“Mana is more than just some fuel for magic. Mana is fundamentally a force, while not of creation, it is a force which closely mimics all of reality.”

“So you’re saying if you understand mana, you will understand the universe?” I questioned, peeking an eye open.

“No.” The ghostly vestige glanced down at where I was seated, his arms folded. “It’s the opposite. To understand the entirety of the depths of mana, one must look outward to the universe for answers.”

I frowned, looking out toward the massive gaping chasm in front of me, where reality had literally been ripped open by the man standing next to me.

Or, well, more accurately, the still living version of the sage.

“In the time you’ve been granted, it would be impossible to instruct you on the fundamentals of every single revelation and abstract of knowledge required for all ten sage rings, but, at the very least, it is enough time to ensure the completion of your third ring.”

“I still don’t see why I can’t just do what I did before with your mana. I mean, plenty is coming from the Rift.”

“No.” the Vestige of Wisdom, as he told me to call him, shook his head. “I do believe we’ve been over this.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I stuck a finger out, shaking it as I mimicked his words. “ ‘If refined mana of a mage’s core is pure, a zero, then sage mana would be akin to a negative zero. It both is and isn’t. Therefore a sage, no matter who they may be, would be compatible with sage mana from any source. The mana of the Rift is what infinity is to zero, and thus one cannot haphazardly draw on it.’ Did that about sum it up?” I once more looked up at the Vestige of Wisdom from where I sat cross-legged, no more than a stride from the edge of the Rift.

“Is this what it was like to have an apprentice?” The vestige sighed, looking down at the endless darkness below us.

“Maybe it’s a historical difference.” I offered. “Or maybe it’s because you’re a vestige, and the vestiges I’ve dealt with before aren’t normally threatening.”

“I may be a vestige, but I still command authority over this dungeon. Directly I may hold no power, but that doesn’t change that I can have the dungeon act on my will.”

“Fair point.” I nodded, reminding myself to watch my words lest I annoy the vestige too much.

“Regardless, if you understood the answer already, why bother asking the question you did?” The vestige looked at me with inquisitive eyes, like a mentor trying to better understand their pupil.

“Because you say that, but all you’ve had me doing the last-” I cut off, frowning as I tried to count the days up in my head, difficult if not outright impossible to tell the passage of time here.

“One week, three days.” The vestige offered.

“Thanks. All you’ve had me doing these last ten days is sitting here and breathing.”

“Is that what it appears to you?” The vestige arched an eyebrow at me, his silver hair swaying as he chided me. “What do you believe would be the reasoning?”

I shrugged. “Well, I mean, ‘Sage of Wisdom’ or ‘vestige’ in your case kind of gives the impression of being all about philosophical introspection or something.”

The vestige sighed, seating itself next to me. “What do you take as wisdom?”

I scratched at my chin, thinking about the question.

What is wisdom?

“It’s more than just knowing that much I’m sure.” I let my thoughts linger for a moment longer before continuing my answer. “Wisdom is making the correct choice within certain restrictions.”

“You are correct.” The vestige nodded. “But wisdom is more than just philosophical ponderings and emotional reasoning. When distilled past such pleasantries, wisdom is effectively a choice selection tool, using knowledge of prior experiences and the realities that accompany real life that a simple study of utility may not touch upon. A wise man is not wise because of some deep mystical connection; a wise man is wise because he is versed in the irrefutable facts of reality and the meanderings of emotional reasoning. When combined, they create wisdom. So, if, as my title would suggest, I am dedicated to the idea of wisdom, let me ask you again, for what reason would I have you sit here doing ‘nothing’ over such a period?”

I was silent for a full minute, thinking it over.

Wisdom isn’t just philosophical reasoning.

“Because I’m lacking in something.” I finally answered. “Logically, it makes no sense for me to sit idle unless, of course, attempting to do more than this would prove harmful for whatever reason.”

“So take it a step further.”

“I think….” I took a slow breath through my nose, the air heavy, not with moisture like one would expect from an underground cavern, but with energy. “I think you’re having me acclimate, aren’t you?”

“Precisely.” The vestige smiled; his ghostly teeth were brilliantly white. “As for why we have not bothered discussing much in this period-”

“You needed me in a neutral state.” I interrupted, mind already connecting the thoughts. “And if I were busy trying to wrap my mind around things you were saying, I wouldn’t be in a neutral state, which would only slow the rate of acclimation.”

“You are a bright pupil, even if you are shockingly lacking in certain…. fields.”

“Don’t blame me.” I shrugged. “There was only a single tutor in my village, so my mother took it upon herself to teach me instead. I think she did a pretty good job.”

“How old are you know?”

“Nineteen.”

“And how old were you when you started your education.”

“Five, I think? But I left home at fifteen because a Sage showed up.”

“A Sage, you say?” The vestige looked at me with a hint of curiosity. “One from your time?”

“No, there aren’t many, if any, sages running around anymore. She took over one of the villagers-” I frowned for a moment, unable to remember who it had been, but I passed it off as simply time clouding my memory. “Called herself the ‘Sage Above All,’ and while it wasn’t technically her who did anything wrong, it was her rebirth that set everything into motion.”

I was about to continue lurching into my rant, but glancing over, I noticed the vestige had frozen, his jaw slightly ajar.

“Uhm, something wrong?”

“The Sage Above All. Are you sure?”

“No way I’d forget,” I answered with a nod. “Why, you know her?”

“Hah.” The vestige snorted. “Did I know her? We were rivals of sorts. Rather, the Sage of Wisdom and she were rivals. In my current state, I would never consider myself to be of her equal or peer.”

“A little self-deprecating, don’t you think?”

“I do not say this in any sort of misunderstood value. I simply mean it literally, the Sage Above All, hate as I do to admit it, truly was the greatest of us all. At her peak, she was responsible for the downfall of the True Dragon Solarus, chief amongst the True Dragons. Up until the point in which she cast him down, he was considered by most as the most powerful mortal to have ever lived.”

Well, that puts some things into context.

“I met him. Kind of grouchy.”

“I would presume that is why there is a faint trace of draconic mana on you? I had assumed it was from being in the presence of the dragon girl, but as the mana signature has yet to wane, I was beginning to have my suspicions.”

I reached into my pocket, pulling out the mana matrix and showing it to the vestige.

“Intriguing.” The vestige cupped its chin. “You made modifications to the data crystal design.”

“Uhm, not really for the purpose you might think.” After a moment of silence, a thought occurred to me. “Wait, if you can see and sense everything within the dungeon, how didn’t you see me do this?”

“Ahh, I was wondering if you may question that.” The vestige stood up, gesturing at me. “Come, walk with me.”

“Where are we going?” I asked as I stood up.

“You will see. As we walk, I will answer your question.”

As the minutes passed, we began to walk away from the looming Rift, the grey stone of the ground sloping up and away through the darkness.

“Uhm, hello?”

“Quiet.” The vestige’s face was tight with concentration, piquing my curiosity. “I am busy.”

“Busy?”

The vestige was quiet for several seconds until his face relaxed, looking toward me. “Yes, at your request, I have been taking a much more hands-on approach to handling your former group. While I may have the authority of the dungeon, it takes effort to warp reality, even of a meta-space such as this.”

“Okay.” I nodded, having to take his words at face value. “So then, my question?”

“Oh, right.” The vestige nodded. “The reason for why is because you are quite peculiar. Even within this domain that exists solely as an extension of my authority, or perhaps I exist as an extension of its authority, you, for reasons I cannot truly understand given my current… state, are capable at times of slipping out from my sight.”

“And you don’t know why?”

“As I said, I am but a vestige of my former living self. Much of my knowledge and understanding were tied to my essence as the sage, not as a vestige. Thus, while I may, in a fashion, have the same knowledge as he, I cannot relay it in a way that would make any sense, for I am like a copy. As a vestige, I only reflect the first dimension of the multi-dimensional facets of living existences.”

“You said a lot of things, and somehow I managed to understand none of it. But, in short, you can’t explain it in any way I could possibly understand?”

“I cannot.”

“Typical.” I sighed. “Then, can you tell me anything about the Sage Above All, considering you knew her?”

“I could, but I won’t.”

“Why?” I stopped, crossing my arms angrily.

“Because it is not my place.”

I stared pointedly at the vestige, but I gave in after only a few seconds. Trying to bull the answers from the vestige would be pointless. As a living person, the vestige had been a Great Sage, and if there was one thing I could rest assured of about a Great Sage, it was that they were unlikely to falter from a measly two-and-a-half ringer like me attempting to force their way.

“What can you tell me then?” I changed tactics. Rather than searching for a specific answer, I looked for any information I could use in the first place.

“Do you know what a mire is?”

“Uhm, like a swamp?” While the question came out of nowhere, I was the one who had prompted the sudden direction change, so I was confident that was a point to it.

“Correct. The Sage of Wisdom decided upon this location as the Citadel of the Moon for three reasons. One, the fabric of spacetime, of reality, was weaker here. Two, it was out of the way of any major powers which may take issues with spacetime being ripped apart on their doorstep, and three….”

“Yeah?”

I waited for the vestige to respond, but he fell silent, guiding us forward.

“Hello?” I prompted but was met with silence.

Right. Well, guess silence it is.

We continued our trek until after half an hour, or what felt like half an hour at least, we reached the crest of an upward sloping hill, the rise gentle enough that I had largely failed to notice it until we stood at the precipice.

“Three.” The vestige finally broke the silence, pointing to the sight I was looking at ahead of us. “The Larkion Mire.”

We were at the peak of a bowl-shaped crater, the opposite rim several leagues across. Within the crater was a swamp land of depressing grays and sickly green, noxious expulsions of gas and sulfur puffing out from boils within the landscape.

“The Larkion Mire was necessary for luring out the True Dragon of the Moon, as within the Larkion Mire was a relic formed by the natural forces of the mire. This relic, a gemstone known as ‘Little Planet,’ was highly desired by the True Dragon Lunahliss, and ultimately, it was the bait used to draw her out. When reality was torn asunder, and the Rift was opened, the natural landscape was shifted and changed, some of which were even drawn into and incorporated within this facility.”

“I take it the Larkion Mire was one of those places drawn in.”

“At the very least, your observational skills and context clues meet the bare minimum of sufficiency.” The vestige chuckled.

“So what, you want me to retrieve this gem or whatever?”

“Oh, no. That story was simple trivia as to why a swamp would be here in the first place. There is nothing within the mire that is required, but it is the existence of the mire that will prove useful.”

“Meaning…?”

“Now that you have been acclimated, it is time to lock in this new resilience. The corrosive nature of the mire would have burnt away your very life force in minutes had you attempted to enter it as you were, but now, you have the resilience to persevere and succeed.”

“Persevere?” I knew better than to hope the vestige was about to suggest I endure anything pleasant. “For how long?”

“You will traverse to the center of the mire where the aura of decay is thickest, and there you shall stay until you have reached the point where you are naturally able to stabilize the aura.”

“Aura? Don’t you mean mana?”

“Do not get caught up on small details, young sage. It is no more than a simpler way of referring to the mana as a whole within the environment, much as how we refer to ‘the air’ rather than iterate the individual gas and particles that come together to form it. Now, no more questions, you distract me, and I’m already doing you a favor in treating the current group within the dungeon more favorably than the last two.”

Wait, last two?

I had been staring down at the mire within the crater, but the mention that two groups had entered the dungeon caught my curiosity.

“What exactly do you mean by two?” I questioned, turning to interrogate the vestige, but it had already vanished without a trace.

Figures.

Without the vestige to answer my question, I shelved it for the time being; a wandering mind was unlikely to help with the task at hand. Taking one last deep breath of fresh, relatively fresh air, I began my descent down the crater wall, half walking, half sliding into the mire.

Here goes nothing.

-----------------------------------------

I’d never spent much time traversing swamps, but I had always figured it would be unpleasant. Hot, smelly, treacherous footing, general things that, when one thought of the word ‘mire,’ came to mind.

The Larkion Mire was all those things but somehow so much worse than I could have ever imagined. As I gained distance from the crater’s edge and made my way inward, the heat began to climb to horrifically uncomfortable levels. I understood immediately why I had to spend time acclimating before coming here. The air within the mire had a similar thickness to it as next to the Rift, but unlike the balanced levels of mana saturating the atmosphere there, here it was thick with decay, a mana aspect derived from heat and rot, be it fauna or flora. Had I been faced with the pressure of the environment and the corrosive mana straight off the bat, I would have succumbed within minutes. With that decay came a matching smell, the environment in a perpetual state of rot that only swamps could seem to sustain in perfect equilibrium. On more than one occasion, that rot led to me placing my foot in what I thought was solid ground, only to take a tumble into the equally horrid sludge, for to call it water would be an insult to water.

I was sweaty, gross, and uncomfortable, but that wasn’t the worst aspect.

No, the worst aspect was that I had a strong sense of foreboding, that with each step deeper into the mire I took, my life was shortening, one second, one minute at a time.

I cannot wait to get out of this place.

I was on a time limit of sorts. While my body had acclimated to such a heavy aura from my extended stay sitting next to the Rift, it hadn’t become immune to its effects. I was like a ship stranded out to sea, small holes leaking water within. For a while, such a ship would stay afloat, but if those breaches within the hull were not repaired, eventually, it would go down.

“Which I guess is the entire point,” I grumbled, regretting it the moment I did, physically capable of tasting the air so thick with stench and rot as it was.

Gross.

At the very least, there appeared to be no monsters or fiendish magical beasts snapping at my heels with every step; the journey inward was, while unpleasant, an uninterrupted trip.

Think. The faster I can figure out how to use this, the quicker I can go out of this disgusting place. So, what do we know?

The aura of this place seems to break down other forms of mana within. It smells worse than ass. This is, somehow, supposed to ‘lock in’ my current state and further my ability to do…. Stuff, I guess? Everything is done to achieve the completion of my third ring.

I was thankful that, at the very least, I was only making my way to the center of the mire and not the opposite end of the crater, as I’d already been walking for several hours, and the thought of potentially having not even made it halfway would have broken me down then and there.

Lost in thought, I tripped for the umpteenth time, stumbling as I walked straight into a large-looking boulder in the middle of a small mud clearing.

How did I miss that?

Picking myself up from the muddy sprawl I’d fallen into, my eyes flicked forward, something lying in the mud nearby.

Whoops. Probably don’t want to lose that.

The mana matrix had tumbled from where I kept it when I’d fallen over. Trudging through the vilely warm mud, I bent over, picked it up, and wiped it clean of the layer of grime covering it. Clean, or as clean as I could possibly get it considering the environment, I found myself staring at it, curiosity budding.

I wonder…

Probing at the mana matrix, to my intrigue, I discovered the mana matrix was completely untouched, not physically; it was, of course, quite dirty. The mana within was unchanged, showing no signs of the outward touch of the decaying aura.

How does that work?

If anything, a construct made to house such concentrated forms of mana should have been even more prone to the effects of the decay.

So why?

I sat down upon the boulder I’d tripped upon, pulling my feet up as I turned the mana matrix over in my hands, examining it with my hands and my probing intent. During my time next to the Rift, the mana matrix had settled, the black crystal lattice and the data crystal forming a sort of mana linkage between the two. The black crystal lattice, much like the Hollow it had once been, was devoid of any mana but bonded with the data crystal; I could sense the mana of the crystal flowing throughout it, like a conduit for mana to flow through. That wasn’t new, at least not from what I’d seen in the last few days.

What was new was that I sensed the mana matrix absorbing the aura surrounding us, taking the decaying mana and refining it within.

No. Not refining.

Refining suggested that it took the mana and distilled it into some pure form, but it was the opposite. It wasn’t refining it so much as fusing it together, resulting in a heavier, denser form of mana that further insulated it from external degradation.

Why didn’t I notice it sooner?

As I sat upon the rock, fidgeting with the increasingly mystifying mana matrix, the solution to the current issue of the decaying aura struck me like lightning, the answer so simple that I couldn’t help but wonder if had it wrong.

If you can’t somehow neutralize the decay, and you can’t avoid it, then you simply put something else in the way of it.

It was, of course, easier said than done. Without a mana core filled with mana to draw upon and use as a sort of barrier between myself and the decay mana, I had nothing with which to use as a defense against the aura.

Which, of course, was where the answer I’d come to came to play. If you didn’t have the mana within you, you simply had to take it from elsewhere. Attempting to use the decay mana for that purpose would be counter-intuitive. Yet if it were fused together into a stable form, there would be an unlimited pool to draw from, even if I could only use it as a shield.

Still.

Even that was easier said than done.

“Why send me here if that’s the case? Of course, if I could fuse mana in the first place, I wouldn’t need help developing my third ring.” I muttered, having gone taste-blind to the rancid air.

I was still missing something, I was sure.

But what?

I closed my eyes, slowing my breathing as I exhaled with practiced rhythm, doing my best to release stray thoughts.

Perhaps closing one’s eyes and sitting around seemed counter-intuitive when one didn’t have infinite amounts of time. To that, I would say there was a difference between being quick about something and rushing headlong into things.

I’ve made that mistake before. Rushing without thinking, and it almost got me killed.

I sat cross-legged, feeling as the aura slowly decayed away at me, breaking down piece by piece. There was a strangeness to idly sitting by as your life force was slowly being corroded by the environment around you.

There must be something to take away from all of this.

There was something I was missing; I was sure of it. Why, why else would I be sent here if there wasn’t something directly to learn?

Think.

I closed my eyes even tighter as if doing so would somehow give me the spark needed to figure out my predicament.

That’s when it hit me.

Think? That’s the issue! I’m thinking about it too much when I could be watching.

My eyes snapped open, and I looked down at the palm of my hand before whispering.

“Aulous.”

My upturned palm began to fill with water as the mana flowed from my sage rings, but with curiosity, I saw as the rate at which it appeared grew sluggish.

No, it’s not even that.

Watching the water with my mana-enhanced senses, the water which had begun to disappear wasn’t really disappearing; it was vaporizing, turning to gas right before my eyes.

Why?

It wasn’t that hot, so why?

Clued into the fact that there was more going on than I initially suspected, I probed further, imagining myself viewing it on the same scale if I were no larger than a grain of sand.

Stupid! I’m so stupid!

My eyes widened in surprise, the secret of it all finally revealing itself.

The decay wasn’t just as simple as it somehow removing or changing mana in the environment. If that were the case, the water loss within my hand would have been concentrated upon the surface area, but it had been everywhere, all at once.

“It’s not the mana itself that decays.” I giggled, utterly oblivious to my surroundings in my sudden elation. “It’s the mana bonds.”

The state, the affinity of mana was entirely based upon the way it bonded together, almost like the attracting and opposing poles of a magnet. Depending on the state of the mana bond, it could alter the very state, and form mana appeared.

“If decay works by weakening the mana bonds and breaking them apart, then inversely….” I held my hand out, still with a small amount of cupped water, as I closed my eyes, focusing.

I needed to go deeper. Finding and focusing on the mana around me wasn’t enough. I needed to manipulate even the integral bonds within the mana responsible for shaping the mana in the air around me. I began to pull sage mana from my rings, using it to focus my mind and sharpen my perception to a needlepoint.

One day I’ll make sure I can do it without the aid, but for now…

It was odd, strange, like the very first time I’d found myself capable of seeing the world filled with mana. One moment the world had been filled with familiar sights, further given depth by my ability to perceive the aura around me, the next, it was as if that very same aura was now spanned by almost imperceptibly fine threads woven throughout.

I flinched, my head suddenly aching.

Gods above that hurts.

It was too much to take in all at once, my brain simply unable to comprehend the sudden influx of information, so I focused my vision on the palm of my hand alone, on the water within where there was a greater abundance of interweaving threads from the mana. Concentrated on it alone, I saw how those threads were being reshaped, pushing against one another as the mana in the form of water quickly broke down.

Let’s see if we can’t change that.

Without much of a clue of what I was supposed to be doing, I focused on the mana bonds alone.

Alright, uh, fuse?

Nothing.

Damnit. Of course, it can’t be that easy. If only the stupid stuff would just-

I sucked in a breath as the water within my hand, nothing more than droplets at this point, suddenly began to move on their own accord, drawn inward and merging into a larger, albeit still relatively small, droplet of water.

“No way.”

The droplet wasn’t done yet, though. In a small orb no larger than my fingernail, the surface of the tiny droplet began to ripple, a cascade of movement through the water droplet as the entire thing solidified a moment later, leaving me with a gemstone of crystalized water, ice that wasn’t cold.

I released my hold on my mana perception, the world returning to a sense of expected normalcy as the mana hues and endless interwoven mana bonds within the aura vanished. I was tired, far more tired than I had expected. Exhausted, I laid down flat on the boulder I’d been sitting on.

I did it.

The thought made me grin as I raised the hand holding the crystalized water above my face.

Well, sort of.

It was still a far cry from proper mana fusion. All I’d done was alter the attraction state of a homogenous mana concentration; trying to do the same between differing mana affinities would likely prove more difficult.

But.

But that didn’t change that for the first time in over a year; I felt like I had taken a step forward.

First things first, though.

I sat back up, rubbing at the back of my head.

“Does this mean I can leave this stupid swamp now?”