Mana was everywhere, in every living thing, in every object. Even the air we were breathing was saturated with it. Aspen explained that to me earlier when she taught me how to control my mana. I just wasn’t at the point to sense it yet. If all that was true, then there were tons of free mana around us, ready to grab.

So why didn’t the mages use it?

She smirked when I raised the issue with her. “I asked the same question when I was learning magic.”

Of course, I wasn’t the first one to think of that. I didn’t even think I would. Still, the question remained. “So?”

“A mage’s life would be a lot easier, wouldn’t it? Okay, I’ll tell you what my teacher told me back then,” Aspen said, adjusting her collar and thought, searching for her teacher's words in her memory. “Think of mana as water. Now, your body produces fresh, clean water. You can easily drink it with no issues. The ambient mana, on the other hand, is like stagnant, stale water. You can still drink it, but...”

“But?” I asked when she paused.

“At best, you’ll get the trots, for Traiana’s sake!” She shook her head when I didn’t get the point. To be honest, not the analogy I was expecting. “Drinking it makes you sick. The more you drink, the sicker you get. It’s like food poisoning. Except ...” She paused again, expecting me to finish her sentence.

“It,” I stammered. “...it’ll give me mana poisoning. So ambient mana is what? Foul?”

“Nah, that’s just an analogy my teacher used,” she shook her head, shifting her weight. I did the same. Sitting cross-legged during hours of training made me stiff. “He compared the mana of plants to oil and that of animals to tar. You might as well compare the ambient mana to raw food, that of plants to spoiled veg and that of the living to rotten eggs. The point is, you can’t use it without preparing it first. But preparing it in your body will hurt you.”

“All right, I think I get it,” I said, quite confident I did and stopped short. It brought to mind Lord Wigram’s words regarding beast cores that without runes, he wouldn’t be able to use more than half of the mana stored in them. Was this the reason?

“If I find a beast core, I have to cook the rotten eggs inside first, right?” I asked, half in thought.

Aspen gave me a puzzled look, most likely wondering how I’d come to that conclusion. Then her gaze hardened. “No, never use raw mana in the beast core period! Fuck, I think we’ve gone too far with the water and food analogy. The teacher made it sound better.”

All I could give her was a sympathetic look. Me retelling the jokes was tragic.

“Then how will you use it? How will you use a core?” asked I, quite perplexed. How did the Imperial Chief Healer use it?

“Through the runes. Tools and machinery don’t care what mana powers them. If you want to use it for storage, you have to empty the core first,” she said in a tone that suggested it was a given. Not for me, though.

“Isn’t there, I don’t know, some neutral mana?” I questioned, not trying to hide my ignorance. “Mana, that all could use?”

She gave me a knowing look. “This is pure mana you’re talking about. But hold your horses. No one knows how to refine it, and it’s no easier to find it out there. There are records of such places, where it naturally occured, but you can probably imagine how that turned out.”

Given the similar nature of the people here on Eleaden as on Earth, I was able to. “Extracted to the last drop, ruined.”

“Exactly. Now it’s more a thing of legends, the wet dream of the rich and the hope of the poor. Finding a place like that would fetch you a lot of coins,” Aspen said, rubbing her fingers together, emphasizing the last word. I could almost hear her saying ‘cha-ching’.

“A fair amount of trouble, too,” I couldn’t resist adding.

She smirked. “That goes without saying.”

I gave it some thought before opening my mouth again. “Only pure mana can be used by anyone, without consequence, except for your own, of course. If I use another one, I get mana poisoning. The more individual it is, the faster and more severe the consequences will be. Right?”

“Pretty much.” Aspen nodded. "That's why most mages focus on mana capacity and regeneration.”

“Okay. So, where do mana potions fit in?” I asked. She had talked about them before. They existed, so what was the deal.

She gave me a laugh. “I can’t tell you how many idiots I’ve seen who didn’t give this a second thought. Fucking fools, I tell you.”

“Rune Masters have figured out how to use mana regardless of its origin. Alchemists, in turn, how to extract it and mix it into potions.”

“Refine it,” I chimed in.

“Hell no,” she swore. “They’ll argue, but don’t let all their vials and fumes fool you. Those things have only one purpose, to extract mana from different materials. Not to refine it, just to extract it. Mana potion is a mixture of various types of extracted mana, binder, reactant, and carrier. Don’t ask me to go into detail. I’m not an alchemist,” she added quickly for clarification. It brought a smile to my face as chemistry has never been my strong suit either. The composition of the fertilizer was as far as my interest went.

“It’s not pure mana by a long shot. On the contrary, it has more ‘impurities’ in it than the ambient mana. The other substances in the potion make it easier to consume and mitigate the negative effects to some extent. But and it’s a big ‘but’, always keep in mind that no matter how good a mana potion is, it will never neutralize the downsides completely,” she warned me sternly, and thinking about it, she wasn’t the first.

Deckard said something similar to me before, after the end of the challenge Esu issued to Shadowbreakers. According to him, the man who won had used so many potions that he was beyond saving.

“Too much of a good thing, huh?” I hummed.

Aspen nodded, fumbling for her collar. “It’s good to have one at hand in case of emergency, for sure. Though if you can, use potions only to boost your mana regeneration.”

“Got it!” A lot of things made more sense to me now. Like why the beast core implantation caused the tissue to rot. Sure, the Imperial Chief Healer said the human body repels the beast’s mana in it, but he didn’t elaborate further. It also explained why my core was empty. Dungreen minimized the risk of core rejection by my body. It was that simple.

As usual, with the questions answered, new puzzles arose in my mind, too.

What about the food? I was drooling over the high-level meat Deckard was giving me. From what I knew, the raw meat of that caliber was saturated with mana. You might say poisonous. Was I poisoning myself? Nah, nothing new.

Still an issue, the issue for cooks and chefs to deal with. It was their job to make it edible, also the reason a level 50 cook didn’t prepare meat from level 200 beasts. It required a considerable amount of experience and, most importantly, the appropriate skills.

Healers also came to mind. Their mana enters another’s body, heals it, not destroys it. Why is that? Well, first of all, healers are humans, terrans, and so on. Their mana is close to that of their patients, still unique and different, but close. Then it is mainly the healer class that gives their mana unique properties. It is the closest to pure mana people are able to achieve. Not quite, though. Thus, even long-term treatment can be harmful. It is one of the reasons why mana-formed tissue is not as strong and why healers prefer to boost regeneration instead.

“You should have seen the look on the Imperial Chief Healer’s face when he found out a mother mossbear healed me.” Aspen laughed heartily. “Beast healed a human. That should be impossible. He rushed into the infirmary and, without saying a word started examining my new arm. I was still half out of it at the time and had no idea what was going on. I was this close, this close to yelling at him before Janina stopped me and told me who that creepy old geezer was.”

She made me laugh with her. Lord Wigram could be very passionate. So, it wasn’t hard to imagine it vividly.

“He wasn’t that surprised when he talked to me,” I pointed out when I stifled my laughter. “Esu has healed me over a dozen times.”

Aspen shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know if he showed up in the infirmary before he met you or after. Like I said, I was still half out of it. Could be that beast nature of yours.”

That gave me pause. I didn’t tell her about my race. Did I?

“I’m not stupid, Korra,” she said, startling me. “At first glance, you look like some kind of demi-human. That’s what I thought of you, that you’re a rare half-terran, and so did Rutledge. Then the mind mage called you a hybrid. First time I’ve ever heard someone call a terran like that or a halfie in your case. Yada , yada...I had plenty of time to think in bed. Mostly about my tragic life decisions, but this one was on my mind too.” She squinted her eyes and leaned towards me. “You’re half-beast, right?”

“Rayden said you were bright,” I replied instead of a straight answer. While it did not differ from admitting to it, Aspen respected my reluctance to say it out loud and didn’t press the issue further.

She only smiled, sadness in her eyes. “Not enough.” Not bright enough to avoid the mistakes she made. The result of her decisions was on her neck. She kept readjusting the collar, whether consciously or not, unable to get used to it. I knew the feeling.

“It’s the Human/Beast. They call it, us, me a hybrid,” I said after considering. She came up with enough on her own.

“I knew it.” Aspen laughed with joy and a hint of bitterness in her voice. “The price on your head, Beast of the South, Empire, mind mages, it just didn’t add up.” It wasn’t a question, just a loud statement of what’s been on her mind for a long time.

A shrug was all I gave her. There was nothing to say. Instead, I thought back to what we initially talked about, mana. More precisely, mossbears healing us. Well, technically, I was healed by moss. Nevertheless, I was a beast, Esu was a beast. So there was this synergy. Lord Wigram must have attributed it to that when he met me. That wasn’t the case with Aspen, though. It indicated that the mana of the mossbear, at least of the mothers, was pure enough not to interfere with that of the humans.

All that was nice, but it didn’t answer my original question, the control of the ambient mana. Or did I miss something?

“Aspen, this mana control. I understand it’s dangerous to use mana other than my own, but what about just controlling the ambient mana,” I phrased my question. “Without taking it into my body, you know.”

She gave me a serious look. “I thought it was obvious. It’s impossible to control any mana other than your own. If you want to use external mana, that’s the term for all mana except yours. You have to take it for your own first.”

“Ah,” I growled in understanding. “Thus risk mana poisoning.”

“Not something you want to do in a fight. Not even outside of it, to be honest,” she said, giving me an odd look. “I’ve been through it a couple of times, and it wasn’t a fun time, trust me.”

“There’s really no way around it? Some class that would make it possible, skill?” I blurted out ideas.

Biting my lip, I watched Aspen shake her head, tugging on the collar. “If so, it’s not public knowledge. And believe me, any mage worth his salt digs for such rumors. There is only one legend that lies close to what mages crave, and that is the legend of the mana heart.”

As she said it, I froze, trying not to show my thoughts. That spoke for itself though, and I knew I’d failed when Aspen grabbed onto the collar with both hands and started laughing so loud my ears were ringing.

“Fuck me! What did you say, that Ward got paid for you? Etherstone? You’re worth more than a dozen of them,” she said with such wonder that it sent a shiver down my spine and made me squeeze Sage.

Of course, she noticed. “Oh, you don’t have to worry, Korra. When I volunteered, it was with the condition that I wear Geas on top of this cursed thing. To be honest, when I saw it, I hesitated. I don’t know where Rayden got it, but I’ve never seen Geas that strong in my life. But I’ll tell you what. It was worth it.”

Why? Why did she do it? Why was she willing to go to such lengths just to meet me? Was she punishing herself? Well, it was none of my business to tell her otherwise, not unless she meant to hurt me. And I didn’t get that vibe from her.

What I saw as a necessity was to correct her. “It’s not a mana heart, just a heart of magic.”

She laughed even harder, wiping away the tears that welled up in her eyes. “Just! Just?! You are too much, Korra. That’s still something no one I know of has ever achieved. Just a step away from a true mana heart. Is that why you asked about external mana? It should be able to filter it as well. Did you try it?” she asked eagerly.

Drooping my ears, I shook my head. “Lord Wigram described my heart to me, but I am not yet able to sense its mana half.” Janina’s legitimate fear of dragons overshadowed it at the time, but I could now see why the Imperial Chief Healer was so insistent on my magical training. From a mage’s standpoint, me being a fighter was a colossal waste. Blasphemy, I dare say.

“Ah, that’s why the individual training. I was wondering what kind of bullshit it is to give you private lessons on mana control. It’s basic, no secret, usually done in larger groups so as not to waste the teacher’s time. Not everyone has the patience, you know. There were eight of us, and only two of us became mages, as I recall. Private lessons are for noble brats, which you are definitely not. The heart of magic? That’s another story,” she said, still half in disbelief.

Six out of eight gave up? That was unexpected to me and raised alarm bells in my mind. It meant that controlling mana was no easy feat. Or that the people who tried it had weak resolve. After all, I found it relaxing so far.

Either way, I didn’t have an answer for Aspen.

She didn’t seem to be expecting one, though. “Heart of magic,” she repeated, grinning like a little kid. “It is an honor for me to teach you.”

Honor? That caught me by surprise. I was just a clueless gal from Earth, a florist, a nobody. Not someone who deserved the honor, not from my perspective. Looking at me with her eyes, it made more sense. Inside my chest beat the thing of legends, or close to them.

“I’ll do my best,” I said simply, reluctant to promise the impossible. That’s what I came here with, a determination to learn to control mana properly.

Aspen gave me a nod, then swore as her eyes went blank for a second. “Shit, look at the time.”

The system clock read 11:21. “And?” I saw no reason for her to panic as she scrambled to her feet.

“Come on, get up. You were supposed to be on the training grounds twenty minutes ago,” she hurried me along.

I didn’t put two and two together at first. The training grounds, what was I supposed to do there? Then it dawned on me, my meeting with junior guards. Springing to my feet, I joined Aspen in her rush to the door from the hall.

“Why a training grounds?” I asked as we ran down the corridor.

She smirked. “To prove yourself.”

“To what?” I stopped in my tracks.

“To prove yourself to them,” she repeated, halting as well. What was obvious to her was utterly lost on me.

I cocked my ears. “Why would I need to do that? Deckard said I wasn’t gonna have a fight.”

She paused. “I-I think he meant beasts. Everyone kind of expects there to be a fight.”

“Everyone? Rayden, too?” I asked, disbelief seeping into my voice.

“That’s why the training grounds,” Aspen pointed out. “Plenty of room, both to fight and to watch.”

Now I was speechless. “Who’s going to watch?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Guardsmen who are not on duty, it’s a fun distraction from time to time.”

How many was that? The thought of dozens of people watching me made my throat tighten. “Is that necessary, some kind of tradition?”

“Hmm” she hummed in thought. “Sort of, not really. Junior guards are new squads, so talking about tradition is a little...off. On the other hand, when someone new joins an existing squad, it is a tradition that senior members test them.”

“Always?” I asked to be sure. “It’s not enough that I’ve, I don’t know, been accepted by Rayden.”

“Happens even when someone is just reassigned,” she replied, her look saying she was thinking of a way to explain. “It’s not about showing the rookies who’s the boss but to see if there’s any synergy whether you’ll fit in. It will show them what they can expect from you on the team and vice versa.”

“So something like a job interview, or more like team building?” I asked, and judging by her reaction, she had no idea what I was talking about. With a loud sigh, a low growl escaped my throat. “Can’t say I’m thrilled about that.”