Dan opened his eyes. He didn’t really remember when he closed them, but this passing out at the end of battles was beginning to be a problem. It was probably time to ask Nora if she knew of any method to take the edge off when absorbing mana. Looking around for her, he tried to shut down the nagging voice whispering to him that maybe he shouldn’t dull the mana when he was absorbing it.
It made excuse after excuse: he needed the full flow of the mana to stay on edge. Dulling the mana could reduce the amount he absorbed. There might be secrets hidden in the mana just waiting for him to discover them. But deep down, Dan knew it was all crap. Really, a part of him just wanted more of that electric pleasure. It wanted that moment when colors were brighter and the world seemed more solid and real.
He shook his head and stood up, only to float a foot or two as lack of gravity let his momentum carry him. Dan frowned and glanced more closely at his surroundings as he floated back toward the ground. Well, ground was a stretch. He was standing on a pink cloud, and as far as he could see, his surroundings were nothing but a serene landscape of other pink clouds lit by a diffused light that seemed to come from everywhere. After a brief check, he confirmed that Nora, Emily, and Andrea were nowhere in sight. Neither was anything else from the surface of Twilight.
E))&)! Pl%^/ #%^^&*
The System’s normally inobtrusive writing suddenly lit up the sky with incomprehensible symbols and hashes. Dan’s mouth tightened into a severe line. That wasn’t good. Briefly, his mind went over the previous battle and what could’ve happened. Worryingly, he kept coming back to the possibility that the amount of mana unleashed by Ishlar’s death had overwhelmed his nervous system.
Things had been awfully touch and go there for a while, and Sam had been clear before he left that no research had been done on the mana absorption process. Dan wasn’t exactly keen on the idea of his skin turning green or growing another thumb or something, but there had to be at least a relatively safe way of doing things.
Maybe it was just finally time to come clean to Nora. It would be hard to admit that he had been deceiving her, but there was something about her that made him want to confide in her. It could be her general aura of affability, or it might be the way that she had helped him through every hiccup to date, but talking to her about his mission just seemed like the next step. Something about the unending plain of pink clouds reminded him that this wasn’t a game. Even if the nanites gave him a huge advantage, he was still playing for keeps. If he was going to gamble his life to gain superhuman powers, he needed to stop flying blind.
She knew what was going on in this world, and she didn’t seem overly hung up on him being from another planet. The torrent of new experiences had been novel at first, but he desperately needed the help of someone local who could actually ground him. He was doing his best to adjust to the magical civilization that the Foundation had temporarily transplanted him into, but at the end of the day, he really didn’t even know what was possible or impossible. He just needed to get over his paranoia that she had some sort of hidden agenda and his general sense of pride and ask her for help.
REM communication shunt functioning
The words again occupied the center of the ethereal landscape. At least this time, they spelled out something comprehensible.
<USER>’s mana has become destabilized. Attempts to stabilize mana via nanite intervention have failed. <USER> has entered a comatose state. Attempts to wake <USER> from coma have failed.
NOTE: Failure to contact Thoth Foundation System administration before attempting to modify <USER>’s mana has voided System warranty. Please speak to a System sales representative about renewing your warranty.
The System is not responsible for death, mutation, dismemberment, or sudden catastrophic reality failures while <USER> remains outside of warranty.
Thank you for continuing to use the System.
Great. The notice didn’t even include a tech support number for a call center where he could wait on hold for the next two hours. Dan massaged his likely-imaginary temples. At least that made a little sense of his situation. He was in some sort of dreamscape while his body lay undefended and inert in the middle of pitched combat. Absolutely swell.
“System,” he queried the empty air, “can you respond to vocal prompts?”
For a second, nothing happened. Then the writing appeared in the center of his vision once again.
The System is designed to respond to vocal input as well as a limited range of subvocal, nonverbal, and subconscious input.
WARNING: <USER> has not been fully mapped for subconscious input. Communication may be slow or inexact if <USER> continues to attempt subconscious interactions with the System.
Dan sighed. Of course everything he was doing was subconscious. It was easy to forget when whatever was left of his mind created a comforting figment of him standing in a cloudscape, but his real body was laying insensible in the real world. Luckily, the System could still understand him after a fashion, but it didn’t look like complex topics were an option.
“System,” he spoke slowly, “you’ve mentioned that my mana has become destabilized. Can you tell me what’s happened?”
Again, there was a pause. Then an image of a human body appeared in front of Dan, floating in the air. Staring at it for a second, he quickly noticed the accuracy of the diagram. As far as he could tell, it mapped the musculature, skeleton, and circulatory system of a human body he strongly suspected was his.
Optimal mana configuration is a self-replenishing sphere located next to <USER>’s heart.
On the diagram, a silver ball pulsed in the figure’s chest. It might have been his imagination or the placebo effect, but Dan could swear a resonance in his chest throbbed in time with the model.
Spirit sphere has reached maximum mana capacity, but excess mana has been absorbed. Currently <USER> has excess mana in their body with no storage or outlet.
On the diagram, silver light appeared in the figure’s veins. This time Dan definitely felt something. Specifically pain. A whole lot of pain. Everywhere the image showed the silver light, it was like his nerves had been doused in lava. On the model, individual motes of silver burned through his veins and spread into the rest of his body. The free mana was burning him like acid, hollowing him out.
Almost immediately, he remembered the agony after he swallowed the mana crystal. This is why people who swallowed mana crystals died. Unless the mana was contained in a sphere, it was poison that would destroy your body. He would need to recreate the miracle that allowed him to survive his first ill-advised adventure with mana. He could only hope his unfortunate experience gaining his first sphere would let him succeed again where so many others had failed.
Instinctively, he reached toward the diagram and pulled on the mana in his veins. For a second his pain-addled mind thought that his actions were in vain. Then slowly, like a brick dragged through treacle, the mana began to move. The pain from before doubled. The extremities of dAN’S subconscious self-projection began to blur and fade. He wasn’t sure what exactly that meant, or what happened when his self-image faded entirely, but he wasn’t exactly keen to find out.
Luckily for him, a year dealing with Samantha Weathers, amateur dominatrix, had prepared him for this. Dan focused every ounce of his being on the mana in his veins as it moved with glacial slowness back through his body and toward his chest. A detached part of him reflected that the process reminded him of his junior project in college, when he had worked for an environmental engineering firm dredging silt from river beds so that larger ships could take goods down the rivers. The project had been soothing, involving months of monitoring equipment on boats as they slowly drifted down the river, dragging large scoops that dug deep into the dirt.
He seized that image and clung to it as the nerve-fraying pain sought to shatter him. In his mind’s eye, hundreds of the dredges moved slowly through his body, gathering up every free drop of mana. Already his fingers had blurred and become indistinct to the point where they resembled a flesh-colored fin. He ignored them. That was a problem for a future time. Instead, he continued pulling, using his willpower to power the imaginary dredges trawling through his body.
He lost track of time. Like his blurry hands and feet, it wasn’t a factor that he could control. Every moment was a constant battle against the omnipresent pain, but as seconds flowed into minutes, a second sphere began to take shape. It was faint and unstable, but already the pain was slowly abating. It was still at a level that made him suspect he had soiled himself in the real world, but he could feel himself turning the corner.
Dan grabbed onto that moment of hope and let it fuel his will. The dredges running through his body increased their speed, again wracking his body with pain, but well over half of the free mana was in the second sphere. He spared a brief moment to glance at his arms and grimaced. His hands were gone entirely, and his forearms were ethereal and ghost-like. Maybe time was a concern after all. Still, all he could do was his best. He had his task; anything else was a distraction.
Second spirit sphere detected, beginning stabilization
He almost gasped with relief as half of the pressure on his body faded. It was still agony pulling the mana particle by particle from his body and dragging the unwilling energy to the sphere, but at least he didn’t have to expend any energy actually maintaining the sphere itself. Bit by bit, he pushed the free mana in his system back into the sphere.
In the back of his mind, a voice whispered to him that it would be easier to give up. That his arms and legs didn’t hurt anymore. That if he just gave up, he could not hurt anymore. There would just be a brief burst of pain, then nothing. He couldn’t deny that on some level, succumbing to the void appealed to him, but there was just too much at stake. Even if he was willing to let himself die, humanity couldn’t let that happen. The Tellask and the Orakh were coming, and Earth deserved more than to be crushed under the technologically-inferior heels of space racists. This pain was nothing compared to what everyone he knew would face if he let them down.
Finally, he turned the corner. The new sphere glowed dimly in his chest. No longer inert, it began sucking on its own, pulling the last of the free mana into itself. His entire body was awash, like he’d been dipped in a cool spring. For one brief moment, nothing hurt. Then everything went black.
Dan opened his eyes. His head hurt like hell, and the dampness of drying blood covered his face and the front of his chest. Next to him, Nora was shaking his shoulder and shouting something, but for some reason it seemed like she was so terribly far away. His entire body hurt. Not as bad as when he had been consolidating the spirit sphere, but it was a constant, ugly pain. God, was he tired. He reached up and touched Nora’s cheek with a bloody hand. He tried to say that everything was ok, but he wasn’t actually sure that he said anything.
Congratulations on stabilizing your mana and reaching Rank 2 <USER>. Further options will be available to you depending upon your achievements.
He closed his eyes again. He could deal with that tomorrow.
