CHAPTER 27: A TRUE CORE

Hiro allowed herself to be swept up in Moria's power. It was foreign yet familiar. Her silver ocean concept was a part of Hiro's gold water concept. It felt like an old friend, and yet, it felt so different from Hiro's power. Controlled yet free.

Hiro opened her metaphysical eyes in Moria's center and would've gasped if her ethereal form could breathe. It was a glittering grotto. The walls held crystals that captured the light from the slowly spinning core in the center of the grotto. Tidal pools of water held colorful corals. It was bright and beautiful within especially compared to Hiro's center which looked like a hole in the ground compared to this glittering paradise.

Hiro looked down at herself. Her form here made her think of the ghosts people drew in video games. A torso and arms and the legs ending in a whisp. She looked around for Moria and gasped when she saw her. "Holy Little Mermaid Batman," she whispered.

Moria was no longer in a humanoid form. A long blue-green tail had replaced her legs as she swam around in the grotto's space as if it were water. The tail looked like a cross between a dolphin and a fishtail. It was oriented like a dolphin's but flowed like a fish. Her skin was covered in fine scales. Her back held the same blue-green scales as her tail, but her front had paler colors. She wore no clothes. Her chest looked smooth and flat with coloration like nipples, though still all covered by fine pale scales. Her hands were mostly normal but webbed, between the first knuckles. Her face and hair were mostly unchanged except for the same fine pale scales creating up her neck and onto her chin and face.

"Woah," Hiro said as she swam up to her. "You look different." Moria had mentioned that some of her people had fins and tails and frills and gills, but she hadn't expected to see Moria with any of those. It was strange, but it held an otherworldly beauty that matched her magical core.

Moria spun around showcasing a dorsal fin on her back and another one on her tail. "My grandmother has a similar form. I took this on after I got here to honor her teachings." She floated down to Hiro's level where she was hovering above the grotto's floor.

"It's a wonderful form," Hiro said with fascination. Professor Davenport had mentioned that you could make your metaphysical shape whatever you wished it to look like, but Hiro had not thought about what she should be yet so stayed with her default self. Though here in another person's center she felt less substantial. Probably why her legs had disappeared into the mist.

"All you born on the land hover way down here. Come and swim with me! I will show you around before we begin," Moria was happy to show her around. Hiro reached out with her hands and swam through the area as if it was water. Though there was less resistance, and took her a bit to get used to it. Almost like the people on the international space station but she could push against the air to move around instead of objects.

The grotto wasn't that large. Moria wanted to show her how she had made the pools of water out of mana constructs and filled them with her mana. Since her Ocean concept was the dominant one, her mana took on the form of water with a rainbow sheen like an oil slick of the other concepts mixed throughout. She showed how she had small trickles coming from the core to keep them topped up so she could do more magic before being depleted.

"The stronger your concepts the more magic you can do before needing to let it regenerate. Some people have different rates of regeneration, but this trick of making stockpiles of energy within yourself to refill your core from can help your stamina in battle." Moria told her.

Hiro nodded, "I think the professor mentioned something like that. But she has said so much in the past two days I can't keep track of everything."

Moria nodded in understanding, "You'll pick up a lot of things once you get into proper classes." She swam toward her glittering core and pulled a strand of water from it. She guided it through the air in a spiral. "One of the ways to get approved for outpost positions if you don't have above a bronze concept is to have enough in reserve to help power you through a twelve-hour combat scenario. At the silver level, it is recommended, especially if you only have one or two silver concepts, but when you get to gold or higher your cores provide so much mana that unless the battle lasts days without end, your natural reserves tend to be enough without this." She gestured to the pools allowing the trickle of power to connect to one and let it swell with energy.

She continued, "Plus it's hard to contain those concepts in outside constructs unless you have excellent control, and usually the professors like to focus that control on actual use instead of power reserves." She shrugged. "Overwhelming power can do a lot for the higher concepts, but understanding yourself enough to have control helps growth."

She spun slowly to face Hiro, "Enough about that though, we can talk about that when we aren't in meditation, it's time to learn some exercises to help you with constructs that can contain mana."

Moria sunk to the floor and began to slowly dig into the sandy-like floor for the grotto. "Hiro, what do you notice about my mana here? Look at my core and my reserve pools. What do you see?"

Hiro looked around at the pulsating light representing Moria's power. The first thing that caught her attention was the colors, they were mostly cool watery tones with flashes of other colors swirling on the surface. She was drawn in by the colorful lights as she examined the core. A rhythm began to emerge as she studied it. The core grew slowly as the color danced across the surface. Then slowly shrank again in waves that rippled across the surface. Hiro followed the leading wave for a bit so captivated she missed the lopsided smile spreading across Moria's face as she quietly dug, letting Hiro have space and quiet to think.

The swirls of color rose and sunk like rafts on the waves. Each time the wave rose it swirled the color of power into new patterns, but they also repeated after a while. Hiro knew she had seen that same shape form before because it reminded her of a spiral on a necklace from one of her favorite Disney movies.

She spent a few minutes captivated by the core. She was careful never to get too close or to touch it. That is something the professor had made very clear to her as a bad idea as well as being exceptionally rude. When she had collected her thoughts she returned to where Moria had almost finished digging a new tidal pool.

"The core seems like it breathes or has a tide that moves across its surface." She began while Moria listened to Hiro while still digging, "As the swell moves around the core it changes the other colors within in repeating or maybe echoing patterns?" Hiro continued trying to put her observation into cohesive thoughts. "It feels alive like the orbs in the cavern did when I was gaining my concepts." Hiro lapsed into silence still thinking.

Once it was clear she didn't have anything else to say, Moria softly asked, "And what of my tidal pools or reserve power?"

Hiro turned her attention to the power in those and spent another few minutes watching them as Moria finished her digging. It didn't take long before Hiro stuck on something, "They are moving! Slowly, but the power within moves back and forth, and the pools, they have shifted?" Hiro looked back and forth to the dip Moria had dug and the closest pool to her. She was very good at eyeballing measurements after years in the shop. It was closer to her now.

"Yes, they have. About once per day, they will have made a full lap around my core. Do you have a guess as to why?" Moria asked.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Hiro looked up to the core and the swirling power within. Tides were caused by the moon's gravity. Did her core have gravity as a concept? But no that was certainly a gold concept and Moria said she only had silver. But it was her best guess, so she decided to go with it anyway. "Does your core have gravity?"

The mermaid version of Moria bobbed her head back and forth, "Of a sort." Her hands stilled as her brow furrowed, "Energy of any type does not stand still. At the smallest level, everything moves. Does your planet know that?" Hiro nodded, she had only taken high school science classes but she remembered about atoms and molecules and how they were always moving.

"Well, when we condense power into ourselves, into our souls it still wishes to move. The mana concepts we can hold thanks to our soul sparks still remember that they are energy and part of the physical world even as they are held within and separate from the physical world. Magic doesn't always follow the rules of the natural world, but it remembers it was once a part of it. So we must also remember that when we work within ourselves."

Moria dug some more while Hiro thought about what she said coming to a realization. "When I've been making constructs the professor said they had to be strong so I've been thinking of steel and metal. Things that I worked with at my job. She said it had to be flexible, but I didn't understand why. It's because I'm not accounting for how it wants to move. I need to engineer a way to work with the water concept so it doesn't erode or shatter. I was thinking of how water likes to take any shape it's in and thought it would be fine." Hiro trailed off.

"That is exactly my thought. So Let me teach you how to sense how your mana moves when you are at rest. When you're not calling upon it. Then I'll show you how I build one of my pools and how to fill it properly. Finally, we will switch over to your center and do the exercises there." Moria gestured to Hiro to join her, "Professor Davenport is amazing, but I found her way of thinking about mana too rigid and formal. For most people, it works well, but I found myself mixing her teachings with those of my grandmother. That's how I earned to top spot in my class with her."

Hiro drifted down and joined Moria. "My grandmother had me join her in meditation at least once a week when I was young. Each member of my pod would teach me different things, but it is up to your blood relatives to teach about your center and future core so it fell to her. I am going to take your essence within myself and we are going to ride the waves of my core together for a short time. This is better done within yourself, but I wish for you to know how it feels. I will be the shield around you so you will never actually touch my core. But you should still be able to sense some of what happens. Don't be alarmed, it is the best way to learn the technique quickly."

Hiro's look had grown alarmed while she explained what would happen next. But she was even more alarmed when Moria's metaphysical body grew and enveloped hers. She didn't feel any different other than when Moria moved she stayed within her torso without having to move too. Moria began humming a tune before softly breaking into a quiet singing chant. Hiro felt as if the insubstantial form of Moria had become more real to her. Then she moved to the core, shrinking both of their forms down. Then she dove into her core like a fish into an ocean.

Hiro was disoriented at first. Moria swam in her power but Hiro felt she could only be there because of the protective shell of her form around her. Most of the power around her came in as static noise. But then there was the sound of crashing waves, the whooshing of water, and the chanting of Moria blending it all together. Slowly what she was seeing and felt the echoes of through the shell began to make sense. Moria soo stilled her swimming and just floated being pulled slowly in a circle by the swirl of power around her.

The chanting fell away as they floated as one in the center of Moria's core. The complex weave of Moria's power was too much for Hiro to decipher, but it no longer was a mass of confusing colors and sounds. Instead, the power echoed with the last sounds of Moria's singing chant before taking up its own kind of music. The sounds of a sea mixed with the sound of metal hitting metal as a drum to the swirl. Other noises joined with it but Hiro couldn't place them.

Moria held out her hands and began to move them with the flow of power around them. Letting the swirl of her magic push her limbs this way and that dancing with her power letting it take the lead following the rhythm of the sounds around them. It was captivating to watch. A form of moving meditation and becoming one with her core.

Moria danced within the core for a few minutes before she began to chant and then make her way back out of the press of magic. When they were out Moria grew until she could expel Hiro from the protective shell she had made with her form.

"I know it's overwhelming at first," Moria said, "But even as a child I caught on to the edges of what was happening within my grandmother. The key is learning the flow of your soul and working with it not against it. Once you know how your power wants to move you can influence it to your design. I have had my powers for close to ten years now. When you first enter it is chaotic and tries to fight itself. The concepts you absorb have not found their equilibrium. Your job with this kind of meditation is to find how they overlap and have them work in harmony."

"I thought the change was supposed to do that?" Hiro said confused.

Moria nodded, "It does but like an orchestra, it might be out of tune or a player behind a beat. Or an unruly player tries to overwhelm the other tunes. It's your job to be its conductor, you have to conduct your power to be in perfect harmony. To some, this happens as they learn what their powers can do and instinctually harmonize them. For you, however, as someone with multiple cores, you will have to conduct multiple symphonies at once while having one player off playing an unauthorized solo."

Hiro nodded along, "Why does it make more sense after a half hour with you than after two days with the Professor?" She asked wryly.

"She takes a very academic approach. She is not a bad teacher, but she teaches advanced students. Students who have already mastered the first courses in mana studies. She is brilliant and unparalleled in mana control but has trouble breaking concepts down for students who don't grasp the basics or have a strong foundation."

Moria brought her to the edge of the freshly dug pool. "Now let me show you how I make a construct to hold mana."

The first part of the process wasn't new to Hiro. However, when Moria built in the ability to move she found out she had a major misconception. "The material can change after you built it."

"Yeah, it's magic." Moria had then explained how important intention was in magic. If the intent was for the mana in the construct to be adaptable, it would be. Everything within the center of her being was hers to mold how she wanted it to be. It was part of her.

"The first reserve pool I ever built broke after I stopped meditating. I ended up spraying everyone in class with salt water as I was caught by surprise by the flush of power. After I dried everyone off I reentered meditation to see what happened. Turned out as my mana was naturally moved by my core the pool didn't budge and instead, the wall was slowly eroded until there was a flood of power rushing out." Moria chuckled then said dryly, "To be fair I had been a little overzealous of my first pool. It was massive. I had been trying to show off to the class. None of them were that impressed with what I had done."

Moria dismissed the construct and built it one more time for Hiro to flow along before settling into the hole she had dug. "Now when you fill it you also have to work with your mana. What you described at dinner sounds like you were filling the construct too quickly even if you had built a vessel that could hold it. Watch."

Moria then began pouring power into the pool. A whirlpool formed. The vessel held flexing as the mana spun. Soon though the power had filled it up enough to begin splashing out of the top of the pool as it spun. Moria deftly pulled the power back into a stream and fed it back into her core making a loop. She cut off the flow of power into the pool and drained away all the power.

"See there, I moved it too quickly and it spilled out of the bounds. Now watch." This time she let a small trickle come from her core and slowly puddled it into the tidal pool. She swayed the stream back and forth slowly and Hiro realized it mimicked the movements of the waves across the core's surface, washing back and forth with the swells.

Slowly the pool filled up. After only a couple of inches. Moria stopped actively guiding the mana with her hands. "Now I have practice with this. I don't have to actively think about filling the pools. It'll be about a day until this pool is filled. I will check on it several times throughout the next few days. I haven't tried to make a new pool of power for a while and I can already feel some strain maintaining so many at once. I still hope to evolve my ocean concept though and this is one method that has been theorized to work." She said somewhat quietly.

Hiro looked around at the dozens of tidal pools of different sizes all around them. She couldn't even get one construct to work, she couldn't imagine having this many at once. "Hey, it looks impressive from my end." She said eyebrows raised.

"Thanks, my lessons are done here. Let's move into your center and see what we can do with whatever you have going on in there." Moria gently pushed Hiro's form and she felt herself being ejected from the grotto.