I didn’t fully concentrate until Andy came to wake me. He looked frustrated, and I couldn’t blame him. His core remained unchanged, the darkness around the bright center refusing to yield to his attempts. I simply passed along what Corey had told me and dropped the annoying rock into a bag at Andy’s feet.

“In case you want to talk with him.”

“I’ve never been so annoyed by interacting with a rock,” he grumbled but picked up the core anyways.

I left him to his conversation and lookout. I found an empty spot on the floor next to Chavez where I could focus for the rest of the night. I couldn’t tell if the big man was snoring or just breathing deeply. I resumed my cross-legged position and focused all my attention on my core.

I Willed the core into my desired shape. The red and silver flowed together, the dance center of my mana. Gray mana, rigid and unmalleable, except where it touched the heated center, settled into place, creating a thin layer. Next, the green and blue flowed together. Because of the inconsistent nature of the gray mana, and how it settled into jagged edges around my core, the blue mana would flow into the deepest gaps, filling them. The green mana almost covered every spot not covered by the gray mana. There were places where the green and gray even seemed to blend into an unhealthy brown. Finally, I brought the last of my mana to bear. I focused on condensing it and forcing it into the same density as the mana in the air around me, trying to make my core invisible to my mana sight. The core instead faded to a white with tinges of blue and green. I supposed it was closer to what I wanted.

“That’s cool,” Chavez said next to me. “Some kind of camouflage effect on your mana?”

“Something like that,” I said. “Just trying out ways to hide my core. I was thinking of having the white mana be on the outside of the core, just like what we see around us.”

“Looks like you’re pretty close, too.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m having some trouble though. I have silver and red at the center, then gray, green, and blue. Then finally the white. Problem is that any time I lose concentration or relax, all the mana erupts back into chaos.” So saying, I relaxed my hold on the mana, which spun back into a mess of energies in my core.

“So, you modeled the layers of mana off the earth?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s pretty obvious that red mana is heat, blue is water, and white is air.”

“And the other three?”

“Silver, green and gray are confusing. I would say they’re earth-related of some kind. Gray would be more stone, while green is more life-based. Or carbon, I guess. I wonder if a diamond would have green mana or white mana…”

“And the silver?”

“Metal,” he shrugged. “That would make sense with your sword. It absorbs the mana and is somehow becoming stronger like us.”

“Six kinds of mana?” I said. “Doesn’t seem right. Shouldn’t it be a prime number?”

“Seven,” Chavez said. “The corruption mana would be a seventh.”

“The black mana,” I nodded. “That would make sense.”

“So, you’ve got your perfect planet, free of any corruption mana?” Chavez asked.

“I mean… yeah. I can’t really explain it, but the black mana just feels wrong.”

“I get that. The real question is, do you want the mana in your core to imitate the earth?”

“Seems like a good fit,” I said, “if the colors of the mana are what we think.”

“Then, you know what you have to do to get the mana to all hold together.”

“No…?” I said, trailing off.

“Come on, big ball of liquid, solid, and gas, all floating together through space around the sun.”

“Yeah, I know what the earth is.”

“Yeah, but you haven’t thought about how your mana should probably imitate the earth.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“Dumbass, you the earth spins.”

I was a dumbass. I was so focused on trying to get the different types of mana to hold together that I forgot the main component that creates night and day on the freaking planet.

“I am a dumbass,” I said as my palm hit my forehead.

“Glad we’re on the same page about that.”

I closed my eyes with one last grumpy look at Chavez, then I focused my attention inward again. I pushed all the mana together. The process was even easier this time, only taking thirty minutes or so to consolidate the different pieces of energy into a pattern I liked. Then I tried to make the ball of energy spin. I broke out in a cold sweat, and my head immediately began to throb from the effort, as if someone had cracked open my skull and was twirling their fingers around in my brain. Golden spots appeared in my vision, having nothing to do with my mana sight, and I found myself lying on my back.

“Hey, Ward. You okay, man?”

“Ugh,” I grunted noncommittally. I was not quite sure if I was entirely conscious or alive. I guessed that if I could still feel pain, then I could still be considered alive.

“You just collapsed, bro.”

“Felt like Thor took a swing at me with his hammer,” I said.

“Well, good thing he didn’t just drop it on you. That could have been real bad.”

“Nerd,” I said.

“I’ll accept it. You can’t be hurt too bad if you’re joking.”

“It’s a defense mechanism,” I said. “Helps me cope with the pain.”

“I would offer you some ibuprofen, but I don’t have any.”

“You’re too kind, thanks.”

“Just here to help. Did you learn something from what just happened, at least?”

“My Will is going to have to be much stronger before I can spin something as concentrated as the mana in my core.”

“Wait, you tried to make it all spin at once?”

I looked up at him, searching for the answer on his face. I found it quickly enough.

“No,” I said. “Of course not. That would be efficient and stupid. I definitely did not do that.”

“Maybe take a rest before you try again though, yeah?”

“Sure. How’s your meditation coming along?”

“Same as usual. I’m making progress. If I keep at it for the rest of the night, I might be able to rank up tomorrow.”

“Look, what I said before–” I started.

“I needed to hear it,” Chavez said. “I haven’t been pushing myself like the rest of you. It’s just that I’m ahead of Anderson, but behind Carter. I guess I just accepted my place in the lineup.”

“Don’t push yourself too hard this evening. You still have to be fresh for tomorrow.”

“I’ll make sure to grab a few Zs before tomorrow, don’t worry. I won’t let Anderson stay up all night on watch either.”

“Thanks,” I said, lowering my voice. “Maybe try to talk to him as well.” I looked back at where Andy was taking watch. “You gave me some really good advice there with my own mana. Maybe you can do the same for him?”

“Sure. I’ll finish up here and see what I can do.”

“Thanks.”

I settled my consciousness back into myself. My thoughts drifted down to the mana in my core. I forced the heat and metal mana, as Chavez had named them, together. They pooled into a liquid, albeit dense, mass. I tried spinning the material. Again, pain lanced through my head. It was bearable this time, though the dense mana still refused to spin. I let go of my focus, taking a deep breath again.

What was wrong? The mana didn’t move after I blended the heat and metal mana. Was there something I was missing? Back and forth, I combined the metal and heat, then let it dissipate back into my core. It would form a liquid core, I would try to spin the mana, and it would resist the movement. Then I would start over.

Einstein once said that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If that’s true, then I was a hardcore Section 8. I must have repeated this process a dozen times, becoming only faster and faster at screwing up whatever I was doing wrong. But no matter how hard I pushed, how much I endured the stabbing headache, the mana would not move after I had formed it into the stationary ball.

After.

Was it that simple?

Fuck it.

I released the ball of mana before even trying to spin it this time, then I immediately began drawing the two kinds of mana together. However, instead of forcing them together into a stationary ball, I rotated and mixed the mana that way. The mana twisted together within my core, the metal and heat spinning at a rapid pace. I twisted the heat and metal, separating it from the rest of the mana in my core. I condensed it into a ball – already rotating. As the red and silver mana separated from the others, it formed a cyclone, like a tornado that spun down into the stable core of my mini imitation planet. The dual-colored twister was a strong reminder of the twister coming from the sky and down into the dungeons. Was it related? Was I doing at a smaller scale, inside the universe of my core, what was happening in the world outside of me? Or was I simply imitating what I’d seen?

I let go of the spinning energy, letting it settle back into stillness in the core. I rested like that, for an hour on the floor, feeling the mana inside my core, and even how it flowed in the rest of my body. I never understood just how much movement was happening underneath the skin until the mana highlighted what had been occurring my whole life. Normally, you don’t feel the blood pumping through your veins. You don’t feel the vibrations off your eardrums as they pick up sound. You don’t feel the slight shifting of your organs as you breathe or as your heart pumps. In my meditative state, it was as if my internal senses were dialed up.

I sat like that for an hour, not touching the mana, moving it, or changing it in any way. Finally, when I thought I fully understood the mana in my core, I mentally reached in again. Within the perfect sphere, I created a gap, a place where no mana was. It was empty, but separate from the chaotic energy. And into the energy, I forced order. All the mana began to swirl, a rainbow of colors twisting out of the chaos and into the mana void. The energy rotated as it condensed. This time, there were subtle differences in how the mana came together. The heat and metal created the core, once again. At first, the energy flowed into a point, but I realized it was simply much more condensed than it had been before. The heat and metal twisted on themselves until the boiling liquid was under so much pressure that the center of it returned to a solid. Next, the gray mana twisted down, flowing over the top layer of metal and absorbing some of the heat at the lower layer until it cooled toward the surface. The blue mana flowed over the surface, covering every deep basin and even soaking into the gray mana. The green mana burrowed into what wasn’t covered by the shimmering surface, then it resurfaced, spreading the mana up and out so that it more fully covered the gray mana. It wasn’t perfect. Areas were still left bare, occasionally the places where the tips of the gray mountains could be seen. The white mana – the only mana left in the rest of my core – spun over my core, condensing and covering it in places. Parts of it absorbed the blue mana, pulling it up so that the blue and white were like a dance across the surface of this more refined core. And the entire time, the ball of organized chaos, spun in the perfect synchronization of a well-organized troop. Everything was in its place. Not perfect, but orderly in its imperfection.

It continued to spin, and I let out a contented sigh. There was no effort in the rotation of the mana; it was as if the mana took the shape that it wanted the whole time. Or that I wanted. It was impossible to tell the difference. Either way, it felt right.

I smiled as I relaxed from my cross-legged position. That’s when the wave of exhaustion rolled over me. Chavez wasn’t sitting next to me in the living room. I looked over and saw his mana core, free of all but a small portion of the corruption. He was sitting next to Andy, both of them on watch by the front entrance.

I rose from the floor, pulling myself up onto the only couch left in the room. I had to curl into a fetal position to fit between the high arms. It felt glorious. I took one last look down at my core before closing my eyes and drifting to sleep. Inside my core, the mana was still condensed into the very center of my core, leaving an empty void around my spinning, blue and white core.