“Mana? Really?” Mercy crossed her arms. “You’re gonna try to explain it now?”

“Yeah! Why not?” Mallory asked. “Jon is completely new to this.”

Jon looked at Mercy. He wanted to learn.

“It is a good idea,” Mercy said, finally. “But we should start-”

“There are several broad concepts of mana!” Mallory waved his hands in the air, demonstrating the broad nature of the subject.

“...Ok,” Jon said. Mallory was much more expressive than any of Jon’s old teachers. He was excited to watch Mallory speak.

“First, there’s mana. The energy that flows within the world, and all its inhabitants. It’s like a continual force that flows through us all, like an invisible river.”

Jon nodded.

Mallory continued.

“Now, although all mana is connected in this weird sort of multi-layered thread, there are different manifestations of it that exist simultaneously along with each other. shoulder to shoulder. Like a whole bunch of second cousins sitting together at a family dinner. The different manifestations of mana all have different densities that are involve how the greater world interacts with it.

Jon grimaced.

“I can see that face. Don't worry. Stay with me."

Mallory cleared his throat and patted Jon on the shoulder. Then he continued. “For your sake, the geniuses of the world have condensed the many different manifestations of mana use into 4 different categories. There's probably countless more, but if we go into more detail, we'll be here all day."

Jon nodded.

Mallory intertwined his fingers together and pushed out with his palms, making a large cracking noise that made Jon shudder but impressed him nonetheless.

“There’s animal mana, body mana, world mana, and attack mana.”

“Okay." That was much simpler than Jon thought it would be.

“World mana is the mana that exists ethereally all around us.” Mallory waved around his body and turned with his arms outstretched. “It’s here, right now. Teasing us. Saturating the world around us with its greater presence."

He turned back to Jon. “Then there’s animal mana.”

“Animal mana,” Jon repeated.

“Animals have a closer connection to the mana of the world than us dumb humans,” Mallory said. “So like, their bodies naturally conduct world mana with their own inner mana. It’s like… doing a spell that you never have to cast. It’s always on. It’s like…”

“Animals don’t have to spend mana the same way we do,” Mercy said simply.

“Genevieve for instance,” Malory continued, nodding approvingly at Mercy's breakdown. “She’s a bird person. So like, their bodies naturally utilize world mana for flying without having to burn their personal stores, which I'll explain later.”

Jon remembered Genevieve’s ease of flight. She had feathers, but she only occasionally flapped her arms to stay in the air. She had told them that it would cost her mana to carry people in the air. Jon didn’t know how he would keep track of so many concepts with the word mana, but he trusted Mallory’s description.

“That leads us in human mana, or body mana, cause we just love to talk about ourselves in the alpha.”

Mallory walked up to Jon and patted him on the chest. “All humans have their own internal mana systems. It’s a different density than the world mana that surrounds us. It acts as our life force, and also gives out body the abilities to do things otherwise considered unnatural.”

Mallory put his hand on his chin and began to mumble to himself. “Although if our bodies allow us to do weird things, then is it considered unnatural?”

Mallory removed his hand and brought his attention back to Jon. “Don’t worry about that. Anyway, because body mana and world mana exists on different levels, humans have a tax on their body when they use mana. Then In order to use spells, your body burns its own mana to connect to the world mana to create an ebullition of-”

“Mallory," Mercy interjected, "Word choice."

“Humans use their body mana to draw in world mana, connect to it, then do freaky shit,” Mallory finished. “And from there, there are tons of ways that mana can be utilized, as long as the person understands how to use mana in that form. And that’s where we get into attack mana.”

“Attack…”

“Well, that’s a bloated word,” Mallory crossed his arms, interrupting Jon. “Attack mana doesn’t necessarily mean you're fighting people. It’s just that most people use it to blow each other up, and it’s the type of mana people often see manifested into existence, so... attack mana. Attack mana is the form of mana after a person has used their personal mana to interact with the world mana to create a spell. A spell is anything that’s been induced by mana usage."

“Spell... “ Jon pulled off his blunderbuss and looked at it. Was shooting a spell?

“Yes!” Mallory pointed to Jon and his gun. “You’re on the right track! But don’t get too far ahead!”

Jon nodded and put his gun back in its strap.

“Anyways, the world of spells is pretty weird. There's so many different forms and concepts that I don’t think I can explain them all right now, but we’ll start simple. First, there’s body spells.”

“Body spells…”

“Yes! Hector!” Mallory waved at Hector. “Come here!”

Hector was knelt down in front of the horses. “Huh? Okay.”

Hector stood up and walked over to Mallory. It stunned Jon to see Hector listen without complaint.

“Hector uses body spells also exclusively,” Mallory explained.

“...Yeah…” Hector looked away uncomfortably.

“Body spells are spells that activate like second nature,” Mallory said. “It doesn’t require any active casting. Your body just does it. It’s like an extension of yourself.”

Mallory poked Hector in the arm. “For instance, many people who fight use their mana to enhance their body, so they can take hits and deal attacks stronger than average. Usually, these people don’t rely on active spells. They just try to cut your head off or something.”

“Yeah…” Hector still looked uncomfortable.

“Hector’s family is unique in the way that they can use fire attacks as a body spell instead of an active spell. When he attacks, he can extend fire from his body as an accessory to his movements. When he’s swinging fire all over the place, the fire isn’t coming from his sword, it’s coming from his body.”

"Cool," Mercy commented. "I'm almost jealous."

“Are we done?” Hector crossed his arms.

“On the flip side," Mallory added, "Hector isn’t very good at casting active spells. In fact, the battle we just had was the most active spellcasting I’ve ever seen from Hector in my whole life.”

“I’m not good at it,” Hector said. “So it’s useless…”

He walked away.

“..He is good at casting spells,” Mercy said, watching Hector walk away with a curious glance. “He shot that large pillar of fire and saved my life. That wasn't a normal body spell.”

Jon remembered when Hector had cleared a path for him and the other farmers during the night. It was different from anything else Hector had done during the battle. He also remembered that Hector was exhausted, and had almost gotten eaten after that.”

“Everyone in Hector’s family is a fighting prodigy,” Mallory explained. “Some of them are way better at active spellcasting than he is. So although he can pull off some big moves, he's not consistent at it.”

“So, he feels pressured from his family to be better at it,' Mercy said.

“Always.” Mallory shrugged. “The King’s Guard is one of the only things he gets to have any freedom in. That’s why he’s always so grumpy, but also why he always tries his best to finish the mission.”

Jon understood. He had worked out his problems with his father, but maybe Hector had the same issues.

“Hmmm…” Mercy hummed in thought until her eyes quickly widened.

“I can cast fire!” she said suddenly. “Watch!”

Jon obliged.

Mercy clapped her hands and a small burst of fire erupted within her grasp. It barely lasted a second.

Jon smiled.

Mercy blushed. “I thought you would like it.”

“That leads me to my other point. Active spells.”

Mallory got closer to Mercy and Jon. like he was telling a secret.

“Active spells are where you’ll physically see the bulk of mana attacks happening. Since there’s so many different types of active spell casting, most people don’t learn more than one at a time.”

Mercy shrugged. “It took me a long time to be able to do that.”

Mercy was able to do a ton of cool things with and without mana. To Jon, making fire was just the cherry on top.

“There are a ton of groups who train to use spells from a young age in a particular mana,” Mallory continued. “Usually large families who train a lot of warriors to… defend their honor or something. Like Mercy here. They learn a diverse set of active and body spells which mimic each other.”

Mercy nodded. “I was trained to fight since I was younger. It wasn’t fun.”

She looked up in thought. “Until it was.”

Suddenly, a flat blue square emerged in front of Jon’s face.

He recognized the color. It was definitely one of Mallory’s spells.

“I learned spellcasting in mana school,” Mallory explained. “So I can do lots of little bits of here and there. But we don’t really learn to fight.”

Jon touched the blue square. It was like he was touching a smooth wall.

He then began to poke at it repeatedly with his finger. It stayed in the air, resistant to his movements.

When it suddenly moved through the air, Jon jumped in shock. Mallory laughed. Jon could now see the glowing blue circle surrounding Mallory’s feet.

“You’re right. You don’t really attack people at all,” Mercy said. “But you can still do a lot of useful things..”

Mallory nodded. “We did a lot of study and practical practice. That means learning about how to do all sorts of spells from all sorts of disciplines. We’re much more… broad in our approach.”

“Huh,” Mercy said, “I never thought of that. Most mana spells I know are just to-”

“Kill people?” Mallory finished.

“...Yeah… sorry.” Mercy shrugged with a small smile. “But that’s why you were able to do that large spell at the end to take down that monster. That’s incredibly powerful.”

“Ehhh… any baseline mana user could have figured out how to do that spell, but if you insist…” Mallory did a mock bow in response.

“But doesn’t it mean you’re a sitting duck?” Mercy asked.

“Meh. Yeah. I just don’t get around to learning that other stuff.”

“Even fire?” Mercy asked. “Isn’t that the simplest?”

Mallory looked at Jon. “By the way, fire and thunder are the simplest things for most people to perform spells with. Honestly, it was pretty embarrassing from having to see that from those guys. But don't fix what isn't broken, right?"”

“You make up your own spells to be able to fulfill whatever function you need,” Mercy concluded. “Huh. That’s really awesome.”

“It is, but now we should explain tools,” Mallory said. "For Jon."

“Oh, yeah.” Mercy reached to her side where her black tool was. She held it out to Jon.

He looked at it. From far away, it looked smooth, but up close, he could see the small lines connecting the segmented cylinders together.

“There are tools that are designed to use mana,” Mallory explained. “They’re technically rare, although, if you hang around us mercenaries enough, you’ll start to see them a lot more.”

Mercy nodded. “Yeah.”

“Nobody knows who makes them,” Mallory continued. “They’re all different. But the basic gist is that the tool allows the person holding it to use a spell specific to that item. There’s different items that do different spells. But… it’s still a mystery on how it’s all decided.”

Jon pulled his blunderbuss and looked at it. So, his blunderbuss was casting a spell? Or was he casting it?”

“Tools more often than not do most of the work for the user,” Mallory said. “They’re similar to animals, in the way that their way more intrinsically connects to the world mana. It uses the mana of the user to form the world mana to cast a spell, but because the tool is doing most of the work, it barely takes any mana from the user.”

Jon switched takes between his and Mercy’s tools. They were very similar.

“The catch is,” Mallory continued, “is that because tools do a particular spell, they match particularly with a specific wavelength or density of mana. Only people who fit that mold can use it.”

Hmmm… Jon remembered Graves surprised at Jon’s ease of using the blunderbuss. He understood it now. When Graves gave it to him, it was because he knew that only Jon would be able to use it. Jon had first thought that Graves was being careless, but now, he could see it as a kind gesture. Especially after Jon had used it to help save the farm.

The irony didn’t fly by Jon, although it usually did. Jon knew.

“Try it.” Mallory interrupted Jon’s trance.

“Huh?”

“Try to take Mercy’s weapon.”

Jon looked at Mercy.

She frowned. “You can try…”

Jon looked down at the black tool in her open palm. He felt something emanating from it.

He stared at it, not able to make a move.

“Yep.” Jon turned to see Mallory’s approving nod. “The tools don’t like new people. It’s… weird. But only certain people are able to take them.”

Mallory's pitch suddenly changed. “Which is why it was awesome that you were able to just hand your gun to me.”

Oh. Jon did offer Mallory his gun, and he refused it. Did Mallory feel the same energy?

“Sorry…”

“No way!” Mallory shook his head. “It’s fine. Whenever people use a particular type of spell, their body acclimates to it. Tools included. It’s one of the reasons it’s hard for a person to learn many spells.”

“And it’s the reason why you know so many weak ones,” Mercy added.

Mallory nodded.

“...Everyone in my family has one of these,” Mercy said. “They’re giving to us when we get to a certain part of our training. I don’t know where we get them. I should, being that I’m the daughter of-”

Mercy stopped herself. “Nevermind.”

“Alright, it’s time!” Hector yelled. He threw the sack back onto the wagon.

Mercy grabbed Jon’s hand with both of her own. “One day, I’ll explain everything to you.”

“...Okay…” Jon said.

“Thanks for the explanation, Mallory, I learned a lot.” Mercy walked away.

Jon felt something in his hand. He looked at it.

It was Mercy’s tool.

Mallory whistled.

Jon held it firmly in his grasp, unsure of what it all meant.