“There’s one more step,” Faynel said nervously, her glance shifting around the room everywhere but at Mason.

Her nervousness was infectious, and since she had rubbed the salve into his legs, face, neck, torso, and arms, Mason could only imagine where this was about to go next. He gulped, and Faynel just seemed to grow more uncomfortable when he didn’t say anything. He’d offer to do it for her again, but she had shot him down when he had suggested that earlier so…

“I have to connect to your mana flow with my own,” she finally blurted out before looking down.

“What?” Mason asked, suddenly unsure of what was happening.

She took a deep breath and looked to the side before explaining, “Remember when I adjusted your glamour? It’s like that but a little more… invasive. My mana will enter your body and take control of your own mana. It’s the only way to properly activate the salve since you’re not very skilled at mana manipulation yourself.”

Mason could feel the tension rolling off of her, could see it in the way she held close to herself, and her eyes shifted about as she shuffled in place. “Faynel I don’t think I’ve ever seen you nervous before. Is there something I’m missing?”

Her eyes met his, and a glimmer of her usual focus returned, “To touch someone’s mana is very personal.”

He thought he understood what she was getting at, but curiosity demanded clarity. “I have two people’s souls inside of me, and some old guy in a library underground literally thrust me into my own tree of memory. I’m not really sure what boundaries I really have left.”

Now Faynel was beginning to go from uncomfortable to frustrated, “Mana binding like this is… Well, the only people who have ever bound with me were my parents while I was an infant. Occasionally it is required for medical issues when ordinary spells are not enough, but healers don’t have the same reservations about that sort of thing.”

“So you’ve never…?”

“No!” she squeezed her eyes closed after she realized she shouted.

“I mean, my parents didn’t even have mana? So… this will be my first time too?” Mason pointed out.

“This is for medical purposes only,” she insisted as her eyes traced his body.

“I get that. But… I’m only a little sore and worn out. Is it really necessary to push yourself like this for me?”

“It is necessary,” she nodded.

It didn’t mean quite the same thing to Mason as it did to her, so he figured if she was so determined, it only made sense for him to agree. After all, he had pretty good reason to trust her at this point. She was the only person he had met in this world that didn’t seem to half-despise him. “Okay, then let’s do this.”

Her head jerked down in a tight nod again, and then she stepped forward. Even without consciously using mana sight, he could see the glimmer of energy on her palms. She reached toward his hands and before they connected he felt a spark as his mana and hers connected.

Energy rushed into him then as the warm salve all over his body seemed to activate. It heated up, but not uncomfortably, and seemed to just match the warm energy that was rushing through his body from hers. No, that wasn’t quite right. The mana was running between them, and he could feel her. There was a nervousness there, but also an excitement. He felt part of him stiffen, and since he was only wearing cloth undergarments he was immediately embarrassed, because he knew she could feel what he was feeling.

The intimacy there was unlike anything he had experienced before. This wasn’t sex- this wasn’t even a Marran’s version of sex. It was pure intimacy, a rushed familiarity like that which came from months of sharing company. Mason understood why she had been hesitant to share this with him, but even with his growing awareness of her body and her feelings, he couldn’t quite understand why she was doing this. It seemed unnecessary, especially in the wake of the fear and uncertainty that was pouring from her mind and into his.

Minutes passed as they contemplated one another through their shared mana, and then finally they broke apart. The salve continued to warm, and tingled and stung in places where it was fully activated. Mason felt the shape of the force rune inside of him, and the confusing form of his soul as well. The mana swirled about him, and then it seemed to pull from his core to his edges, receding like a tide into the salve on his skin.

“The mana is being used to heal your wounds now. Your muscles will be strengthened as if you had spent days recovering. But there’s more,” she seemed hesitant again, and Mason really wasn’t sure what to think of this side of her. “You will be more like a Marran from today. I could feel it. Mowry laid the path in your soul, but this ritual took another step. The mana you generate will infuse itself into your body and rebuild you.”

She still wasn’t looking him in the eye. If she had said this with her normal, casual tone, Mason might have just accepted it. But she seemed guilty. And he recognized that. The fear and hesitation he had seen in her body movements and felt in their connection. She was guilty of something. “What? What did you just do to me? You didn’t warn me that this would change me like that.”

“I…” she started. “It was necessary. To strengthen you. We knew for sure after the mana liquor. Your body couldn’t handle the effects of spell casting for long, and we wanted to prevent you from experiencing the real effects.”

His face contorted in an emotion he wasn’t sure how to describe. “What the hell, Faynel? You could have just explained that to me. I probably would have agreed anyways! You’re just going to use sex magic to fuck with my body?”

At first she shrunk as his voice rose, but something flipped inside of her and reminded her what kind of person she was. She stepped forward, “That was not sex magic, and I did not have the luxury of running it by you. You could not see what was beginning to happen to you!”

“Oh, so you were concerned for me, then?”

“Yes!”

Mason just stared at her. He was flattered by that, but still rather pissed. “Well, fuck!”

Her face twitched at the exclamation. He looked angry, but that hadn’t been much of a retort. They stared for a moment longer, but a thin, hesitant smile broke on her face and he just stormed away into the other room.

A minute later, Mason came back out fully dressed. “That was a fucking awful thing you did, Faynel.”

“I did what I had to.”

“You will not trick me like that again.” The anger in his voice was waning. Mason clung to his anger but it slipped away from him like a tattered cloth. Every moment he spent looking at her reminded him of what he’d experienced in that brief connection. He felt too sympathetic.

“I will do what I have to.” Her focused and unreadable expression was back. No longer was she the nervous and hesitant girl she had been minutes before. Mason liked this side of her, but that made it even harder to be mad.

“You’re planning another trick already.” It wasn’t a statement.

“There was more to the salve than I’ve told you,” she admitted.

“Fuck!” he knocked one of the mugs of tea to the ground and watched it clatter unbroken. “Are you serious?”

“So when you said we…?” Mason asked as they walked next to each other throughout the town.

“My grandmother, yes.”

Mason put a hand to his face and sighed. This was difficult, to say the least. As they walked, their strides were unusually in sync. They didn’t normally walk this closely to one another, either. But Faynel had explained that their were side-effects to the mana mingling. It made people trust each other.

She had also explained that the reason she had been so insistent about the salve and the mana mingling wasn’t because of Leornal at all. It was because of her grandmother. The oldest woman in the city, and apparently, the most powerful, too. Faynel held back most details beyond that, but had made it clear that Mason’s continued presence in the city was because she allowed it. And that had come with certain stipulations.

If Mason had been told about this plot- that the mana liquor and the salve had both been prescribed tricks that Faynel had only been made to enact- without having experienced that unique bond with the dark-skinned girl, he probably wouldn’t have trusted another word she said.

But he had experienced that bond. He hadn’t read her mind or anything like that, but the mana connection made him feel close to her, and gave him a certain insight into her feelings at that time. It made him trust her.

Which might have been part of the plan all along, he knew. And it upset him. It did. But he just couldn’t bring himself to distrust Faynel, no matter how hard he tried.

So he followed after her. He was confused, and irritated, but ultimately curious and comfortable in her presence. He chalked it up to women and their tricks.

And besides, there was a burning question in his mind that he knew would serve as some measure of revenge. “Was that mana mingling totally unpleasant to you?”

She flushed a deep violet, and Mason noticed something more to that color as he moved in front of her and looked intently in her face. His mana sight was better than it had been even just an hour or two ago, and suddenly he didn’t think her skin was nearly as dark a color as before. He saw it now, a swirl of purples and blues. There were patterns there, rich and tightly woven, and he could see why one might think they had obsidian black skin, but that wasn’t right at all. And her skin shimmered, just slightly, with the aura of mana that flowed from her.

She really was made entirely of mana. He knew that now- knew it even better than he had when he was connected to her.

But he was woken up from his reverie by a sharp stinging pain on his face. What was… she had slapped him!

“What the fuck, Faynel?”

“Don’t mention the mingling again!” She glared daggers at Mason, but he just smiled. Her grandmother might have forced her hand somehow to perform that ritual, but that didn’t mean she had done it unwillingly.

“Have you been training with me this week for that?” he asked her quietly, standing mere inches from her.

“Mason, please,” she said, shaking her head.

“Thank you for making me strong, Faynel,” he replied with a sad smile, then gestured for her to lead on.

Some time later they had moved further into the city than Mason had yet explored. The buildings here were no less ugly in their designs, but at least with the improvements to his mana sight, he could begin to see that the tar on the buildings was very similar to the Marran’s skin in that it hid its true appearance from all but mana sight.

There were steps carved into the ground as the city fell into a bowl. They weren’t steep- a natural slope would have sufficed- but they made it clear that this area had been prepared like this. At the center of the lowered area was a shockingly impressive structure. It may have been small compared to Earth standards, but for the area it was large.

He could tell at a glance that it was two stories, and it was easily wider and longer than the council chambers, which meant it qualified as a mansion, though Mason felt inclined to consider it a temple.

Faynel grew morose as they got closer, and Mason’s insight into her feelings led him to assume that she was feeling the guilt of what she had forced her new friend into against his will. He was still a little frustrated that she didn’t give him a chance to choose his fate in the matter, but it seemed pointless to be stubborn about that.

They were offering him power. He hadn’t argued with the staff, or the tree of memory, either.

The air rippled as he got closer, and waves of energy made his hair stand on end. The Darkest Night seemed to insist that they were low on mana but the air here was thick with it. For the first time, he was nervous to meet Faynel’s grandmother.