Manning

There was nothing but darkness. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, everything was blindingly bright before quickly fading back to darkness. The lost soul heard clashes of sound, thunderous and deafening, and then no sound at all. Several senses it forgot it had would flare up louder than ever just to fall mute once again to an unknown force.

Where was it? Who was it? Come to think of it, what was it?

It was in the dark. It was so, so, so very small. It was terrified. After spending several hours struggling to move, straining to see where it was, the soul realized it was trapped and suffocating. It could not remember anything before waking up, but part of it instinctively knew that the situation the soul found itself in was wrong. A was a prisoner in the dark. Paralyzed.

Lying there in the dark, contemplating its new existence, the soul felt something beginning to stir in the dark, straining against the intangible walls of its prison. Where it was excited at first, to not be alone in this endless vastness of nothing, the soul realized that if there wasn't even enough room for it to move, and it’d tried, surely there couldn't be enough space for anything else in the prison.

The flashes of light started up again, chaos outside of its hearing and sight. That ethereal swirl of chaotic effects that had first roused the soul from its slumber began anew. Again and again, it could feel something poking at the back of its mind. Something I could almost see but couldn’t, as if it were just a fleeting feeling, gone as soon as it arrived. It was quickly distracted from the poking sensation as its attention was once again drawn toward the light that did not help it see, and the sound that it could hear but could not hear.

Trying its hardest and straining to see whatever it was, if only to catch a glimpse of anything, it once again dwelled upon the fact that all of its senses felt muffled. Dull. If it could only just know that there was something outside of that prison, somewhere it could get to or work toward, it would be able to grasp it. Yet, just as suddenly as it had awoken, the soul found that it had no energy to stay awake, and it was once again asleep.

With a jolt, the spirit awoke once again. It still did not know where it was, but it now knew what it was. It was being pushed, and did not like it one bit.

Shoving back as hard as it could, there was a resistance, somebody or something straining back against it, wrestling against it for space in an already tight prision. The stranger seemed to have awoken, and was fighting for its own space inside of this coffin that they were trapped in. After what felt like hours and hours of pushing, the battle of wills seemed to just fizzle out from both parties at the same time, much to the lost soul’s relief. It'd started to develop a pounding headache that was only getting worse the longer the struggle continued. As it relaxed, it could feel something akin to a pop, and the static that it’d been hearing slowly became something audible.

"Have you finally stopped freaking out?" The voice sounded familiar, the only truly familiar thing since it had woken up, but it couldn't quite place its metaphorical finger only why it sounded familiar. It was feminine and sounded almost as exhausted as it felt, and very annoyed. "I should have guessed you were here with me. I just don’t know why it took you so long to wake up. Or how long I took to wake up for that matter. Ugh!" Exasperation bled through their mental channel in droves.

She knew where they were? Knew who it was? "Who are you? Where are we? What's going on, and why can't I move or see anything?" Once it finally remembered how to voice questions of its own, they could no longer be contained. A flood of short, but important queries flooded from the soul with the fury of a thousand-year-contained river finally breaching its dam.

"My name is Cara-" she began, and then hesitantly, "Don't you remember what happened, Manu-Manning, how we got to be stuck in here? I mean you were a little out of it at the time I guess, but you were there too."

It was at that point the spirit realized that it wasn't hearing her per se, but her voice was echoing around inside of it’s mind. Although it had obviously subconsciously made that discovery, allowing it to ask its questions in the first place, it was still extremely disorienting and warranted further questioning. There was something far more pressing that it had just learned, something that enlightened it. Manning. It felt right, and it knew. It was a Manning. She was a Cara. Something must have happened to them, and the Cara knew more than it did. She shoved me. Again.

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"Knock that off! If you know where we are you just tell me already! We need to figure out how to get out of here, and what about my eyes and arms and legs. I can’t feel them…" I trailed off.

"We, uh, we were attacked by a wizard, Manning. He trapped us inside something called a Soul Gem. We don’t have any limbs anymore. Just concentrate and imagine opening your eyes, you should be able to see our surroundings. Or at least you would, if we had any surroundings that was." Manning could feel a palpable sense of nervousness from Cara, understandably he believed she still feared that wizard. If the wizard had done this to them, it must be powerful. Still, she’d enlightened him on how to regain his sight.

So Manning tried just that.

Relaxing a bit, Manning opened his 'eyes’, and yet still saw nothing. Well, it wasn’t exactly nothing. He could see in every direction, and in every direction was… oh wait. Yeah he supposed it was nothing after all. Their prison seemed to be in some sort of crevice. That was his assumption at least, for he could only see two walls and a lot of nothing above and below them. It was pitch black, except for a light (hah) glow coming from... coming from the prison they were encapsulated in, the Soul Gem!

The Soul Gem was some sort of black rock that was chained up. Actually, their prison seemed to be a gem set into a silver necklace. A necklace that had been dropped somewhere. And was glowing.

Right, more questions seemed to be the best avenue of attack there. Manning prepped my next barrage of inquiries, only to be proactively cut-off by Cara speaking again.

"Look, I'm sorry I was pushing against you,” She seemed to mistake his prolonged silence for sulking, “but we need to figure out how to escape or something. There is almost no room in here for us and I am getting claustrophobic. I think I figured out a way to push against the barrier but I need your help."

"How?"

"With magic. Look, just focus on your Mana and try to make a bubble around yourself, us, whatever. Then push it outwards. That's how I was pushing you in the first place, and since you were able to push back you obviously have the capability."

There were a few seconds of silence, seemingly stretching on into eternity.

"Mana..?"

"How can you not- You were just- You really don’t know what Mana is?" I could feel her frustration at this point, vibrant and violent. Once again there was this awkward silence in their little crack. "Sorry, I forgot you were just an uneducated forester before all of this."

Without any real reaction outside of hurt and anger, Manning really did start to sulk. He didn’t know what she meant by uneducated forester, but he could tell from her tone that it was nothing nice.

"Oh don’t be like that, I didn't mean it that way. I can feel your frustration and I'm sure you can feel mine too, and neither of our frustrations are going to get us out of this. Try this, focus on our surroundings and you should be able to feel energy. It’s the energy that makes up everything in the world, and it is present in anything and everything. That energy is ambient Mana. Pull it into yourself and then push at the inside of our pendant with it."

Naturally, it wasn’t nearly as simple as Cara implied. Looking around, Manning could in fact confirm there was absolutely nothing around them, let alone energy, he could ‘see’ that much clearly. He even tried to investigate the light radiating from the gem they were contained within, to no avail. Cautioned against asking another question to his remarkably short-tempered roommate, Manning decided to put some effort into finding it himself.

Closing his 'eyes' again and concentrating, he put forward all of his mental energy into trying desperately to feel some sort of energy. Envisioning it from the way she described, he decided it would probably feel like the heat from the sun, or the breeze on a winter day. Something almost physical, but spiritual at the same time he supposed if he couldn’t see or touch it before.

Nothing. He still felt absolutely nothing. Yet, he was still cautious of asking for more help from Cara. She seemed to have a lot of problems of her own to deal with right now, and he wanted to try and figure this out on his own anyways. He’d show her who was an uneducated forester.

Deciding to try another approach instead, Manning turned off all of his senses and once again went back to being that soul floating in a void of nothingness. If he’d not been able to sense Mana before being trapped inside of this gem, as Cara had inferred, then perhaps he needed to stop clinging to his old sense and try and discover Mana from scratch. Perhaps, he thought, she didn’t really mean ‘see’ the energy when she said as such. He closed my eyes and blocked out all thoughts of their current imprisonment, of the warm sun, and fresh breeze that he’d probably never feel again. He simply basked in this new void of thoughts that he’d created and just listened.