Slowly, he subconsciously focused onto a buzzing just outside of his void; in the bits of soil and rock. His first thought was that it was a lot harder to think of nothing than he first assumed, followed shortly by the realisation that he’d never been able to hear that particular sound before, even only minutes before when he’d been listening to everything around him.

He opened his senses up and stared intently at the hard surface around his prison, attempting to locate the source of the buzzing he could both feel and hear. As he peered into the depths of the rock, the cracks that ran alongside the wall, the perfect smoothness and the imperfections, he came to an understanding. The mana wasn’t a heat or a breeze, but rather it felt like stability. It was unchanging, yet always changing. It had always been all around him, even if he’d never sensed it before.

He decided that the vibrational energy he could feel filling his surroundings must be the mana that Cara had been referring to.

Trying as hard as he could, Manning pulled at the sensation, and it worked! The earth around him yielded a small trickle of its buzzing, which strung toward and then through the casing of his prison, directly into his core. It tasted like a spring morning after the rain. Like a storm brewing on the horizon. Like a long day of tending a garden.

It tasted magnificent. He was still not happy about waking up trapped in this prison, but in that moment he was thankful for it, for allowing him to feel the best sensation that he could possibly imagine. Apparently it was a day of revelations, because he quickly came to another one.

It wasn't enough. Although the sensation of hunger was largely foreign to him in his current state, at that moment heI knew that he was both a Manning and a Hungry. Moreover, he needed more of this delicious Mana that he’d been missing out on his entire existence. So he pulled, and pulled, and pulled.

If you asked him later, he’d admit that he wasn’t exactly proud of the fact that he’d lost himself in the process, continuously pulling from his surroundings while forgetting to put all of his other senses back on, including his concept of the passage of time. In that moment, in those moments, there was nothing but a Manning, a Hungry, and an all you could possibly attempt to eat buffet of mana, so far as he was concerned. All that existed was that feeling, that high that he couldn’t stop chasing if he wanted to.

"STOP!" a shrill scream brought him out of his stupor. Slowly, his sensibilities returned to him and he realized that that must have been the Cara. He knew he should thank her for teaching him how to eat this delicious meal. "If you just keep pulling we are probably going to die. We don't have the capacity for this much, look at all the cracks in our gem that you caused just now. You can’t just absorb the mana, you need to cycle it and purify it or use it."

As hesitant as he was to ask and risk incurring her question based wrath, this whole cracking and dying thing she had mentioned sounded a little more terrifying at that point in time. He also decided it wasn’t a time to be prideful, and should just ask her what she meant by that instead of doing something risky.

"Right. Umm, I figured out how to get the mana. Thanks for that by the way, it tastes really good. But what do you mean by cycle it?"

"Focus inward by ‘closing your eyes’. Envision us, but not as a solid rock or gem, as a bubble." She sounded more tired than she did annoyed this time, even transmitting a sort of mental sigh over their link, but she continued her impromptu lesson regardless of that fact. "Your mana is the air that fills that bubble, and you need to spin in around as fast as you can, I think. Back when we were still humans, you kind of cycled it through your mana channels in a certain pattern. We don’t really have those here, but I kind of feel some sort of grove on the surface of our gem, so try to follow those I guess? That's what I was doing earlier but I can’t reach the side of the gem that your soul seems to occupy, or rather I couldn’t until you woke up. Anyways, as you mentally cause speed, you need to press it against the shell of the bubble and expand it."

Once again, her answers left Manning with more questions than before, but since he’d worked out last time he decided to try and figure it out anyways and ask more questions when and if he needed to. It could have been his imagination, but he’s pretty sure he felt a little bit of ‘impressed’ under the underlying frustration that Cara seemed to bleed, probably at the fact that he was such a natural that he could find and absorb the mana without any need from her.

Senses once again closed down after Cara forcefully blew them open, Manning did his best to envision their gem- cage like she was described. He could see the pendant in his mind, a tiny oval black rock with a silver chain that dangled into the abyss, and tried to concentrate on pushing his mana along the faint groves that circled the inside of the gem, small enough to be invisible to the eye.

He didn’t really have any problems pushing the mana through the groves, even when he had to cross over into the space that Cara occupied to do so. He did notice, however, that the mana that was circling the inside of the gem seemed to be in a state of unrest. It wasn't even that he was forcefully changing the way the mana felt, but that the mana was constantly hitting little dead-ends, speed bumps, and potholes as it did its circles. Brushing against minor imperfections in the lattice framework of their prison, and causing tumorilus conflict with its nature.

The longer he thought about it however, the more he realized their entire prison just felt wrong. The bubble imagery wasn’t really working for him as much as it did at the start, and for some reason unknown to him, he felt like it was because of the shape of the gem. Something was wrong with the oval, and it caused it to not synchronize with his spirit..

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In his mind he brought up the oval again and molded it, treating it like it was clay rather than a bubble or solid gem. He spent a long time pushing at the far ends and mentally rolling the ball of clay until it was a sphere in his head space instead of an oval. He followed up by applying pressure until it started to look a little bit more like what he felt it should, like the rock that he could his soul would fill properly..

Manning squeezed and pushed at the outsides, while at the same time he pushed and shoved from the inside of the oval, willing his mind’s creation into reality. Just as he finally felt it snap into the shape he felt in his heart, several things changed.

The sudden shift in shape caused the clasp for the silver chain to snap, sending it tumbling down out of sight, and his new home almost doubled in size. Instead of an oval, he was now a proper multi-faceted gemstone. That was something else that changed. As the shape finally aligned with his soul, he realized that he wasn’t in a prison, he was the prison. HeI had one face on the top, another on the bottom, and two rings of 6 equal-sized facets between.

There was another loud snap, and suddenly Cara and Manning were not so alone anymore. There was a small creature in front them, glaring down at their gemstone over the top of a pristine ornamental clipboard. He was probably five or six times bigger than their newly expanded gemstone, had two large wings folded behind himself, and looked a little annoyed to be there.

“Good existence, young dungeon core. I am UI, one of the Universal Interpreters, and you do not have an appointment today.” His accusatory tone was a little confusing, but Manning was stunned speechless at the fact that he’d appeared from nowhere and was therefore unable to ask what they’d done wrong before it started speaking again.

“Let’s see here. Hmm, dual-affinities. Or, wait, are there two souls in that core?” He leaned closer and squinted into the gemstone like he could actually see the gemstones unwilling new inhabitants. “That is… genuinely interesting. Tell me, which of the gods decided they were going to create their own dungeon? I’d like to figure out how they managed to shove two sapient souls into a gem like that. Or how they managed to create a dungeon outside the usual means at all. Your existence certainly wasn’t on the schedule, interesting...”

Manning, even more lost than he’d been when he woke up disembodied in a gemstone, put all of his willpower and focus, all the wisdom that his new and old existences could lend to him, into forming the most important question.

"Huh?"

"How do we escape this Soul Gem? How do I get back into my body?" It seemed Cara had a couple questions of her own. Questions that, grudgingly, Manning would have to admit were a bit more refined than his own. But only a bit.

The weird creature, one that Manning felt he should call a fairy, though he had no clue why, smiled back down at us as it heard our voices. Not a pleasant smile though, more of a predatory smile that sent chills and shivers through all of their facets.

“I'm not really authorized to answer those questions, young dungeon core. Cores? Core, there is only one gemstone here, silly me. We UIs are not supposed to have interactive conversations, those are for your companions to have. I am here to collect your base affinity, or affinities in this case, and get a name for your dungeon. I’ll also send out a general broadcast to try and lure potentially willing fey to come bond with you. So, young core, what is your name?”

"Manning."

"Cara."

“Hmm, Manning and Cara. Cara and Manning. Canning? No that’s just silly, who ever heard of a canning dungeon. Mara, Manra, Carnning, Caraing, ugh this is so hard. Usually I just name the dungeon after the first thing I think of, but you two already have names and I want to make it feel more personal. Besides, I can’t think of the last time I found a new core already capable of speech. It definitely deserves a special touch.”

“What about Mana? That kind of sounds like Cara and Manning.” Manning had to agree with Cara there, it sounded similar enough, but also-

“It’s delicious too!”

The fairy gave our core another long look before continuing “…delicious, right. Well, Mana is already taken. The Mana Dungeon is one of the oldest dungeons if I recall correctly. Hmm. Oh! I’ve got it. You’re the Caring Dungeon now. It’s close enough and you seem like you really care for each other.”

“What gave you that idea? We barely know each other!” Cara didn’t hesitate to let her disagreement be known. Manning even felt like he heard a bit of guilt in her speech, as if she perhaps realized just how rude she sounded.

The little fairy ignored Cara’s protests and scribbled something on his clipboard. “Right, well my job here is done. I am going to send out the beacon for local non-bonded, dungeon-eligible companions. Remember your questions for them, and don't forget, help is on the way! I’d say I look forward to seeing you again, but you won’t even remember me being here.” There was another loud snap, and Cara and Manning found themselves alone again. Not that remembered being anything otherwise, all memories of the fairy having vanished almost right after it left.

"So, I think I made us some new room, Cara. Sorry I didn’t ask for your input, but once I started it kind just felt like I needed to finish." It had been a very exhausting day for both of us, if it had even been a day. It was very hard to track the passage of day without a day-night cycle.

"No, it’s alright. It is actually kind of easier to think now, but we shouldn’t stop trying to get bigger. There isn’t much we can do besides wait otherwise, so I suppose for now we should keep trying to cycle mana and see if we can get our core any larger. It's way too cramped in here still and I can practically feel you pressing against me."

Having agreed on their course of action, that is exactly what they did. Manning ate more of that delicious Mana while trying continuously to expand. It was significantly more difficult to expand now, and the mana moved a little more sluggishly, but it was smooth and easy going. Manning could even feel Cara helping along, her handling of the mana with much more finesse than his own. Mana, Cycle, Push. He brought it in, she refined it, they both used it for expansion.

Before long, the both of them had lapsed into a sort of trance once more.