Chapter Two

Torrents of Mana

The Rock

The pretty rock in the ground still hadn't decided on a name for himself, but he had a list. He had names written on the wall in a curling, flowy script that had come naturally to mind when he had decided to write. As he experimented with his newfound power to move things around the hole in the ground, he crossed off names from the list as he decided that he didn't like them.

The little hole was coming along nicely. The rock had decided that it quite liked shaping the different materials in the hole, but progress had slowed to a halt as it discovered something very important about its newfound power. When he had eaten the dirt earlier that day, it had felt like filling up with power. As material was moved around, the power didn't seem to drain at all, but whenever more material was created, the power drained away. Creating some things was more expensive than others, though there didn't seem to be much of a pattern to it yet. Perhaps one would become clear after further testing. The biggest problem was that the dirt which had been consumed was apparently not a great source of energy.

Creating a pile of dirt and then consuming it resulted in a net gain of zero. Creating a stone of the same volume required at least three times the energy. Water and stone seemed to take a similar amount to create, but the stone sank in the water quickly. This meant it probably wasn't closely related to density, unless there were other factors at play. Perhaps it had to do with the state of the matter? Time to set up some experiments. The rock expended all the energy it had on creating a pile of small, uniform gold ingots, arbitrarily defining each one as a single unit of energy. Mana, let's call it. He absorbed the first ingot, slightly replenishing his mana stores, and then spent it all to create as much dirt as possible. One more ingot made a pile of sand, a third went to making a cloudy glass. It was the same elements as the sand, just in a different form. Two more ingots to make different types of stone, and another for water, placed in a bowl. Now let's make some comparisons.

Two hours later, the rock was tearing out his metaphorical hair. Somehow, there was a variable he wasn't accounting for here. The dirt was still the most plentiful of the materials he had made for a single unit of mana, that was consistent at least. The sand and glass came out equal to each other, when weighed against each other on a scale (which had been surprisingly easy to create). But the stones came out different. Two stones, made from the same materials as each other like the glass and sand had been, but made in different patterns, had been produced in different amounts using the same mana. Why was this different from the sand and glass? Was it the materials? The process used? Something about the intrinsic nature of rocks? Was one more aesthetically pleasing than the other, and therefore more expensive? It didn't seem to make any sense. Either there was some variable that he couldn't track, or something about the process was currently beyond his understanding. Still, at least he had a small catalogue of what materials he could make and how much they cost. Let's get back to building!

The rock went through his list of names and removed anything that sounded too much like a mad scientist's name. Mad he may be, but a successful scientist he was not. An interior decorator, perhaps. The floor was leveled out and a pedestal was raised off to one side for the rock to set himself on display. He was still the most majestic thing in the room. As his control got better, he found himself better able to shape his sphere of influence, which as a matter of course was no longer a sphere. His domain was shaped into a relatively long rectangular hallway, with an arched roof. Still growing slowly, it was now about six feet across and tall, and nearly twelve feet long. The walls were still made of dirt as a matter of cost cutting, but there had been other improvements. Stone archways held up the tunnel and terracotta tiles made a pattern of diamonds on the floor. Glass mirrors were carefully arranged to diffuse the light coming in from the single hole in the ceiling at the far end of the hallway. As his influence grew, he pushed it up the hole, slowly making his way towards the surface. Was there anything up there? He had memories in bits and pieces showing wonderful views and a diverse collection of plants and animals, but so far all he had seen for himself was rocky soil and the materials he had created. There had to be something to see up there, right? No matter, it should only be a few hours left to go until the surface was in view... oh. Wait a minute.

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"I won't be able to see anything."

The thought was almost painful.

"I can only see things inside my area of influence. My little realm. That doesn't seem fair."

Perhaps there were many beautiful things to be seen on the surface, but he would never see them. Trapped in a hole with nothing to look at but himself... Oh!

"Looking at myself? Of course! It's so simple!"

His vision quickly shifted to the mirrors by the hole and he shifted one to look straight out the top. He couldn't see the ground but he would at least see the sky.

It was a grey, cloudy thing. Slowly darkening and looking like rain might come soon. Strangely enough, he was looking straight through his own reflection. Apparently, however he oriented his point of view, it was invisible. Then again, he had already found that his vision wasn't strictly light based, although he could see the light well enough. Perhaps he was visible but without a reflection.

He was startled out of his musings by the first drop of rain hitting the mirror, falling from the dark clouds above.

"Oh, this isn't good. I'm in a hole in the ground! If it rains my new entryway will fill with water! Water that... that I can just absorb. For more mana. Oh. Oh, this is gonna be good."

---

The storm lasted for what must have been two days. Despite the howling wind and torrential downpour, the crystalline rock in the ground would have been grinning from ear to ear if only it had ears and could grin. The whole time he had been slurping up the steady stream of water that had poured in from above like a dying man in the desert, and he was feeling about as rich as a ten year old child who had just been handed fifty dollars in coins. Was this what true power was? He'd been playing in a sandbox before, with a plastic shovel and barely enough sand to shape, counting his mana and worrying over conversion rates. Now he was the foreman! He had so much energy inside that he didn't know if he'd ever find a use for it, but he knew he had to. Surely there would be another rainstorm in the future, which meant that his was only the beginning of what he could do. His limiting factor was suddenly not his meager mana reserves, but his tiny sphere of control! It had been growing at what now seemed like a snail's pace, but was there a way to speed it up? If he expended all his mana to make the most dense materials he could think of, he would still fill the room twice over.

"Actually, now that I think about it, where is all this stuff stored? Do I have a maximum capacity for all this energy? Will I explode if I eat too much!? Oh well, no use crying over spilt milk, especially when you've spilt it down your throat where it belongs. Let's see what I can do with this."

Focusing once again on the dirt walls of the chamber, they were carved away and replaced with a white and black marble. The swirls in the stone weren't left up to chance, and instead were guided to form a pattern similar to the diamond shaped tiles on the floor. In some of the diamonds, he formed gemstones mirroring the colors that reflected on his own surface, always a red ruby in the middle of a ring of the other flickering colors. The hole to the surface was widened slightly, to let in more light and rainwater.

As the final touches were added to the chamber, the rock found a simple, intense pleasure looking over what he had created. Observing the intricate details in the marble, he decided what his name would be and removed the names from the wall, smoothing it out.

"Mason," the rock said.

"I am Mason, and I will build the most beautiful stone works the world shall ever see!"

He felt power flare within himself at the declaration, and a soft hum resonated across the hallway from his Core. Mason's identity was decided, his goals were before him, and now all he needed was more mana to work with. As more thunder rumbled from above, Mason began planning what he would build next.