouds and thought, ‘Are all of the crystals going to be this way? No quick road to power? Just listen, practice, and repeat? Why does it have to be so boring?’

It was not that Leo did not appreciate the recording crystals and the guidance they offered. He just felt dull. And as such, he understood the lure the clans or the Church would have back in the day for the young mages who looked for excitement in life. They could choose - a long road to freedom or a quick fix today.

It was the same for ordinary humans as well, Leo realized. Over the years, as access to modern amenities grew in the various regions of the world, humans now had more choices about what to do.

Long gone were times when you were forced to work a trade you did not want to, for example, be a shoemaker when all you wanted to do was sing in an opera. Now you could do both, either or none. This enabled the spread of a false sense of security, making many believe that hard work wasn’t needed. Many first-world countries’ children were born with silver spoons in their mouths. And they talked about their comfort on social media, creating false assumptions for those who did not know better.

Many of Leo’s peers from his early childhood had to find out this truth the hard way. Leo gave his all and studied furiously in middle and high school. He did the same in university. At the same time, many of his peers made a mistake he almost did when he was fourteen - they went after quick cash.

Some started to work in construction, as this sector never required workers to have a proper education, as long as they could show up to work and do the things required. Others worked together with their parents doing some menial jobs. Few started dealing drugs on the street in post-soviet Riga, dying young. Some turned to get-rich-quick schemes, losing what little money or belongings they had. The result was the same - they failed to achieve security and freedom without work.

Or did capitalism fail them? Leo could not decide. He grew up to be a hard-working person, always focused on a goal he set, knowing fully well that there was no free lunch, an adage used multiple times in his finance courses. He knew that you had to work hard to get something done. There was no one else at fault but just yourself.

‘It is the same with magic, I guess. I will make no progress if I do not put my all into it,’ Leo thought, as he understood that life was not a fantasy. No one gained miraculous powers overnight and went off to save the world. As with everything - you had to work for it. Pull every inch along the way. He got up from his back and stopped daydreaming. Determined, Leo closed his eyes and went into his core space to understand the lesson imparted to him from the crystal.

Concentrating, he imagined a network of channels that spread from his core to all around him. Nothing happened for a second. He willed some of the mana from his core to rush out and into the channels he trusted were connected to it. That seemed to work as he noticed the swirling green mana from his core started to pass into invisible tubes connected to it.

The process was slow. Awfully so. Even slower than the collection of motes inside the core space when he first found this place. So Leo did the only thing he thought he could - he observed the process closer.

Up close, he saw that the mana was not as liquid as he had imagined. It had more viscosity, which is partially attributed to the slow process. Next, he saw the number of channels connected to the core was so large that he could not count them all. They looked very different in their twists and turns and their size.

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So Leo thought, ‘What if this process is similar to how the water flows? If I do not have a constant method that increases the pressure in my core and the volume of my mana is limited, it will be impossible to flood all my channels with the stuff. That must mean I must concentrate on a single channel and pass mana only in it, as far as possible.

“Alea implied that I must cultivate my mana before working on my channels. I will not have enough internal mana to do it as it is now. To cycle it through all of the channels in a quick manner.”

Leo stopped the process and observed that the mana he expelled flowed back into the core quicker, returning it to the vibrant green color with a swirling liquid-like substance inside. Thinking to test a theory, he willed the mana flow in a single channel that he remembered the best and saw that he was right.

The speed at which the substance moved increased a hundredfold. It moved quickly out and upwards. Seeing how far it could go, he gave it his all and continued to push mana out of his core. Toward whatever place it was going in the darkness and started to feel something he did not expect.

He did not feel his body while in the core space. Therefore, he was surprised to feel slight discomfort in his shoulder. Noticing that it did not go away, he decided to leave his meditative state and check what was wrong.

Opening his eyes, a wall of pain hit him. He fell on his right shoulder and shut his teeth as the agony took over. He was not able to move or even make a sound. After an eternity, the pain subsided, and Leo could think again.

He relaxed, lying still on the grass. Slowly, he got up to a sitting position and parted his shirt to check what was wrong with his shoulder. He felt a pain comparable to a knife being scraped against a bone.

Checking the shoulder, he saw that nothing was amiss. No blood, no blackened or charred skin. Nothing. Remembering how he could see mana back in the mansion, he concentrated on his sight to check for mana in his shoulder and immediately saw what he had done.

The mana from his core did not go just up somewhere. It went to his shoulder and hit, what he guessed, was the mana gate in it, which was underdeveloped and non-functional. As for the pain, he had no idea why it hurt so bad and hoped that the following crystals would explain this in more detail.

‘What should I do then,’ he thought, putting the shirt back in its rightful place. Leo looked up to the sky and thought about what other ideas he might have. In a few moments, it came to him, ‘My channels should be a closed system until the mana leaves my body. That means I can pass the energy around me in a closed system. Cycle it. Cycle…,” Leo remembered the novels he had read.

‘Alea meant that I should do not only one thing but two. First, I must continue to meditate and gather external mana in my core to push the amount it can hold and convert some of what I pull in, storing it. Second, I must use what I store to cycle through my channels. Find them, strengthen them, get used to mana passing in them,’ he looked up to the sky, smiling.

“What are you smiling for like an idiot?” Heidi asked, interrupting him, coming up from the cabin, carrying a bowl of something steaming. “I brought lunch.”

“Oh, it is lunchtime already?” Leo asked in turn, not paying attention to her remarks, and took the offered bowl of beetroot soup.

“Yep, you were at it for the better part of the morning. So what happened?” Heidi asked and sat down next to him.

“I understood that nothing is free in life,” Leo answered, sipping the hot soup.

“That is true. Took you a while to understand that,” Heidi commented. “And?”

“And I understood what the mana channels are for. How to work with them,” Leo said, smiling.

“Work with them? Leo, they just are. We just passively use them when casting spells,” Heidi commented, dumbfounded. “You mean that you can observe mana channels and strengthen them like the lesson mentioned?”

“Yep,” he nodded and took a few spoons of the soup. “There is so much more to mana than I thought initially. The possibilities really are endless.”

“It is great that you have understood it,” Heidi stated and looked down at her knees, hiding her sad smile. ‘And what I would give to be able to explore them.’