“Damaged mana channels,” I said. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Imagine, everyone else can use mana to make themselves move faster.” Corey could give a master class on sarcasm. “But you can only move at a regular pace.”

I said nothing.

“Imagine a toddler, who is just learning to walk, trying to keep pace with an adult.”

“Thank you for dumbing it down for me.”

“You’re very welcome,” Corey said.

It seemed like we were getting along more civilly since the start of the conversation. At least he wasn’t still calling me a monkey.

“Next lesson will be about not eating your own fleas.”

And there it was.

“So, it sounds like this is something I will have to fix pretty quickly, right?”

“No, not quickly. You probably forced the mana into your body, and that is what ruined your channels in the first place. You can use mana to heal more quickly, but if you push more than your body can handle, you will burn your mana channels and stunt their growth.”

“Like when I drank coffee as a child?”

“What is coffee?”

“Never mind.” No one appreciates good humor.

“Look, dunderhead, if you are going to keep interrupting with your silly questions, I can just find another monkey to help. Maybe one that doesn’t ask stupid questions.”

“Fine,” I grunted. “How long will it take to heal my mana channels?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you know?”

“You will need to pass a gentle flow of mana through your channels to soothe and heal them. It’s a delicate process, and how quickly you can fix them will determine how quickly you will heal.”

“So how do I do that?”

“You need a source of mana, like a core. Preferably a low-rank core.”

“I don’t have any cores.”

“Of course you don’t. You will have to find one.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

“Yes, probably a good idea.”

I sat in silence, the only source of light in the locker room a faint glow from the narrow, translucent glass windows above my head. Soon, however, even the windows darkened, and I could hear the patter of rain outside the building. I had been ignoring my mana sight until that point, but suddenly realized that the rain seemed to slice through the air onto the ground in a rainbow pattern.

“Corey, what is going on with the rain?”

“Well, I’m not gathering local mana from the atmosphere anymore. So now, it’s coming down as a mana storm. Not a particularly strong mana storm, though. That won’t likely happen for another few days.”

“This is how the mana sometimes comes down to the ground?”

“Yes.”

“I could probably go out into the rain, then, and absorb some mana.”

“Yes and no,” he said. “If you were a Jade, you could likely influence the mana coming down so that it wouldn’t strike you directly. Then you could cultivate from the surrounding mana. Difficult, but possibly doable. As it is, you can only gather mana directly from a source, but it must be a gathered source. The rain would be too raw a form of energy for you to consume. And being hit directly by the rain would be as bad for you as straining your mana channels.”

“Is there anything I can do to use the mana storm?”

“Sit by the door and let some ambient mana come into the room.”

I did as he said, walking through the darkness to lean my back against the door. I could feel a breeze come under the door, which brought me wide awake. With the breeze, I felt refreshing energy slowly roll into my body, pushing back the exhaustion. I could feel more of it outside the door, the promise of power urging me to push open the door and step out into the rain. I fought the instinct by sheer force of will. If the energy wanted me so badly, then it could just flow under the door and into the room toward me.

The flow of cool air under the door increased, and I could see the mana flow into a pool around my feet.

“What the hell was that?” Corey said, the gemstone lighting up in my hand brighter than ever. “Did you just use your Will?”

“I-“. I fumbled to think for a moment. “I don’t know.” There was something important I was supposed to be doing… something to do with the swirl of mana on the ground. And something… I couldn’t be certain.

“Focus, dumb-dumb,” Corey said, his voice cutting through the haze in my mind. “What did you just do?”

“The mana was calling to me.”

“That’s it, he’s lost it.”

“So I called it instead.”

“Okay, I want you to do exactly as I say. Slowly toss me to the nearest other monkey in this place.”

“What? Why?”

“Because at least that monkey probably isn’t crazy.”

“I’m fine,” I protested. Corey’s voice, with his adolescent voice, Texas drawl, and patronizing attitude, was grating on my nerves.

“Yeah, right. I think your feet are wet.”

“It’s just mana, not real water.”

“No, it’s because you’re standing in de Nile.”

“Shut up. And how would you even know what the Nile is?”

“I’m getting mixed signals here.” The little bugger was sneering at me. I wasn’t sure how that was possible without a face, but his voice in my head did it well. “Am I supposed to shut up, or answer your questions?”

I glared at the annoying little orb.

“I guess I’ll throw you a bone,” Corey sighed. “Or is it a banana? I know that’s what monkeys prefer.”

“I wonder what type of dungeon you would become if I buried you in a manure pile.”

“Fine, fine, fine. I’m the dungeon core for a zoo. With crocodiles. Nile Crocodiles. How could I not know what the Nile is?”

“Humph,” I humphed.

“Back to the important thing,” Corey said, and his voice had suddenly lost its jovial nature from before. “Did you just use your Will?”

“How should I know? I thought you said I wouldn’t be able to do that until I was… what rank?”

“Jade, yes.”

“So, I couldn’t have used my will, right?”

“Will. With a capital ‘W’.”

“Why does that matter?”

“Because as long as you don’t take your Will seriously, you will never be able to use it correctly.”

“Didn’t seem like a problem for me just now.”

“Yes, well.”

There was a long pause as Corey didn’t say anything else.

“So, can I use this mana to help fix my body?” I wanted to bring us back to the important thing.

“Your body is fine. It’s your mana channels that are scorched. By forcing too much mana into your channels too quickly, you have essentially stopped their ability to grow.”

“Like a weightlifter who pulls too much weight and hurts his body, so he’s not actually improving his strength?”

“I have no idea.”

“You know what the Nile is, but don’t know what it means to lift weights?”

“I was created from the overactive imagination of elementary schoolers!” He seemed to shout in my mind. “Would they know what it means to lift weights!?”

“Probably some of them,” I grumbled, obstinately.

“Well, they didn’t. At least not as far as I know.”

“But to my point.” I was doing a bad job of not letting the frustration through in my voice. “I’ve put a strain on my body. While pushing myself in small increments is good, pushing it too far is bad. Is that right?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“And I can use this mana to purify the channels in my leg that I’ve damaged.”

“Again, yes.”

“Then I’m going to pull this mana into my core, and try to let it go down into my legs.”

“Yes. You’re practically sitting in it, so just will it in.”

“Is that Will with a capital W?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass. And no. You can probably get it done by just reaching out and touching it with your hand.”

I did as he said, placing my hand palm-down toward the pool of mana underneath me. Before my hand even touched the surface, I felt the tug of the mana and pulled the liquid light into my hand. It flowed up my arm smoothly — almost sensuously, though I couldn’t explain how I knew that. It was like the mana… desired to come into me. And the desire was matched by my need. The magic flowed into my core, where it waited as if it knew what I needed it to do, and it simply waited for me to ask it. I did.

Again, the power reacted as if it were glad to do exactly as I asked, the cool power spreading down into my right leg.

If you’ve ever had the sensation of sitting in the hot sun on the side of a lake, you have probably looked at the water, which appears so fresh and cool and inviting. And you think that if you took a run off that abandoned dock and dove into that cool, clean lake, it would take the edge off the sunburn you were beginning to build up. And that girl is sitting on the towel next to you, and you think how great it would be if you jump in the water, and she follows you in. So without further thought, you take that run off the end of the dock. And into water that must have freshly melted off the mountains.

There was no sun, no beautiful lake, and no girl to impress. But I was still the dumbass that jumped into the lake. The mana soothed the burning I didn’t even know was in my leg, even as the freezing cold took my breath away. I came to the sudden realization that the cold mana wasn’t in my chest, so I gasped in that deep breath, like a man coming up for air.

“Well, that went better than I hoped,” Corey said cheerfully. “And it didn’t take you very long. If we just do that a couple of thousand more times, you should be ready to advance.”

“A couple… thousand?” I groaned at the thought of having to go through that sensation every night for the next five years. Then I noticed the glimmer of sunlight peeking in through the windows at the tops of the locker room. “How long was I out?”

“About six hours, I would say.” The revelation hit me like a bullet in my chest.

“Six hours?” My voice was blank, as I tried to control my temper.

“Yes, six,” Corey said. “If the monkey counted all the fingers on one of his hands, well, it’s more than that.”

“What if something had happened?” I fumed at the core. “We could have been attacked. We could have been killed!”

“Yes, very sad. Absolutely terrible. Anyway. You will get better at processing pure mana like that. You’re already quite fast. A natural, I would say, though I don’t exactly know what’s natural for monkeys normally.” Then he continued as if I weren’t glaring at him from my seated position on the floor. “While you were napping, I thought of another name. Since I’m helping you learn how to control mana, and I am the superior intellect and superior in rank, why don’t you call me ‘Master’?”

I said nothing.

“Master Corey?”

Still nothing. “I suppose just ‘Corey’ is okay too. In fact, I kind of like it.”

“I’m glad to hear it!” I said. “The alternative was ‘master asshole’.”

“That doesn’t sound — hey!”

I overhand threw the core at my backpack, which sat a good twenty feet away from me on the floor. As soon as the dungeon core left my hand, Corey’s voice cut off, and I was left in blissful silence.

Despite whatever meditative state I’d spent the last several hours in, I felt no more rested than when I lowered my hand to absorb the mana. I went over to the dungeon core and — without touching it — folded into the depths of my backpack. Then, I went over to Carter’s sleeping form leaning into the corner, and I shook her shoulder. She woke with a start, and I had to stop her from pulling her sidearm. I brought a finger to my lips and gestured at the sleeping forms around us.

“I’m going to get a little sleep before everyone wakes up,” I whispered.

She nodded in understanding, and I took her place in the corner. I watched her settle into the same spot I’d been sitting in before I picked up Corey, but I didn’t see anything after that as my eyes drifted closed.